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

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.

‘Good Christ,’ he said.

The burly monk continued to threaten – ineptly – with the butt of the staff. He shouted for help again, and there were distant footsteps.

A slim man – older, but with angelic blond hair and a less than angelic face – appeared from behind the monk. ‘You are the barbarian who speaks Greek?’ he asked.

It’s difficult to appear dominant or even charming when you are naked and covered in dried blood and bruises. Swan shrugged. ‘Greek. French. Italian. English. Latin.’ He smiled in what he hoped was an ingratiating manner because he really wanted to live.

The blond man nodded. ‘Come with me, then,’ he said in Latin.

Swan spread his hands as if to indicate his nudity.

The blond man was dressed foppishly like an Italian – tight hose, tight short jacket, a tiny hat perched on his curls. He had a very effective sneer. ‘His Eminence has seen a naked man before,’ he said. ‘Perhaps not as gamy as you – but still. Move.’

The fop drew a dagger from behind his back.

Swan considered the possibility of taking the man’s weapon and running. He didn’t have the bone-weary feeling of defeat – his joints ached, he had bruises, but he could fight.

The slim blond man looked as if he knew what he was about. He kept his empty hand between them, and the dagger well back.

Swan walked along the brightly lit corridor. A nun saw him and turned her back. Then she moved quickly down the corridor and shouted ahead that a naked man was coming.

She turned back and looked at him. And spat.

He almost laughed.

He took a deep breath. They were at a closed door.

The thin man stepped out of the way. ‘If you do anything I do not like, I’ll put this in your arse,’ he said, flicking the point of the dagger from side to side. ‘Understand, Englishman?’

Swan nodded.

‘Say something in Greek for me,’ the man said. His grin wasn’t friendly.

‘Oinos, o phili pais,’ Swan said. He smiled.

‘Eh,’ the other man said. ‘Not the way Greeks say it, but still. In you go.’

Swan was ushered through the door.

Every monastery has a room for receiving rich or noble visitors – panelled in wood, lined in tapestries, sometimes with precious silver and gold in a cupboard carved with lives of the saints. This House of God was no exception, except that the cupboard had no carved doors. And no silver.

The cardinal was sitting in the sun. Swan shrugged. ‘I’d like something to wear,’ he said. ‘Your Eminence.’

The cardinal nodded. ‘You speak Greek?’ he asked.

‘Yes,’ Swan answered, in French.

‘What in heaven’s name suggested that you should call out to me in Greek?’ the cardinal asked.

Swan fingered his beard and tried to think. ‘You’re a cardinal,’ he said. ‘From Italy.’

The cardinal raised both eyebrows.

‘People in Italy study things in Greek. My Greek master was Italian.’ Swan was suddenly babbling. ‘My sword master was Italian, too, but—’

The cardinal barked a sharp laugh. ‘As it happens, I am Greek,’ he said.

Swan took a deep breath, racked his brain for the Greek for ‘to save’. ‘Σας ευχαριστώ που με έσωσες, αγιότητα σας. Thank you for saving me, Eminence.’

‘I am very pleased to have saved such a young scholar. Are you – hmm – someone important? Worth a fine ransom?’

It occurred to Swan to tell the truth, but he couldn’t risk it. ‘Oh, yes,’ he said. ‘My father will pay a thousand ducats for me.’

The cardinal nodded. ‘I told Alessandro you were a nobleman’s son. He doubted me. A thousand ducats? Excellent. I’ll see you well lodged, then. I’m going to Paris. Do you have friends in Paris?’

Swan shrugged. ‘I had hoped to go to the Sorbonne,’ he said. ‘It didn’t work out.’

‘Do you read Hebrew?’ asked the cardinal.

Swan had to shake his head. ‘No,’ he said with real regret.

‘Have you read Plato?’ asked the cardinal.

‘My Greek master had a copy of Aristotle’s De Anima. And Xenophon’s Apologia. That’s really all I’ve read.’ It was an astounding piece of truth, for Swan. But Bessarion was difficult to lie to.

‘You’ll enjoy Paris,’ the cardinal said, and waved his hand. As Swan turned to leave, he said, ‘Don’t do anything . . . hasty. This place was burned by the English. Some of the nuns were raped. All the silver taken. Yes? You understand? They would like to kill you.’

Outside the door, the thin blond looked him up and down. ‘I’ll find you clothes,’ he said. He sneered. ‘But you’re not worth a copper centivo, much less a thousand Venetian ducats. Are you?’

Swan raised an eyebrow. ‘I most certainly am,’ he said.

‘Eh,’ said the Italian. ‘We’ll see.’

Back in the cells, where the men lay on palettes. They were waking up. There were a dozen francs-archers in the corridor, eyeing the nuns. The nuns glared at him with unconcealed hate.

One of the Frenchmen tripped him as he went by. He went down and rolled, avoiding another kick.

The Italian punched the Frenchman in the ear so fast that Swan was very glad indeed he hadn’t grabbed for the dagger. The punch went in – uncontested – and the archer fell and his legs kicked – once.

‘My prisoner,’ the Italian said, in French. His dagger was out again, and he gestured with it. ‘Don’t make me hurt any of you.’

The Frenchmen growled, but they didn’t do anything more.

‘Do you have a servant?’ asked the Italian, his eyes on the Frenchmen.

‘No,” Swan admitted, and then narrowed his eyes. ‘Yes,’ he said. He paused. ‘If he survived.’

The Italian looked over the men, most of whom were still on their palettes. ‘One of these?’ he asked.

Swan reached out and pointed at the Fleming, who was still unconscious. ‘If he’s alive.’

The Italian looked at him. It was a long look – eye to eye.

‘Really?’ he said. The faintest sign of a smile flickered at the corner of his mouth. ‘The English devil that all the Frenchmen are waiting to hang is your servant. Eh?’

Swan shrugged and licked his lips. ‘He’s not English,’ he said. ‘He’s Flemish.’

The Italian raised an eyebrow. ‘Eh bien. If you say. I will do my best to keep him from being shorter by a head.’ He shrugged. ‘You are clever, Englishman. I give you this for free.’

Swan nodded. ‘Sometimes,’ he said. ‘Not yesterday, by God.’

An hour later, he was on a bad horse, wearing a bad doublet and a foul shirt and a pair of braes that had shit stains and hose with holes in them – soled hose and no shoes.

Thomas Swan had spent his life being the poorest boy among rich boys. He knew what good clothes were like. He just never seemed to have them. The kit in which he’d been sent to France was the very limit of what his mother could afford, and it was gone – every stitch, down to his eating knife and his belt purse.

The Fleming was head down over a mule, wearing a shirt and braes and nothing else.

They sat mounted in the courtyard. There were raised voices in the portico.

The cardinal was insisting that the English prisoners were not to be murdered.

The Italian picked at his beard. ‘They’ll all be dead before we’re at Amiens,’ he said.

Swan took a couple of shallow breaths.

The Italian spat. ‘Dogs,’ he said.

Swan looked around. ‘Might I have a sword?’ he said. ‘As I’m a gentleman on ransom?’

The Italian looked at him.

‘A dagger?’ Swan asked. He wished he had something with which to bargain.

The Italian drew his dagger and started to clean his nails. He looked up. Their eyes met. ‘Why?’ he asked.

Swan shrugged. ‘Oh, as to that . . .’ he said.

The Italian laughed. ‘Tell me your name, English devil.’

Swan bowed in the saddle. ‘Thomas Swan, Esquire. Of London. And yours?’

The man smiled. ‘Alessandro di Brachio,’ he said. ‘Courtier.’ He smiled. ‘Formerly of Venice, and now of the world.’ It was a very unpleasant smile. He reached behind him into the leather roll behind his saddle and rooted about.

His hand emerged with a long, slim dagger. He held it out.

Swan reached for it.

The Italian whipped it away and tapped him on the head with the hilt. Swan reached for it and missed again. He almost fell out of his saddle.

Alessandro laughed. ‘We’ll see,’ he said, and put the long dagger back in his bedroll.

‘Bastard,’ Swan spat.

Alessandro nodded. ‘Yes,’ he said. When he grinned, his gold tooth caught the sun. ‘And you?’

It was such a good answer that Swan had to laugh. The Italian laughed back. ‘You are almost as fast as a Venetian,’ he said. ‘But not quite.’

The cardinal came out from under the portico. The abbott bowed, and all of the nuns came and kissed his ring, along with some of the monks.

It seemed incongruous that, under his robes, the man wore boots. With spurs. But he did, and he mounted his big warhorse easily.

‘Come,’ he said, and Alessandro prodded the convoy into motion – four wagons, a dozen soldiers, and an entourage of priests and servants.

Swan found himself riding with a pair of notaries, who conversed in Latin and ignored him. All they spoke of was church politics – and what a waste of time the attempt to negotiate with the English had been.

‘We thought we’d win,’ Swan said, as much to indicate that he knew what they were talking about as because he really wanted to contribute.

The nearer man all but fell off his pony. ‘You speak Latin?’ he asked.

‘Oh!’ Swan said. ‘I thought we were speaking English.’

The notary on his right rolled his eyes. ‘You are pleased to make light of us,’ he said.

Swan nodded. ‘Passes the time,’ he said.

‘Why are the English such barbarians, then?’ asked the first notary. ‘War, war and war. You kill your own kings and then come to France to kill theirs.’

‘Our king is the king of France,’ Swan said automatically.

‘An untenable position,’ said the right-hand notary. He held out his hand. ‘Giovanni Accudi.’ He grinned. ‘My grandfather was English,’ he said.

Swan took the offered hand.

The man on the other side of him relented. ‘Cesare di Brescia,’ he said. ‘I’m sure I had a grandfather,’ he mocked the other, and spat. ‘Who the devil knows who he was? The English probably killed him.’

Swan raised an eyebrow. ‘I’m sorry to see how unpopular the English are,’ he said. He didn’t sound contrite.

‘Violent people. A sword in every hand. Killers, every one of them.’ Giovanni nodded. ‘Like Florentines and Brescians.’

‘Like fucking Milanese,’ Cesare shot back.

‘Wine?’ Giovanni asked, and held out a glass flask.

Swan drank some. He tried not to be greedy. ‘Messire Accudi, I must tell you that yesterday I thought I was about to die without ever tasting wine again.’

Accudi nodded. ‘Welcome to life,’ he said. ‘Have another drink, but leave some for Cesare. He’s far more dangerous than I am.’

‘Fuck your mother,’ Di Brescia said, but he smiled. ‘Listen – Giovanni’s a gentleman. He doesn’t even need this work. I’m a simple working man. I actually read books for my degree.’

‘Then why don’t you know more?’ Accudi asked. ‘Give me the flask if you are going to talk. Damn you to hell – it’s empty, you sodomite.’

‘Are you two sure you’re not soldiers?’ Swan said.

‘Oh, no,’ Cesare choked out. He was laughing so hard he was having trouble staying on his horse. ‘We’re lawyers. Can’t you tell?’

The sun was past high in the sky and it was brutally hot. The horses were flagging. The notaries had run out of wine and were debating the role of the Trinity in a manner so blasphemous that Swan, who thought himself worldly and jaded, had to ride a little behind them in a vague superstitious belief that lightning from the sky would kill them all.

But when they’d stopped cursing God, he rode back up to them.

‘Why don’t we . . . stop at an inn?’ Swan asked.

‘An inn? Here? In France?’ Accudi laughed. ‘You English have burned them all.’

