King of the Middle March (15 page)

P
IERO ALLOWED ME TO TAKE THE TILLER FOR THE FIRST
night watch. “Aim for that cloud,” he said.

“But clouds move.”

“That's been sitting there all evening,” Piero replied.

“How much longer?” I asked.

Piero pushed out his lower lip. “Ask the wind,” he said. “Tonight and half a day?”

I whooped. “At last!” I shouted.

After a while, Piero pointed at something on the dark coast. “See that?” he said. “Follow my finger.”

At once I leaned hard into the tiller.

Piero yelped and wrenched it back again.
“Sei pazzo?”
he barked. “With your eyes! Not with the tiller!”

I made out the contour of a little building with candles shining in its four windows.

“Church,” said Piero. “Little castle church.”

“Candles?” I said. “Why candles at this time of night?”

“Not,” said Piero.

“There are!” I exclaimed. “Look!”

“I've seen it before,” Piero replied. “Not candles.”

“What do you mean?”

The steersman shrugged.
“Magia!”
he said.

The tiller throbbed under my right hand, and I stared into the
dark. The church windows were flashing and flickering as if they were lit by hundreds of will-o'-the-wykes, or by specters.

“Leopard in there,” said Piero.

“Where?”

“He jumps out of the window and kills crusaders. Three times.” Piero pressed the tip of his right forefinger against his forehead. “Leopard fighting in Holy War,” he said.

Y
OU HEAR HER NAME. YOU WONDER. YOU IMAGINE.
You're so impatient. Afraid. You set sail towards her. And then…there she is. Dream and body meet. For a little time there is no time.

That's how it was as we closed with Zara; as we dropped anchor, and rocked in the sparkling water.

I haven't seen much of this middle-earth yet, but I have looked up at the gap-toothed grey walls of London and the walls and towers of Ludlow Castle and Count Thibaud's castle in Champagne and the Doge's palace in Venice and they're nothing like as high or long or smooth-skinned as the Roman walls of Zara. You can only see the tops of the spires and bell towers behind them. Rubbing shoulders. Reaching for heaven.

We were all up on deck. Some men were kneeling and talking to God, many were leaning over the gunwales; some were silent, some were conversing in low voices and gesturing.

I overheard two men from Champagne.

“Impossible.”

“All things are possible.”

“Not with walls that thick.”

“With God's help.”

“They're as safe in there as hill-warriors.”

Which warriors? Not the ones Nain told us about, guarding the Sleeping King?

I was about to ask them when Sir William strode towards me, singing loudly and badly out of tune:

“Water leaps from rock,
Manna snows on earth,
In the burning bush
The flame still flickers.…

“Sing, boy! Sing!” Sir William bawled.

“We'll root out the serpent,
Stone him out, smoke him out,
Starve him and dig him out
From behind his walls.”

He grimaced, and I could see all his black teeth. “That's what we'll do, won't we?”

“But I thought…, ”I began.

“You think too much,” Sir William boomed. “You tie yourself in bloody knots.”

“But Lord Stephen said we wouldn't have to attack,” I said. “They're Christians. He said we'd talk and reach an agreement.”

“And I said when they saw the size of our fleet they'd mess themselves. God's teeth, Arthur! They're in our way.” Sir William sniffed loudly. “I know what I'd do,” he said, and he strode off towards the stern, singing:

“We'll root out the serpent,
Stone him out, smoke him out,
Starve him and dig him out
From behind his walls.”

At noon, the Doge came alongside in his vermilion galley. He dropped anchor and sent over a messenger to say we should await all the other boats, the transports and horse carriers.

“And then,” said the Doge's messenger, “as the sun rises tomorrow, we will proceed.”

“Thanks be to God!
Deo gratias!
Thanks be to God!”

I could hear myself shouting along with everyone else on board, but I don't know what will happen when we do proceed.

The sun's setting now, and the water is fretful, slopping and sobbing.

All the towers and spires are on fire. Zara! Her high walls are ashen already.

N
OT LONG AFTER SUNRISE, THE
PARADISE
LED US ALL
up the channel on the landward side of Zara. Our galley was one of three immediately following her. I could see the shadows of our masts gliding along the city walls.

The first I knew about the huge iron chain stretched across the channel was when the
Paradise
rammed into it, screeching and screaming. The chain sheared through the bow, and the iron bollards sunk into the stone moles on either bank were ripped out of their sockets. The two ends of the massive sea-plait sprang into the air before they fell back and lashed the water.

