Rhodes

Swan tried a simple overhead cut, and the other man parried heavily, so that the sword-blades locked for a moment. Zambale pushed – hard – and made Swan stumble.

Swan thrust outside into the bigger man’s covered line – a foolish move, but it did guarantee the man would be safe. As Swan stepped back from his failed attack, Zambale twirled his sword over his wrist …

And Swan cut at his head, forcing him to make a rapid parry. It was the same blow as before – the Graeco-Scot gri

He began to use the force of his wrist on the bind, but Swan had a different notion, and had stepped forward and offline. His left hand shot out and he grabbed his opponent’s blade high in the air – near the point – while keeping the blades locked by the hilt. Then he pushed with his left hand, rotating the other man at his knees and midsection. His left elbow passed over Zambale’s head, and the blade – his own blade – lay along his neck.

‘You ca

Swan continued to exert force. He put a foot behind the other man’s and began to force him inexorably to the ground with his knee. ‘Now,’ Swan said pleasantly, in Greek, ‘I can kill you with your sword, or break your arm, or simply put you face down in the sand.’

‘You ca

‘You can,’ Swan said. ‘I just did. Look. Stand on guard.’ Swan noted that, in fact, the man’s guard was fifty years out of date – he stood with his left leg forward and his sword cocked back over his shoulder.’ He nodded and took up his own guard. One of Maestro Vadi’s.

‘Cut at my head. A nice simple fendente.’ He raised his sword’s tip.

Zambale didn’t like this, as it was not the game he’d imagined – so when he cut, he did it with a clumsy feint and a lot of force.

Swan caught his blade with a high parry and held it well to the inside of his head – and then reached up and caught it with his hand. Very lightly, he tapped the big man on the head with his sword.

‘Well!’ Zambale said. ‘That’s a trick. It must be that new swords are lighter. You couldn’t do that against a heavy sword.’

Swan didn’t feel like relenting. ‘It is easier with a heavy sword.’

Zambale looked at his blade, which had several deep nicks, and frowned. ‘Hmmf,’ he said. ‘School tricks.’

‘I thought that you wanted to see what the Italian schools offered?’ Swan said.

‘I don’t need a lesson from you,’ Zambale said. ‘I know what works in a real fight.’

Swan was old enough to know invincible ignorance when he saw it. ‘Well – a pleasant Saint George’s Day to you.’ He examined his blade and sheathed it.

The stradiotes were paying off their wagers. The oarsmen clapped Swan on the back. There was some evident ill-feeling, and Swan was pretty sure he hadn’t done the cause of Christian unity any good.

And he’d sweated through his doublet.

Swan arrived at the citadel exactly as the hour of eight o’clock rang from the chapel. The knights had told him to be on time, and he had heeded them.

There was no one in the hall but servants laying tables.

The positive side of being the very first guest was that he had time to change into his costume. Servants took him to an old solar, where he changed. He stripped off his Italian clothes and played with the chiton for ten minutes until a bored slave approached him and offered, in a pantomime of gestures, to pin his chiton. When he was pi

Instead, he put his Italian clothes in a neat pile and went out into the hall.

There was still no one there. If it hadn’t been for the boards newly laid and the smell of a feast in preparation, he would have worried that he had the wrong day.

He began to wander the hall. There were cabinets – three of them. Each filled with delightful antiquities. There was an entire lacquered tray of ancient coins – some of the finest that Swan had ever seen, including a great many from Samothrace, and more with dolphins and beautifully realised women – Swan found one big silver coin breathtaking.

‘I shall have my collections more carefully watched,’ Prince Dorino said in his odd voice. This time, he was already at Swan’s elbow – just at hand. Swan hadn’t even heard him approach.

‘Although, to be sure, you have nowhere to hide anything that you lust after,’ Dorino said. He leered.

Swan winced. The slaves were looking away. ‘Your collections are the finest I’ve seen,’ he said.

Prince Dorino was already in a chiton and chlamys. The chiton looked a trifle odd on a man of fifty. On his shoulder burned an emerald as big as an acorn, pi

‘Oh, is it the collections that brought you so very early?’ Dorino said. ‘I rather fancied it might be my young cousin Theodora. Hmm?’

A year or two earlier, such a comment might have brought a stammering denial or a blush, but now Swan merely shrugged. ‘A magnificent figure, I agree.’

‘A magnificent figure! I shall tell her. Given your love of the classical, we’ll assume you know whereof you speak, young man. Have you met my daughter, Caterina?’

The young woman in question came closer. Dressed in a long sea-green linen chiton that revealed her arms and the points of her shoulders and hung to the floor, with a belt of pearls and more pearls in her shining black hair, she looked like a painting in the latest Italian style. ‘Goodness! So early!’ she said.

Swan knelt instead of bowing – as he was aware of the limitations of his own chiton from watching Prince Dorino. It hiked up at the back very easily. ‘You are like a vision of Apollo’s sister Artemis of the flowing hair, come to earth to visit us poor mortals.’

‘This is my friend Isabella,’ she said, turning to a dark redhead. That young woman was wearing a deeper green chiton with a peplos, but the sides of her chiton were very slightly open and Swan nearly expired of lust on the spot – though in fact he could see only a finger’s width of creamy flesh.

‘Had I known that such a handsome knight was already in attendance,’ Isabella said with a dimpled smile. ‘My brother thinks you are a dangerous menace to island society. So naturally, I like you.’

Swan went down on one knee again. He had never realised how much padding hose gave him until he had to place his bare knee on a marble floor. ‘Do

‘Just don’t tell me I’m either Aphrodite or Artemis,’ she said. ‘I won’t have either.’ She smiled again, and Swan – unrepentant – stepped offline as if in a sword fight and had another look at her sides.

She raised an eyebrow.

Swan cocked his head to one side. ‘It would be a sin not to look, Despoina.’

It might have been a good line with some girls, but apparently not with Isabella Zambale. Two parties had arrived in the foyer and had been escorted to the hall, and she turned to greet them.

‘Women are odd about flattery,’ Prince Dorino said with a co

Swan re-evaluated his views of Prince Dorino.

‘My cousin was born to the Imperial Purple,’ the prince went on. ‘She cares no more for flattery than she does for religious dogma. It has been her place all her life to receive the plaudits of strangers.’

Swan was at a loss for what to say. ‘I … seek only to do her honour,’ he managed.

Prince Dorino looked at him as if he were a fool. ‘Oh, honour,’ he said. ‘I’m attempting to do you a favour, young man.’

Swan met the prince’s eyes. ‘Why?’ he asked.