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

‘Do you have a pair of swords? Safed swords?’ Swan asked.

Solomon shook his head.

‘We’d need a pair. They would have to be kept somewhere, yes? Illegal for you to own, I think?’ He looked around. ‘Or for me to bring to the ghetto.’

Solomon put a hand on his shoulder. ‘But you . . . would.’

Swan shrugged. ‘Yes. I’m not that good – I’m taking lessons myself.’

Solomon smiled. They were the same age. Solomon looked so different he might have been an alien – different clothes, different face, different manner. But there was something – a piratical gleam – that made Swan take to him instantly.

‘We need a place – somewhere we can both get to. With the equipment, and no nosy neighbours.’

‘In Venice?’ Solomon shook his head. ‘Let me see. It is a foolish thing. I have always wanted to do this. I saw you – you aren’t like my father’s bravos.’ He shrugged. ‘And the rabbi said you were a good man, for a Christian.’

Swan bowed deeply. ‘Your servant. Send me a message.’ He frowned. ‘I leave in a week.’

Solomon’s face fell.

Swan smiled. ‘Listen – your father must have a way of moving things in and out of the ghetto. Get a pair of swords, and I’ll give you a first lesson in the garden.’

Solomon smiled. ‘Thanks. My father may see this as a Christian’s attempt to entrap him.’

Swan shrugged. ‘Your servant,’ he said.

Walking along the wharf, looking for a boat, he couldn’t quite see why he’d liked the young Jew so much. It was like seeing a girl – he didn’t want to follow that thought too closely.

A boatman waved, and poled in. As Swan stepped into his boat, he saw the ill-laced doublet standing behind a pile of barrels. He saw the man only for a second, but it was enough.

He forced himself to smile and make a remark to his boatman.

He sat in the cupola at the back of the boat, and managed – without too much effort – to sneak a look behind him.

Another boat was leaving the pier. Was the black doublet in it? He wasn’t on the wharf.

Swan wasn’t armed beyond an eating knife. Venice had laws about such things.

Alessandro, despite his murmurings about being ‘disinherited’, was living at his father’s palazzo on the Grand Canal. Swan didn’t know exactly how to approach him. He got out of his boat on the Rialto and walked along the waterfront, enjoying the great cogs, the nefs and the galleys that stretched away like an aquatic forest to the south.

He walked into an alley after the first bridge, and walked up the street quickly to a small bakery that Cesare liked. He turned in the door. The whole shop was the size of a lady’s wardrobe. There was just room for a customer or two to stand – then the counter, piled high with bread, and behind it, the ovens. It was hot.

He bought a sweet roll. The very pretty girl behind the counter called them Hungarian. The girl almost distracted him from his intention, but he managed to be in the doorway lingering and munching when the black doublet went past him. Swan glanced back at the girl – Cesare’s interest revealed, although the Hungarian roll was miraculous – but she didn’t spare him so much as a look, and he stepped out into the alley, leaped over the very narrow canal, and ran along the walkway behind St Mark’s into the square.

Black Doublet walked into the square and then began to search. He stopped and cursed.

It was as good as anything the travelling mimes could produce. The man was truly angry, and he walked around the square, and then back along the wharf. Swan followed him warily. This was something he’d done often enough in London, as a youth. For various purposes.

The man walked up an alley and came back down and almost caught Swan flat footed, but a stack of cloth bales saved him, and the man had no notion of being followed himself.

He went up the next alley, saw the bakery, and stopped. Ran a hand through his thinning hair and stepped on to the portal. He said something. Nodded, and smiled – a terrible grin.

When he emerged, he was moving quickly. Swan assumed he’d realised that Swan had stopped, and was now giving up. He walked west, through St Mark’s Square, over the bridges. It would have been faster for him to take a boat, but he didn’t – he was cheap.

As darkness began to fall, he went into a maze of alleys behind the Grand Canal palazzi. After one turn and an ill look from a man who seemed as dangerous as Swan’s quarry, Swan gave up and walked back to the canal, catching a boat in the last rays of the sun.

There was a magnificent palazzo dominating the canal just there. On a hunch, Swan pointed at it. ‘Who’s is that?’

The boatman looked at him as if sorry for his provincial ways. ‘Where are you from? Naples?’ he asked, as if this was the worst insult a man could be offered.

Swan laughed. ‘Yes, Naples,’ he said.

The boatman smiled, seeing that his passenger wasn’t a complete fool. ‘That’s the Palazzo Foscari,’ he said.

The next morning, Swan met Alessandro for a lesson. They were swaggering swords in a dry alley behind the inn. The watch had come and gone.

‘We’re to travel on a state galley,’ Swan said.

Alessandro had taught him six positions. The positions were called ‘gardes’. His feet had to go . . . just so. His arms and his head also.

It was very different from standing in the inn yard of the Swan with one uncle swinging at him while the other drank and made comments.

‘Look – if he covers his head, what can you hit? His legs, boyo! Cut at his legs. High, low. Left, right.’

In fact the instructions often ended in the same place, but approached the subject from different angles. It was remarkably like learning a language from a new instructor. One started with verbs, another with nouns. Swordsmanship had a grammar, and Alessandro insisted that he learn it properly.

‘Do not just cut at my buckler!’ Alessandro said. ‘Have I not told you ten times to make a provocazione!’

‘Cutting at your buckler is my provocazione.’ Swan stepped back.

‘No! No, it is not! If you make such a move, it is an attack. It uses your effort, and now I will get to respond. Look!’ The Venetian came on garde – not, in fact, a garde that he’d taught to Swan yet.

Swan got his sword and his buckler up, and the swords crossed at the tips.

‘Look!’ Alessandro said, and he stepped forward powerfully, his sword now crossed almost to the hilt with Swan’s. Swan pushed the sword away, and as he pushed, Alessandro’s weapon vanished under his and was at his throat, instead.

‘I provoked you by walking into your measure. I forced you to act. You acted as I expected, with pressure to my blade. I left your blade to have a picnic by itself, and I kill you, thus.’ Alessandro nodded. ‘That was a proper provocazione.’ He nodded. ‘Now you.’ He paused. ‘State galley?’

Swan smiled, but he kept his sword up. He’d seen all this before. Alessandro insisted that he be on his garde all lesson. He reinforced the point by cutting suddenly at his pupil while they talked.

‘I have a source who says we’ll sail on Nike. And that the Bishop of Ostia is our patron.’ He adjusted his point until he was in the garde that Maestro Viladi called ‘Porta di Ferro’ while Alessandro called it ‘Coda Lunga Larga’. So many names.

A language of its own.

Alessandro stepped back with a flourish. ‘You are already much better. Maestro Viladi is very old fashioned, but he has improved your stance.’

‘He knows how to wrestle, the old maestro,’ said Swan. He still had a sore hip where he – all cocky – had attempted to throw the maestro.

Alessandro laughed. Then he became serious. ‘We need to find you some armour that is presentable,’ he said.

‘I have it. At least, half-armour.’ He smiled.