The Long Sword (26 page)

One man said, ‘Is that him?’

And then I was on them.

Jacques exploded into them and I might have killed them all, but one man knew how to fight a knight. Someone cut my girth and down I went.

That, my friends, ought to have been the end of this story. I fell heavily, and my helmet protected me from being knocked senseless, but I had no armour and I should have been meat.

Marc-Antonio and the mule had followed me out into the night and by luck and skill and the will of God, Marc-Antonio slammed his riding horse into the routier who’d put me down, staggering the man. I was already scrambling in the dark for my sword.

I was damned if I was going to lose the Emperor’s sword.

I took a blow to the helmet that sharpened my perception of the threat. Jacques was still fighting – that’s what a trained horse does. He bought me a moment and then another moment, and I still couldn’t find my sword, and then I was fighting in the dark. My opponent had a dagger, and another man had a sword, and I had a helmet and gauntlets, which proved by far the best armament.

I found my sword with my booted foot, and cut myself badly. There’s ancient satire there, something Petrarch might have appreciated. I thought it worth the blood to find the sword, and when Jacques rallied to my side I knelt and got a hand on the hilt.

I clutched it.

The night was full of shouts, and there were men running in all directions, and Marc-Antonio was shouting my name like a war cry. Jacques came up right beside me and I was up on his bare back in the time it takes to say ‘pater noster’ and we were away, our hooves echoing off the stone buildings.

For some reason I thought it was the Bourc Camus and his men, so I was shocked when I saw a man-at-arms by the gate in blue and white blazon. But he was badly mounted and his horse wouldn’t face Jacques, and I put my pommel between his arms and broke his teeth. I had his sword arm by the left wrist, and I stripped his sword in the moment of shock, and I still had it in my left hand when we burst out on to the steep mountain road below the town. We rode hard for the time it takes to hear Mass, but if anyone pursued us, it was on foot, and not for very long. We could see every foot of road in the clear moonlight, and I changed to my riding horse after checking Jacques for wounds. The loss of my war saddle was a sore blow to my finances, but we’d escaped.

I handed the sword I’d taken to Marc-Antonio. He giggled nervously and pushed it through his belt.

And so we passed into the night.

We rode for three days without sleeping. We stank, and we didn’t care. We stole a pair of riding horses from two monks in fur habits and riding boots, wandering mendicants who claimed a vow of poverty, and probably as much brigands as I can be myself. With spare horses, we could move all the time.

In the foothills of the Alps, Marc-Antonio reined in. ‘Lord, I have to halt,’ he said. ‘I beg you.’

I shook my head. Fatigue and fear play strange tricks on a man, and the evils I had imagined and dismissed in Avignon now loomed as certainties in the light of day. I could no longer see Emile as a capable woman at no risk. I saw her now as the ultimate target of my enemies. D’Herblay was going to kill her – horribly. I could feel it, and dreaded that it had already happened.

‘If you dismount, I’ll leave you,’ I snapped.

‘Fuck you,’ my erstwhile squire said, but it was more of a moan of protest than a curse. Marc-Antonio made me smile, and that’s a good thing when you have fear all the way to the marrow of your bones.

‘No one ever died of lack of sleep, lad,’ I said. ‘Change horses.’

Twenty leagues short of Turin, a day’s ride past the abandoned chapel where I’d slept twice, there is a Benedictine house high in a mountain pass. We were allowed into the guest house after I showed my pass on the order and let in with a swirl of snow at the very close of day when there was only enough light in the sky for owls. We were wet through, so tired we must have seemed like drunkards, so cold that my hands and feet hurt like torture as they warmed.

Marc-Antonio was asleep as soon as he sat to take off my boots. I put a damp wool cloak over him and undressed and a monk brought me water.

I shocked the monk by stripping naked in front of him, and shocked him more by bathing with a sword by my hand. He brought me good wine, good bread, and a bowl of something with rabbit in it that was superb. Or perhaps hunger and fatigue rendered it superb. I ate that bowl and another and drank the wine and fell asleep in the bath, and
the monk awoke me silently – he had some vow or other – and got me on to a pallet in a cell.

That’s all I remember, except that I kept my sword by me.

Emile had a town house in Geneva. I learned as much from the monastery’s abbot, and as soon as he said it, I realised that I was a fool, for I’d heard her speak of it as the place she spent the autumn and winter and lay in with her babies. More comfortable than her damp castles, she had said with her laugh that hid pain and pleasure equally. Few knights go to battle as well armoured as my Emile is in her laughter.

But the passes were closing with snow …

I left Marc-Antonio with money and all my letters except those for local men, and I left my riding horse and took Jacques. I rode for Geneva.

I was three days too late.

That said, remember that it was Emile’s courage – well, and her beautiful body – that first attracted me, and her good sense that held me. I was three day’s too late to stop her abduction: luckily, she never needed me to save her.

I arrived at the door of her town house in as pretty a town as ever you need see, on the shores of the most beautiful lake in the world. The door had been hacked about.

The steward himself was in half-harness, and he only showed his face through a grill at first. I suppose that shaving might have helped me, but I looked like a routier after three days on the road, except for my scarlet surcoat. That got the gate open. Her steward still didn’t like the look of me, and behind him in the entry way, I could see a brown blood-splash on the whitewashed stone.

