Tom Swan and the Head of St George Part One: Castillon (3 page)

‘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.’

Cesare smiled in understanding. ‘Ah!’ he said. He looked at Swan. ‘Would you wash me a shirt?’ He looked embarrassed. ‘I’ll cover your wine.’

‘We poor men of letters have to stick together,’ Swan said. He wondered if it would sound better in Latin. ‘
Pauperes homines de litteris opus haereat iuncto
.’ He made a face. ‘
Opus
?’

‘
Pauperes scriptores manere simul
,’ Cesare said. ‘And I agree.’ He pulled off his doublet and his shirt and tossed Swan the shirt. Then he pulled on his doublet over his hairy chest.

Swan looked at the crowd of dancing servants. ‘Do you know any of these people?’ he asked.

Cesare smiled bitterly. ‘Not really. When you are a lawyer, you are not a gentleman and not a servant.’ He shrugged. ‘I know the men that serve L’Oustier, but not well enough to share a cup of wine. They’re most of them in the blue and red livery of the Paris guilds – eh? See?’

Swan felt foolish. ‘I thought that they were soldiers.’

‘You must have a low opinion of soldiers. Marechault’s men are in blue and gold – his wagoners are hired men, so no livery. We travelled with them at the tail end of winter – again, I’ve seen them before, but I don’t know any of the wagon men.’

Swan shrugged. His theory about the French knight was dashed. ‘I’ll see your shirt is clean,’ he said.

‘I’ll be in your debt, English,’ Cesare said.

Swan went back to the laundry. It was dark, except for a pair of rush lights going in the corner by the hearth.

‘Strip,’ said Tilda.

‘I have an extra shirt to wash,’ Swan said.

Tilda shrugged. ‘A woman’s work is never done,’ she said.

The whole laundry area was hung with linens – many of them religious. There were chasubles and surplices and altar clothes; shifts for nuns, long and coarse, and men’s shirts and braes.

‘Wouldn’t it dry faster outside?’ Swan asked. He’d stepped between the rows to strip.

‘Thieves,’ she said. ‘We hardly ever get thieves here. It does happen, mind,’ she said. She emerged in front of him, and pulled a shirt off the line and held it up to him. It was a fine lawn shirt with embroidered cuffs.

‘He’s a right bastard,’ she said. ‘And a bad priest. Pity thieves took both his shirts and his braes.’ She leaned over and kissed him on the lips.

He’d expected – or rather hoped – for something of the sort, but the moment of contact was . . . lovely. Very exciting.

She vanished amidst the laundry.

He followed her.

‘Unlace me? There’s a dear,’ she said. ‘The water in the smaller copper is clean, which is more than I can say of you. Wash. Jesus and the saints. Is that blood?’

Swan poured warm water into a shallow bowl and used a coarse cloth – a dry, clean coarse cloth – to wash. His left arm had an enormous bruise and a long cut – even in the flickering rushlight, it looked bad.

She got out of her kirtle and helped him wash the arm. ‘So you
are
a soldier,’ she said.

He shrugged. ‘My first battle was very nearly my last.’

She kissed him. It went along nicely, and then she broke off and gave him some wine. Then, without shame, she pulled her shift over her head. ‘Might as well do my own while I’m about it,’ she said, and put all the linens in a larger copper.

Swan was wakened by the first cock-crow. He was in no hurry to leave, nor was she in a hurry to be rid of him, but eventually he was dressed – clean, by God – and out the door, with a clean and ironed shirt over his arm. He walked back down the line of merchants’ wagons and again was not challenged. This time the courtyard was empty and his investigations were a little more thorough.

He found Cesare asleep and snoring.

Peter, too, seemed to be sleeping. The pewter cup was empty.

He hung the shirt on a peg for horse harness over Cesare’s head, and went back out to the courtyard to look at the wagons.

There were heavy tarpaulins treated with beeswax over every wagon. The wagons themselves were taller than a man, their sides heavily sloped outwards like fortress walls, their wheels as tall as a big man’s shoulders. Two were clearly living spaces – they had tall covers and doors.

Swan had an apple from the kitchen, and he ate it while he looked them over.

Then he went back into the stable, took his two new and very pretty shirts, and rolled them tightly. He put a piece of coarse sacking around them, tied the bundle tight, and put it into one of the cardinal’s carts.