‘Fat lot you know,’ Swan said. ‘This is the Dordogne. This is English. Frenchmen burned all this.’

The Italians laughed. ‘It’s hard to tell you apart, it’s true.’

After a while longer, some of their soldiers left the convoy and rode ahead. When they crested the next ridge, he saw a town in the distance, fully walled. Closer, he saw the convoy’s horseman talking to a farmer by the road. He came and spoke to the cardinal, hat in hand, and kissed his ring. The gate to his walled farm opened, and they rode in.

Men came with water, and the horses drank noisily. Swan drank water, too.

He went over to the Fleming, and lifted his head.

The man looked at him, eyes open, and Swan felt the man’s body tense.

‘I’m a friend,’ he said. ‘My name is Thomas Swan. I claimed that you’re my servant.’ He spoke low and fast.

The Fleming moaned.

Alessandro appeared at his elbow. ‘He is awake, your servant?’ he asked. ‘Give him some water. Here. I put a little wine in it.’

Swan took the cup and put it to the Fleming’s lips. He drank greedily. And moaned again.

‘He is your master, this Englishman?’ the Italian asked the Fleming.

‘Uhh. Uhhh.’ The Fleming moaned. There was blood coming out of his side.

The Fleming met Swan’s eye, and just for a moment . . .

‘You’re drowning him,’ Swan snapped, trying to sound as authoritative as his father.

‘Master,’ muttered the Fleming.

Alessandro looked at Swan and raised an eyebrow. ‘Heh,’ he said.

The next evening they came down a ridge into Périgeux, passed the gates after a cursory inspection and a great deal of fawning, and made their way to the Abbey of Chancelade, as Swan heard said repeatedly. The town didn’t seem to boast an inn, but the abbey was huge – like a palace.

There were wagons parked all along one wall, and the stables were full. Swan ate with the notaries and poured watered wine into his ‘servant’. After some consideration, he went to the kitchens.

‘What do you want, shit-stain!’ bellowed a huge woman.

He bowed. ‘To be your lover, madame!’

She screeched. ‘You’d need a prick two feet long,’ she said. She eyed his stained braes. ‘And I don’t think you have one. Eh?’

‘Something tells me you are not a nun,’ Swan said.

‘Something tells me you are not a Gascon,’ the woman replied. She laughed. ‘Eh! Tilda! There’s an Englishman!’

A younger, horse-faced woman came out of the fireplace. ‘What do you want, then,’ she said in English.

Swan turned his charm on her. ‘Honey. A good-sized dollop, if you would be so kind.’ He bowed. ‘For medicine.’

‘Medicine, is it? And honey so dear.’ Tilda had an armload of firewood.

‘I could carry wood for you,’ he said.

Tilda nodded. ‘You can have your honey just for hearing the sound of English spoken. But I wouldn’t mind having you carry the wood.’

After he had carried enough to fill the kitchen’s giant maw of a fireplace many times over, she pointed to a stool. ‘Sit, brother,’ she said.

She handed him some wine, which was decent enough. He watched the kitchen staff and listened carefully. Most of them were locals – a few were from the south, and he saw several of the cardinal’s Italian servants move through. One pinched a girl and got a clout on the ear for his pains – another grabbed a loaf of bread and laughed.

Tilda brought him a plate of cut tongue and bread and another cup of wine. “Tell me what medicine you make with honey,’ she said.

Swan smiled at her. She was quite pretty, in a homey kind of way. She had big bones and a strong waist. And large breasts. She was no beauty, and yet her straight back and her graceful carriage would have made her seem so, even if he hadn’t been on the brink of death a day before.

“The white honey is not formed of pure thyme, but is good for the eyes, and for wounds,’ according to Aristotle,’ he told her.

She nodded and smiled. ‘Like enough,’ she said. ‘Likewise my mater always said so.’ She sat back with her wooden cup of wine. ‘You’re a prisoner?’

He nodded. “Sir John Talbot was defeated—’

‘At Castillon,’ she said. ‘It’s common knowledge.’

‘They were killing the prisoners,’ he said. He hadn’t planned to say that. He planned to be light hearted, or evasive, or perhaps heroic. He shrugged. ‘I lived. The cardinal took me in.’

She nodded. ‘Poor dear. But soldiers – live by the sword, die by the sword.’

He laughed. ‘You have a hard heart, madame.’

She shook her head. ‘I followed the armies for a year or two, din’t I? I’ve known a soldier or two.’ She shrugged. ‘I’ll get some honey for you.’ She paused, as if weighing him up. ‘Come back when I’ve served the gentles dinner and I’ll see your linens get washed,’ she added. Her eyes met his, just for a moment.

Swan walked out to the stable. He caught Alessandro’s eye – the man was obviously watching him – and waved honey at him. The Italian man-at-arms came over. ‘You have a sweet tooth?’

‘For my servant’s wounds,’ Swan said.

The Italian nodded. ‘What’s his name, this servant of yours?’ He held out a hand. ‘No – never mind. Why complicate this? What’s the honey for?’

Swan shrugged. ‘It’s in Aristotle. Good for wounds.’

Alessandro shook his head. ‘Are you really another bookman? Aristotle is so full of shit about so many things.’ He thrust his chin at the Fleming, lying on his blanket. ‘But my first captain put honey on wounds. The Turks do it. Let’s see.’

The Italian soldier helped him fetch hot water, and watched as he bathed the Fleming, washed his wounds, dried them with the man’s shirt, and then pasted honey over them, pushing it boldly into the suppurating hole in his side where the Frenchman’s dagger had gone in.

‘He’ll probably live,’ Alessandro said. ‘That knife hit his ribs and went up, not down.’

‘I’ll tell him that,’ Swan said. His Italian wasn’t that good and Alessandro made him feel a little light headed.

‘You ought to wrap it, now that you’ve cleaned it and put the salve on.” Alessandro looked at him, one eye raised.

‘I don’t happen to have a spare bolt of linen in my baggage,’ Swan said.

Alessandro gave him a lopsided smile. ‘Perhaps God will provide,’ he said. He swaggered out, and returned a little later with a long piece of linen. ‘I found it,’ he said.

Swan wrapped the Fleming, and Alessandro actually lifted the man while Swan got the bandage under him. He made it as tight as he dared. The Fleming moaned a few times but remained resolutely unconscious.

When they were done, Swan was too conscious of his sweat-soaked shirt and his shit-stained braes to strip, and he felt dirty and unfashionable with the dapper professional soldier. But his mother had taught him that the best defence was a good offence.

‘If you keep helping me like this, I’ll have to assume you aren’t a complete bastard,’ he said.

Alessandro smiled. ‘Maybe I am, though. I am a bastard. If I thought you meant that as an insult, I’d kill you.’

Swan shrugged. ‘Me too,’ he said.

‘Ah,’ Alissandro said.

Swan realised he’d said too much. But the man-at-arms bowed and walked out the stable door.

When the Italian was gone, the Fleming opened an eye. ‘Peter,’ he said. ‘If the bastard asks again.’

Swan dropped the end of the bandage. ‘You’re awake!’

‘You just rolled me over and shoved something sticky inside my fucking body,’ the Fleming said. Peter. ‘Honey?’

‘Yes.’ Swan put his hand on the other man’s head. Everything he knew about medicine was from books.

Peter opened his eyes. He was a big man with a heavy brow, but his eyes held a great deal of intelligence. ‘I’m an archer, and a fucking good one,’ he said. He said ‘fucking’ as if it was two words. Fuck – ink. ‘But I suppose I can be your servant, at least until we’re out of this. They kill everyone else?’

Swan shrugged. ‘I think so.’

Peter’s eyes closed, and then opened. ‘Thanks for saving me.’

‘You saved me,’ Swan said. ‘When you went for the francs-archers, I was next.’

Peter grinned. ‘Kilt one, didn’t I?’

‘Oh, yes,’ Swan said.

‘Bring me some unwatered wine, eh, Master?’ Peter asked.

Swan nodded. ‘I’m Thomas Swan,’ he said.

Peter shut his eyes again. ‘Aye. Got it.’

Swan ate with the notaries. They had to buy wine and Swan had no money, and he suspected he was going to wear out his welcome eventually, but for the moment, he drank.

They were at the very last table in the hall – the lowest of the ‘gentles’. In fact, some of the upper servants – the cardinal’s steward, for example – sat above them.

Swan didn’t mind. The food was cold, and served on bad pewter with too much lead in it, but he didn’t mind that, either. He saw Tilda at another table. She didn’t serve directly, but directed the younger girls and boys as they waited on the tables. He couldn’t catch her eye. She stood with her back determinedly to him.

That didn’t bode well for clean linens, or for wine for Peter.

The two lawyers wandered off into an argument about the merits of the judicial duel – again, into a bit of theology so tedious that Swan couldn’t, or wouldn’t, follow them – and he took the chance to look around. Well off to his right, on a dais at the head of the hall, the cardinal sat with a dozen local worthies – mostly men. Below them sat his household – Alessandro, for example, was only two tables from the Prince of the Church. In the next row of trestles there was a crowd of French merchants – mostly young men with daggers, but a handful of older men in fine clothes, and one important-looking man-at-arms who sat, proud as Lucifer despite his old coat, and looked angrily at the high table, where, as Swan could see, he clearly felt he belonged.

Swan nudged Cesare. ‘Who are they?’ he asked.

Giovanni shrugged. ‘Rich merchants. Who cares?’

Cesare shook his head. ‘Merechault was the king’s officer for wagons, I think. He will have made a packet off the campaign.’ He looked around. ‘The man-at-arms – no one I know. The man in the blue velvet is Messire Marcel l’Oustier. He is a Parisian wine merchant. My father deals with him.’

Swan nodded.

‘Do you play piquet?’ Giovanni asked.

‘Only when I have money,’ Swan admitted.

Cesare smiled wolfishly. ‘Best get some money, then,’ he said.

Swan left them to it when the Florentine was up by thirty ducats. They both took their gaming seriously, and they were playing for sums ten times those that Swan had ever played for. Swan used the time to learn the game, and to watch the French man-at-arms. He was plainly dressed – but there were details to him that didn’t go well with his old fustian arming coat and his unmatched wool hose. His sword and dagger were worth a fortune – plain hilted in the French style, but beautiful. Swan fancied himself a connoisseur of swords.

And shoes. A lifetime of sizing up a tip caused him to look at the man’s shoes. Elegant, fitted, black with a narrow piping of red leather at the instep, they were utterly at variance with the man’s plain garments.

Swan rose, stretched, and watched the young men taking down the trestle tables and moving the chairs from the dais. The cardinal was long gone. So were the merchants. The man-at-arms sat and drank, alone. Swan’s curiosity almost got the better of him, but the possibility of clean clothes won out over the possibility of hearing stories of chivalry, however genuine. The man was interesting – a sort of problem. A challenge.

But not as interesting as the kitchens.

However, it took no great daring or sleight of hand to pick a pewter cup full of wine off the sideboard and carry it out, across the yard, to the stable. In any great hall there’s always someone too rich, too drunk or too stupid to remember his cup. Swan carried it to Peter and left it by his head.

Then he walked along the edge of the French merchant’s wagons.

No one challenged him.

Wagons – especially unattended wagons – interested him almost as much as tales of war and chivalry. He walked slowly along them, tapping them idly with his fist. He wasn’t able to stop and search any of them – the courtyard was far too full of monks and visitors.

But it was interesting that at least one wagon was empty.

