The Leopard Sword (11 page)

 

 

 

When we reached a paved high road, Sir Nigel noted that the wide paving stones were scored by the passage of carts. “Many heavy wagons, is my guess,” he said, “over many years.”

Father Giles had visited Rome, and said it was scarred with evidence of the empire-building pagans who had lived there. “Iron-wheeled chariots,” I suggested.

The domes of time-pocked buildings approached us along the road.“These are the burial sites,” I hazarded, recalling what I could of Father Giles's accounts, “of famous Roman knights.”

“They buried their men-at-arms in temples?” queried Edmund.

“Like any people of good sense,” said Nigel,“the Caesars, no doubt, were a ghost-respecting lot.”

Before Edmund and I could absorb this, Rannulf's voice reached us, calling with an uncharacteristic emotion.

It was the first time I had heard the knight sound so excited.

The shoulders of monuments, the belfries of sacred places clustered in the distance behind city walls. Bells sounded, the music softened by the miles we had yet to travel, and the tumult of a great city pattered and rang through the sunlight.

“It would take ten thousand men to storm these walls,” said Rannulf, wonder in his voice.

The red clay-stone walls rose above us, and a city gate studded with iron. The gate had closed before us at our approach.

“And then you would have a street battle,” Rannulf continued to muse.“Nearly always a pikeman's fight, not a knight's.”

“We will enter like lambs,” said Sir Nigel.

I made the sign of the cross, in part to show my earnestness as a Christian knight, and partly to steady my will. Guards armed with halberds and broad-brimmed helmets looked down at us from the top of the wall. Knights rarely engaged personally in an initial parley—announcements of name and rank were generally made through a chief squire. This saved a knight any hint of disrespect or insult while his identity and intentions were established.

“We are Crusaders,” I called upward, “just returned, with news of King Richard of the English and King Philip of the Franks.”

Two armored heads looked down at me, with no sign of understanding.

I spoke in English, in Latin, and in Norman-Frankish. I was about to invent a language on the spot, half gesture and half shipboard Genoan, when I heard one of the guards say, among other words,
Crociato,
conferring with his fellows.

“Si!”
I exclaimed. “And these others—they are Crusaders, too.” One of the helmeted heads climbed up onto a battlement, to afford himself a better view of us. At the same time I heard a muted sound, the noise of a mechanism being cranked by hand, slowly but with a certain urgency.

I knew this sound well, and so did my companions. It was a crossbow being cocked.

“Don't cease talking,” murmured Sir Nigel. “Soothing speech calms horses, hounds, and nervous sentries.”

I said that we were honored to stand before this great city, and looked forward to seeing its many holy sites. I had the impression this guard knew exactly what I was saying—perhaps all visitors before the gates delivered similar sentiments. The speech he offered in return struck me at first as little more than polite-sounding noise. As he continued, however, I recognized that the language was enough like Latin for me to glean some meaning.

He believed us, he said, when we said that we were Crusaders. He was honored to see such noble
cavalieri. “Inglese?”
he inquired at last.

“Yes, every one of us,” I said.

He reached down and produced the crossbow, painted blue and red along its stock, and decorated with yellow stars. A quarrel—a crossbow bolt—was ready-cocked. I had no doubt that a quarrel fired at such close range would pass right through me, and end up buried in the ground.

Edmund stepped before me, and said, looking upward, “No quarrel has the force to go through two men.”

“Corragio,”
said the bowman with a laugh.

 

 

A carter approached the gate from the road behind us with a load of charcoal. He called up to the battlement, but the guard explained that no one could pass for the moment. The sight of a guard leveling a crossbow caused no evident concern or surprise. Several other tradesmen arrived with heavily laden cobs, stout-legged horses. We all had to wait.

The barrier opened at last, nearly silent on its massive hinges.

