Niccolo Rising (29 page)

Claes said, “Well, it depends, like everything else. But I expect you refused.”

“Then he tried to buy Loppe. Loppe!” said Julius.

“That’s because his voice is so good,” said Claes, nodding.

“
Loppe
,” repeated Julius wearily. “Not the monk. How did Astorre become friends with a monk?”

“You’re thinking of Brother Gilles,” said Claes in a friendly way. “That’s the one whose voice isn’t very fine, but he was the best Tommaso could find when the Medici wanted a tenor. The person singing Gregorian chants with the good tenor voice is the Guinea slave Loppe. He learns anything. He was with a Jew, and then a Portuguese, and then a Catalan, and then Oudenin and the demoiselle de Charetty and you. Five languages, and the Gregorian chant.”

Julius looked at him. At length, “Brother Gilles has been teaching him?” he said.

“No, he picked it up. Brother Gilles was impressed. They sing in counterpoint.”

“And Monsieur Jaak heard him,” said Julius.

“And wants to buy him, of course. He’s worth a fortune. Did you sell him?” said Claes.

“No,” said Julius. “I wouldn’t sell that man a dog. But if Loppe is valuable, what do we do with him? He was Oudenin’s gift to the Widow.”

“I told Messer Sassetti about him,” said Claes. “He thought the Duke of Milan would be interested. Oudenin wouldn’t mind if Loppe went to the Duke of Milan. Loppe thinks he would like it: I asked him. And Astorre and Brother Gilles would be pleased. We might get better terms for the contract.”

Sometimes Claes could surprise you. Julius gazed at him.

“If we get him over the Alps, that is,” Claes added thoughtfully.

Chapter 12

C
ROSSING THE
Alps in November made a good story, of course, when you got back home again, and why not. It was no pleasure for Africans (or elephants) who had never seen snow before. Well-educated young men had written of how, bravely, they had been towed over the mountains blindfold on a sledge. Someone spoke of making the traverse on a wheeled litter pulled by an ox on a prudently long lead, with the reins of his horse in his hand.

Astorre’s only concession was to reload all the merchandise on to pack horses and mules, and muffle the four gift horses in blankets. As an afterthought, Loppe got a blanket too, above which his broad black face rose like a smoothly-buffed moulding. He was unhappy.

The roping and packing was assigned to Claes, who had proved in the journey from Bruges to be an instinctive expert in the distribution of weight, and who could design knots like a sailor. Although the snow glistened on the Jura mountains on their left and the Alps on their right, the lakeside was still green and without the carts they moved briskly, the harsh bitter wind bending and whipping their standards and the new-dyed plumes on Astorre’s shining helmet.

Four days, they reckoned to take, from Geneva to the St Bernard’s hospice on the top of Mount Jove, and, with luck, no snow until they had left the lake and climbed as far as St Pierre. In fact, they achieved it in three, because traffic to and from the Pope’s Crusading Congress had squashed down the snow and given the inns and monasteries a reason for being warm and well-plenished and lucratively efficient.

There were, of course, other ways of crossing into Italy. Armies went by the Brenner Pass, which was gentler and good for supplies. Germans such as Sigismund of the Tyrol went by the St Gotthard. French and Flemings and English who didn’t want to travel by Lake Geneva could ship their goods south on the river Rhone to Marseilles, and in the sailing season, make for Genoa.

But it wasn’t the sailing season, and in any case, Genoa was controlled
by the French. So, his frilled ear blue and his beard spiked with frost, the captain led his little company through Savoy, which was controlled by the French as well, in the sense that King Charles told the Duke of Savoy what to do. But then, as everyone knew, the Duke’s wife and all her relations from Cyprus also told the Duke what to do.

Facing all ways, that was the Duke of Savoy. His father the Pope, who had died eight years before, had at least known what he wanted, and how to get it, if not how to look it in the eye.
A cross-eyed monkey
, the present Pontiff had been heard to call the late Pope Felix, in Latin naturally. Gossip about Pius the present Pope lingered, discreet and titillating, in all the inns and monasteries Astorre’s company called at.

