The Long Sword (11 page)

I liked this kind of game, always have. I sat back and played with my wine cup. ‘Perhaps if we were to slip into the kitchen, I could prove myself,’ I said.

The two ladies-in-waiting both giggled.

Donna Giulia leaned forward, and I could smell her scent again, more like musk than flowers, and yet at the very edge of perception. Her presence was … palpable. I have known a few women like her, where up close, the impact of beauty and personality can rob you of breath. She put a warm hand on my arm. ‘You play this game very well for an Englishman. What would you make me, in the kitchen?’

I sighed. Italian ladies can play this way for hours and mean nothing, or mean everything, where an English girl would be reduced to giggles – or a blow with her hand. I thought of Sister Marie, Donna Giuglia’s direct opposite.

I leaned forward. ‘I should make you …’ I said softly.

She smiled.

‘… dessert,’ I finished. ‘Perhaps a nice apple tart.’

Now the whole table laughed; some at me, and some with me. Ser Nerio, beside me, gave me a look that told me I’d found the right path. We had skirted the marshy ground, for flirting with your host’s mistress is a dangerous game at the best of times.

She threw back her head and laughed, not a ladylike simper, but almost a roar.

Ser Niccolò appeared at my shoulder. He poured his lady wine and she told him of the whole exchange, word for word.

He raised his eyebrows. ‘But of course you must go make her an apple tart. I insist only that I have some too.’ He grinned. ‘Think of it as a feat of arms. Or a task of love.’

‘He loves apples,’ Donna Friussi said.

Juan glared at me, and Miles looked offended on my behalf, but given Ser Niccolò’s origins, I didn’t think he meant a slur. At any rate, I rose and took my beautiful glass of wine to the kitchen, following a page.

The cook was a big man with a pair of enormous knives in a case in his belt, and he frowned and then shrugged. ‘Whatever my lord and lady require,’ he said, ‘it is my task to provide. You wish to make an apple tart? So be it.’

I found that the darker of Donna Giulia’s ladies was at my shoulder. ‘This may take an hour or two,’ I said.

She shrugged and sipped her wine.

By the time I’d made my dough and was rolling it out, I had a little crowd. Ser Nerio was there, and Ser Niccolò, and Donna Giuglia. I had flour on my best doublet, and I was having a fine time. In fact, I was the centre of attention, and I like that well enough. And the cook had decided to humour me – better than that, he was actively supporting me, so that when I was at the point of forgetting salt in my crust, he slapped a salt horn on to the table beside my hand.

A pair of boys chopped apples for me. I discovered that the palazzo boasted a majolica jar of cinnamon, a fabulous spice from the east – you know it? Ah, everyone does, now. I ground it myself, and held my fingers out to the dark lady-in-waiting and she breathed in most fetchingly.

More and more of the guests found their way into the kitchens, and Ser Niccolò served a pitcher of wine to the cook’s staff. He had rented the house, and none of the staff knew what to make of him: cook’s apprentices do not usually mix with the guests. But Donna Giuglia brought musicians into the kitchen, and there was dancing, and a lady began to sing. And then, as I assembled my little pies, Donna Giulia took a tambour and raised it, and everyone fell silent, and she whispered to one of the lute players. Accompanied by only a single lute, she danced and sang to her own song.

She was magnificent. Let me add that she was so good that the fifty guests and twenty kitchen staff crammed into the corners of a great kitchen gave her both silence and room – and that she had an open strip of tiled floor no wider than a horse’s stall and not much longer, and she held us all spellbound.

I finished my pies. I put Master Arnaud’s mark on them – I don’t know what imp moved me to do that. Perhaps just the memory of every other apple tart I’d ever made. The cook swept them away into the great oven by the fireplace, itself big enough to roast an ox.

Donna Giuglia finished, her honey-coloured hair swaying, and every man and woman whistled, shouted, clapped their hands or laughed aloud, and she stood and swayed a moment, eyes closed.

Ser Niccolò went and threw his arms around her and kissed her – a lover’s kiss. I had seldom seen outside of army camps a woman kissed in such a way in public, but I gathered that there were few rules that applied to Ser Niccolò.

After the dance, it was difficult for any of us to reach the level that Donna Giuglia had set us, and we chatted. I began to tidy up the mess I’d made, and the cook and his apprentices began to look at me reproachfully, but in truth, it gave me something to do, and I didn’t want to stand idle and silent among strangers.

