Swan let him go. Running through Venetian alleys in the dark seemed like a sure way to die – or merely ruin his clothes. He reached down and the man at his feet stabbed at him and he caught the stab on his arm. The buckler took some impact, but the man’s knife scored into the meat of his bicep, and the pain enraged him, and he cut viciously at the man with his sword – not once but three times.
Then he shook his head and cursed himself for a fool.
And then he took their purses. Searched their clothes. No one had called the watch – one scream and one clash of blades wasn’t enough to upset most Venetians.
He picked up the first one and carried him a block, to the canal. And dropped him in.
Walked back, picked up the second, and repeated the exercise.
When he was done, his hands didn’t stop shaking. He almost couldn’t walk.
There were two torches burning outside the inn, and if another man had tried to kill him, he’d have died. He didn’t take any precautions, but walked up to the door. Only when he saw Joanna did he fully appreciate how foolish he’d been.
She looked around – Cesare and a group of other men were playing dice.
‘Come!’ she muttered fiercely. She dragged him into the kitchen. Then ran back and closed the front door.
He sat on a settle by the fire and wondered if he would throw up.
Then he looked down and saw the pool of blood on the stone floor under his feet.
He came to to find his right arm wrapped tightly – perhaps too tightly. It was all pins and needles. Something was pressed against him.
He moved his right hand and found that what was pressed against him was warm.
‘Ah,’ Joanna said. ‘You were cold.’
She was naked.
He found that he was, in fact, still alive.
In the morning, he went to his room and found an oiled silk envelope that weighed two pounds. With it was a scroll tube sealed with a red seal in heavy wax.
Swan took them both. He put the silk envelope into the wicker basket with his armour.
He watched the basket and his heavy leather bag swayed up over the side of the state galley Nike, and down on to the deck before going down into the shallow hold under the rowers.
‘We’ll sail after matins,’ said the mate, a young Venetian aristocrat with a full beard. ‘Good to have a couple of knights aboard. Will you fight as marines if we have a scrap?’
‘Of course,’ Alessandro said. ‘Show us our stations.’ He turned to Swan. ‘I’m going to assume you were attacked,’ he said.
‘Not exactly,’ Swan answered.
He told the story and Alessandro laughed his unpleasant laugh. ‘So – for all you know, you attacked an innocent man,’ he said.
Swan shrugged.
‘I don’t think so, either,’ Alessandro said. ‘But next time, leave someone alive, eh, Barbarossa?’
As Alessandro’s harness and arms were swayed aboard, Swan saw that he had a long sword, four feet of steel with a heavy cross-guard, a long hilt and a spiked pommel.
Giannis had one, too.
Giannis saw what he was looking at and leaned over. ‘In a ship fight, it is good to have reach and power,’ he said.
Alessandro opened Swan’s basket. ‘Fine armour. Milanese. Does it fit?’
‘Well enough,’ Swan said. ‘Better than the stuff I wore at Castillon.’
Swan had been to sea – twice – in great ships. A galley was a very different ride. He was close to the water, and it felt faster and more personal.
As a ‘knight’ in the train of an ambassador, he rode in the captain’s luxurious ‘coach’ with eight other men – the bishop, his two priests, the captain, the mate, their two men-at-arms who were well-born Venetians training for the sea, and Alessandro.
After one very uncomfortable night, Swan joined Giannis under the awning. The deck was as hard as rock, but the space to roll over was better than a feather bed. The third night, Peter showed them both how to rig a cloak as a ring for the hips, and Swan slept well.
They put in almost every night after the first week at sea. They touched in Dalmatia, every day, and down to Ithaca and Corfu. Then they turned east, and they were in a sea that was supposed to be friendly, because Venice and the Turks were at peace.
But Ser Marco, the captain of the galley, was very watchful. He was different from the aristocrats that Swan had seen in France. He was very professional, and he was on deck at all hours. He had grey in his beard, and no front teeth – when he smiled, he looked like a drunken bully Tom had known in his youth. But there was nothing drunken in his style on deck. He was demanding, and his men loved him.
He was also very cautious. He seemed to expect pirates from every headland. He made them practise arming and disarming every day. Every day at dawn he had all the marines and all the archers on deck, fully armed, unless they were in port. When he discovered how good Alessandro was, he had the young nobleman direct a sword exercise – every day, rain or shine, on the gangway down the centre of the ship.
The ports were pleasant – small towns, carefully fortified. The Venetian fortifications were always modern and well maintained. The guards of their garrisons turned out with a flourish.
Venice took care of its overseas empire, that much was obvious.
On the west coast of the Peloponnese, Genoa still held sway, and the Venetian galley stayed out to sea and didn’t touch land except for headlands. Swan stayed on deck all the time, watching the distant shore and trying to guess what part of the classical world they were passing. That low-slung isthmus – was that Sphacteria? Was that towering summit Mount Olympus?
He got used to donning and wearing armour. He fenced with Alessandro every morning, and with Giannis, and with the three Venetian men-at-arms. The oarsmen would watch them, sometimes wager, and always offer raucous comments. They were not slaves.
Around Attica, they put in at Piraeus, and the scarred Parthenon towered in the distance.
‘I must see it,’ Swan said. Cesare agreed, and when the capitano said they had a day, the two men rented mules and rode up from the port to the ruins of Athens. The Dukes of Athens maintained a residence on the summit of the Acropolis, but the duke wasn’t present. Swan climbed to the summit of the Acropolis in a state of near-awe, and stood on the steps of the Parthenon, looking up at its dazzling white stone, the miraculously intact roof, the carved coffers in the ceiling, the frieze of endless, marvellous statues – the gateway . . .
He spent three hours wandering the crown of the Acropolis. Cesare sat down in the shade of an ancient olive tree.
‘Too damned hot. Enjoy yourself,’ he said.
On the way back, Cesare cursed his mule, and then said, ‘You really love all that.’
‘It is right there,’ Swan said. ‘It’s . . . as if Pericles might come out and speak.’
Cesare shook his head. ‘Insects and hot sunlight and greedy peasants,’ he said. ‘Much like home, but without the good wine and the taverns. And the cities and the money and the good roads.’
‘I copied down some of the epitaphs,’ Swan said excitedly. ‘Aeschylus!’
‘You sound as if you didn’t believe he was real before.’ Cesare shook his head.
‘The long haired Persians remember me in the grove of Marathon,’ Swan quoted. He looked at his tablets. ‘The wax is melting,’ he said, disgusted. ‘I copied one about another solider – Diodorus something. Fought in Egypt.’ He looked at the Italian. ‘Yes. It seems more real here than in England.’
Cesare shook his head. ‘And you waited tables in an inn? What a fascinating country England must be.’
At Naxos, the bishop, who hardly ever showed his face on deck, went to pay a visit to the Duke of Naxos, who was, of course, a Venetian.
The Bishop of Ostia was a papal courtier. It was not his first trip outside of Rome, but one would never have guessed it. The man’s world view was utterly dominated by Rome, and he seemed to feel that the world existed to serve the Pope, which, as Alessandro said, was going to make his visit to Constantinople very exciting.