It might seem a delicate topic, but there were others more dangerous. There was an English party at St Maurice, stiff with armorial bearings, and you wouldn’t choose to talk to them about their idiot Lancastrian king and his Yorkist rebels. Or about their French queen, whose brother you were actually going to Naples to fight. It was safer to chat about the Pope’s fearful visit to Scotland nearly twenty-five years since, and its well-known consequences. A half-Scottish bastard, soon perished, for one. And a barefoot pilgrimage for another, which had afflicted the feet of Pius Aeneas ever afterwards. You would have thought that Papal feet would have interested this great doctor Tobias. But he just sat and drank, and watched Claes a lot. Astorre noticed him.

At the next meal, a Milanese on his way north deafened them on the same topic till Meester Julius felt roused to put in a word for the Pontiff. “All right. He’s had a couple of bastards,” said the notary. “Then why should this poetic home-wrecker take Holy Orders, become Pope, and then devote all that energy to a campaign to retake Constantinople?”

“Met him, have you?” said the Milanese. “Well, some say it was a change of heart. Myself, I might do the same, with his conscience. At any rate, my Duke’s not complaining. No crusade is going to leave while there’s a war going on in south Italy. If the Pope wants Milan to fight Turks, then he’s got to do something first. He’s got to help Milan beat those greedy French dogs who want Naples.”

“That’s what we heard,” said Meester Julius.

“They told me. Oh, they’ll take you on in Milan,” the other man said. “The Papal army’ll take you, or the Milanese army; or they’ll send you straight down to Naples to help King Ferrante hold out, if that’s what you fancy. Mind you, you have to watch how you go. A lot of French-lovers about, making for the Mantua congress. Don’t overtake
them
, if you can help it.”

It was good advice, if hard to keep in the heights where snow fell in thick felting layers, like wool in the napping and shearing-sheds, and began to choke the trodden ways. The horses’ heads hung, and men’s cheeks turned raw and blotched between their beards and their eyebrows, and when they blew their noses, their face-guards stuck to the skin of their fingers. Then, whatever company loomed through the
whiteness, you caught and thankfully kept with, for there was safety in numbers.

By the time the final, multilingual cavalcade reached the monastery built by St Bernard, even its English component had unbent, and ate and drank with the rest in the steaming warmth of the refectory, and told their servants to answer when Claes tried out John Bonkle’s English on them. But next morning, it was Astorre who was first on the floor, arranging his convoy for the second and harder part of their journey. He left the roping to Claes, who had to be retrieved from some congenial courtyard where he had been effecting a repair to a pump.

The blessing Claes received from the Prior was, Astorre considered, excessive, but might possibly serve to keep the youth on his horse until they were over the mountains. Although the fool was improving. Listening to the sound of the talk, Astorre could tell that Claes was less of a butt to the soldiers, although some of rougher kind still took the chance, now and then, to play tricks with him.

A captain less experienced than Astorre might have stopped them, before an arm or a leg could get broken. But that never did any good. Men simply resented what they saw as protection and beat their victim up worse on the sly. It was up to Claes to learn fast enough to protect himself. Which he was doing. And the journey was designed by the devil to exhaust experienced men, never mind youths with a turn for trouble-making.

Astorre even said as much to Tobias who, as a former companion of Lionetto, had so far lived under the cloud of Astorre’s darkest suspicions. Time, however, had revealed the doctor surprisingly as a hard man much after Astorre’s own heart, with a tongue on him that could make a lazy trooper jump as sharply as Thomas’s. Astorre had spent some time, in fact, reconciling Thomas to the fact that the company now had four officers to it instead of two, and that no company with ambitions could manage with less.

Contracts, letter-writing, book-keeping were all part of the business, and time was too short to spend half the day scouring a town for a notary, or taking the services of your employer’s man, who would cheat you as soon as look at you. And good fighting men stayed where there was a good surgeon. Good food, good pay and good doctoring was what kept men together. And a leader who knew his business, took no foolish chances but knew how to save the best efforts for the best promise of plunder, and would divide booty fairly.

