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

  ‘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 Ita
lian 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.’