A figure before us gave a bow—a young man with a striped tunic with a gold-colored belt. Every trade had its livery: the baker his cap, the brewer his long leather apron. I took this man to be a herald. He wore a finely wrought gipser purse and a silver-chased sheathe with a well-wrought hilt, and introduced himself as Fulke Mowbray, herald to King Richard's envoy in Rome. He gracefully motioned us inside the gate.

“Stay close to me,” said the herald.“The Holy City is ripe with cutthroats.”

Just inside the city walls was a great church, and a vineyard. A few rows of pear trees offered shade from the afternoon sun. I was not surprised that church clerks would want grapes for wine, or pears for perry, a pleasing drink.

But I was surprised at the shabbiness of the city, weeds and broken stones everywhere. We marched through flocks of sheep driven by shepherds armed with short swords and cudgels. Geese flocked along the broad, paved street.

Nevertheless, it was the grandest city I had ever seen. Father Giles had drawn sketches on my
tabela,
and described to me the magnificence of the Colosseum. But nothing prepared me for the sight of it, ghost-gray and gigantic. Edmund and I exchanged glances of wonderment and delight. The arches and barrel vaults that supported the great monument thrilled me. By comparison, the grandest church in Nottingham, and the richest oak-timbered hall of my father or his fellow merchants, were like the playhouses of little boys.

Sir Nigel, too, was flushed with excitement as we passed through the vast late-afternoon shadow of this place.And yet I continued to be surprised at how worn this holy site was. Much of the marble facing of the monuments had been stripped away, leaving holes where it had been attached. Men and women in rags crouched in the entranceways and corridors, and as they caught my glance they called out in tones of no great respect.

I was stunned further at the ruin of what I took to be the great Roman Forum, a place Father Giles had described to my family, my sister and both my parents all as rapt as I was to hear of this crossroads of an empire. Either a brutal army had swept through this civic core, or the rubble was all so much older than I could imagine. Oxen lowed in a make-shift pen, among fallen columns. Men in coarse-spun aprons fed lengths of marble into a kiln.

“They are turning chunks of pagan temples into lime, for stone mortar,” explained Sir Nigel.

“Is it wise,” I found myself asking, “to consume the famous ruins?”

“I think God takes no great offense,” replied Sir Nigel.

 

 

 

Men in livery—fine, flowing silks—eyed us as we passed, swords cocked jauntily at their hips. They put their heads together and laughed, and I knew how shabby we looked, like prisoners or mendicant paupers, not at all like men-at-arms. And women would not give us a second glance— well-formed, graceful women, enjoying the music of the fountains as they talked, ignoring us.

I hated our worn shoes, our monk-woven garments. I wanted to sing out that we were Crusaders, but I knew my carefully tutored Latin would sound stiff. Merchants and tradesmen took a moment to eye us. They were clad in bright clothing, the finest examples of the dyer's art. They turned back to their fruit stalls or their gossip, speaking a fluid, rapid tongue.

Our guards were heavy men, too fat for active battle, or thin and wide-eyed, youths pressed into service. At the corner of a narrow street the herald knocked at a studded oak door. A servant opened it and bowed courteously.

We were left alone in an outer chamber. Sir Nigel and Sir Rannulf consulted each other. An army of masons, they agreed, could not construct such a town, the existence of which, Sir Nigel asserted, was itself testimony to the glory of Our Lord.

Edmund and I stood shoulder to shoulder.This Holy City was a cold place, I thought, and I shivered.

We were taken into a room lit by tapers, fine candles, long and slender, that did not smoke and sputter as they burned.

There stood a man in a richly dyed scarlet mantle. The dancing candle shadows half hid him, but I could make out a short sword, with a red jasper decorating its hilt. He had fair eyebrows, nearly white eyelashes, and the thick muscular neck of a fighting man. Fulke the herald watched from the shadows.

The nobleman introduced himself as Luke de Warrene, a knight of the royal household, and steward to King Richard's ambassador to Rome. He spoke in clear London English.

I gave the most flowery introduction I could manage, announcing the worshipful Crusaders Sir Nigel of Nottingham and Sir Rannulf of Josselin, and the squire-at-arms Edward Strongarm. “I am Hubert de Bakewell,” I concluded, conscious of my own name's lack of poetry.