The oarsmen kept their heads, though, and brought the transport in to the first dock, only another two hundred paces up the channel.

Lord Stephen and I heard that two Venetian cooks hidden in a small chamber under the hold-planks were sawn in half, and they were naked as needles.

“God's own punishment,” Lord Stephen said grimly.

The Doge ordered half the fleet to wait offshore, to discourage Zarans from escaping, but even so the harbor was packed with our galleys.

Everyone seemed in a hurry to go ashore after being aboard for three days and three nights, and the confusion on the quay was all
the greater because so many people wanted to see the damage to the
Paradise
for themselves. But before we had time to disembark, a Venetian councillor came aboard. It was Gennaro, whom we met at the sea-feast, and he advised us to wait until we were assigned a campsite.

He was just about to leave when he saw Simona and Serle, and Simona saw him. First they stared at each other, then they both caterwauled. Such a storm of relief and delight and sorrow! They fell into one another's arms.

Simona told us Gennaro was her father's first cousin, and she didn't even know he was on our crusade, and he didn't know she was, and he is a good man, and has three daughters, and he's sailing on the Doge's own galley, and he will protect her.…

“We're protecting you,” said Serle. “I am.”

“I am!” said Bertie.

“Tutti! Tutti!”
Simona cried gaily. “Everybody!” Then she engulfed Bertie in an embrace.
“Tu!”
cried Simona.
“Tu specialmente!”

Gennaro winked at me.
“Signor
Artù!” he said. “Cows' eyes! Sea snails!”

When Gennaro went ashore, he took Simona with him. She didn't come back yesterday, but this afternoon she hurried into our camp, and told Serle and Lord Stephen and me what had happened.

The Doge's servants had scarcely hammered home the last peg of his vermilion tent before the councillors of Zara rode out of the city to speak to him.

“They offered him the city,” Simona said. “They offered him everything in it. Everything! One condition only.” Simona wagged her pudgy right forefinger. “He spare their lives.”

“God be praised!” I exclaimed.

“What did the Doge say?” Lord Stephen asked.

“He said he must ask the French crusaders,” Simona told us. “He told the Zara councillors to wait. In his tent.”

“I see,” said Lord Stephen.

“Surely Milon will be pleased,” I said. “And Villehardouin.”

“Of course!” said Lord Stephen. “The last thing we want is trouble here.”

“So why did he ask them?” said Serle.

Lord Stephen's eyes gleamed. “Tact,” he said. “And tactics. If he consults the French now, aren't they more likely to consult him later? And maybe the Doge thinks it won't harm the Zarans to simmer in the stewpot for a while. They've been troublesome for more than twenty years.”

Then Simona told us Count Simon de Montfort and Enguerrand de Boves visited the Doge's camp while he was away, talking to all the other French leaders.

Simona cupped her left ear and leaned against the canvas. “Count Simon and Enguerrand talked alone to the Zarans,” she said.

Lord Stephen never took his eyes off Simona for one moment.

“They said the French pilgrims are Christians and the Zarans are Christians. They said the French would never attack Zara. They told the Zarans not to surrender their city. Their beautiful city! So long as the Zarans can defend themselves against the Venetians, they have nothing to worry about.”

“How dare they?” Lord Stephen said, very quietly.

“I don't understand,” I said. “The Zarans have already surrendered. Doesn't Count Simon want them to?”

“Aha!” said Lord Stephen. “He feels slighted because he wasn't asked about who should build our ships, and he objects to a Lombardian and a Venetian leading French crusaders. But even so!”

“And Robert de Boves,” Simona said. “Enguerrand's brother. He rode up to the walls and shouted the French pilgrims are friends, Christian friends.”

“Outrageous!” Lord Stephen said angrily. “So what did the Zaran councillors do?”

“They thanked Count Simon and Enguerrand for telling them God's truth and for their Christian friendship. Then they left.”

“Dear God!” said Lord Stephen. “Does the Doge know?”

Simona shook her head. “I go back now,” she said.

“We'll come with you,” said Lord Stephen. “Sooner or later actions have consequences, and I very much doubt whether Count Simon's actions will prevent bloodshed, as he supposes.”

