Free Tom Swan and the Head of St. George Part Four: Rome by Christian Cameron

skin back from the edges of the wound for a moment and nodded. ‘Needle and thread?’ she asked.
    Giannis and the Frenchman were looting the fallen men of their purses.
    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.’
    Giannis gave him a look. The Frenchman raised both hands. ‘Share and share alike!’ he said with Gallish sincerity. ‘I swear! Brothers for ever! Or until we have to fight!’
    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 innkeeper, of all people, had taken a heavy blow early in the fight, and sat by the upturned table, with his wife fussing over a new egg on his scalp. She looked up. ‘We don’t want any more trouble,’ she said. ‘My poor man – look at him!’
    ‘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 innkeeper’s wife to spread on the wound. Di Brescia and Giannis were virtually untouched. They embraced the Florentine with promises of future comradery and all of them wrapped themselves in cloaks and followed Giannis, who had volunteered to scout, out into the darkness.
    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