Rome

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.

Gia

‘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.

Gia

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.’

Gia

The Florentines watched the process with distaste. ‘What becomes of them, then?’ Accuicciulli asked Di Brescia.

The Roman sneered. ‘Nothing good, but it won’t be at our hands. One dead – the rest are merely down, and this coward here’ – Di Brescia had his foot on one man’s gut – ‘is merely shamming, waiting for us to leave.’

‘Do we hold the battlefield, or must we flee from their reinforcements?’ asked the Florentine. ‘I don’t know your Roman ways.’

The i

‘The watch won’t come,’ Di Brescia said. ‘If these were hard times, like a papal election, then both sides would send for more men and we’d have a battle. But in these decadent times …’ The older man shrugged. ‘Swan, you attract trouble like shit attracts flies, you know that, eh?’

In the end, they all went back to the cardinal’s palazzo, moving carefully. Swan’s split lip, along with the bruise to his head, had swelled outrageously, making any kind of talking difficult, and his right eye was almost swollen shut. Violetta had sewn Irene’s hand, and the Greek acrobat stood the pain during the sewing, and got honey from the i

Swan realised that the Frenchman was with them.

‘Where are you going?’ he whispered. They were crossing the edge of the forum.

‘I need work,’ the man muttered. ‘My boss got the plague. You’re rich – hire me. I can fight.’

Swan could barely talk, much less negotiate. ‘I’ll give you a place to sleep,’ he said. ‘That is the limit of my resources.’

Bessarion had two stables, one for visitors and one for his own nags and some donkeys. Swan put the Frenchman in with the mules, and fetched him two good blankets from his own travelling gear.

Violetta stood in the shadows. ‘I can’t go to your room,’ she said.

Swan was in pain. ‘Why not?’ he asked.

Di Brescia shook his head. ‘You won’t be caught,’ he said. ‘It’s as important to the cardinal’s reputation as to ours. Come on.’ He took them in through the kitchen, and the only servant awake was a small boy nodding by the great fireplace.

They climbed the back stairs, up two flights, and crept along the barracks corridors to their rooms. Swan reached his with a sigh of relief, pulled the courtesan in behind him and shut the door. He kissed her in the darkness despite the pain.

She put a hand behind his head. ‘You taste like blood,’ she said. She sounded happy.

Later, in the darkness, she pushed him away. ‘Would you marry me?’ she asked.

Swan couldn’t see her. He grunted, thinking the proposition over.

‘The fucking priests aren’t going to marry me, are they?’ she asked the darkness. ‘My mother said that you needed to find a soldier and stay with him. She did it for ten years, until the gentleman took a lance in the side down in Naples. He was good to us. I remember riding his horse.’ She wriggled. ‘You think I’m used goods. Can I tell you something whores know that virgins don’t?’

‘My mother was a whore,’ Swan said. His whole face hurt. His side hurt. But this was … interesting.

She went on as if he hadn’t spoken. ‘It just doesn’t matter. Unless you let it matter. I could be a good wife. Did you just say your mother was a whore?’

‘She runs a tavern in London. Like that woman tonight, except there is no landlord. Just her brothers, who are a pair of …’ He couldn’t think of words to do justice to his uncles. ‘Bruisers. Thugs. Killers. But they were always good to me.’

They lay in silence.

‘I like you,’ he said. ‘I’m not – exactly – the marrying type.’

She laughed. ‘Well, neither am I. But I decided I’d ask you, as you are the only man I know that I like. Well – I like Gia

Swan licked the inside of the big bruise on his cheek. ‘So did I,’ he said.

‘You’re not a hundred years old,’ she said. ‘Your body’s as good as mine.’

Later, he said, ‘Damn it, maybe I should marry you.’