He walked on, around the back of the great central building, past the herb garden and the dispensary, to the back of the kitchen. The heat pouring out of the kitchen was visible as ripples in the air, and the summer night was hot enough to melt wax. Most of the trestles were now here, in the back, and a bagpiper was playing while a circle of men danced. There was a lot of food.

Swan smiled. He walked in boldly and took a large chunk of pork. He didn’t even have an eating knife, so he had to eat it in chunks, like a dog.

‘You’re really just an overgrown boy, aren’t ye?’ Tilda said. ‘But you’re a gent. I saw you up there.’

‘I tried to catch your eye,’ he said. ‘You ignored me.’

She shrugged. ‘You weren’t an archer, were ye?’

He shook his head.

‘Too many teeth,’ she said. ‘I should ha’ known.’

‘You have all your teeth,’ he said.

She shrugged. Hugged herself despite the night air’s warmth.

‘But you know we’re here – eh? You know your way around a kitchen. And a cook.’ Tilda smiled, but it was a hesitant smile as if a wall had grown between them.

He smiled and nodded.

‘And you aren’t going to tell me any more,’ she said.

A few feet away, a very thin girl hit a man so hard he went down. Everyone laughed.

‘I’m a bastard son. I haven’t a penny, and I’ve promised the cardinal that my father will pay a thousand florins for me.’ He shrugged. ‘It’s the truth.’ He looked at her from under his eyelashes to see her reaction.

She was smiling a little and looking elsewhere.

‘I’m Thomas,’ he said. ‘That’s the truth, too.’

She nodded, pursed her lips, and nodded again. ‘I can find you a pricker and an eating knife, maybe,’ she said. ‘I admit it – I like that you sound like a gent.’

He decided to risk telling the truth. ‘I’d rather have clean clothes,’ he said.

She looked at him – just out of the corner of her eye, the way grown women look. ‘If I do your clothes, you’ll be naked,’ she said.

He tingled. ‘I could perhaps live with that, if you won’t sell me to the cardinal.’

‘Naked?’ she asked.

‘I’m told it’s what he likes,’ Swan quipped.

She nodded. ‘Mmm.’ She laughed. ‘I’ve been a fool twicet, youngling. Once I followed a soldier what told me he’d marry me, and then, to atone for a life o’ sin, I thought I’d work in the abbey.’ She rolled her eyes. ‘Godly people.’ She shook her head. ‘There are some, I allow. And some as ought to have done what I done.’

A heavy pottery jar of hard cider was thrust into Swan’s hands. He took a drink and handed it to Tilda, who drank.

Then she took his hand – hers was a curious mixture of rough and smooth.

It took time to get a fire lit in the laundry. There were coals from the day’s fire, but no wood in the hamper, and again he was carrying wood. He stopped for more cider, and another slice of pork. There were a hundred people dancing.

Cesare was leaning against the cool stone of the abbey, watching. He put a hand on Swan’s shoulder. ‘If you work like a servant, they’ll treat you like a servant,’ he said in Italian.

Swan smiled. ‘I know,’ he said with far too much honesty. ‘I’m getting clean clothes.’

Cesare smiled in understanding. ‘Ah!’ he said. He looked at Swan. ‘Would you wash me a shirt?’ He looked embarrassed. ‘I’ll cover your wine.’

‘We poor men of letters have to stick together,’ Swan said. He wondered if it would sound better in Latin. ‘Pauperes homines de litteris opus haereat iuncto.’ He made a face. ‘Opus?’

‘Pauperes scriptores manere simul,’ Cesare said. ‘And I agree.’ He pulled off his doublet and his shirt and tossed Swan the shirt. Then he pulled on his doublet over his hairy chest.

Swan looked at the crowd of dancing servants. ‘Do you know any of these people?’ he asked.

Cesare smiled bitterly. ‘Not really. When you are a lawyer, you are not a gentleman and not a servant.’ He shrugged. ‘I know the men that serve L’Oustier, but not well enough to share a cup of wine. They’re most of them in the blue and red livery of the Paris guilds – eh? See?’

Swan felt foolish. ‘I thought that they were soldiers.’

‘You must have a low opinion of soldiers. Marechault’s men are in blue and gold – his wagoners are hired men, so no livery. We travelled with them at the tail end of winter – again, I’ve seen them before, but I don’t know any of the wagon men.’

Swan shrugged. His theory about the French knight was dashed. ‘I’ll see your shirt is clean,’ he said.

‘I’ll be in your debt, English,’ Cesare said.

Swan went back to the laundry. It was dark, except for a pair of rush lights going in the corner by the hearth.

‘Strip,’ said Tilda.

‘I have an extra shirt to wash,’ Swan said.

Tilda shrugged. ‘A woman’s work is never done,’ she said.

The whole laundry area was hung with linens – many of them religious. There were chasubles and surplices and altar clothes; shifts for nuns, long and coarse, and men’s shirts and braes.

‘Wouldn’t it dry faster outside?’ Swan asked. He’d stepped between the rows to strip.

‘Thieves,’ she said. ‘We hardly ever get thieves here. It does happen, mind,’ she said. She emerged in front of him, and pulled a shirt off the line and held it up to him. It was a fine lawn shirt with embroidered cuffs.

‘He’s a right bastard,’ she said. ‘And a bad priest. Pity thieves took both his shirts and his braes.’ She leaned over and kissed him on the lips.

He’d expected – or rather hoped – for something of the sort, but the moment of contact was . . . lovely. Very exciting.

She vanished amidst the laundry.

He followed her.

‘Unlace me? There’s a dear,’ she said. ‘The water in the smaller copper is clean, which is more than I can say of you. Wash. Jesus and the saints. Is that blood?’

Swan poured warm water into a shallow bowl and used a coarse cloth – a dry, clean coarse cloth – to wash. His left arm had an enormous bruise and a long cut – even in the flickering rushlight, it looked bad.

She got out of her kirtle and helped him wash the arm. ‘So you are a soldier,’ she said.

He shrugged. ‘My first battle was very nearly my last.’

She kissed him. It went along nicely, and then she broke off and gave him some wine. Then, without shame, she pulled her shift over her head. ‘Might as well do my own while I’m about it,’ she said, and put all the linens in a larger copper.

Swan was wakened by the first cock-crow. He was in no hurry to leave, nor was she in a hurry to be rid of him, but eventually he was dressed – clean, by God – and out the door, with a clean and ironed shirt over his arm. He walked back down the line of merchants’ wagons and again was not challenged. This time the courtyard was empty and his investigations were a little more thorough.

He found Cesare asleep and snoring.

Peter, too, seemed to be sleeping. The pewter cup was empty.

He hung the shirt on a peg for horse harness over Cesare’s head, and went back out to the courtyard to look at the wagons.

There were heavy tarpaulins treated with beeswax over every wagon. The wagons themselves were taller than a man, their sides heavily sloped outwards like fortress walls, their wheels as tall as a big man’s shoulders. Two were clearly living spaces – they had tall covers and doors.

Swan had an apple from the kitchen, and he ate it while he looked them over.

Then he went back into the stable, took his two new and very pretty shirts, and rolled them tightly. He put a piece of coarse sacking around them, tied the bundle tight, and put it into one of the cardinal’s carts.

And went back to his apple.

He had to eye the carts with a certain regret as they prepared to ride away. He was much cleaner, but rest, food and a bath only sharpened his annoyance at his poor clothes and ill-fitting soiled hose. He was lucky the notaries even treated him like one of them.

On a lighter note, Peter was riding sitting up. He ate porridge at breakfast and smiled at everyone like a man with a new lease on life.

Swan caught sight of Tilda in the yard. She came up boldly.

‘Not disowning me by light of day, messire?’ she asked.

For an answer he leaned down and kissed her on the mouth. Giovanni whistled and Cesare clapped his hands. Swan frowned. ‘That’s how we say goodbye to friends in England,’ he said.

Cesare rubbed his beard. ‘For the first time I want to visit England, then,’ he said. ‘Are you the lady to whom I owe this beautifully clean and ironed shirt which smells a little of lavender?’

Tilda cast her eyes down and swayed back and forth like a girl. ‘You are too kind, sir,’ she said in French.

The cardinal came out. He looked angry. He wasn’t wearing a red hat or a cassock – he looked like an athletic man of sixty in boots and a tight jacket. He spoke – at length – to the French knight. He didn’t like what he heard, and finally shook his head.

When he was mounted, he rode down the convoy to where the notaries were.

‘I need a letter,’ he said. ‘In Latin. We’re going to be late to Paris and I have work to do.’

Cesare bowed in the saddle, so Swan felt he should do the same.

Giovanni reached into his wallet and took out a beautiful pair of wax tablets set in rosewood and a gold stylus. ‘At your service, Eminence.’

‘Polite opening. Addressed to the Bishop of Paris. English army defeated, countryside full of brigands, forced to travel slowly with armed escort, please send news from outside world. I’ll bring some wine. Two weeks at best. Flowery signature. Bessarion.’

Giovanni nodded. Suddenly Swan saw that Cesare had also copied down the cardinal’s words.

They looked at each other. ‘An hour at least, Eminence,’ said Cesare.

Alessandro rode up to the cardinal’s shoulder. ‘Delay, Eminence?’

‘The count insists we travel with his convoy,’ he said. ‘The valleys ahead are full of brigands, or so he claims.’

Swan thought it was worth trying his luck. ‘The convoy won’t be quick,’ he said. ‘I’m a passable sword. Leave me a weapon and I’ll escort these gentlemen when they’ve done your letter.’

The cardinal looked at him, and for a moment Swan thought the Greek could read his mind. He had the oddest look – the slightest lift of one corner of his mouth. The cardinal looked at his own man-at-arms, who in turn looked at Swan.

The cardinal smiled. ‘It is very kind of you, my prisoner. I accept. Alessandro, find him a sword. And a pair of boots. Brigands might not be afraid of a barefoot man on a spavined horse.’

Alessandro trotted down the column to the last wagon, dismounted, and rooted under the cover. He was back in no time, while the two scribes convinced a monk to lend them a desk and the cardinal rode to his place at the front of the column.

The boots were very good – thigh high, goatskin, waxed to a deep black. ‘My spares, and my second-best sword,’ the Italian said. ‘I don’t trust you, but I think I might have to like you. So let me be honest. If you don’t come back, I love these boots, which means I will find you and kill you for wasting my time. If you do come back, I will lend you both sword and boots until we get to Paris.’ He smiled. It was the first real smile Swan had received from the mercenary. ‘Do we understand each other?’

Swan reached out and took the boots and the sword – a damned good sword, he was pleased to see. Then he held out his hand. ‘I understand you – perfectly,’ he said.

Alessandro nodded. ‘I thought you might,’ he said, and rode away.

Tilda watched him go. ‘What was that about?’ she asked.

Swan gave her a lop-sided smile. ‘He thinks I may be a rogue,’ he said.

Tilda smiled. ‘He’s sharp.’ She swayed back and forth again. ‘I can make an hour – if you don’t have any other appointments.’

Swan stretched. ‘I’m so tired, mistress. I feel as if I was up all night.’

‘Perhaps a nap would do you good,’ she said. ‘Will you come back and visit me?’

He grinned. ‘Do you have a dozen of us, out there on the roads? Coming in rotation?’

She shrugged. ‘And if I do?’

He laughed. ‘It must be honesty day. Let’s play at napping.’ He took her hand. ‘Of course I’ll come back.’

