The Florentines watched the process with distaste. ‘What becomes of them, then?’ Accuicciulli asked Di Brescia.
The Roman sneered. ‘Nothing good, but it won’t be at our hands. One dead – the rest are merely down, and this coward here’ – Di Brescia had his foot on one man’s gut – ‘is merely shamming, waiting for us to leave.’
‘Do we hold the battlefield, or must we flee from their reinforcements?’ asked the Florentine. ‘I don’t know your Roman ways.’
The innkeeper, of all people, had taken a heavy blow early in the fight, and sat by the upturned table, with his wife fussing over a new egg on his scalp. She looked up. ‘We don’t want any more trouble,’ she said. ‘My poor man – look at him!’
‘The watch won’t come,’ Di Brescia said. ‘If these were hard times, like a papal election, then both sides would send for more men and we’d have a battle. But in these decadent times …’ The older man shrugged. ‘Swan, you attract trouble like shit attracts flies, you know that, eh?’
In the end, they all went back to the cardinal’s palazzo, moving carefully. Swan’s split lip, along with the bruise to his head, had swelled outrageously, making any kind of talking difficult, and his right eye was almost swollen shut. Violetta had sewn Irene’s hand, and the Greek acrobat stood the pain during the sewing, and got honey from the innkeeper’s wife to spread on the wound. Di Brescia and Giannis were virtually untouched. They embraced the Florentine with promises of future comradery and all of them wrapped themselves in cloaks and followed Giannis, who had volunteered to scout, out into the darkness.
Swan realised that the Frenchman was with them.
‘Where are you going?’ he whispered. They were crossing the edge of the forum.
‘I need work,’ the man muttered. ‘My boss got the plague. You’re rich – hire me. I can fight.’
Swan could barely talk, much less negotiate. ‘I’ll give you a place to sleep,’ he said. ‘That is the limit of my resources.’
Bessarion had two stables, one for visitors and one for his own nags and some donkeys. Swan put the Frenchman in with the mules, and fetched him two good blankets from his own travelling gear.
Violetta stood in the shadows. ‘I can’t go to your room,’ she said.
Swan was in pain. ‘Why not?’ he asked.
Di Brescia shook his head. ‘You won’t be caught,’ he said. ‘It’s as important to the cardinal’s reputation as to ours. Come on.’ He took them in through the kitchen, and the only servant awake was a small boy nodding by the great fireplace.
They climbed the back stairs, up two flights, and crept along the barracks corridors to their rooms. Swan reached his with a sigh of relief, pulled the courtesan in behind him and shut the door. He kissed her in the darkness despite the pain.
She put a hand behind his head. ‘You taste like blood,’ she said. She sounded happy.
Later, in the darkness, she pushed him away. ‘Would you marry me?’ she asked.
Swan couldn’t see her. He grunted, thinking the proposition over.
‘The fucking priests aren’t going to marry me, are they?’ she asked the darkness. ‘My mother said that you needed to find a soldier and stay with him. She did it for ten years, until the gentleman took a lance in the side down in Naples. He was good to us. I remember riding his horse.’ She wriggled. ‘You think I’m used goods. Can I tell you something whores know that virgins don’t?’
‘My mother was a whore,’ Swan said. His whole face hurt. His side hurt. But this was … interesting.
She went on as if he hadn’t spoken. ‘It just doesn’t matter. Unless you let it matter. I could be a good wife. Did you just say your mother was a whore?’
‘She runs a tavern in London. Like that woman tonight, except there is no landlord. Just her brothers, who are a pair of …’ He couldn’t think of words to do justice to his uncles. ‘Bruisers. Thugs. Killers. But they were always good to me.’
They lay in silence.
‘I like you,’ he said. ‘I’m not – exactly – the marrying type.’
She laughed. ‘Well, neither am I. But I decided I’d ask you, as you are the only man I know that I like. Well – I like Giannis, now. Di Brescia – he wanted to peel my clothes off even while he teaches me to hold a sword.’
Swan licked the inside of the big bruise on his cheek. ‘So did I,’ he said.
‘You’re not a hundred years old,’ she said. ‘Your body’s as good as mine.’
Later, he said, ‘Damn it, maybe I should marry you.’
Swan was summoned by the cardinal, and was left in no doubt of his failings. It was early, but he was already shaved, dressed and ready.
Swan looked at his empty bed, considered his past and future, and made his decision. He picked up the bag of his treasures – the small items he’d purchased on his own account in Greece – and took them with him to the cardinal.
Bessarion sat across his desk and steepled his fingers. ‘You threatened my steward, you created a riot in the forum where my name was mentioned, and you brought a notorious courtesan into my house. And no doubt fornicated with her.’ He sounded weary. ‘You look like an animal,’ he added.
Swan was past anger. He’d been awakened early by Violetta – after almost no sleep – and his face was as big as a melon. His right eye was barely able to open and he looked like a puffy-faced Turk. She had dressed quickly, with almost no talk, and she hadn’t kissed him.
He’d taken her out through the kitchen, of course. Except that the kitchen at dawn is a much busier place than the kitchen at the dark of the moon.
‘I feel that you are out of place in my household,’ Bessarion said.
Swan thought furiously – much as he’d thought when Violetta proposed marriage. It wasn’t what you said – it was how you said it. Adults had been shouting at him for his various misdemeanours for most of his life. Reacting to the injustice of the situation was almost never the best tactic. He controlled his breathing.
‘I’m sorry,’ he muttered.
‘No, you are not,’ Bessarion said. He raised his eyes, and they had a little sparkle to them. ‘She is quite remarkably beautiful,’ he said. He almost sounded wistful. ‘Listen, boy. I owe you a great deal. But this is an awful time for the Curia. The loss of Constantinople …’ He shrugged. ‘For me, it is liking losing my right hand. But even for the Latin curates, it is as if God has turned his back on us.’ He looked off into space beyond Swan’s head. ‘Perhaps he has, and this is the end of the Church. Di Brachio says that the Turk plans to conquer Italy.’
Swan met his eyes. ‘Yes,’ he said. ‘He thinks he is Alexander born again.’
Bessarion smiled. ‘What a heretical notion for an Islamic man to hold,’ he said. ‘I wonder how I can use it against him?’ He looked at the ceiling. ‘Listen, boy. There is a galley at Ancona that is readying for sea – bound for Cos and Rhodos. You need to leave this town, and I am flush with money – I can afford to send you to buy books.’ He leaned back. ‘Mind you, I suspect that you, too, are flush with money. Mm?’
‘I made some money in Constantinople, Eminence,’ Swan replied.
‘The missing stones on the head, perhaps? Never mind. I’m giving the head to the Serenissima in return for their support for a crusade. They can replace the stones.’ Bessarion leaned forward. ‘I was thinking of other money.’
‘Father Ridolpho’s gold?’ Swan asked sweetly. ‘In French francs and Genoese gold mixed? Is that what we’re looking for?’