Despite which, in an hour, they were dancing merrily. The main figure was a woman dancing between two men, and the men took turns with the woman – Swan smiled a little bitterly as he shared Violetta with the French soldier and later with the tallest of the Florentines, but the dancing was done with goodwill.
The Florentine leaned against the wall – women were in short supply, which gave men a rest from time to time. ‘She’s a beauty, your girl,’ he said. ‘I haven’t had this good a time in a year. May I ask who you are?’
Swan bowed. ‘Thomas Swan, equerry to Cardinal Bessarion.’
The Florentine bowed. ‘Ah – we share a friend – Di Brachio of the Bembii of Venice. I am Giacomo Accucciulli.’
Even more remarkably, the Florentine spoke excellent Greek. He admitted to Giannis that he’d been born there. The Greeks greeted him like a long-lost brother. The party grew warmer.
The French soldier sat with Swan. So much wine had been drunk that Swan could scarcely see, and he was watching Violetta whirl and leap with the Florentine and with Di Brescia – the two best male dancers – without a qualm.
‘Come on, friend – you’re a soldier. You have soldier written all over you,’ the Frenchman said, his arm around Swan’s shoulder.
Swan shrugged. ‘I’m …’ He struggled to define what it was he did. He laughed. ‘Well, I certainly saw some fighting last summer,’ he admitted.
‘I knew it!’ said the Frenchman.
They sat watching Violetta as she turned, back straight, on her toes – even in a frumpy wool overdress and a heavy man’s shirt, the set of her head, the way her eyes touched Swan’s …
Behind her, the main room’s door opened, and a wave of yellow and red washed into the room.
As it was, the Orsini were immediately confronted by Violetta, and her beauty turned their heads for a count of three, before their captain pointed at Swan. ‘There he is!’ he shouted.
By the count of three, Swan was standing erect with his sword in one hand and a heavy dagger in the other, and he was surprisingly sober when he came on guard. He turned his head once – looking for somewhere to run – but the construction of the place left him no options. The kitchen door was far across the room behind the table at which the Florentines had been sitting. The party was all intermingled now –
Nor did the Orsini seem to have any target beyond Swan. The leaders – three men – ran across the open floor.
The Frenchman seized the heavy table at which they’d been sitting and stood up – tipping the table up like a fortress wall. His left hand saved the pitcher of wine as the table fell with a crash.
Swan had nowhere to retreat – the back wall was at his left shoulder.
The lead Orsini thug tangled with the table. The second man leaped over it with an acrobatic jump, but Swan put his left-hand dagger into the man’s stomach and threw him into the wall behind him with a crash. The wall moved – plaster cracked, leaving the twigs and brush that had been used to set the mortar plain to see. The third man cut with a heavy sword at the Frenchman, who parried with the pitcher of wine – it shattered, and sticky, hot wine flew. Swan stabbed diagonally across the table into the exposed underarm of the red and yellow bruiser who was trying to hack the Frenchman down.
The room was full of red and yellow.
The man who’d lost his footing at the table had recovered, and Swan met his sword, mid-blade to mid-blade, over the table. Both men tried for the other’s blade, Swan with his dagger, the other man with a gloved hand – Swan tried and failed to land a pommel-punch, and the Orsini’s left hand punched his dagger arm hard enough to threaten his grasp of his weapon. He threw it with little force, but the quillons hit his assailant’s face and made him flinch, and Swan got his left hand on his own sword-blade and slammed the edge down on the man’s left hand where it had come to rest on the table, breaking all the other man’s fingers.
The Orsini swordsman stumbled back, and Swan vaulted the table and made a fast cut to finish the fight, but the other man parried.
Swan drove him back three steps, but each step took him deeper into the melee, and any thought of single combat vanished as a fist caught him in the thigh – an almost harmless blow that nonetheless awakened him to the fact that he was surrounded by enemies, most of whom had their own opponents but all of whom could potentially end his life.
He caught a sword-blade intended for his head on his crossguard, trapped it with his left hand and slammed his whole hilt back down the line of the attack, making teeth fly. The grip on the enemy sword slackened, and he whirled, swinging the stolen sword by the blade and cutting deeply into his own left fingers. The hilt caught an unwary retainer in the back and shoulder. He rolled with the blow like a trained fighter, but not fast enough to avoid Di Brescia’s debilitating kick to the groin and follow-up blow to the head.
Swan caught a new assailant’s attack in his peripheral vision and raised his sword, only to have it smashed by a chair – a heavy oak chair – which broke his beautiful blade and almost shattered his right arm. One leg caught him a glancing blow to his lip and ripped his face.
Swan saw red, stepped into the open space created by the chair and caught the man’s dagger hand in his own bloody left – the chair-thrower tried to use his own left to drag Swan to the floor, but Swan passed under the blow as Di Brachio had taught him on board ship – slamming his elbow into the man’s throat in passing his own right arm across the Orsini’s body, turning the man unwillingly outward and away, and then throwing him over his own right leg – while maintaining control of the dagger hand, so the man’s shoulder separated with a loud pop, and he screamed like a woman in childbirth.
Giannis had another man against the wall, and was slamming his head repeatedly against the tiles of the fireplace. There was a high-pitched shout of triumph, and another man fell heavily against Swan’s legs. Violetta stood triumphantly over her victim while Irene nursed her knuckles.
‘She parried and I thrust,’ Violetta said, breathing hard.
Irene had a bad cut all the way down her hand and arm. She stared at it, and Andromache grabbed her. ‘Don’t pass out, you little fool!’ she shouted.
Swan rotated, looking for a new adversary.
The Florentines had taken the Orsini by surprise, and all three of them had downed a man, shattering the weight of their attack. Messire Accucciulli bowed like the dancer he was, and flourished his blade. ‘A perfect end to a perfect evening,’ he said.
Di Brescia was looking at the men he’d downed with all the pride of middle-aged prowess, but he returned the bow. ‘Messire may well have saved us,’ he said.
The Florentine shrugged. ‘A small return on your hospitality. Who would abandon a dance partner?’ He bowed to Violetta. ‘At your service, my lady, whoever you might be.’
Swan was looking at Irene’s hand. The blade had crossed her guard and cut down between the knuckles, almost separating the web between the fingers – and had also scored high on the forearm near the elbow.
Violetta helped Swan lower the Greek girl into a chair – the same chair that had done some damage to Swan’s face. ‘Look away,’ she said to Irene, who was white as a sheet and breathing very shallowly.
She peeled the skin back from the edges of the wound for a moment and nodded. ‘Needle and thread?’ she asked.
Giannis and the Frenchman were looting the fallen men of their purses.
The Frenchman laughed. ‘By Saint Denis, I was out of money, and I only joined you lot to touch a woman for a change, and see here! Money from heaven.’
Giannis gave him a look. The Frenchman raised both hands. ‘Share and share alike!’ he said with Gallish sincerity. ‘I swear! Brothers for ever! Or until we have to fight!’