She rolled her eyes.

An hour later, booted and wearing a sword and carrying a dirty but presentable pair of gloves that he’d picked up off a side-table in the abbey, he leaned against a pillar in the stable, eating another apple. The two notaries came out of the scriptorum.

‘Do you know how long it takes to write a formal letter between two Princes of the Church?’ Cesare said, disgustedly.

‘About an hour?’ Swan said. ‘Here, have an apple, messires.’

Accudi caught his in the air, got a leg over his horse, and stretched. ‘I have a sword of my own, Messire Swan,’ he said.

Swan shrugged. ‘Now I do, too,’ he said. The two notaries laughed.

They left the abbey easily enough, trotting through the outskirts of the town, which was just filling with French soldiers pouring in from the south. Swan wasn’t particularly worried about being lynched on the spot, but he rode more freely once he was in the countryside to the north and east of the town and out from under the walls.

At noon they stopped at a roadside shrine with the L’Isle river flowing at their feet and ate good sausage and bread with local soft cheese. Swan had a good leather bottle now, thanks to Tilda, and he shared it freely.

‘Your lady-friend provided the wine, eh?’ Cesare said.

Swan smiled and didn’t answer. He was watching the hills. They weren’t steep, but they rose well above the valley.

‘You look . . . concerned,’ Giovanni said.

Swan raised an eyebrow. ‘Something shiny and of steel was on that hillside,’ he said.

After lunch they rode quickly. The notaries were, as usual, excellent company, and for more than an hour all conversation degenerated into Latin jokes, most of them bawdy.

In a little hamlet of perhaps a hundred villagers, Swan asked the two lawyers to wait under the tree in the central square while he asked directions. He rode into a walled compound. He leaned down from the saddle in front of the stone house that seemed to function as the auberge.

‘Have you seen a convoy of wagons?’ he asked the man sitting on the bench.

‘Maybe, and maybe not,’ the man said. ‘Who are you?’

Swan shook his head and made a face. ‘No one of any importance,’ he said. ‘But I wish to catch my master. How long ago did they pass?’

‘Before noon – hey! Give me a penny, master!’ The man was suddenly wheedling. He got up off his bench. ‘I told you what you wanted to know.’

Swan shrugged. ‘I don’t have a penny of my own, friend.’

The man glared. ‘I guess if that horse is all you have you don’t have much.’ He nodded. ‘Your boots are nice.’

Swan nodded. ‘Is that a professional opinion?’ he asked.

He didn’t order wine. He backed his horse out of the yard. The two Italians were looking at him. He waved a hand and they moved out of the village at a trot.

‘Brigandi,’ Swan said. and touched his heels to his horse’s flanks.

They rode for almost a mile before Swan pulled up.

‘Where?’ asked Cesare. ‘What are you talking about?’

‘The peasant in the auberge was no peasant. He was a soldier slumming, wearing a peasant smock.’ Swan was watching the hillsides.

‘How do you know?’ Giovanni asked.

Swan shrugged. ‘I can’t tell you. Maybe that he was so bad at begging. His hands were clean. He had wrists like me. But I can’t pin it down.’

‘But you’re sure,’ Giovanni said.

‘Yes.’

‘Sure enough to go back and find another way?’ Cesare asked.

Swan looked back and forth between the two Italians. ‘Messires, you are both older than I am,’ he said humbly. ‘But if you will be guided by me in this, you will not go back.’

‘What do you propose?’ Giovanni asked.

‘That we move fast and stop for nothing. We ignore mothers with wounded sons and priests who only need a moment of our time.’ Swan suited action to word and touched his boot-heels to his horse, which responded with a burst of what, in a better horse, might have been a canter.

The three of them rode along, leaving a dust cloud, for ten minutes. By then, Swan’s horse was flagging, and he felt like a fool. He reined in. ‘Perhaps you two are better without me,’ he said.

‘Nonsense,’ Giovanni said.

They went on at a walk. Swan looked behind them.

‘Gentlemen, I’ve made a number of mistakes. The dust cloud,’ he pointed behind them, ‘is like a red flag.’

Cesare winced. ‘Why us?’ he asked. ‘What brigand wants us?’

They were climbing steadily, and Swan could see a long, sharp slope ahead, a set of rapids in the river, and tall bluffs. He stood in his stirrups, trying to make out the path of the road.

‘The road crosses the river at a ford,’ he said.

Before a nun could say three paternosters, they were across.

On the far side, just where the road turned rocky as it passed over the end of the eastern ridge, was a wagon. It was one of the wine merchant’s wagons, and there were four men by it.

They looked uncertainly at the new arrivals.

They were not any of the men who’d been dancing the night before, and none of them wore livery.

Thirty yards away, by the stream-bed, Swan saw a pool of blood and an arm sticking out of the weeds. The arm was blue and red.

‘It’s a trap,’ he said quietly. ‘When I attack them, ride like lightning.’

‘Why?’ asked Giovanni.

Cesare muttered.

Swan’s horse was tired, so he rode straight up to the nearest man. From a few yards away, he called out, ‘Wheel trouble?’

The man nodded. But he didn’t speak. He was watching Swan as a cat watches a mouse – and yet he was utterly confounded when Swan whipped his sword from his scabbard and cut him down with a powerful blow from above.

The other three men stood rooted to the spot.

Giovanni, who had a fine Arab, put his spurs to her, and she went straight to a gallop.

Cesare did the same, but aimed his Arab’s head at one of the men by the wagon and rode him down.

Swan whirled and his horse misstepped. Swan cursed and slid from her back, ducked, and moved with her a few horse lengths while the other three men shouted at each other. He burst round the end of the wagon, catching the man Cesare had knocked down by surprise, and rammed his sword into the man’s gut despite his coat of plates. He almost died trying to get it out. The point was wedged between two plates. The third man had a falchion, a heavy sword like a scimitar, and he cut overhand at Swan, an untrained blow but nevertheless a powerful one. Swan saw the twitch in the man’s stance that heralded the blow and pulled on his hilt with a sudden burst of strength. The sword-point grated and came free, and Swan got his guard up and wished he had a buckler. The two swords rang together.

The man was essentially untrained, and obviously scared to death.

Swan was scared, but he did as he’d been taught. He pivoted his weight, let the heavier sword ‘win’ the bind, and cut sharply down with little more than the pressure of his wrist. Two of the scimitar-wielder’s fingers fell away, and the man dropped his sword and screamed. Swan stepped in and drove his pommel into the man’s mouth, teeth sprayed, and the wounded man was down. Even as the fourth man ran at him from beyond the wagon team, Swan plunged his sword through the body of the man writhing on the ground.

His mother’s brothers all said you had to do it. ‘Don’t leave anyone behind you,’ they said, when they drilled.

The fourth man had a spear.

Swan got into a low guard. His knees were weak. He’d practised this. It hadn’t usually gone all that well. But the spearman was no better trained than the falchion man, and he thrust ineptly, a tentative attack, which Swan beat remorselessly aside with all the energy of doubt and fear. He stepped through, got a hand on the shaft, and killed the man with a simple cut to the neck – and then cut him twice more as his body fell.

He stood, breathing like a bellows.

He could hear hooves, and the sounds of shouting.

I killed them all.

He was kneeling beside the last man. He wanted to vomit, wanted to take some action. Wanted to pray.

It was all more personal than the battle had been.

He watched his hands cut the man’s belt and take his purse and dagger. Then he went to the falchion man and did the same. He tottered to his horse and tried to get a foot over the old thing’s back. He was shaking too badly to mount.

But the hoof-beats were still distant. Across the ford, he could see dust, and more steel moving on the hillside beyond the ford. He had a little time.

He went to the first man he’d cut down. There was a stunning amount of blood around the man – a pool like a small lake, of a red opaqueness like magic wine. He’d never seen so much blood.

He threw up into the pool of blood.

His horse and saddle saved him, and he stood there, one hand in his stirrup leather, for as long as a man would say a benison. Without the horse, he’d have fallen in the blood.

Then he unbuckled the man’s belt and took his purse and dagger. He had to touch the blood. But he did. Then he put all three purses in the leather sack the first man had been carrying.

Even in the shocked reaction to his first real killing, he eyed the wagon. The canvas was split, and he could see the cargo. On the wagon box, where the drover sat, was a chest with iron reinforcement. It had a lock. They’d been trying to force the lock when he came up.

But he didn’t need trouble, and the distant hoof-beats were getting closer.

It seemed a waste, though.

He got mounted, and convinced his antique horse to trot.

He was no sooner moving than a dozen mounted men appeared in front of him, three of them fully armoured, with lances. They rode at him hard.

It was not a fight he could win, so he was very pleased when he recognised the French man-at-arms from the abbey, and behind him he could see the two notaries. He saluted.

The French knight rode up, raising first his lance and then his visor. ‘Messire,’ he said. ‘You are one of the cardinal’s men?’

‘Yes,’ said Swan.

‘Have you been attacked?’ said another of the men-at-arms in blue and red. He sounded hopeful.

Swan pointed at the road behind him. ‘Brigands attacked one of your wagons. I’m afraid they killed the wagoner. We happened on them.’ He shrugged.

Cesare was waving from farther up the road.

‘You burst through them?’ asked the man-at-arms.

‘No,’ said Swan. ‘There’s more of them coming. We outran them.’

At this, the party whooped, and set out for the wagon. Swan left them to it.

He rode until he caught up with Cesare and Giovanni. The two notaries were clearly pleased to see him. It steadied him.

‘What happened?’ Cesare asked.

‘I left them,’ Swan said. He shrugged. His hands were shaking. ‘We should keep going.’

By nightfall, they caught the convoy, well north of the valley of the L’Isle. The wagons and carts were drawn in a circle, and the three of them were challenged on approach.

Cardinal Bessarion sent for them as soon as their presence was known. Alessandro came to fetch them. He gave Swan a civil nod. ‘You came back,’ he said.

‘I have your boots,’ Swan said.

‘You managed to get a sword-cut on them,’ Alessandro said.

Swan looked down and was disconcerted to find that the tan top of his right boot had a cut right through the leather. ‘Uh – sorry.’ He shook his head.

‘He stayed and fought them. He killed at least one brigand,’ Giovanni said proudly.

‘Did you?’ Alessandro said. He looked at Swan with renewed interest.

Bessarion was sitting on three camp stools – reclining, with a book. He didn’t sit up, but merely waved his book at them, and a servant fetched wine. Swan was grateful for wine, and he drank his too fast while the notaries read their letter aloud.

Bessarion nodded sharply. ‘Well done,’ he said in Italian. ‘You had trouble with brigands?’

Giovanni bowed. ‘Messire Swan dealt with them, Eminence.’

Bessarion extended his hand to Swan. He knelt and kissed the cardinal’s ring. It was, apparently, what foreigners did with cardinals. The cardinal’s hand clasped his lightly. ‘That was well done, Messire Swan. I won’t insult you with payment, but—’

Swan winced. In his persona as a great man’s son, he couldn’t accept payment, it was true.

‘It is a pleasure to serve’ he said.

Bessarion’s eyes seemed to twinkle. It was probably a trick of the firelight, but Swan had the feeling that he amused the cardinal. The Prince of the Church held out the book he’d been reading, carefully marking his place with a ribbon. ‘Do you know it?’ he asked.

Swan almost dropped it when he opened it. It was a small volume bound in whitened parchment, and between the covers it was very ancient. It wasn’t a copy, or at least not a recent copy.