W
HEN WE REACHED THE DOGE'S CAMP, THE VER
-milion tent and the smaller pavilions surrounding it and the slimy steps down to the water were seething with servants and cooks and monks and vintners and falconers and blacksmiths and people hoping for an audience with the Doge, and I don't know whom else. I listened to a man practicing the wheedling bagpipes; then two Black Monks told me about the Rule of Saint Benedict, and I told them I knew about how Saint Maurus walked on the water. Simona and I talked to a surgeon called Taddeo, who told me the gut of a cat stretches for one hundred paces, and the worst way of dying is to be hanged and drawn and quartered, and once he trepanned a man whose blood was blue.

“I don't want bone cut out of my skull,” I said.

The surgeon's mouth twisted. “Few people do,” he said. “I please the Doge most when I'm doing least!”

We waited, but the Doge and his councillors still didn't come back.

“Come on!” said Lord Stephen. “We're wasting our time here.”

We weren't, though. I found out about all kinds of things.

Early this morning I hurried back to the Doge's camp, taking Bertie with me. It was already packed. We had to elbow our way through the crowd, but Bertie used his head and feet as well.

“Sometimes you're a squire and sometimes a beast.”

“A leucrota!” said Bertie, grinning.

“What's that?”

“Me!” exclaimed Bertie. “The body of a donkey, buttocks like a deer's, a lion's chest, a mouth that opens right back to its ears. And it talks like a human. You'd still be one as well if you weren't a knight. Your boots are splitting.”

In the middle of the tent, a square space had been cordoned off, and a guard with a spear stood at each corner. On one side sat the Doge, wearing his cotton cap with the scarlet cross. His face was quite bloodless, except for his angry cheek-blotches.

Gennaro and the other councillors were standing behind the Doge, and so were the French leaders. I caught Milon's eye, and he nodded firmly. I think he was pleased that Bertie and I were witnesses.

On the other side stood Count Simon de Montfort, Enguerrand and Robert de Boves, and an abbot.

“In the name of God!” began the Doge in his high, light voice. “While all your fellow leaders begged me, yes, they begged me, to accept the surrender, you went behind our backs, telling the Zarans not to surrender. I was ready to spare limb and life. What do you want? The blood of Christian Zara?”

The count shook his head, but the Doge wasn't finished.

“Do you want to split our army? To wreck our great crusade? You are traitors to God!”

Count Simon turned to the abbot and the abbot stepped forward.

“I am Guy de Vaux,” he said. “I have a letter. A letter from the Holy Father.”

Around me, everyone gasped.

“Yes, from Rome. From Pope Innocent himself. My lords, in the name of the Pope, I forbid you to attack this city. The people here are Christians, and you have all taken the Cross.”

The abbot shuffled across the space and put the piece of parchment into the Doge's hands.

“If you ignore the Holy Father's warning,” he continued, “he will cut you off from the grace of God. He will excommunicate you!”

Some people began to cross themselves and get down on their knees. But others shouted insults at the abbot.

The Doge waited, then raised his right hand. He turned round to face the French leaders.

“My lords,” he said, “you have encouraged and authorized me to accept the surrender. But your own fellow Frenchmen have gone behind our backs, and the Zarans believed them. So there is no surrender to accept.” The Doge paused. He raised his blue, shining, blind eyes to heaven. “My lords,” he said, “in Saint Mark's we made a solemn agreement. You swore to help me recapture this city, and now you will keep your word.”

At this, yelling and hissing and jeering began, and there was cheering as well. Count Simon and the brothers and the abbot angrily barged out of one door of the tent, the French leaders bowed to the Doge and left by another, and Bertie and I ran back to our camps not knowing what was going to happen.…

This evening, Milon and Bertie walked in while we were all eating supper. Milon came straight to the point, as he always does.

“Against Pope or against agreement with Doge? Rome or Venice?”

“Well, which?” asked Sir William.

“If we go against Rome,” said Milon, “ex…ex…”

“Excommunication,” I said.

Milon winced. “If against Venice, we lose ships. Finish!”

Bertie kicked at his right heel with his left toecap.

“We are God's pilgrims,” Milon said. “The Pope promise us pardons for all our sins.”

“To hell with pardons!” muttered Sir William.

Lord Stephen wiped his mouth, and kept blinking.

“But we will not allow de Montfort and de Vaux to wreck our crusade,” Milon said. He spat on the ground. “We send four envoys to the Pope to explain. We help the Doge to recapture Zara.”