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

He could see one man at the church corner. That man was leaning forward to talk quietly to another, whose voice came back hollowly, echoed by the next alley.

He stood at the corner and listened.

The man closest to him said something.

The voice floated back.

‘I said, maybe he stayed with his Jews. Do you think he’s one of them? Some sort of sorcerer?’

The disembodied voice came back.

‘Fuck your mother!’ said the man closest to him, and Swan started across the square. He had to be sure, so he caught his sword with his left hand at the midpoint – mezza spada – and ran light footed in on his opponent, who had leaned into the alley.

‘What?’ he said.

Swan used his sword the way a workman might use a pick. His sword-point rammed right thought the back of his skull, killing the man instantly. He fell, and his fall seemed very loud to Swan, who froze.

It must have actually been loud, because he saw a shadow move at the far end of the alley.

And then the man was on him.

Swan retreated in a single leap – to get more light and more room to swing a sword. He was shocked at the man charging him, but only as shocked as the assassin was himself, to find himself facing a sword an ell long with a dagger.

Now he stepped back into his alley.

Something in his stance gave Swan an instant of warning. There was the scrape of leather on a cobblestone.

A third man.

Swan whirled and cut – on instinct. He missed, but the new assailant sprang back.

With two men coming at him from widely divergent angles, Swan knew he had to attack one. The new man was closer.

Swan cut back up the same line he’d cut down. He dropped his cloak, keeping hold of one of the bucklers inside. He stepped forward with his left foot and punched with the buckler, and caught the man’s dagger more by luck than skill, and his counter-cut took the man high on the dagger arm.

He screamed.

Swan punched him in the head with his buckler and the man crumpled, and Swan pivoted as Alessandro had taught him, on his hips, and got his buckler up. The third man stood for the count of three. And then he turned and ran.

Swan let him go. Running through Venetian alleys in the dark seemed like a sure way to die – or merely ruin his clothes. He reached down and the man at his feet stabbed at him and he caught the stab on his arm. The buckler took some impact, but the man’s knife scored into the meat of his bicep, and the pain enraged him, and he cut viciously at the man with his sword – not once but three times.

Then he shook his head and cursed himself for a fool.

And then he took their purses. Searched their clothes. No one had called the watch – one scream and one clash of blades wasn’t enough to upset most Venetians.

He picked up the first one and carried him a block, to the canal. And dropped him in.

Walked back, picked up the second, and repeated the exercise.

When he was done, his hands didn’t stop shaking. He almost couldn’t walk.

There were two torches burning outside the inn, and if another man had tried to kill him, he’d have died. He didn’t take any precautions, but walked up to the door. Only when he saw Joanna did he fully appreciate how foolish he’d been.

She looked around – Cesare and a group of other men were playing dice.

‘Come!’ she muttered fiercely. She dragged him into the kitchen. Then ran back and closed the front door.

He sat on a settle by the fire and wondered if he would throw up.

Then he looked down and saw the pool of blood on the stone floor under his feet.

He came to to find his right arm wrapped tightly – perhaps too tightly. It was all pins and needles. Something was pressed against him.

He moved his right hand and found that what was pressed against him was warm.

‘Ah,’ Joanna said. ‘You were cold.’

She was naked.

He found that he was, in fact, still alive.

In the morning, he went to his room and found an oiled silk envelope that weighed two pounds. With it was a scroll tube sealed with a red seal in heavy wax.

Swan took them both. He put the silk envelope into the wicker basket with his armour.

He watched the basket and his heavy leather bag swayed up over the side of the state galley Nike, and down on to the deck before going down into the shallow hold under the rowers.

‘We’ll sail after matins,’ said the mate, a young Venetian aristocrat with a full beard. ‘Good to have a couple of knights aboard. Will you fight as marines if we have a scrap?’

‘Of course,’ Alessandro said. ‘Show us our stations.’ He turned to Swan. ‘I’m going to assume you were attacked,’ he said.

‘Not exactly,’ Swan answered.

He told the story and Alessandro laughed his unpleasant laugh. ‘So – for all you know, you attacked an innocent man,’ he said.

Swan shrugged.

‘I don’t think so, either,’ Alessandro said. ‘But next time, leave someone alive, eh, Barbarossa?’

As Alessandro’s harness and arms were swayed aboard, Swan saw that he had a long sword, four feet of steel with a heavy cross-guard, a long hilt and a spiked pommel.

Giannis had one, too.

Giannis saw what he was looking at and leaned over. ‘In a ship fight, it is good to have reach and power,’ he said.

Alessandro opened Swan’s basket. ‘Fine armour. Milanese. Does it fit?’

‘Well enough,’ Swan said. ‘Better than the stuff I wore at Castillon.’

Swan had been to sea – twice – in great ships. A galley was a very different ride. He was close to the water, and it felt faster and more personal.

As a ‘knight’ in the train of an ambassador, he rode in the captain’s luxurious ‘coach’ with eight other men – the bishop, his two priests, the captain, the mate, their two men-at-arms who were well-born Venetians training for the sea, and Alessandro.

After one very uncomfortable night, Swan joined Giannis under the awning. The deck was as hard as rock, but the space to roll over was better than a feather bed. The third night, Peter showed them both how to rig a cloak as a ring for the hips, and Swan slept well.

They put in almost every night after the first week at sea. They touched in Dalmatia, every day, and down to Ithaca and Corfu. Then they turned east, and they were in a sea that was supposed to be friendly, because Venice and the Turks were at peace.

But Ser Marco, the captain of the galley, was very watchful. He was different from the aristocrats that Swan had seen in France. He was very professional, and he was on deck at all hours. He had grey in his beard, and no front teeth – when he smiled, he looked like a drunken bully Tom had known in his youth. But there was nothing drunken in his style on deck. He was demanding, and his men loved him.

He was also very cautious. He seemed to expect pirates from every headland. He made them practise arming and disarming every day. Every day at dawn he had all the marines and all the archers on deck, fully armed, unless they were in port. When he discovered how good Alessandro was, he had the young nobleman direct a sword exercise – every day, rain or shine, on the gangway down the centre of the ship.