The lettering was alien, the hand almost square. But the first page clearly said that it was about the stars. Swan flipped it open – turned a page. And shook his head.

‘It’s not Aristotle’s Greek. It’s about mathematics.’ He felt foolish. ‘I can’t even find a title page.’

Bessarion smiled. ‘That’s because it isn’t a modern copy, young Englishman. This is at least five hundred years old. Monks made it – perhaps when Alexandria, in Egypt, was still Christian.’

Swan sucked in a difficult breath. ‘Oh!’ He grinned. ‘It’s beautiful.’

‘Oh, indeed. I see you have the heart of a true connoisseur.’ He extended his hand and Swan put the book reverentially in it. ‘It’s by Ptolemy.’

Swan felt he was being tested. ‘King Ptolemy?’ he asked.

‘One of them,’ Bessarion said. ‘I have trouble reading it, too. It’s about mathematics – the mathematics of measurement. Angles as relations to other distances.’ He shrugged. ‘There are men in Italy who understand this sort of thing.’ He nodded to Swan, who took that for a dismissal. He retreated from the cardinal’s tent area, and went to find Peter.

Peter was awake and better. Swan changed his bandage and got them both supper from the cardinal’s cooks. He sat on the ground to eat, and felt his eyelids closing.

‘Unroll your blankets, you fool, or you’ll freeze at midnight,’ Peter hissed. His oddly sibilant Dutch-English and his slightly too careful pronunciation made him sound as if he was giving orders.

Swan went and fetched his blanket roll and the sack he’d filled with purses. He used it as a pillow, but before he could get to sleep, he heard horses, and then he was summoned by Alessandro.

The Italian dusted the leaf mould off his back. ‘You killed four of them?’ he asked quietly.

Swan met his eye. ‘Yes.’

Alessandro whistled. ‘You weren’t going to mention it?’ he asked.

Swan shrugged.

‘And you robbed them?’ Alessandro asked.

Swan realised he hadn’t thought this through. ‘They were dead.’

Alessandro nodded. ‘I don’t mind. But the French think that someone else killed them and took their money. How do you want to play this?’

Swan looked at the Italian. Even through a haze of sleep, he could tell that he was worried, and further, was not telling him something.

‘Let them think that,’ Swan said.

Alessandro shook his head. ‘If I do, my master must travel slowly for days. If I say you did it, the French have no reason to go slowly, because all the brigands are dead.’ He waved. ‘Come.’

Swan followed him unwillingly, but consoled himself that he still had the sword.

They walked to a different fire, where the French soldiers were gathered. Alessandro was well known here – they handed him wine.

‘This is your fearsome Englishman?’ asked the count.

Swan bowed.

‘Did you kill four armed brigands by yourself, boy? Why didn’t you tell me when we rode up to you?’ The big knight took a step towards him.

Swan looked at the ground. ‘I . . . killed them, yes. I wasn’t thinking so well, after.’

The knight winced, but he did not sneer. ‘This I believe. Did you take their purses?’

Swan shrugged. ‘I’m not sure why—’ he said.

The count nodded. ‘It this your first time in battle?’ he asked.

‘Second,’ Swan admitted.

‘Mm,’ said the count. ‘So – this one to you, Messire Alessandro. We have no more brigands – that we know of. But I will beg you to ride with us another day or so.’

Alessandro shrugged wearily. ‘If you insist.’ He bowed, and the two of them walked back towards Swan’s sleeping roll.

‘Did you see anything? When you fought the brigands?’ Alessandro asked. ‘I am phrasing this badly. Did something . . . alert you?’

Swan stretched. ‘A dead man. If that’s what you mean. We saw the wagon, and it looked as if it had broken down, and then I saw . . . a body. In the bushes. I knew—’ He shrugged. ‘It felt like a trap.’

Alessandro put a hand on his shoulder. ‘This I must ask. Did you open the wagon?’

Swan looked at the ground. ‘No.’

Alessandro said, ‘I’m not trying to insult you, Englishman. But something doesn’t add up.’

Swan met his eye in the dark. ‘I took their purses. You know I have no money. It is within the laws of war.’

Alessandro laughed. ‘Laws of war. Messire Swan, for the first time I think perhaps you are a young gentleman.’ He looked into the darkness. ‘It was one of my men on that wagon. And he is dead.’

Swan nodded. ‘But – he wore the blue and red. I saw him – Cesare says it is the Paris livery.’ He paused. ‘I’m sorry.’

Alessandro frowned. ‘You notice a great deal, Englishman. Yes – I dressed him as a Parisian. I hoped to . . . learn something.’

Swan scratched under his beard. ‘You distrust the count?’ he said.

‘Yes. Well. We’ll see. I do not suspect you. I merely wish you had seen more.’ He paused, fingering his dagger. ‘Why do you ask if I distrust the count?’

Swan looked around carefully. ‘He pretends poverty.’

Alessandro’s eyes narrowed. ‘He lost his patrimony in the king’s wars, or so he says.’

‘His sword is worth five hundred florins. His shoes are as good as the shoes the King of England wears.’ Swan shrugged.

Alessandro nodded. ‘You see a great deal. I missed the sword. But yes – I’ll give you this much. There is something not quite right about Messire the Count.’ He waved. They had arrived at Peter’s fire. ‘Go to sleep.’

Swan would have thought about it more, but the moment he had his blanket on his shoulders, he was asleep.

The next morning he fed Peter gruel from a copper pot. The Fleming laughed when he was done.

‘I think perhaps it is you who are my servant,’ he said.

Swan shrugged.

‘Where are you from?’ Peter asked.

‘London,’ Swan said.

Peter nodded. ‘I thought so. You are schooled?’

Swan smiled. ‘Yes,’ he said. ‘Bishop’s School, Inns of Court. I never went to Oxenford.’ He leaned closer. ‘You?’

‘I am an archer. Once I was a cloth fuller, but the trade fell off. My wife died.’ He shrugged. ‘There’s money in war.’

‘I have no money, but when I have a chance to go through the purses—’ He paused.

Peter nodded. ‘I heard about your heroic deed of arms, young sir.’ He met Swan’s eye. ‘If you make this a habit, fighting four men, you will soon be dead.’

Swan flashed on the pool of blood. ‘I’m . . . it just sort of happened.’

Peter nodded.

‘Can you ride again today? Alessandro acts like a prick, but I suspect he’d put you on a wagon if I asked nicely.’ Swan shook his leather bottle. It was empty.

‘I can ride. You know I’m on a better horse than you are.’ He looked at Swan, who blushed.

‘Damn. Another of Alessandro’s little tests.’ He made a sign to avert evil. ‘Keep it. You need to ride easy. My plug will keep me going.’

Swan had never undressed. He pulled his boots on, laced them to his doublet, and played with the hang of his sword until he liked it. He tied the leather sack behind his saddle and mounted. No sooner was he up than Alessandro rode over to him.

‘A good day to you, messire. I wonder if I might ask a favour, in the cardinal’s name.’ He bowed, and Swan returned the bow. ‘I am a man short. Would you be an outrider?’

‘I’d like a better horse. My servant needs the courser.’

Alessandro nodded. ‘You have my spare boots and my spare sword. Why not my spare mount? Listen, messire, at this rate you’ll marry my sister.’

Alessandro’s spare mount was an average riding horse – nothing to look at, but well enough trained and sturdy. Swan spent three hours prowling the high ground to the west of the convoy with another of the cardinal’s guards, a Greek named Giannis who couldn’t initially understand a word of Swan’s Greek but was happy to converse in Italian.

At the mid-morning halt, the two of them reined in several hundred feet above the convoy. Giannis dismounted and, with consummate professionalism, produced a stolen cooked chicken.

‘Do we take turns on watch?’ Swan asked.

‘Like Christ and his angels watching over sinful man,’ Giannis said with a gap-toothed smile. ‘But I’ll share. The boss says you gutted the bastards who killed our Dmitrios.’

Swan was queasy at the praise. ‘They tried to kill me. They weren’t very good.’

Giannis shrugged. ‘Bandits seldom are. The real killers go to the mercenary companies.’ He shrugged. ‘But there are some villains among them. Here’s to Dmitrios. He’ll be singed in hell before he goes anywhere near heavan, but he was a good comrade, for a fucking schismatic, I beg your pardon.’

Swan laughed. Then he pretended to stretch. ‘Don’t move too fast, but there’s a man with a crossbow. He’s not aiming. Now he . . . fall flat!’

Giannis fell flat, and by the time the bolt was rattling among the rocks, he was already on his horse. Swan was riding flat out for the crossbowman. His ugly horse skimmed the rocks like a goat.

The man on foot had no chance.

Swan cut him off. Giannis rode him down. Swan slipped from his horse, and slammed his sword-hilt into the back of the man’s head while he tried to ward off the Greek.

‘Like the Turks,’ Giannis said. ‘Except there’d be ten of them, they’d have horn bows, and they’d be set to cover each other.’ He shook his head. ‘If you keep charging men like that, you won’t live long.’

Swan immediately looked around. They were on top of the ridge that ran parallel to the road, and the man had been in the cover of a large rock. He felt foolish. The Greek was right – if the man had had a partner, he’d have been dead.

He took the man’s purse. It held two French ecus in silver – a decent sum. Swan showed them to his partner and tossed him one. The Greek caught it and grinned.

‘Glad I shared my chicken with you,’ he said. He ran his hands over the man. Pinned to the inside of the man’s coat was a lead badge, such as pilgrims wore. He took that. He also took the man’s crossbow and his bolts.

They rode down to the column carefully, Swan with the crossbowman across his saddle. The count rode out to meet them.

‘Who . . . what do you have there?’ He looked angry. ‘Another of the lice?’

Alessandro was riding towards them, his galloping horse throwing up dust. Swan wondered why he was in such a hurry.

Two of the count’s archers had the unconscious man.

Giannis bowed. ‘My lord, he shot at us with his weapon, and my young friend here was too foolish to let him get away.’

The count glanced at Swan, and Swan didn’t like his look.

Alessandro arrived. ‘Is that a prisoner?’ he asked.

Giannis nodded. ‘Yes, boss.’

The count shrugged. ‘I’ll hang him. I have the right.’

‘Let me question him first,’ Alessandro said. ‘My lord count?’

‘Why?’ asked the count. ‘Scum like this will say anything. Best rid the world of him and send him to hell.’ He made a motion with his hand, and one of the archers drew a knife.

‘I would very much like to question him, my lord—’ Alessandro said, but the man was beyond questioning.

Alessandro glared at the French knight. ‘I thought you intended to hang him?’

Swan gave his horse a little knee and turned in between the knight and the Italian man-at-arms. ‘Messires, I feel I should be back at my duty. Do you have any further orders?’

The count shook his head.

Swan rode away, all but towing Alessandro. The Italian was angry.

‘He did that on purpose,’ he said.

Swan shrugged. When they were out of sight of the count, he handed over the pilgrim badge.

Alessandro let out a sigh of pure frustration. ‘When I saw it, I thought it might be a livery badge,’ he said.

‘I don’t think of brigands as the kind of men who go on pilgrimages,’ Swan said.

Giannis handed his boss the crossbow. ‘A fine weapon,’ he said. ‘Well kept.’

Swan looked down at the column, just coming into sight below them as they climbed. ‘Does the cardinal have . . . an enemy?’

‘In Rome? Yes. Here?’ Alessandro shook his head.