Ser Niccolò came and put an arm around my shoulder. ‘Now I believe that you were truly a cook,’ he said.

‘While I confess, my lord, that I have trouble believing that you were ever a stingy banker,’ I said.

He laughed. ‘Perhaps I became a knight because I was such a very
bad
banker.’

My little pies emerged from the oven, no thanks to me, and carefully watched, no doubt, by the professional. But they were golden brown, and the scent alone – I’d used more eastern spices in six small pies than one of Prince Edward’s cooks would see in a month of Sundays – the scent alone suggested that the gates of heaven might be close.

I put one small pie on a wooden trencher and presented it on my knees to Donna Giuglia.

She laughed. ‘I think I have been bested,’ she said.

Ser Niccolò took a bite, and he looked at me over his pie with pure, unadulterated approval.

I cut the pies as small as I could, and almost everyone had a bite.

At the door, Ser Niccolò took my hand. ‘I love a man who is not afraid,’ he said.

I assumed he was serious, so I shook my head. ‘My gracious lord, I’m afraid all the time.’

‘You were not afraid to make the pies. In public.’ He was serious.

‘I was afraid that they might not come out. It has been a few years.’ I smiled.

He didn’t return the smile. ‘But this is exactly what I meant. Wait, please. I want you to meet my son Nerio.’

I had seen Nerio all evening, and never known him to be the great man’s son. But of course, when I saw them together, it was obvious. Nerio was my own age, as handsome as his father, and at this late stage he had another spectacularly beautiful woman at his elbow, this one thinner and more otherworldly than Donna Giuglia, but neither more nor less magnificent. I knelt to her and to him, and he pulled me sharply to my feet.

‘By God, messire, you are a famous knight
and
a competent pastry cook, and I am neither!’ He laughed. ‘When there is steel singing in the air, I find a lady’s lap and hide my head there like a unicorn.’

It has amused me all my life, the different ways men boast.

I had a fine night. After I saluted Nerio, I slipped around the palazzo and in by the tradesman’s alley, and found the cook. ‘Here’s three florins to share,’ I said. ‘I know how much work you went to for me.’

He took the florins without hesitation and gave me a little bow. ‘You were truly a cook?’ he asked.

I looked past him at the circle of apprentices. ‘Never,’ I said. ‘I was a cook’s
boy
, and Master Arnaud would never have trusted me to cook a pie on my own.’

That made them all laugh, even the master. And as if he’d been drawn by the laughter, I saw Ser Niccolò appear on the servant’s stairs.

‘Sneaking into my house?’ he asked.

‘Offering my compliments, because these men made me look better than I am,’ I said.

He nodded. ‘If you always remember to thank the men that help you step up …’ He shrugged. ‘Where do you bank, Ser William?’

‘With the Bardi,’ I admitted. My Genoese bankers.

He nodded and cocked his head to one side. ‘They will fail – if not this year than the next. Your prince has served them but ill again and again.’

I was sitting on the same table where I’d prepared the pies. It seemed incongruous to me: Ser Niccolò was wearing the most magnificent
grande assiette
pourpoint I’d ever seen in crimson silk covered in gold embroidery, and he was leaning against the fireplace.

Well, I wasn’t his squire, thanks be to God.

‘Move your money to my family’s bank,’ Ser Niccolò said.

I grinned. ‘My lord, I’d move only my debt. I’m owed some ransoms, but another knight collected …’

Ser Niccolò smiled and made a very Florentine gesture with his hands, a sort of denial of the very statement he was about to make. ‘I know all this,’ he admitted. He smiled at me. ‘Give me your account, and I will find your money.’

I suppose I frowned. ‘Why?’ I asked.

Ser Niccolò tilted his head to one side like a very intelligent dog. ‘You are a friend of Acuto Hawkwood. A good friend for me to have. A good knight. And you serve Father Pierre. Any one of these things might have made me notice you, but you now have all three things.’ He leaned towards me. ‘You can, I think, read and write.’

I shrugged. ‘Yes. Latin or English.’

He nodded. ‘Write me a letter giving me your account, and I will see to it you receive the money due you on your ransoms.’ He slapped me on the shoulder. ‘Really, I ask nothing more.’

As I walked through the dark streets with his linkboys lighting my way, I searched for the strings that would make this dangerous, but all I could see was that it would be a fine thing to be friends with the Florentine. He was the Queen of Naples’s chancellor, a great knight, and a powerful lord.

