They heard booted footsteps and spurs, and the older serving brother leaped to his feet and cleared the tray with the cards. He dumped it into a sack and put the sack smoothly under Swan’s mattress. He seemed very practised at this movement.
‘Lucky for all of us that Fra Diablo wears spurs, even in the hospital,’ the monk added. ‘Like a bell on a cat.’
‘Fra Diablo?’ asked Swan.
The older Englishman winked. ‘Can I get you aught else, Master Swan?’
‘A really beautiful girl who will do all the work?’ Swan asked wistfully.
Totten didn’t even laugh. He wrinkled his brow and walked off as the knight strode on to the ward with Di Brachio in tow.
‘Our prize patient,’ said the knight. ‘Touched by God. Messire Swan, this gentleman has come to see you. I hope he is an agreeable visitor, as I have a small item of business to discuss with the two of you.’
Swan saw the ring, collet turned in to hide the stone. Even as he glanced at it, he noticed the knight twirl it with his thumb, and the stone shone for a moment and then vanished again.
That thing is very, very big.
Di Brachio took Swan’s hand and pressed it. ‘I want you to know that when I was told you were going to die, I was, perhaps, going to shed a tear.’ He leaned over and kissed Swan on both cheeks. ‘But as you plan to live, I suppose you’ll eventually replace my boots.’
Swan laughed, and his gut hurt.
‘How is everyone?’ he asked.
‘Di Brescia got through without a touch. Giannis got an ugly wound – an arrow that ran right up his left arm under the skin. Looks terrible, but seems not to trouble him much. Only one man died – Giovanni, the archer.’ He grinned. ‘The pretty actress asks for you every day. Don’t get your hopes up – I think she’s changed horses for Giannis.’ He shrugged. ‘Peter is in another ward – he took three hits and he’s slower to recover than you.’
‘Sweet Christ,’ Swan said.
Di Brachio nodded. ‘I’ve never seen a shot stour like it.’ He shook his head. ‘Arrows fell like snow.’ He sighed. ‘And you, scapegrace? Are you planning to live to make more trouble for me?’
Swan met his eye. ‘I’m sorry,’ he said.
Di Brachio shook his head. ‘Don’t be. This one isn’t on your head, my friend. Or rather, it is on the head, not on you. The head of St George. The news that we have it is everywhere – the oarsmen blabbed. Right now, the head is in the Hospitaller chapel, and even the Greeks are coming to venerate it – there’s a line outside. The Sultan has ordered us taken. There’s an army coming under Omar Reis to lay siege to this place.’
Fra Domenico waited patiently, his hands folded inside his robe.
Di Brachio got off the bed and smoothed the counterpane with his hand. ‘My apologies, Sir Knight. You wanted to speak to us?’
‘I expect the army was coming here anyway,’ the knight said. ‘The Sultan didn’t plan to let this town stand. He intends to take all the Morea. And then the Balkans. And then Italy.’
‘Italy?’ the two men said together.
‘He intends to conquer the world, like his hero, Alexander,’ Fra Domenico said. ‘It is along these lines I wished to speak to you two worthy gentlemen in private. I do not command this town. Indeed, it is something of a miracle that I am allowed to maintain a Latin chapel and a hospital within the walls.’
Di Brachio smiled mirthlessly. ‘Messire is too modest.’
Fra Domenico raised his eyebrows.
Di Brachio shrugged. ‘Are you not the captain known as Fra Diablo? The most notorious pirate in the Aegean? Hero of Genoa, the curse of Venice?’
Fra Domenico sighed. He tugged his beard, and for a moment he was a frightening figure – Swan saw him unhooded, so to speak, and then he veiled his eyes and shook his head. ‘I do not answer to that name, and I attack only enemies of the faith. Venice makes up names for me because I am not their friend when they ally themselves with enemies of the faith.’ He all but spat. ‘And you, of course, are of the Bembii, are you not?’
Di Brachio spread his arms. ‘Alas, I am, although depending on how the wind blows across St Mark’s Square, my father may have disowned me.’
The knight sat on the next bed and sighed. ‘Venice and Genoa – our infighting was the death of Constantinople.’
‘That’s a merry tune for you to play,’ Di Brachio said, curling his lip. ‘I hear that Genoa—’
‘I don’t serve Genoa,’ the knight said. ‘I serve God. That said – what I hear – from my friends,’ said the knight, ‘is that both of you serve Cardinal Bessarion.’
Swan looked at Di Brachio, who let his lashes drop over his eyes.
‘The Greek mimes say it openly,’ the knight added quietly. ‘I’m afraid they are so delighted to be out of the city that they talk too much.’
Di Brachio’s expression grew pained. ‘It is possible I have some passing acquaintance with His Eminence,’ he admitted.
‘This city needs a patron,’ the knight said. ‘We cannot hold it. I have three knights and twenty brother sergeants and as many mercenaries – and we are all supposed to work the hospital. The new rumour that I hear is that the two Paleolog brothers have had a disagreement – about resistance to the Grand Turk. The local gentlemen and their stradiotes might number sixty good fighting men. We need a professional garrison. We need twenty thousand ducats’ worth of repairs to the walls and we need these things immediately.’ He paused. ‘If I get you a letter from the leaders of this city, can you see to it that it goes to the right recipients in Rome?’
Di Brachio’s face registered something between a frown and a sneer. ‘A knight of the powerful order of St John can certainly get a letter to Rome.’ He looked at the ring on the knight’s finger. ‘A man who wears a ring like that can find twenty thousand ducats.’
The knight wrinkled his lips. ‘We need help now. If you can get that help from the Signori, even better.’ The knight leaned forward.
Di Brachio leaned forward too. ‘Perhaps if you had not been quite so busy using this port as a haven to prey on Venetian shipping …’ He shrugged. ‘Listen, messire – are you proposing to sell this town from under the Despot?’
The two men stared at each other. Neither budged – they were nose to nose.
Swan cleared his throat. ‘Perhaps I could broach the matter with the cardinal,’ he said.
Both men turned to look at him.
Swan smiled. ‘My wound hurts. Perhaps I might rest?’
Di Brachio’s look promised him the torments of hell, but Swan rarely cared about long-term consequence. He lay down and rolled over, facing the wall.
Di Brachio leaned over him and whispered ‘You bastard’ in his ear.
Darkness fell, and Swan was awake, plotting. He had the outline of a plan, and wondered to himself what a city – a city with its own international wine trade, perhaps a little past its prime – was worth. In ducats.
There was movement at the end of the ward.
Swan grew very still.
Something pale and graceful was coming down the ward – moving with a sort of effortless inhumanity, like—
The hackles stood up on Swan’s neck for a moment, and then he smelled attar of roses and a little healthy human sweat. He took his hand off the ear-dagger under his bolster, and lay back.
‘I gather I have to do all the work,’ she said. She sounded young, and pretty – and the truth was, he wasn’t ever going to know. It was very dark, and all he saw was the gleam of her naked back in a ray of moonlight as she pulled the shift over her head.
She didn’t linger, and she expected to be paid, and nonetheless, he felt much better. Perhaps because everything worked. Perhaps—