Giannis looked at his capitano. ‘But he has valuable things with him.’

Swan reined in. ‘You have years of experience. But if it was up to me, I’d guess that the count means the cardinal harm.’ He looked down the column. ‘Or one of these other gentlemen.’

Alessandro nodded. ‘An interesting thought. One, perhaps, you should not share.’ Alessandro looked at Giannis, who shrugged expressively, despite his breast and backplate. He managed to convey, in a single shrug, that he was interested in the subject, but would not discuss it.

The rest of the afternoon passed without incident, and Swan was tired and covered in dust when he returned to the convoy at sunset. They were rolling into the courtyard of an inn.

Peter took his horse, wincing as he reached up for the bridle.

‘You should take more time,’ Swan said.

Peter wagged his head back and forth. ‘I’m bored. Pain is pain. Listen – master – I opened the purses.’

Swan looked around. He wasn’t comfortable discussing it.

‘Well – there’s a charge for straw and another for wash water. I thought as—’ The Fleming raised an eyebrow.

‘Tell me,’ said Swan.

‘I won’t say as we’re rich. But if you kill one bandit a day and take his purse, we’ll be able to keep eating.’ Peter shrugged.

Swan winced. He reached into his shirt and came up with the silver ecu.

Peter took it and bit it. ‘Nice,’ he said. ‘You have some useful skills, for a gentleman.’ Peter said ‘ooseful skils’. Otherwise, his English was near perfect.

Swan dismounted and curried the horse with Peter. While they were working, Giannis came out and got to work on his own horse.

‘Giannis, this is my man, Peter,’ Swan said.

Giannis grinned. ‘Sure,’ he said.

When the horses were curried and fed, Giannis unrolled his cloak. ‘I want to keep the crossbow,’ he said. He handed Swan a dark red leather belt with a red leather purse. It had nice buckles and a pair of cast decorations to weight the rain cover. It wasn’t fine like a nobleman’s purse, but it was good work. It also had a good, heavy knife – German work – with an eating knife and a pricker in the scabbard.

‘There’s his belt,’ Giannis said. ‘That’s a fine knife – I throw in the purse, as’ – he smiled his gap-toothed smile – ‘as you don’t seem to have a purse.’

Swan looked at Peter. Peter walked over and lifted the crossbow.

‘That’s a nice piece,’ he said. The goat’s-foot lever was built into the stock. He ratcheted it back with an effort and a grunt of pain. ‘That cost—’ He looked at Swan. ‘Who was this man? That’s a fine knife. The crossbow and the knife are both Low German. I know the maker’s mark on that knife. He sells in Antwerp. It’s not the gear a brigand would have.’

‘He might if he just killed someone for it,’ Swan said.

‘You haf never been a brigand, haf you?’ Peter said in a matter-of-fact tone.

Swan translated into Italian for Giannis.

Giannis nodded. ‘He’s no fool, this man of yours,’ he said.

‘He owes you on this deal, even with the knife,’ Peter said.

Swan turned on Giannis. ‘My man says you’re trying to cheat me,’ he said.

Giannis shrugged. ‘Cheat is a harsh word,’ he said, smiling. ‘You are a rich boy. I am a poor man-at-arms. What will you do with the crossbow – hunt killer sparrows?’ He shrugged. ‘Listen – you did the work. I admit it. But I can’t afford even half this machine. I just want it.’

Swan looked at Peter. ‘He wants it. He admits it’s worth more.’

‘Get him to buy our wine tonight and call it a deal,’ Peter said.

‘Listen,’ Swan said to Giannis. ‘I’m as poor as a slave right now. Buy our wine tonight at dinner, and I’ll take the dagger and purse and we’re even.’

Giannis offered his hand and they shook.

In the common room of the tavern, Swan sat on a trestle with his back against Peter’s and worked on the belt. The lawyers came in and waved, and he waved back, but they were forced by the flow of patrons to sit near the fire.

He had to ask around to get a needle, heavy thread, some resin and some wax – but as he expected, a tavern was the place to buy all these small necessities, and for the first time in his life, he had cash, and a purse in which to put it. He tried not to keep drawing the heavy hunting knife and fondling it, but in truth, it was the finest thing he’d ever owned.

Killing people and taking their goods was looking better and better.

Alessandro came and stood over him while he cut off part of the belt, stripped its tip of some white metal and used the anvil in the barn to reset the rivets. Then he resewed the edge of the belt. Alessandro spent most of the time talking to Giannis, but when Swan returned from the barn a second time, he turned.

‘You seem to know your way around a needle,’ he said.

Swan shrugged. ‘My master-at-arms said a gentleman who couldn’t sew was going to be very unhappy on campaign. When I was a royal page—’

Alessandro shook his head. ‘Don’t claim you were a royal page.’

Swan looked up. ‘Why not?’

‘Easy to prove or disprove in Paris. If true – you are worth more, yes? If false—’ He shook his head.

‘Ah,’ Swan said. He bit his thread. ‘Peter says he knows this knife maker,’ he said, and drew the knife and handed it to the Italian soldier, who took it by the hilt and tossed it in his hand.

‘From the assassin, yes?’ he asked.

Swan nodded.

‘Hmm,’ Alessandro grunted. He hefted it. It was as long as a man’s forearm, elbow to the tips of his fingers, with a thumb-rest that doubled as a guard. Alessandro took out the bye knife—the small eating knife that rested in the scabbard. He nodded. ‘Nice work.’

‘Not as nice as the crossbow,’ Peter said.

Alessandro smiled out of the corner of his mouth.

The room was loud and growing louder, as the town’s four prostitutes had just come in, wearing red dresses and with flowers in their hair. They were particularly unappetising to Swan, but the rest of the men clapped and hooted.

Swan leaned closer to Alessandro. ‘I would like to propound a theory,’ he said.

The Venetian bit his lip, glanced around the room, and nodded. ‘Outside, I think.’

They didn’t exactly slip outside, as several men growled when they pushed by, but they made it into the stable yard. The merchant’s carts were lining the south wall, and the count’s carts lined the west wall.

‘Propound away, my young scapegrace,’ Alessandro said.

Swan glanced around. ‘You went to university, sir?’

Alessandro nodded. ‘Yes. Padova. With Messire Accudi, in fact.’

‘So you know that the very best kind of theory is that which can be tested?’ Swan asked.

Alessandro nodded. ‘Get on with it. You weary me with all this talk of school.’

Swan nodded. ‘The count is a fraud. He’s a brigand – a good actor, and possibly a genuine knight. He’s not after us – he’s after Merechault. We’ve become a nuisance by appearing with a dozen men-at-arms.’ They walked slowly along, arm in arm like two old friends.

‘Fascinating,’ Alessandro said. ‘And your proof?’

Swan stopped in front of one of the count’s wagons. Now that he knew the liveries, he knew that the count’s wagons were the three that were not marked. ‘If I take my knife and slit the tarpaulin, you’ll find nothing inside of any value,’ he said. ‘But here’s a lesser proof.’ He pointed at the merchant’s wagons. Two of the wagoners sat on the boxes, watching. ‘The count’s wagons are never guarded. Because all his men know there’s nothing in them.’

Alessandro grunted. He turned both of them back towards the inn. ‘It would help to explain something which has vexed me,’ he said.

Swan paused. ‘Yes?’

Alessandro shrugged. ‘I understand that there was a great deal of theft at the abbey. A priest lost his shirts. Other things went missing – Cesare said someone stole a rich monk’s riding gloves. The abbot tried to blame us, as foreigners. It made the cardinal angry.’

Swan set his face like stone.

‘I do not care – very much – what you might be. But if you are a thief – leave my boots and my sword and ride off into the night,’ said the Italian.

Swan took another step. ‘I’m no thief,’ he said. ‘I’m a gentleman and a soldier.’

‘Of course,’ Alessandro said. ‘Where did you get a pair of riding gloves?’

‘I found them in the road,’ Swan said. Their eyes met in the darkness and Swan didn’t flinch.

And in that moment, his plan crystallised.

After Alessandro went off, he had a brief conversation with the youngest of the prostitutes. He caught Alessandro watching him, and winked while he pressed money into the girl’s hand. ‘That much again when we’re done,’ he said.

After dinner, he played piquet with the lawyers for an hour. His luck was fair, and he ended the game a few silver sequins ahead of when he started. Most of the rest of the inn was in bed, and the men-at-arms had gone to the stables to sleep.

Swan walked out through the kitchen. There was one slattern watching the fire, a second washing cups, and a third providing personal services to one of the French merchant’s men – the whore he’d spoken to earlier. Swan walked past, and out through the kitchen door into the darkness of the yard.

The merchant’s wagons were unguarded. He walked all the way down the line of wagons and made himself walk all the way back to the kitchen.

He wasn’t challenged.

His heart beat like a drum in a dance, but he drew his new knife, stepped up to the last wagon in the row, and slit the tarpaulin across.

A quarter of an hour later, he met the whore in the portico of the church.

‘Why here?’ he asked.

She shrugged. ‘I do most of my fucking here,’ she said. ‘It’s dry.’

He handed her a whole silver ecu.

She laughed.

‘Now you run,’ he said. ‘If you are here to be found in the morning—’ He hardened his voice. ‘I’ll kill you. Myself.’

She laughed. ‘You ain’t the killing type, lad.’ She bit the coin. ‘I’m gone, now. I’ll find another town.’ She looked at him. ‘You’re a funny one, though. You didn’t steal anything.’

He grabbed her wrist.

‘Ouch! Listen! I was done fucking the archer and I watched you through the door. You moved things, but you didn’t take anything.’

He shrugged. He bent her arm back the way his uncles had taught him. ‘I can break your arm, and then cut your throat,’ he said.

He must have looked the part. She whimpered. He let go, and she ran.

He was careful. He went up and over the wall into the inn yard, waited until the wagon guard was looking elsewhere, and crept into the stable. His greatest fear was that Alessandro would be there waiting for him, but the capitano was not there. Swan got into his blankets.

Peter’s hand gripped his arm like a vice. He put his lips almost against Swan’s ear. Swan froze.

‘I owe you, but I won’t swing for you,’ he said.

Swan turned very slowly. He was so close that it made him uncomfortable. This was like whispering with a girl in the loft of his mother’s inn. His heart was hammering.

‘We won’t swing,’ he said.

Peter grunted.

Swan lay awake, trying to tell himself that his plan was foolproof, but now the whore and the Fleming could kill him, and he was still awake when the light showed through the roof and the cock crowed.

There was a scream and a roar of anger from the yard.

His heart beat double time, and he thought, I’m an idiot.

He’d just seen the flaw in his plan, and it was far too late to fix it.

Cardinal Bessarion listened to the angry remonstrances of the count and the endless gush of invective from the injured merchant for an hour. Eventually, he bowed to both men and left them, mounting his destrier and riding at the head of his own convoy, out of the inn yard and on to the road. He rode side by side with his captain for a mile.

Swan watched them from the middle of the convoy, where he rode with the lawyers, as the road was deemed safe enough without him. He managed a blank face – he made some Latin jokes that fell flat, and he tried to engage Giannis, who waved and rode away.

He was scared enough that every apparent slight seemed to him to show that everyone knew what he had done.

He saw Alessandro nod to the cardinal and ride back down the column, and he knew immediately that the capitano was coming for him.

He straightened his back.

The Italian turned his horse neatly, and waved. ‘The blessing of the day to you, Messire Swan. The cardinal begs the honour of your company.’

