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

watch naked women in good light. It had an artistic quality …
    The cook began to use a small portion of the work surface to make mulled wine. It all had the air of comedy – the kitchen staff, now cleaning the floor; the naked beauty, the man, possibly dying. Swan bit his lip, trying to keep the edges of the wound steady. ‘Has someone sent for a doctor?’ he asked.
    Violetta nodded. ‘Yes. Let me take some of that. Christ, that’s a lot of blood.’
    ‘How is it that you are so good at blood?’ Swan asked.
    ‘My mother was an army girl,’ Violetta said. She shrugged. ‘She followed armies until she got the cough and died. She protected me like a wolf – kept the men off me. I did laundry and sewed wounds to pay my way, but when she died’ – Violetta smiled at Swan, and the smile was as hard as steel and as comforting – ‘I sold – what I had. Eh?’
    One of the cook’s boys appeared with needles and white linen thread. ‘Demoiselle?’ he said, as if he saw a magnificent naked woman every day. It occurred to Swan that perhaps he did.
    ‘And I still have a soft spot for soldiers,’ she said.
    Swan felt the strength of her grip along the line of the wound and he moved his left hand, which had long since begun to cramp. ‘I’m not really a soldier,’ he said.
    ‘You are a great deal more like a soldier than most of the soft worms who come in my bed,’ she said.
    There was a commotion in the back. The sound of horses.
    ‘Still want a fencing lesson?’ Swan asked. ‘I’m a good deal better than I was last time.’
    She turned her head then, and met his eye steadily. ‘You don’t even intend these double entendres, do you?’ she asked coolly. ‘Of course I’d like a fencing lesson. And a hundred dagger lessons. I’d like to teach every girl in this house to handle a dagger well. And then …’ Her eyes sparkled.
    Swan saw Di Brachio’s eyelids flutter. Violetta was all but kneeling on his chest. ‘Can he breathe?’ he asked.
    Violetta moved. Di Brachio coughed. There was more blood.
    The kitchen entrance filled with people, and one was Master Claudio. The bishop – their former employer – was only four palazzos away.
    ‘Swan,’ Claudio said. ‘Ah – Messire Di Brachio. Christ on the cross. Demoiselle Aphrodite, do not let go. Swan – you remembered my little class on pressure. What happened? No, I don’t need to know. He was in a fight and lost?’ Claudio’s hands were moving rapidly, at odds with his speech.
    ‘More rags,’ he said to the cook. ‘All boiled. You understand?’
    The cook nodded. ‘We keep boiled linen,’ she said.
    ‘Good. How deep is it? Did you see?’ Claudio asked Swan.
    Violetta answered. ‘Not to the lung, master. It cut an artery – I have one end in my hand. That’s all.’
    Without any more talk, Claudio cast a loop over the artery that Violetta produced, a very small twist of rawhide covered in blood, or so it appeared to Swan.
    ‘Amazing that something so small makes so much blood, eh?’ he said. ‘Demoiselle Aphrodite, you are a superb nurse. Much better than this big Englishman.’
    ‘I had lots of practice,’ the girl said.
    ‘Where?’ Claudio asked.
    ‘Milan,’ she said. ‘The army.’
    ‘That’s why you know to strip,’ Claudio said with satisfaction. ‘Soldiers must love it.’
    She shrugged. ‘Clothes cost money,’ she said. ‘White linen is never the same after blood.’
    The bell rang for matins, and she kissed his nose. ‘Shall we go and check on our patient?’ she asked.
    He didn’t leap out of bed. Naked, in a closed bed with a beautiful woman in Roman winter, he was as warm as anyone in the city, but out beyond the bed curtains, the temperature was roughly the same as it was outside the palazzo. Instead, he reached out to the shelf overhead and grabbed a fur-lined robe that the house apparently provided for male guests. He got his feet into his shoes, which were disgusting with dried blood.
    The two of them