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

Tom Swan and the Head of St George

Part One: Castillon

Christian Cameron

Foreword

There’s something very . . . historical, about writing an historical serial for e-publication. If it’s been done recently, I haven’t heard about it, and yet it has impeccable historical credentials – before we had the epub, we had the magazine, and in that format Dumas did it, and Conan Doyle, and a host of other authors with magnificent credentials; Harriet Beecher Stowe, for example, and Charles Dickens.

It’s a fine format. Instead of a single pulse of seven hundred manuscript pages, the author can write in blocks with independent storylines that may still have an arc and a complex interweb of characters and motivations. I was resistant – but not for long.

So here is Tom Swan, my first serial character. Tom is firmly based in history; Italy was full of itinerant Englishmen, especially soldiers, throughout the period, and so was Greece. I confess that the man who forms the basis for the character was not English but Italian – Cyriac of Ancona, sometimes known as the ‘Grandfather of Archaeology,’ who roved the Levant in search of antiquities and manuscripts that he could beg, borrow or steal for the Pope and other rich clients in their burning zeal to rediscover the ancient world. Ancient manuscripts were then, and remain, incredibly valuable; recent re-discovery of a complete text of Archimedes in a palimpsest shows that such manuscripts are still out there, and give us an idea of the kind of treasures for which Tom Swan – and Cyriac of Ancona – searched.

If this serial has some success, I’ll write more – the format, as I say, is fun, and allows me to explore some nooks and crannies of history – and even some characters that I’d love to take to greater depth; Philokles, in the Tyrant series; Archilogos (Arimnestos’s Ionian adversary) in the Long War series; Geoffrey de Charny in the late Middle Ages – the list goes on and on. And I’ll add pieces rapidly – perhaps even one a month.

Readers of my other books are aware that I’m a passionate re-enactor and also a military veteran, and that these experiences inform my writing. Those who are new to me deserve the following reassurance – I’ve worn the clothes and armour, and shot the bows, and rowed, and even ridden some of the horses. In the process of working as an intelligence professional, I met people who exercise real power every day, and I got an idea of how they work – and how history works. But I don’t do this in a vacuum and I receive an amazing level of support from friends, fellow re-enactors, veterans, academics crafts people and artists. In those last categories, I’d like to thank Dario Wielec, who drew the illustrations; he has a passion for historical detail that delights me every time I see his drawings, from any period, and you can see more of his stuff at http://dariocaballeros.blogspot.ca/. Finally, the ‘covers’ for the Tom Swan series are provided by Albion Swords, who are, to me, the premier manufacturers of accurate replica swords in North America. I use their products every day. How many people can say that – about swords?

Chris Cameron

Toronto, June 2012

Tom Swan – Part One: Castillon

For good or ill, Thomas Swan had been one of the first men into the French gun positions and one of the last to be taken. So he was on the right of the line of captives as the blood-maddened crowd of peasants and foot soldiers killed Englishmen.

Swan was too tired to struggle. He thought about it. By the time he’d watched them kill a couple of men-at-arms worth far more than he was worth, he realised that they were all going to die.

He took a breath and wondered somewhat idly how many he had left. A Frenchwoman killed an archer by cutting off his penis with an eating knife. The archer screamed, utterly wretched, and the crowd cheered her. Swan took another breath.

It was his first battle – his first campaign in France. His first time out of London. But he’d heard enough from his mother’s brothers to guess why the Frenchwoman had killed the archer.

A big man – a really big man – shouted at the French mob in French. Swan’s French was quite good. The man didn’t even sound English. He heckled them, and when two French gunners came for him, he picked one up. The man stabbed at him with a long knife. The big man shrugged after the Frenchman put a knife in him, and threw him into the crowd.

Off to the right was a party of men on horseback. They were pushing through the line of wagons that guarded the back of the gun emplacement.

The big man was still fighting. The Frenchmen had scattered, and one was loading a handgun. Another aimed a crossbow and pulled the lever, but his aim was poor and the arrow killed a third Frenchman, a franc-archer at the edge of the crowd.

Swan felt the Frenchman behind him shift his weight, and hunched for the blow. He couldn’t help it. He thought of twenty wrestling tricks his uncles had taught him to take the man’s sword, but he could barely raise his arm. He’d fought . . .

Talbot was dead.

It was all unbelievable. He thought, Damn it, I’m here to make my fortune! I’m only eighteen!

He took another breath, and waited to die.

The horsemen pressed into the crowd, swords drawn. Armoured knights. And a cardinal. Swan knew what the round red hat meant.

Two francs-archers grabbed an English archer, tore his shirt, and then beheaded him in three gory strokes of their short swords. The knights did nothing to stop it, and Swan’s hopes died.

The crowd bayed like a hunting pack and pushed towards the latest killing, and the cardinal was almost unhorsed. He shouted at them, and the crowd moved again – two of the knights pulled their horses up on either side of him, protecting him. The nearer of the French knights reached out and cut a French soldier with his sword. The man flinched away.

Swan pushed through his despair. It couldn’t hurt. It might even help.

‘ Kyrie eleison, Pater! Kyrie, Agie Pater! ’ he shouted in Greek.

All that learning ought to be good for something.

The cardinal’s head snapped around, his eyes searching.

A Frenchman’s fist crashed into Swan’s head.

He stumbled.

Now and in the hour of our death. Amen .

He was hit again, fell to the earth, and . . .

Thomas Swan awoke to crisp linen sheets and light.

His whole body hurt .

Good Christ, I . . .

‘I’m alive!’ he said aloud. And felt like an idiot, but he was very much alive. Certain parts were insisting they were alive.

He looked around – there were palettes laid on a wooden floor, and whitewashed walls. A monastery, then.

‘One of the English devils is moving!’ said a woman’s voice in French.

A burly monk appeared with a staff. Swan bowed. He was naked, which put him at a disadvantage.

‘Tom Swan, at your service,’ he said. Then switching languages, he said, ‘ Serviteur ,’ in good Gascon French.

The monk pointed one end of the staff at Swan and called, ‘Help! Help!’

It might have been funny, except for the real possibility he was about to be killed. Swan bowed again. ‘My interests are entirely in food, friends,’ he said.

Other men on palettes of straw and clean sheets were stirring. Swan had to assume that the big man in the bandages was the Fleming who had fought the Frenchmen. The man wasn’t moving. He had one arm out over his sheet, and that arm was covered in massive bruises.

He counted sixteen. Sixteen men.