Swan bowed in the saddle. ‘Nothing could give me greater pleasure than his company, unless possibly your own,’ he said in Italian.

Cesare slapped him on the back. ‘The courtier’s motto! If you must rub your nose in a man’s arse, do it with elegance.’

Swan flushed, and Cesare laughed.

‘Never mind him,’ said Alessandro.

They rode along the column to the cardinal without another word.

‘Good morning, messire my prisoner,’ said the cardinal.

Swan bowed, and accepted the proffered hand, kissed the ring.

Bessarion smiled. ‘How did you do it?’ he asked.

Swan realised that the Italian man-at-arms was very close to his back.

‘Listen,’ said Bessarion. ‘Alessandro thinks you did it, and I think you did it.’

Alessandro leaned into his back. ‘If you did it without stealing – then you have done us a noble service. And it is an act of . . . let’s say an act of war. A feat of arms. Tell.’

Swan hesitated.

Because he had made a mistake, and once he told . . .

The cardinal reached out and put a hand on his arm. ‘You took goods from the merchant’s wagons, and put them in the count’s empty wagons.’

Swan looked back and forth between the two men.

‘If I were to say that I found the count’s wagons empty—’ he said.

Alessandro laughed. ‘I thought so,’ he said, punching the air.

Cardinal Bessarion frowned. ‘Messire Merechault claims that he is missing six bales of goods. As well as four pieces of carved ivory from a Parisian maker to be delivered in Burgundy.’

Swan shrugged. He’d learned that shrug through hard practice. He could shrug like that even when his uncles were hitting him with a belt. ‘I imagine the count’s men have them,’ he said.

Bessarion leaned over. ‘I would be very disappointed to find that anything else was true.’ He leaned back. ‘But I am in your debt, messire. The count will be tied up in law for a week. Even the merchant, I think, owes you some gratitude.’

‘It is a pity they can’t find the girl,’ Alessandro said.

‘Girl?’ the cardinal asked.

‘That sly rogue, the count – the supposed count – paid a whore to distract the night guard while his men stole from the wagons.’ Alessandro looked at Swan. Who shrugged. Again.

‘Or so says the night guard,’ Swan said. ‘Perhaps he was bribed.’

Bessarion nodded. ‘What I cannot fathom,’ he said quietly, ‘is why the supposed count would be fool enough to put the goods in his own wagons under Merechault’s nose.’

Swan writhed.

Alessandro came to his rescue. ‘Par dieu, Eminence. He’s arrogant enough to haul empty wagons across four fords, as if we would never notice them. He thought he might get away with it. That’s all.’

It occurred to Swan at that point that he was going to get away with it, and a feeling of joy flooded him, unmixed with any reserve whatsoever. No school prank, no petty thievery in Cheapside, would ever have the satisfaction of this – pulled off under the very eyes of the enemy.

Bessarion nodded.

Swan found that he liked these strange, foreign men, and he looked back and forth at them. After a few more paces, he said, ‘I must confess a thought I have had.’

The cardinal bowed slightly. ‘I can provide absolution,’ he said.

Swan tried to see a way to tell the truth without owning to his part in it. ‘If – someone – had – hmm. Put the count in this unenviable position,’ he said. ‘Ahem. If the count imagined that he had been slighted—’

‘Get on with it,’ muttered Alessandro.

‘What is to keep the count from revenge?’ he asked. ‘He must suspect – er – us.’

Alessandro raised an eyebrow.

Swan went on – he’d had all morning to think it through. ‘At some point, Merechault will call for the . . . I don’t know what they are called in France, but in London we’d call him the sheriff. And the count will find himself in a difficulty.’ He was speaking too fast.

‘He will, too,’ Alessandro said.

‘So he kills Merechault and sets fire to the inn and rides away to kill us,’ Swan finished. ‘As he has more men-at-arms than we do ourselves.’

‘Why kill us?’ the cardinal asked.

Alessandro looked at the young Englishman. ‘Perhaps he doesn’t believe his own men were fools enough to place the bales of cloth in his wagons.’

‘Perhaps he can’t afford any witnesses,’ Swan said.

‘Perhaps he is so well born that he can weather any legal action,’ Alessandro said slowly.

Bessarion raised a hand, looked Alessandro in the eye and said, ‘See to it.’

Alessandro nodded, put a hand on Swan’s bridle and turned them out of the column. As he rode down the column, he gathered men – half his soldiers; Giannis, another Greek called Stefanos, a third called Giorgos, and two Italians, Ramone and Marcus.

He turned to Swan. ‘You’re coming with me. You made this mess, you can help clean up.’ But despite his acerbic tone, he smiled and put an hand on Swan’s arm. ‘You did well enough.’ He shrugged. ‘I think you are too cautious. I think the so-called count will simply ride away.’

Swan shook his head. ‘That was my mistake,’ he said.

Alessandro made a face. ‘What mistake?’

They were just passing a low bluff on their right, covered in big trees – oaks, and some beech. Alessandro was looking at it.

‘The first night I was with you at dinner, I saw him sitting with the merchant’s men, at a middle table. He was as angry as a mad dog.’ Swan was looking at the horizon.

Alessandro shrugged. ‘So?’ He shaded his eyes with his hand to look at the trees.

‘He was angry he hadn’t been given a place at the high table,’ Swan said. ‘He really is a count.’

Alessandro’s face went still, just for a moment. Then his eyelids came down a little. He turned away from the high woods.

‘Then we must, in fact, clean this up very carefully,’ he said quietly. ‘Is your servant an archer?’ He raised an eyebrow. ‘Do you even know?’

‘He’s a very good archer,’ Swan said, hoping it was true.

‘Good. I have a couple of English bows I bought at Castillon from the victors.’ He turned and beckoned to Peter, who rode out of the column.

‘We need to hurry,’ Swan said.

He pointed at a column of smoke rising from the town on the next ridge, just three leagues away. ‘That’s the inn.’

Alessandro nodded. ‘Right here will do,’ he said. He opened his purse and dumped it in the road – twenty silver ecus and some gold, glinting in the summer sun.

The two wagons and twenty retainers rolled on sedately, unthreatened by the rising smoke behind them. At their head rode the cardinal, his red hat prominently displayed. The little convoy raised dust that could be seen from ridge to ridge, for several leagues.

The count’s party moved quickly, raising a column of dust that could be seen from the convoy. The cardinal turned in his saddle from time to time to watch the count’s progress. His force of men-at-arms rode down into the valley, splashed across the ford, and started up the long ridge, now just a league away, closing the distance.

The cardinal gave an order, and the convoy began to move faster. He turned to watch as the count’s cavalcade drew abreast of the oak woods on the bluff above the road.

‘We must kill them all,’ Alessandro said. His voice was as hard as steel. The Greek and Italian men-at-arms all nodded.

Marcus and Stefanos, the best-armoured men after Alessandro himself, rode away, moving slowly so as not to raise dust.

The rest of them dismounted in the trees, where they were bedevilled by insects for an uncomfortable hour. Peter took the two bows from the capitano, and strung them with Swan’s help. He drew first one, and then the other, and winced on both draws. He made a face.

‘Good bows. I’ll take this one.’ He put the bow by him and unstrung the other, and Swan handed it to the capitano. Alessandro looked at him.

‘Do you shoot?’ he asked.

Peter rested his back against the bole of a giant oak and prepared to go to sleep. But he raised his face to Swan.

‘Toe nou! I’d be surprised if he didn’t shoot,’ Peter said.

Swan shrugged. ‘I can use a bow,’ he admitted.

Peter nodded, as if a mystery were solved, or perhaps as if Swan could now be taken seriously. ‘I’ve never met an Englishman who could not shoot,’ he said, and went to sleep.

Giannis spanned his crossbow, put an arrow into the trough, and lay down.

Giorgos and Ramone stayed with the horses. They had no armour, and no bows.

‘Always be sure of your retreat,’ Alessandro said. ‘Even when the odds are heavily in your favour.’

The insects droned. Peter snored.

There were hoof-beats near the ford, and the sound of harness and armour, and suddenly Peter was awake, bow in hand, standing behind the bole of his tree.

Swan’s heart beat too hard. He was tired – he wanted to sleep, but he was too afraid, too full of something that made his nerves tingle, his stomach flip over, his bowels twitch.

Alessandro just chewed on a grass stem and watched the road.

The count’s men – led by the unmistakable figure of the count – came on at a fast trot. The count passed the silver in the road, but the next man reined in, and suddenly they were all stopped, and men were dismounting.

Alessandro smiled, much as the fox might smile when the hen comes to find its missing egg. He snapped his fingers. Peter tensed, and Swan took a war arrow from the bundle at his feet, placed it to the string, and drew to his ear, cocking his head slightly to engage the muscles in his back.

Giannis loosed. His crossbow made a flat snap. One of the men in the scrum over the coins flipped off his horse.

Before his demise was noticed, Peter drew his great bow to his ear and loosed. His arrow hit the count’s charger and sank all the way to the fletchings in the horse’s side, and the great horse screamed and fell.

Swan’s arrow wobbled in the air as it arched. Swan didn’t watch the fall – he knew he’d missed his loose as soon as his fingers released the string.

Every head among the count’s men turned to the woods on the bluff.

Peter’s second arrow took a black-bearded man in full plate armour under his arm while he waved at the woods. He fell backward in a rattle of plate. His horse stood stock still in the road.

Peter’s third arrow plunged into the withers of a franc-archer’s horse. The horse bolted, ran a few steps, and fell in a spectacular crash, flinging his unlucky rider the length of a horse down the road.

Swan’s second arrow struck one of the count’s routiers in the helmet. The arrow sprang away, but the man slumped.

The count was demanding that another man-at-arms give him his horse. Three men turned and bolted, and the rest turned towards the wood and started to ride up the steep slope.

Giannis finished spanning and took careful aim. He muttered a prayer to the Virgin in Greek.

He loosed. His bolt took an armoured man full in the breastplate and flipped him out of his saddle.

Peter’s fourth arrow killed an archer’s horse. The count gave up demanding a horse and started to run for the trees, a hundred yards away.

Peter missed with his fifth arrow. Swan had just raised his eyes from fumbling for his third arrow, and he was having trouble nocking it. All of the non-archers were watching. Peter’s accuracy was remarkable. So when he missed, they all groaned.

The riders were close now.

Peter plucked his sixth arrow from the ground, whipped the nock on to the string, drew and loosed in a single long motion, and his bodkin point drove into a man’s unarmoured face.

Swan put his third arrow into a horse. The horse reared, its feet flailed at the air, and together horse and man fell to earth.

Peter plucked his seventh arrow and the remaining three riders were close enough to discover that there were too many men in the woods for them to defeat. Swan reached for his fourth arrow but Alessandro shook his head.

‘To horse. With me.’ He gestured.

Swan dropped his bow atop the arrows and got a foot in the nearside stirrup.

Peter and Giannis loosed together. By bad luck they both picked the same target, and a young squire died with two heavy arrows in his body.

‘Get them,’ Alessandro said. He and Swan were now mounted, and the two of them charged the survivors, Swan’s heart hammering away. The two men were turning to run. Their horses had galloped up the steep hill, and now they were blown.

Alessandro was like an arrow. His horse passed across the two fleeing opponents’ front, and he cut back into them. In his first pass, he killed the horse of the lead man with a flick of his sword and a dainty montante into the animal’s unprotected neck. He and the second man swaggered swords – heavy, downward cuts ringing together.