Sir Luke considered our names silently for a moment, like a man afraid of ill tidings. “How can I believe, my good squire, that you have set foot in the Holy Land?”

“My lord,” I protested, “we are men of honor.”

“Travelers have told many tales in recent weeks,” said Sir Luke. “Or perhaps they aren't mere rumors. We hear that King Richard is imprisoned in Sicily, that he took a quarrel in the neck outside Acre, that he is buried on the shore there. How can I believe that you four know anything of Crusading?”

I could not hide my anger, but Sir Nigel gave my arm a squeeze. “You're doing surpassingly well, Hubert,” he whispered.

Perhaps this emboldened me. I said, “And how can we trust you, my lord, to deserve an account of our travels?”

Sir Nigel hissed through his teeth.

“If you will,” I was quick to add, “permit me to ask.”

The mantle-clad man approached me.

He wore a brooch, and at the sight of it I was plunged into silence.

It was an enamel insignia, a leopard with his right paw upraised. While some called Richard
Lionheart,
and many praised the king's lionlike bravery, the royal symbol for his court was this leopard, an animal few Englishmen had ever seen in real life. It was a special kind of fighting cat, we believed, one especially noted for its courage.

The knight took my sword hand in his own, and examined the calluses along my palm, and the still-healing chafing on my forearm, the result of wearing chain mail in hot weather.

I continued to feel ashamed of my impertinence. I dropped to one knee, and when he bid me rise I obeyed, and said, “My lord, we have news of King Richard.”

Again I wished I wore a sword. Sir Luke's mantle had been dyed with kermit-seed vermilion, the most expensive dye known.

“Acre has fallen,” I said.

“The siege is broken?” he asked wonderingly.

“And the inhabitants put to the sword,” I said.

He put his hands together prayerfully.

Then he said,“I have another question.” His eyes said,
One I am afraid to put into words.

“My lord, we remain at the service of the king,” I said in my best court manner.

The nobleman stepped close to me, smelling of cloves, a rich spice dukes and other wealthy people chew to sweeten their breath. He said, nearly whispering, “Speak softly.There are spies, even here. Show no sign of your tidings in your eyes.”

I nodded, indicating that I understood.

“Answer me,” he said. “Is King Richard still living?”

Luke led us down corridors dimly illuminated by the late-day sun, past tall oak doors shut tight. I lingered behind, pleased to be in such a splendid house, polished stone tiles on the floors. I heard a whisper and stayed behind, gazing down a shadowy hallway.

A young woman gazed right back at me from a short distance away. She wore a gown with scarlet sleeves, a linen wimple around her throat. A lady-in-waiting stood just behind her, and I heard her offer the young woman an explanation of my presence: “A young knight, perchance, my lady.”

The young woman gave me an appraising glance. She had green eyes, and held her hands clasped before her in the way ladies were trained. For some reason I was slow in remembering my lessons in courtesy. I gave a bow at last, but by then Nigel was calling, with what I thought was energetic coarseness, “Hubert, come see where you'll be sleeping off your travels.”

Sir Luke read the look in my eyes as I hurried to join them.

“Perhaps you have seen Galena,” he said. “Sir Maurice's daughter. She takes the air this time each day.”

I never missed my family more than on that first misty morning in Rome, as Edmund and I walked out to the river, drinking in the vision of red roofs and spires.

My sister Mary and I used to build castles out of rough-hewn blocks, and put a flag at the peak of each rude tower, a tuft of my father's best wool felt. Now I heard bells from a dozen holy places. I was swept with emotion. I included my family in my prayers, and asked Heaven to keep them each out of harm's grasp.

 

 

“Here we see the Circus Maximus,” said Fulke de Mowbray later that day.“A large empty field now, but you see the outline of the arena, where chariots raced. All adorned with rich jewels and golden helmets, the emperors would sit here and watch the contest.”