Rome

When the owner disappeared into the crowd of papal courtiers, Violetta leaned against him. ‘She’s not so bad, but she’s the very princess of liars. If she’d married Sforza, her daughter would have had to be named Hypocritica.’

Di Brachio threw his head back and his laugh rang like a bell. ‘Demoiselle, you have more wit than many a fine lady I have known.’

Swan had no idea what they were on about.

‘The Duke of Milan’s daughter is Hypolita, like the Queen of the Amazons,’ Violetta said. ‘It all but ruins my little wit to have to explain myself.’

‘Leave the Englishman and marry me, demoiselle,’ said Di Brachio.

Violetta smiled and was very beautiful indeed. ‘What a wonderful compliment, messire! But surely you desire a very chaste and religious wife.’

‘I do?’ Di Brachio asked. ‘It seems unlikely.’

‘I fear that otherwise she might be very bored indeed,’ Violetta said. Her smile should have taken any sting out. And made the Venetian laugh again. But he did not, and he leaned towards her, hissing slightly as he did when angry.

‘Listen, my filly,’ he said, ‘I might surprise you.’

She lowered her lashes. ‘Messire, I can well imagine that you are a man full of surprises, and if I had a younger brother—’

Di Brescia stepped between them out of the air. ‘She means no harm,’ he said, gripping Di Brachio’s sword arm. Violetta was as white as the parchment of a fancy sword scabbard. Swan, who’d drunk too much wine, went from a vague jealousy that his best friend was flirting with his chosen girl to fear that she was about to be cut to ribbons before his eyes.

‘Oh, messire,’ Violetta said, hand to chest. ‘It is just wit. Poor wit.’

Di Brachio turned. ‘I disgust myself,’ he said. He bowed. ‘The demoiselle did nothing untoward. I am unfit for company.’ He turned and stomped off.

Swan looked at Violetta, and at Di Brachio’s back. Sobriety returned in a host of memories, and he pressed against her, just for a moment – to remember the feel of her body if he didn’t manage to return. ‘He’s my best friend,’ he said sourly, and walked away after the retreating back of the Venetian.

Di Brachio walked straight out the open door of the great hall and into the night, leaving his cloak and hat. He was well ahead of Swan, and Swan almost lost the young man in the first three turnings of the streets outside Madame Lucrescia’s house, but great houses had cressets burning outside, and Di Brachio’s bare head gleamed in the light as he wandered out into the Via dei Coronari.

Swan ran across a broad square littered with fallen remnants of ancient buildings and caught the Venetian as he climbed the steps of Ponte San Angelo. All the houses had been pulled down at the time of the papal jubilee, and there was a dangerous wilderness of rubble and unfinished work. It was not a place where any sane man walked alone.

Even as Swan approached from behind, shadows detached themselves from the muddy darkness under the bridge and ran, light footed, up the steps between him and his friend.

There were two lamps burning at the top of the steps by the statue of St Peter. Swan saw Di Brachio silhouetted against the left-hand lamp, and saw him turn as the men behind rushed him, and then Swan’s own head was down as he sprinted up the steps himself, sword and dagger in hand.

There was no pause, no demand for money – the men rushed the Venetian, and he stood his ground at the top of the steps and killed one, threw his body at the others, and then put his back against the lamp-post. The other five began to close in.

Then the rearmost man heard Swan’s feet and turned.

Di Brachio attacked, a great slashing blow from a high guard against the bridgeward men, and a sudden flickering lunge like the pounce of a cat to kill the man who had turned to face Swan.

Swan jumped up, climbing three steps in a leap, and got his own back to the bridge’s wall – bound a man’s sword with his own. The man was left handed, and he had a small shield, and Swan thrust his dagger into the man’s shield, cut him in the forearm over the rim, stomped on his extended foot, and muscled his dagger into the man’s bicep. The man’s defence collapsed and Swan hit him in the face with his sword-hilt, stepped behind him and, as he collapsed forward, kneed him in the face and threw him over his left leg and over the collapsed parapet into the water.

All that in the time it would take a monk to say the words ‘Pater noster qui est in coelus’.

Di Brachio fell at his feet, stretched full length on the timbers of the bridge, and Swan cut a great mezzano from right to left at head height, brushing the two immediate assailants back off his friend.

Di Brachio rolled to his feet, swearing like a sailor.

The survivors had used the moment’s pause to realise that there were only two of them left now, and they turned to run.

Di Brachio threw his sword – hard, and overarm, so that it made a torchlit pinwheel and slammed into the farther man’s neck. It wasn’t spectacular – the sword didn’t hit point first – but it had enough power and weight to make a great wound, and the fellow went sprawling on the planks, screaming, both arms reaching for the back of his head.

Swan cursed his tight scarlet hose and ran after the closer man, who was scrawny, short and partially bald. He ran with a limp, and Swan caught him in ten steps. The man turned – and fell to his knees.

‘Spare me, master!’ he said. His eyes gleamed dully, like old metal.

Behind Swan, the man who’d taken the sword in the back of his head screamed as his questing fingers discovered that there was a big piece of his skull missing and he was a dead man, and then his screams stopped abruptly as Di Brachio finished him.

‘I could serve you – I’d be a slave. Oh, God, messire, please …’

Swan thought a thousand things in a second – how he’d spared the young Turk, and how this man had intended to kill and then rob Di Brachio. What Christ intended. What he would think of himself tomorrow. Whether Violetta was yet available. The eyes that watched him were bereft of anything like i

He ran the man through, and kicked him off his point. He felt neither joy nor horror. Killing street trash was no longer incident. It was a professional decision, and he left the corpse and ran back to Di Brachio, but the Venetian hadn’t taken a bad wound, merely a hard cut to the side below his dagger hand.

‘You are a fool,’ Swan said fondly.

‘Am I?’ Di Brachio said. ‘Sweet Christ, that hurts.’ He shrugged. ‘But I no longer feel like killing an i

‘No,’ Swan said.

They sat in the main room of Madame Lucrescia’s and debated how long Pope Nicholas would live and who might be Pope after him. Accudi thought that Bessarion would be Pope, and Di Brescia laughed him to scorn. Swan tried to listen while sca

Like Di Brachio before him, he rose to leave.

‘You came back!’ Madame Lucrescia said, placing a hand on his chest. ‘I sent her to her room. She was going to make a scene.’ She narrowed her eyes. ‘Are you in love with your Venetian?’

Swan laughed. ‘Not that way,’ he said. He smiled, though.

She nodded. ‘I thought not. But – never mind. I will send a slave for Violetta, and you may resume your evening, although if these two gentlemen do not stop fighting …’ She swept past Swan to where Di Brescia was sitting on top of his much less martial peer.

‘Messires!’ she shouted.

Di Brescia raised his head. ‘Ah, che cosare! Let me write you a poem right after I shove this ink-stained cretin’s words down his throat.’