Venice

He bought a sweet roll. The very pretty girl behind the counter called them Hungarian. The girl almost distracted him from his intention, but he managed to be in the doorway lingering and munching when the black doublet went past him. Swan glanced back at the girl – Cesare’s interest revealed, although the Hungarian roll was miraculous – but she didn’t spare him so much as a look, and he stepped out into the alley, leaped over the very narrow canal, and ran along the walkway behind St Mark’s into the square.

Black Doublet walked into the square and then began to search. He stopped and cursed.

It was as good as anything the travelling mimes could produce. The man was truly angry, and he walked around the square, and then back along the wharf. Swan followed him warily. This was something he’d done often enough in London, as a youth. For various purposes.

The man walked up an alley and came back down and almost caught Swan flat footed, but a stack of cloth bales saved him, and the man had no notion of being followed himself.

He went up the next alley, saw the bakery, and stopped. Ran a hand through his thi

When he emerged, he was moving quickly. Swan assumed he’d realised that Swan had stopped, and was now giving up. He walked west, through St Mark’s Square, over the bridges. It would have been faster for him to take a boat, but he didn’t – he was cheap.

As darkness began to fall, he went into a maze of alleys behind the Grand Canal palazzi. After one turn and an ill look from a man who seemed as dangerous as Swan’s quarry, Swan gave up and walked back to the canal, catching a boat in the last rays of the sun.

There was a magnificent palazzo dominating the canal just there. On a hunch, Swan pointed at it. ‘Who’s is that?’

The boatman looked at him as if sorry for his provincial ways. ‘Where are you from? Naples?’ he asked, as if this was the worst insult a man could be offered.

Swan laughed. ‘Yes, Naples,’ he said.

The boatman smiled, seeing that his passenger wasn’t a complete fool. ‘That’s the Palazzo Foscari,’ he said.

The next morning, Swan met Alessandro for a lesson. They were swaggering swords in a dry alley behind the i

‘We’re to travel on a state galley,’ Swan said.

Alessandro had taught him six positions. The positions were called ‘gardes’. His feet had to go . . . just so. His arms and his head also.

It was very different from standing in the i

‘Look – if he covers his head, what can you hit? His legs, boyo! Cut at his legs. High, low. Left, right.’

In fact the instructions often ended in the same place, but approached the subject from different angles. It was remarkably like learning a language from a new instructor. One started with verbs, another with nouns. Swordsmanship had a grammar, and Alessandro insisted that he learn it properly.

‘Do not just cut at my buckler!’ Alessandro said. ‘Have I not told you ten times to make a provocazione!’

‘Cutting at your buckler is my provocazione.’ Swan stepped back.

‘No! No, it is not! If you make such a move, it is an attack. It uses your effort, and now I will get to respond. Look!’ The Venetian came on garde – not, in fact, a garde that he’d taught to Swan yet.

Swan got his sword and his buckler up, and the swords crossed at the tips.

‘Look!’ Alessandro said, and he stepped forward powerfully, his sword now crossed almost to the hilt with Swan’s. Swan pushed the sword away, and as he pushed, Alessandro’s weapon vanished under his and was at his throat, instead.

‘I provoked you by walking into your measure. I forced you to act. You acted as I expected, with pressure to my blade. I left your blade to have a picnic by itself, and I kill you, thus.’ Alessandro nodded. ‘That was a proper provocazione.’ He nodded. ‘Now you.’ He paused. ‘State galley?’

Swan smiled, but he kept his sword up. He’d seen all this before. Alessandro insisted that he be on his garde all lesson. He reinforced the point by cutting suddenly at his pupil while they talked.

‘I have a source who says we’ll sail on Nike. And that the Bishop of Ostia is our patron.’ He adjusted his point until he was in the garde that Maestro Viladi called ‘Porta di Ferro’ while Alessandro called it ‘Coda Lunga Larga’. So many names.

A language of its own.

Alessandro stepped back with a flourish. ‘You are already much better. Maestro Viladi is very old fashioned, but he has improved your stance.’

‘He knows how to wrestle, the old maestro,’ said Swan. He still had a sore hip where he – all cocky – had attempted to throw the maestro.

Alessandro laughed. Then he became serious. ‘We need to find you some armour that is presentable,’ he said.

‘I have it. At least, half-armour.’ He smiled.

Alessandro shook his head in mock wonderment. ‘You work miracles. Have you had any trouble from Foscari?’

‘None,’ Swan said. Then he shrugged. ‘Perhaps.’ He told the story of Black Doublet.

‘That’s lucky,’ Alessandro said. Then he sighed. ‘Foscari can’t have me killed. But he can have you killed.’

‘One of my new friends says the Orsini are looking for me here,’ Swan said.

‘Christ crucified!’ Alessandro laughed. ‘You may be the only man in Venice for whom a trip to Constantinople is the safest option.’

Alessandro suggested a few options to him. One was to spend a little money among the streetwalkers and derelicts around his lodging. He put this plan into effect immediately, paying a few centimes to each of a dozen vagabonds, and paying Joa

On Wednesday, he saw Black Doublet in the square of St Mark’s. But they were fifty paces apart, and he didn’t think the man was following him.

He went to his lesson with Rabbi Aaron, and then took a boat across to one of the small islands – mostly to see if anyone would follow him. No one did.

On Thursday, after mass, a boy approached Swan and handed him a note.

‘Have a sword,’ it said in Hebrew.

Swan smiled. He went to his room and picked up his sword, wrapped the sword belt around it as Alessandro had taught him, and walked to the door. He flourished the sword at his landlord.

‘Messire Niccolo – may I walk abroad like this?’ he said.

‘Why?’ Niccolo asked. ‘Arsenali will ask you.’

‘I’m going to pawn it,’ he said.

Messire Niccolo belched a great laugh. ‘You lie. But it is a good lie, and nothing the Arsenali can disprove. Go with God, my young friend. Don’t kill anyone I like.’

In fact, no one gave his sword a second glance.

At the gate of the ghetto, Solomon was ‘on duty’. He gri

Swan handed it over. Another young man came to the gate, and Solomon escorted Swan to his father’s gate.

‘My father has sent the servants away,’ he said. ‘Just in case. This is my birthday present.’

Swan went into the garden, where Solomon’s sisters watched from windows as the Englishman taught the Jew everything he knew about fighting with a sword in three hours.

Solomon was an excellent student. Immediately, Swan discovered that the other young man knew a great deal about boxing and wrestling.

‘The laws only require that we not carry weapons,’ Solomon said. ‘There is a book by a Jew of Warsaw on wrestling. I have read it. My grandfather was a famous wrestler and boxer.’ He made a head motion – something not Italian. ‘My father is more of a fighter than some of the men who work for him think.’

The sun began to run down the sky. Swan was learning – as all swordsmen learn – that teaching another man to fence is the very best way of learning yourself. Teaching Solomon, just for one afternoon, had caused him to question a hundred things Alessandro and Maestro Viladi had taught him. Solomon couldn’t stop asking why and Swan found he had almost no answers.