Tom Swan and the Head of St George Part Two: Venice

Tom Swan and the Head of St George

Part Two: Venice

Christian Cameron

Foreword

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

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

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

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

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

Chris Cameron

Toronto, June 2012

Tom Swan – Part Two: Venice

Italy was a different world. The air was different. Farms were different. Food was delicious, women were beautiful, they flirted harder and they hit harder when offended. Men were quick to make friends and quick to draw knives.

Swan liked it.

They paused for a week in Florence, where Bessarion had relatives. Swan was enough part of the cardinal’s household that he had come to understand that the cardinal had an extensive network of informants and special friends who provided him with the essential information that allowed him to remain important and powerful – while impoverished.

Florence was . . . incredible. Swan went from one building to the next, from one magnificent vista to the next, from one Tuscan vintage to the next. One evening, he threw his arms around Giovanni Accudi and demanded to be made an Italian.

‘An Italianate Englishman is the devil come to earth,’ Cesare said, and laughed.

Two weeks later they were in Rome. Bessarion had a place – a magnificent set of apartments in an old palazzo, the whole decorated in statues pulled from the Forum, with paintings from many of the artists.

Swan had never seen so much wealth in his life. He’d been in the English palaces. They had carvings, old oak, blue and gilt ceilings . . .

They were like merchant’s homes in Cheapside compared to this. Every ceiling was painted with a scene – the resurrection of Christ, the birth of Venus, the crucifixion, the rending of Adonis by Artemis’s hunting dogs. Swan walked from room to room, his neck strained, watching the scenes go by and bumping into furniture.

Alessandro laughed at him. So did the lawyers, who, home at last, wanted to show off their adoptive city. ‘Come out with us!’ Giovanni said. ‘Meet the most beautiful women!’

‘Play cards with them,’ Cesare said.

‘Bed them,’ Giovanni said.

‘If you can pay,’ said Cesare, and he frowned. ‘Do you have any silver?’

Swan made a face. ‘Take me to a pawn shop,’ he said, ‘and I might have a little silver.’

Most of the cardinal’s entourage had their own homes, but the lawyers had rooms in the old palazzo and Giannis, the only one of the regular guards to be unmarried, also lived in the villa. Cesare pounded on his door. ‘Wear a clean doublet – we’re going to visit Aphrodite!’ he called.

Giannis opened the door. He had plainly been asleep. On the road, the guards – among whom he might have been numbered, at least by a casual observer – had been awake a great deal, even in safe towns in northern Italy. In the palazzo, they slept. Contrarily, the lawyers, who’d scarcely ever been employed on the road, were now expected to write all day.

Cesare looked Swan over in the courtyard of the palazzo. ‘You look like a very young assassin, or perhaps a peasant in the borrowed clothes of a relative,’ he said.

Indeed, Swan hadn’t bought a rag since Paris, and his one suit of doublet and hose had been slept in, fought in, and oft mended. Even clean, the doublet was threadbare.

Cesare, by contrast, looked like a different man. Instead of the long gown of his profession, or the travelling gown he’d worn on the road, he had a short doublet and very, very tight wool hose. As he was a big man, edging on to a life of having a roll of fat at his waist, he shook his head. ‘I’d lend you clothes,’ he said sadly. ‘But there’s nothing about you that’s the same size as me.’

The same was true of Accudi, who stood over six feet tall in his stockings and was as thin as a spear.

‘I’m not sure I can be seen in public with him,’ Giovanni said when he came down. His fine brocaded wool doublet contrasted perfectly with his hose and his matching shoes. Even his dagger belt matched, and had gold fittings that looked, to Swan, like real gold. ‘I’m not going to take him to Donna Lucrescia’s house. We’ll be mocked.’

‘I’m more afraid we’ll be killed,’ Cesare amended.

Swan began to be annoyed. ‘Go, then,’ he said. ‘I’ll stay home.’

‘Are you too poor to buy clothes?’ Cesare asked. ‘Good clothes can be had cheaply, if second hand. A good cutter can resew them in an hour.’

‘I wasn’t born yesterday,’ Swan complained. ‘We have clothes in London, too.’

Giannis came down in a pierced leather doublet and particoloured hose. He looked at Swan. ‘He can’t go out dressed like that. None of the girls will even look at him. He looks like somebody’s country cousin.’

Cesare guffawed, and Swan boiled over. ‘Very funny, you bastards!’