Christian Cameron: Castillon: Tom Swan and the Head of St George Part One

Alessandro nodded. ‘I’ll take him,’ he said. ‘He has a weak stomach for the killing, but I’ll take him.’

‘At least he can read Greek,’ Bessarion said. ‘And Cesare likes him.’

The news that Swan was going to accompany them to Rome didn’t seem to be the thunderbolt that Swan had expected it to be. He told Giovanni at the convent, and the lawyer clasped his hand, kissed him on one cheek, and laughed. ‘Welcome to the very gates of heavan,’ he said.

‘The gates of the inferno is more like it.’ Cesare was a large man, and Paris in midsummer was hot, smelly and stifling. ‘You are not the missing Prince of Wales after all, eh?’

Swan bit his lip.

‘We had a joke about you in the early days,’ Giovanni said. ‘You were either an impostor, a peasant playing at being a lord, or the other way round – a great lord playing at being a lesser light. But we could never guess which.’

‘You were too easy with the servants,’ Cesare said. He shrugged. ‘The way I am. I grew up – as a servant, eh?’

Swan nodded. ‘My mother owns a tavern,’ he said. ‘I waited tables as soon as I was old enough to carry the cups.’

Giovanni laughed. ‘But your Latin is impeccable!’

Cesare grunted.

‘Oh, my father had me educated,’ Swan said. He shrugged. ‘I even did a little jousting,’ he added.

The lawyers shook their heads.

‘You’ll be happy in Italy,’ Cesare predicted. ‘Here in the north, the idiots think birth matters. In Italy – we’re making a new world. Where a man is what he is.’

Giovanni looked down his long nose at his friend. ‘Birth is birth,’ he said, and then relented. ‘But it’s true. We’re not hunting dogs. Cesare proves that anyone can go to university and emerge a man of letters.’ He ducked a thrown inkwell, which splattered against the whitewashed wall. ‘You just made some young novice very unhappy, my friend.’

‘I’ll just imagine her on her knees—’

‘None of your impiety, you blasphemer—’

‘Working her little heart out—’

‘Stop!’

Swan left them to it.

He walked to his own cell – a tiny room the size of a blanket chest, which is what his bed seemed to be. As he expected, Peter was sitting on it, reading the psalms. Copybooks – short tracts, meticulously written out by copyists – were quite cheap in Paris.

He sat on the blanket box. He took the cardinal’s livery badge from his purse and put it on the box. ‘I’ve taken service with the cardinal,’ he said. ‘I’m going to Rome.’ He smiled. ‘You’ve been very good to me. I think we’re . . . even. Eh?’

Peter smiled, slipped a strip of linen tape into his tract, and sat back. ‘I’m fired? Just like that? Just when I’ve figured out how to get the nuns to wash our shirts?’

Swan waggled his head nervously. ‘You’re a master archer. I’m a penniless git.’ He looked up. ‘I haven’t really got anything to pay you with.’

Peter folded his hands. ‘You mean, except for the carved ivories you have rolled up in your blanket? Or had you forgotten those?’

Swan rose from his seat as if he’d been pinched.

Peter laughed. ‘I thought you were saving them to pay your ransom,’ he said. He didn’t bother to hide his laugh. ‘They must be worth . . . a thousand florins? Maybe a thousand ducats .’

Swan shifted nervously. ‘Maybe,’ he said. He was becoming tired of getting caught. The adult world was much more complex that then world of pages.

Peter sat back. ‘So – maybe I’d like to stay with you. If you’ll have me.’ He grinned. ‘And maybe if the pay is good.’ Ant maybe iff te paiy iis gut .

Swan couldn’t believe what he was hearing. ‘Are you kidding?’

Peter shook his head. ‘No. I think maybe it is time to settle down.’ He nodded. ‘The war is over. That’s what they say in Paris. England has lost everything – except Calais. I could go home to Antwerp – and what? Full cloth?’ He smiled. ‘I’ll go to Rome. Pray in St Peter’s. If you and I don’t get along so well – then I’ll come home.’

‘That’s . . . excellent!’ Swan smiled, and they clasped hands like soldiers. ‘Peter, you really are . . . I mean – thanks!’

‘Who knows?’ Peter said. ‘In time, perhaps I learn to be a servant.’ He got up. ‘By the way, don’t try and sell the ivory until we are on the road south. Avignon ought to be good.’ He leaned past his master. ‘I have a gift for you. For saving my life.’

Swan laughed. ‘You don’t owe me a thing.’

‘It is not much of a life, but the only one I haf,’ Peter said. ‘Here. Don’t wear it until Avignon.’ He opened the linen stocking that held his bow and took out the count’s sword.

Swan took it. It was a fine weapon – a single sword, a riding sword. The cross-hilt was plain steel, but it had the two finger rings of the new style, and a pair of deep fullers running down the double-edged blade. It was longer than Alessandro’s borrowed sword, and heavier in the hilt, differently balanced, with a complex ricasso. The blade was virtually unnicked.

‘A fine piece of steel. Eastern, I think. Bohemia, perhaps.’ Peter looked it over. ‘I almost kept it for myself.’ He shrugged. ‘I watched you. You are very fast.’

Swan nodded. ‘Thanks.’

‘You’ve had some training, yes?’ Peter asked.

Even in the close confines of the nun’s cell, Swan was thrusting and cutting. Peter pretended to cower. ‘Careful, master,’ he whined.

Swan laughed.

‘But you could be much better,’ the Fleming continued.

Swan stopped. ‘Really?’ he said, not entirely pleased. He imagined himself a good blade.

‘Watch Alessandro some time when his ankle is healed,’ Peter said. ‘Perhaps in Rome we can take lessons.’

‘We?’ Swan asked. He grinned.

‘We,’ Peter said.

Once again, they shook.

They rode hard out of Paris once the cardinal had settled his debts. They had no wagons and only four servants, the lawyers and the soldiers. They made twenty leagues a day, and if the servants complained, the soldiers enjoyed the pace.

Peter had assumed they’d stop in Avignon for a week, but they didn’t come close to the formal papal city. Instead they went east into the mountains, crossing Savoy. Leaving Turin, Swan buckled on the count’s sword for the first time. They were a mile on the road before Alessandro saw it. He frowned at Swan, who nodded.

‘Peter picked it up,’ he said. ‘I never wore it before today.’

Alessandro frowned, but later in the day he rode up and smiled. ‘I’m used to getting my way all the time,’ he said. ‘It is still a risk. A fine sword. Let me see.’

Swan watched him roll the weapon around with his wrist – moulinetto , stramazone . He knew those Italian terms from his own Italian master. ‘Beautiful,’ he said. ‘As good as my own.’

‘Here’s your spare back,’ Swan said, suiting action to words.

Alessandro accepted his blade. ‘What about my nice boots?’ he asked.

‘I need to earn some money to buy my own.’

‘I think they’re about the same value as my life, which, I think, perhaps, you saved.’ Alessandro nodded. ‘So keep them.’

‘I don’t know. They have a cut in the thigh.’ Swan grinned.

They rode down into Italy.

Also by Christian Cameron

Catch the next instalment of Tom’s adventure in Tom Swan and the Head of St George, Part Two: Venice

Also by Christian Cameron and available as Orion ebooks:

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