And I had had a wonderful time.

If I’ve given another impression, I’m a poor storyteller. And back at the university, I had to tell all the tales of the evening to Fra Peter, who had stayed with Father Pierre. He laughed at my failure to recognise that Nerio was Ser Niccolò’s son.

‘By his wife, who stays in Florence,’ he said.

Father Pierre came in behind us, carrying a pitcher of wine. He poured me wine with his own hands – he always did. He was the worst great church officer imaginable. He helped servants carry furniture and he liked to lay out his own vessels for serving Mass, even in Famagusta when he was with the king – but I get ahead of myself.

‘Ser Niccolò wears his sins as well as he wears his jewels,’ Father Pierre said. ‘He would be more beautiful without them, but he never allows them to weigh on him.’ He shrugged to me. ‘I have known him ten years and more. The power he wields has corrupted him, but not so very much.’

‘I liked his lady,’ I confessed. ‘His mistress.’ I flushed.

Father Pierre laughed. ‘Why should you not? God made her as much as he made you or me and she is a very good lady, despite her sins.’ He shrugged. ‘I am a bad priest. But as a celibate, what do I know of the world? Nothing. It is not for me to judge, but God.’ He turned to Fra Peter. ‘But Niccolò will accompany us to Venice, at least for a few days. I have word of King Peter. He left Rheims; not for Venice, as he promised, but for the court of the Holy Roman Emperor.’

Fra Peter went white.

Father Pierre sighed. ‘I agree with your unspoken words. There are three thousand men-at-arms at Venice, and it is the most expensive city in the world. Every day he delays is a day he is not making war on the infidel. And those men will drift away to wars in Italy. Will they not, William?’

I blew air out of my lips. ‘Unless Walter Leslie has a great many more ducats than he showed at Pisa, he can’t keep them together for long.’

Fra Peter looked at the crucifix on the wall for a long time. ‘What is King Peter thinking of ?’ he asked.

Pierre steepled his fingers in front of him. ‘I am thinking that he was not informed that he was the commander of the crusade before he left Rheims.’ He looked at me. ‘But he is a strange man; a wonderful man, and a great knight. But very much a man.’ Father Pierre looked over his hands at the table in front of him and finally shook his head. ‘I don’t think we can do anything. Any day, the Pope’s appointment will reach him, and he will realise how essential is his presence. We must get to Venice now, and see to the men who are to be my flock.’

Fra Peter tapped a thumbnail on his lower teeth. ‘You could send me to the king.’

They looked at each other for a bit. I drank my wine, which was delicious, and I poured more for my elders.

‘What do you think of the wine, Ser William?’ Father Pierre asked me.

‘Delicious,’ I admitted. ‘As good as anything Ser Niccolò had to offer.’

Father Pierre’s eyes crinkled with his smile. ‘Denied all the other pleasures of the flesh, my brother priests and I can rarely resist a good wine,’ he admitted. He looked back over his hands to Fra Peter. ‘No, I need you at Venice. You and the other men of the Order are my ambassadors to the brigands and routiers who will be our phalanx of Angels.’

Sometimes, I suspected that the saintly Father Pierre had some cynicism lurking under the surface, but like some shy forest animal, whenever it peeked out with his rare half-smile, it was soon gone again.

I needed a new sword, and I spent some delightful hours prowling Bologna for the one I wanted, with Fiore and Juan and Miles, who had recovered from his sullenness to become one of us. But in three days, I knew every sword available for sale in the city, and none of them were quite what I desired.

I’m sure you will say that a sword is a sword, a tool for killing. This is true, and I can use any of them. But listen, gentles. There are many beautiful women in the world. Yes? Consider every charm, every allure. Consider the endless attractions: ankles, shoulders, the curve of a wrist, the top of a breast, the tilt of eyes, the corners of mouths. Consider also the subtlety that is the interplay – the conversation, the soul of a lady, so that some are dull and others sparkle like a fine jewel in any company.

So … every man has his taste, and perhaps every woman also. So many details that we cannot track them all or even remember what we like, and yet, at least with a sword, I have to no more than wrap my hand around a hilt and raise the blade from the floor and I
know
. Some blades demand to be swung up and over my head. Some hilts fit my hand as if they were some sort of inverse glove. And some do not. Perhaps they have warm conversations with other swordsmen, but not with me.