Swan rode up on the man’s left side and thrust under the arm while his full intention was on the Italian. He turned, mouth open to scream, and Alessandro ran him through the mouth. The blow cut away his jaw as he fell off the sword.

Alessandro gave Swan a short salute, hilt to his lips. Then he rode across the face of the hill and waved up at Giannis. ‘Make sure they are all dead,’ he called.

Giannis waved and aimed. And loosed. His quarrel hit the count, still running towards them. It knocked him down, but in a second he was up. His armour was good enough to turn a light crossbow.

Peter’s arrow struck him a few paces farther on. It bounced off his breastplate, leaving a dent visible to Swan on his horse, twenty paces away.

Swan, unarmoured, had no intention of engaging the count. His sword high, he swept wide of the armoured man, riding carefully to stay clear of the archer’s line of fire.

‘Face me!’ roared the count. ‘You sons of bitches!’ He had his visor open.

Another arrow hit him – missed his face by a handspan and struck full on his lifted visor, ripping it away from the helmet.

Swan angled towards him, trying to draw his attention away from Alessandro, who was coming up from behind the armoured man. But Alessandro caused him to turn – and then swept by to the right, his horse labouring on the hillside.

Giannis shot a bolt into the back of the man’s unprotected thigh at twenty yards.

The count screamed and went down.

Alessandro rode up and dismounted even as Swan dismounted himself. Alessandro handed the Englishman his reins. ‘I’ll do this,’ he said. He shrugged.

‘Arrhhh. Arrhhh!’ the count grunted. He was rolling back and forth, his left hand scrabbling at the quarrel that had penetrated his thigh, broken the bone and probably lodged against his thigh armour – in front. He was clearly in incredible pain. His head thrashed back and forth.

Alessandro walked over to him – and suddenly the man dropped the pretence and got to one knee, his sword sweeping low in an attempt to cut one of Alessandro’s legs.

Alessandro blocked some of it with a sweeping downward parry, but the cut was low and he had no leg armour, and he stumbled and went down.

‘Fuck you, you bitch!’ screamed the count. ‘I’ll kill every fucking one of you, you whores!’ He was on one knee.

He began to drag himself to Alessandro, who tried to roll away.

Swan had no armour, and he had a feeling that the count was far out of his league as an opponent. And he wasn’t sure he owed Alessandro anything.

He considered intervening, and thought, I don’t have to do this.

But he wanted to be a knight, and not a thief. He had a feeling – in a long moment between stillness and an explosive leap – that this was his moment to choose. As was so often the case, in one moment of decision, he dared himself.

I don’t have to do this.

I really don’t have to do this.

He leaped over the Italian.

The count cut down.

He caught the cut on his high guard, as his uncles had taught him. The count twisted, but he was on one knee and probably not as powerful as he was used to being, and their blades locked, the two keen edges biting into each other just a little.

Swan had the enormous advantage of being on his feet, armour or no armour. He lunged with his left foot and rotated his sword on the point where the two blades were locked, and punched his pommel into the count’s unprotected face.

He was very fast. People always underestimated his speed.

The count’s teeth exploded over his pommel, and the man fell back, and Swan, almost as surprised as the count by his own success, cut wildly, his point bouncing up from the count’s gorget and cutting across the man’s lips and left eye.

He stumbled back.

The count screamed a long, drawn-out scream. Swan had only ever heard such a scream from a woman in childbirth. He looked like some sort of nightmare monster.

The count got his good leg under him and powered himself to his feet, his scream now a roar.

Peter’s arrow struck his breastplate right over the heart. It didn’t penetrate. But it knocked the count back, and he unbalanced and fell down again, and the spell was broken.

Giannis was shouting in Italian, ‘Get out of the way! Get out of the way!’

But Swan stood between the monster in armour and Alessandro, who he wasn’t sure he liked.

Alessandro was staunching the flow of blood from his ankle. ‘You have to kill him,’ he said.

Swan walked over to the count, who was lying on his back with one leg cocked and the other flat on the ground. He was breathing as if he’d run a race.

‘Je me rends,’ he said heavily. ‘Je me rends.’ He waved his sword-hand.

Swan put his right foot on the hand, pinning it to the earth.

‘Jesu! Get off it, you little bitch. I have yielded.’ The fire in the count’s eyes was unholy. Even with a foot on the man’s sword-arm, his face ruined by the pommel strike, a crossbow bolt in his thigh, he was terrifying in his full plate, and his size. Swan feared him, even now.

‘Pray, Messire Count. You are about to die.’ Swan placed his sword-point near the man’s face, and found that his point was wobbling from the trembling of his hand.

‘I’m worth a thousand ducats, sodomite. Get off my hand.’

‘Pray, messire.’ Swan found his hand was steadying.

‘God is a fucking lie, boy.’ The man lay there, his one good eye staring.

Swan wished he would make one more attempt to rise – to fight. Anything to justify what he was about to do.

His point wavered.

Alessandro said, ‘Just kill him, for the love of God.’

He took a deep breath and . . .

Giannis leaned over and pulled the latch on his crossbow, and his quarrel blew through the man’s skull and killed him instantly. ‘There’s money wasted,’ he said cheerfully. ‘You hit bad, messire?’

Peter was hobbling, favouring his side.

In the distance, four dust clouds on the plain gradually merged to two, and then to one. By the time Stefanos came riding back, Alessandro was on horseback, one foot out of the stirrup and dangling, with Swan’s neck cloth around his ankle.

Stefanos had Marcus over his horse. He shrugged at his capitano. ‘Bad luck,’ he said.

Alessandro shook his head. ‘Dead?’ he asked.

Stefanos nodded.

‘What a waste,’ Alessandro said. ‘You get them both?’

‘Yes,’ Stefanos said.

‘Where are the bodies?’ Alessandro asked.

‘In the river. In armour. What do you think – I was born yesterday?’ The Greek spat. ‘Any of them have anything worth taking? Those two had nothing but their swords.’

‘Leave it. Take nothing but coins. Nothing to mark us.’

‘What about the horses?’ Giannis asked with a whine in his voice.

Alessandro was in pain, and his temper was short. ‘What did I just say?’

‘Fuck. What do we get out of this?’ complained Stefanos. ‘Marcus is dead. I got less than an ecu.’

Alessandro glared.

Giannis, Swan, Ramone and Giorgos dragged each corpse into the wood. It was hard work, and disgusting. Ramone put a knife into each corpse’s neck under the chin, just to be ‘sure’, and searched the corpses for cash.

Peter picked up the count’s sword.

‘Leave it,’ Alessandro said.

‘It’s a fine weapon,’ Peter said, putting a touch of ‘v’ into the ‘w’ of weapon. A vine veapon.

‘It could get us all beheaded,’ Alessandro said.

Swan noted that the capitano spoke to Peter almost as a peer.

Peter nodded the way a man nods when he disagrees utterly. He dropped the sword in the grass.

In twenty minutes, they were done.

‘Put fire to the wood,’ Alessandro said.

The soldiers got a fire going, and spread it. The summer woods caught very fast.

‘Let’s go,’ Alessandro said.

Paris was dull after the road. Alessandro’s ankle cut was worse than it had looked in the field, and he had to go to a surgeon to be bled. The cardinal had apartments in the Louvre, but the rest of them were housed in the Convent of the Ursilines, and the cardinal introduced Swan to the King’s Librarian. He was shocked to be given the run of the Royal Library. Days passed very quickly while he read. He did little but read.

That was good, because every night he dreamed. He dreamed of the four men on the road, of the count’s one remaining eye, of the blood. Every night. Sometimes in the day.

He fantasised about every young nun in the convent, went out with the notaries and drank too much on the silver of the men he’d killed, and diced and played cards until he felt tired enough to sleep without dreams.

It never worked.

After they’d been in Paris a week, the cardinal summoned him. A servant fetched him from Aristotle, and he walked up through the labyrinth of halls to the cardinal’s apartment.

He bowed, was summoned forward, and kissed the cardinal’s ring.

‘Your Eminence,’ he said.

Bessarion smiled. He looked strained. ‘I am about to trade you,’ he said. ‘I believe you said you were worth a thousand florins?’

Swan noted that Alessandro was lying on the cardinal’s bed. He waved an idle salute.

Swan twitched. ‘As to that . . .’ he said, smiling apologetically.

‘Half that?’ the cardinal said. He was already writing. ‘I’m trading you to the King’s Librarian. He wants you as his prisoner. He’ll use you in the library until your father arranges your release.’ He paused. ‘Of course, we’ll need your father’s name.’ He looked at Alessandro. ‘I’m sorry for this, young man. I had thought of releasing you without ransom after your daring on the road, but the truth is . . . we’ve had a disaster.’ Bessarion, the very model of decorum, or Roman-style gravitas, had a catch in his voice.

Swan realised the man was on the edge of tears.

‘A . . . disaster?’ Swan asked.

Alessandro rose on his elbow. ‘Constantinople fell to the Turks. In May.’

Bessarion buried his head in his hands. ‘My city.’

Swan was at a loss. Constantinople was a name redolent with magic – a wonderful place, a schismatic, heretical place, a palace of wonders. Babylon. He had to imagine that the flesh-and-blood Bessarion thought of the great city as . . . as home. Home, like London.

Bessarion raised his head. Now Swan could see that he had aged. His lips were thin, his hair greyer. ‘Suddenly I am cut off from revenue. So I’m afraid I must sell your ransom, young man.’ He shrugged. ‘I’m sorry.’

Swan shrugged.

‘Tell him,’ Alessandro said suddenly. ‘There’s no point in pretence, boy. Tell him.’

‘What’s this?’ Bessarion asked.

Alessandro shook his head. ‘He’s not worth a sou of ransom. He’s someone’s bastard, that’s all.’

Bessarion continued to look at Swan. ‘Is this true? Do you know this to be true?’ he asked.

Swan was frozen. But if he said his father’s name, it would all become instantly clear, anyway.

Cardinal Bessarion nodded. ‘Ah. Of course. What nobly born boy speaks Greek?’ He looked at Swan. ‘Tell us, boy.’

‘My father is dead,’ he said. He shrugged his shrug. ‘He was a cardinal. He wanted me educated for the Church.’

‘Kemp?’ asked the cardinal, his voice sharp. ‘Kemp had a mistress?’

Swan lowered his eyes. ‘Cardinal Beaufort, Eminence.’

Alessandro whistled from the bed. ‘You’re a bastard of that bastard?’ He snorted.

Bessarion pursed his lips and raised an eyebrow. ‘You aren’t worth a sou.’

Alessandro laughed aloud. ‘So – you were a royal page!’

Swan spread his hands. ‘Not for long,’ he admitted. ‘I . . . played a prank.’

Bessarion shook his head. Raised his eyes from his hands and looked at his capitano. ‘I can sell the Ptolemy,’ he said. ‘It will get us the money to go to Rome.’

Alessandro nodded.

Bessarion looked at Swan. ‘You did me good service, young man. Despite your lies. Ahh – spare me. A lie is a lie. Go – I’ll see to it you get a safe conduct.’

Swan sighed. Greatly daring, he met the cardinal’s eye. Then he looked at Alessandro. And shifted his glance back to the cardinal. ‘I’d rather have a job,’ he said. ‘If it’s all the same to you. There’s . . . nothing for me in England.’

Bessarion shook his head. But he laughed. ‘I’m not sure I have what would be required to save your soul,’ he said.

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.