Christian Cameron: Tom Swan and the Head of St. George Part Four: Rome

Rosy-fingered dawn.

The very first hint of light spread from a vague grey to the merest hint of pink, like the touch of colour on a pretty girl’s face before she kisses you.

The three Turkish galleys had rowed all night to close the distance, and now they were at ramming speed, and the froth at their prows was tinted the same grey and salmon pink as the rest of the world, and the sea appeared to be a thousand shades of black, and behind the standing rigging of the enemy galleys, a flock of migrating waterbirds rode the air. Just for a moment, Tom Swan watched them and wished that he, too, could just fly away.

Behind him, on the command deck, Ser Marco was rattling orders as fast as a Florentine auctioneer sells a dead man’s household items.

Swan continued to arm himself.

He’d slept in his doublet, and he stripped out of it, the lace-on sleeves sticking to his arms because in his hurry he’d forgotten to unlace the wrists. He tore them off, and Peter had his arming coat ready. Once, it had been a handsome garment of wode-dyed elkhide quilted to silk, but now it had been soaked in successive layers of sweat and blood, his and others’, and it smelt.

He got it on anyway. He ran the central lace as fast as he could, missed a hole — and went back.

Experience had taught him a great deal about fighting in armour, and one thing he’d learned was to arm as carefully as possible, because a minor discomfort at the start meant screaming pain and lack of mobility in the fight.

He braced his feet as the galley heeled under him. The arsenali — the Venetian professional oarsmen, every man a citizen, every man armed — were awake, and rowing hard, but Ser Marco had just turned them very slightly to the east, towards the coast of Asia. Swan had no idea why, but Ser Marco was the best naval capitano he’d ever served with-

Swan laughed. Ser Marco was the only one he’d served with. He had to laugh at himself, sometimes.

‘He’s smilink, the gapitano ,’ Peter said in his Flemish-accented English.

‘How’s the Spaniard?’ Swan asked. He had his right cuff tied, and went to lace his left.

‘Pfft! Toe nou! That one is stuffed with old rope and nails and leather and not guts. My friend Antonio and I have him vell enough in hand, eh?’ Peter grunted. ‘Get your breastplate on. I’ve been holdink it too long.’

Swan reversed into the breast and back, and Peter folded it closed around him, pulling a little too vigorously to get the mail of the voiders and the skirt in under the fauld.

‘Ouch!’ spat Swan when the front and back closed on his flesh, right through mail and leather.

‘Don’t be a girl,’ Peter said. ‘Even when you smell like one.’

For the first time that morning, Swan thought of Khatun Bengul — her ivory-white body, her breasts like the domes of a Greek church, the taste of her, the smell-

He could still smell her on his hair.

The timoneer was shouting at the arsenali , who were now pulling hard enough, three men to an oar, to grunt with every pull. The sound was obscene.

Irene and Andromache, the women from the acrobat troupe, began to stretch on the small open deck in the stern. Irene did a handstand.

The arsenali ’s grunts quickened, and so did the pace of the oars.

The Turkish galleys were closer now — a long bowshot, and with the wind behind them.

‘Where’s the head?’ asked Nikephorus, in Greek.

Swan was trapped — Peter was lacing on his right arm harness, and he had nowhere to go. ‘It is in my armet,’ he said. ‘I — er — borrowed it.’

Nikephorus looked old and very serious. ‘When I found it gone, I assumed that you had betrayed us,’ he said. ‘Messer Peter here insisted that you would not abandon us, and went as far as to promise to kill you himself if you did.’

It is difficult to be persuasive while men are putting you into plate armour. Tom Swan gave it up as a bad job. ‘I wasn’t sure you’d make it.’ He managed to meet the Greek scholar’s mild eyes. ‘I’ll see you get your share. I was … too clever by half.’

Di Brachio barked a laugh. He jumped down from the command deck. ‘Say that again, English?’ he said. ‘I just want to hear you say it.’

Swan shrugged. ‘I was too clever. I usually am. When I’m tempted, I fall.’

Peter grabbed his left arm and began to fit it into the appropriate harness. He seemed to twist the arm farther than was necessary.

‘Ouch! Damn me, I need that arm!’ Swan spat.

Di Brachio leaned in close. ‘You endangered every one of us when you took the head — the head — into the presence of the Grand Turk. And you endangered us when you stopped to dip your wick with one of Omar Reis’s harem girls. Eh? My young master?’

Swan felt the red flush rising into his hair. ‘We’re here, aren’t we? And by the grace of God, messire, you know as well as I that Reis meant to betray us from the first, and not because of any antics of mine.’ He felt the rage of the young against the injustice of the old.

And the rage was fuelled by knowing in his heart that they were right.

‘Take the head, Master Nikephorus. Keep it safe.’ He hung his head. ‘I almost lost it, at the end,’ he admitted in a mumble.

Admitting to something was often a way to avert adult wrath. He’d learned that with his mother, and his real father, and all the other adults who looked for the best in him.

Di Brachio put an arm around his shoulder, pulled him tight, and kissed him on the cheek. ‘I forgive you, you idiot. But you are going to die in one of these escapades.’

‘And none of us want to be around,’ Cesare di Brescia put in. He had his own armour on. He’d lost the ring of fat around his middle, and he looked like a statue of Poseidon or Zeus.

Giannis Trapitzou laughed. ‘Because it will be spectacular,’ he added. ‘And very destructive, I think.’

‘Why are we turning east?’ Swan asked. He wanted to ask ‘ why are you all picking on me ’, but experience had taught him that this only increased the adult feeding frenzy.

Di Brachio held up his left gauntlet, a magnificent example of the armourer’s art, with sliding plates over the wrist, individual finger assemblies, and a series of sliding rivets on the thumb for near-perfect articulation. Swan raised his left hand and Di Brachio rammed the gauntlet on a little too hard.

‘There’s a heavy current by the Asian shore,’ Di Brachio said. ‘But it runs north, not south, and I don’t know how he plans to use it.’ He paused. ‘You and the old man have a lot in common, little fox. He likes to surprise all of us with his plans. He doesn’t hold meetings, and he never explains. Since he’s still alive, men crawl over each other to serve on his ships.’

Swan grinned at the implied compliment.

‘You know what the difference between you is?’ Alessandro asked.

Swan grinned. ‘Thirty years?’ he asked.

‘Exactly,’ Di Brachio said.

Peter got the gorget closed around his neck and seated home on his breastplate, and then he hinged open the cheek plates of the armet and slid it on top of Swan’s head, pushing firmly until he could feel that Swan’s head was all the way into the deep ridges of padding, four layers of linen stuffed with sheep’s wool.

‘You’re ready,’ Peter said.

Irene smiled at him, and did a backflip right past them, her long legs flashing in the pink light, and the oarsmen on the nearest six benches found the breath to hoot, altogether, as her man’s shirt licked up above her belly button and then fell back without quite revealing an entire breast.