Up to now, he was willing to admit, the company had lacked organisation. It was never twice the same, for one thing. Men under contract mostly turned up when called, but not all of them. Some of them had got themselves killed. Some had formed winter bands and turned to plunder and wayside robbery to keep them in food and drink and girls through the winter as well as the arms they were supposed to be supplied with. He’d been half waylaid more than once by faces he
had recognised, who had withdrawn when they saw who it was, and the number of his lances. And a lot of these were caught and hanged or cut down before spring arrived. Then others would find a captain who paid more, or had a better reputation for prizes; or some might even be paid by the other side not to come.

The companies who did well – the really great companies who gave themselves a grand label, and could name their own price in a big war – these were companies with their own chancery, like a lord would have, and a council, and a treasurer and pension funds and everything, just like a city state. And these companies were good because they stayed together, and their men knew each other, and often never went home at all, but stayed in winter quarters (paid for) when the fighting died down, and were all there and ready to begin again the following year.

That was what Astorre was aiming at. He wasn’t born a soldier-prince. He hadn’t had the chances that made a Hawkwood or a Carmagnola. He didn’t expect to be courted by monarchs. But with Marian de Charetty’s backing, he could get himself noticed. The ducal leaders would ask his advice. He would become known, not just as he was, as a good man with a small company who could be relied on. He would be the man they thought of when they wanted a spearhead for a special siege, a special battle. Men would come to his banner, and there would be money to pay them. And finally, some prince might buy the company from the Widow and give them a permanent home. These sorts of men could be generous. He knew captains who had been given towns in lieu of pay, and then got to keep them. That was what Astorre wanted. That was what Lionetto wanted too. But Astorre was going to be first to get the men and the money and the backing and the conquests. For the first time, this year, it seemed possible. And Lionetto had better not get in his way, or he’d smash him.

Of course, it wasn’t an easy life, on the big campaigns. No wives and no homes – or else several, like a sailor. But camp followers – yes, you had to have those. He would have to have those even with the smaller numbers he expected to join him from Flanders and Switzerland and Burgundy. Women to cook and wash and make homes of the tents and the huts and keep the men happy. There were times when he wished, himself, he were back in the days when he was just part of a lance, with his cronies about him, and not a care in the world but to think up a worse name for the old bastard up there who was leading them.

Then he remembered how good it was, being first with no one to stop him. Good, at any rate when you weren’t crossing the Alps in a snowstorm with your slitted eyes streaming. They were on a single-track now, between towering snow-cliffs which were only the foothills to higher and steeper snow-mountains behind them. His horse didn’t like it. Astorre was pressing it on when he realised that Tobias the doctor was trying to attract his attention. Astorre slowed and looked back to where the doctor was pointing.

Behind the bobbing snow-capped helms of his company, and the nodding shapes of the packhorses, was a long interval of untenanted white. Beyond that was a horse, standing riderless. And beyond that was a trough in the snow, partly filled by a low chequered form which stirred feebly.

“Who?” said Astorre angrily. He would have to stop. Anyone left in this snow would perish. He halted, and the caravan crowded up and then came to a halt at his back. He scanned the faces behind him, noting all his officers, and the boy Claes and the negro Loppe. One of the soldiers, then, curse him.

The doctor said, “He must be hurt. I’ll go back, if you can pass me. No. Look. There’s another party of horsemen behind him. They’ll pick him up for us.”

The notary Julius had edged forward. “If they don’t slit his throat and take his armour.”

“He hasn’t got any. It’s Brother Gilles. It’s captain Astorre’s monk that’s fallen off,” said Claes the apprentice. His face was raw but quite cheerful, and his hat was plumed with white snow like a Janissary’s. He added, “I think it’s the Lancastrians. The English party. They wouldn’t harm him. But I’ll make sure it’s them, shall I?” And kicking the horse, he turned its head to the nearest small ridge.

Astorre did nothing to stop him. He was getting tired of Brother Gilles, who had performed some unspecified favour for one of Astorre’s many sisters and was now collecting his reward. Decency required, however, that the monk should be rescued – unless, of course, the odds were impossible. Astorre scanned the heavy grey sky, and swore quietly. The two college men exchanged clever glances. Claes, arrived up on a ledge, boldly stood in his stirrups and focused his watering eyes on the flags of the oncoming riders. Then his face cleared. “It’s all right. Worcester’s banner. It’s the Englishmen.”