‘You say you are a knight of the order—’ he said.

‘Emile!’ I roared. Or perhaps I squeaked it. I don’t know. I got past the man in half-armour, roaring her name.

I might have expected that her husband was there or had let the attackers into the house.

I made it as far as the solar above the entryway, and I saw her.

She was wearing a breast and back, and had a sword in her hand. And the ice-cold feel of a sword pricked the back of my neck, too.

Some princesses rescue themselves.

It is very unsatisfying when two people in armour embrace. There is no warmth to it.

We managed.

I put my lips on hers and she turned her head away so that I kissed the nape of her neck clumsily. I stepped back.

‘Emile!’ I said. I’m still not sure what I felt: hope, fear, delight, despair? Why was she not kissing me? But she was alive.

‘We were attacked,’ she said, indicating the sword she’d dropped to embrace me. ‘Oh, William. You came.’

‘I’m late,’ I admitted.

She shrugged. ‘My esteemed husband gave himself away, and we were prepared. This is
my
house, the servants are
mine
.’ She smiled gently over my shoulder. ‘He’s not an assassin, Amadeus. He is my loyal
servante
, Sir William Gold.’

I turned and saw the steward. He was as mad as an angry bull, and his sword was drawn. I had, of course, knocked him down. He was sputtering.

Well, there’s comedy to be found in most situations, and I bowed to him and begged his forgiveness, which shocked him so much that he forgave me on the spot.

‘
M’amoure
,’ I said, ‘you must leave. Now.’

‘Do
not
call me that,’ Emile said. Her smile said a great deal; injured and injuring too.

I took that wound like a blow. But I shook it off. ‘Do you know the Bishop of Cambrai?’ I asked. ‘The Bishop, now, of Geneva?’

‘The Lord of Geneva’s younger brother? I should think so – I grew up with him,’ she said. ‘He pulled legs off flies,’ she went on. ‘Picked his nose and ate it.’

‘He is my enemy and he means to harm you to force me to serve him,’ I said.

She put a hand on my arm, and the gesture was warmer than her words had been. ‘He may intend to harm me and then to harm you,’ she said. ‘But he won’t care about the consequence. He is not the kind to make a deep and subtle plan. He’s more the kind to wreak havoc and claim later it was part of a plan.’ Her smile was the same difficult glimpse of the inner woman I’d seen when she told me of her
husband. Not a smile so much as a defence. ‘I grew up with this man, William. I know him.’

‘Then he will not harm you – if you shared—’ I imagine I stammered.

She sneered. ‘Robert would sell his mother into slavery to advance his ends or satisfy his will.’

‘Someone should put him down like a dog, then’ I said.

She laughed, a true laugh, a hearty one. ‘I promised myself I would harden my heart,’ she muttered. ‘But by God, William, it gladdens me to see you. Alive. A knight.’ She shrugged. ‘Even if you have forgotten me.’

I bowed. ‘I wore your favour at the Emperor’s tournament in Krakow!’ I said. ‘I have worn your favour in battle in France and Italy.’

‘Did you wear it while you swived half the maidens of Europe?’ she asked, and her eyes were blank, and I suspect I stepped back. I knew her well enough to know that she was angry.

Then she turned her head away. ‘Pay me no heed, William.’ She put on a false smile. ‘We shall be friends and not talk of the past.’

Hot replies, defences and apologies bubbled to the top of my head, but I ignored them. By God, love can be like combat in this, that sometimes you must take a dangerous decision and live or die by the consequences.

‘We must leave,’ I said.

She looked at me.

‘Emile, believe as you like. Three months ago, you were going on pilgrimage to Jerusalem with the
Passagium Generale
.’

She shrugged. ‘A beautiful dream of another time.’

I shook my head vehemently. ‘The
Passagium
is still active. My lord Pierre Thomas is the legate, and the King of Cyprus is to command us. I have only left him these two fortnights ago at Vienna. He will be in Venice by now.’

She looked at her steward.

He looked at me. ‘I suppose it is possible that the bishop’s brother is lying,’ he said.

‘We have virtually been under siege in this house for three weeks,’ Emile admitted.

‘Why would I lie?’ I asked. ‘There are four thousand men-at-arms in and around Venice. We will cut our way to Jerusalem or die trying.’

She smiled. ‘You really have not changed, have you?’

‘Come with me!’ I said insistently.

She looked at me. ‘I was attacked in my home,’ she said carefully. ‘If I leave, I will forfeit my right to bring my attackers to trial in the courts. This is my
home
. My people have owned a piece of this rock for six hundred years, William. I do not intend to leave that to Bishop Robert and his thugs.’

I had not considered that she was, in fact, of the
haute noblesse.
‘How could he imagine he could have you killed?’ I wondered – that’s how fickle the mind can be.

‘He tried to have the bishop killed so that he could have the See of Geneva,’ the steward said. ‘That’s how all this started. The old bishop was the count’s enemy.’ He turned to his mistress. ‘I think you should go. If you trust this man, go.’

She blinked. ‘Ah, Amadeus, I long for Jerusalem with all my soul, but I am a daughter of these mountains, and I will not be beaten.’

Amadeus shook his head. ‘Take your children and go. If there are none of you left as potential hostages, we will be safe. I will get a notary, some fine plump black cock, to try your case.’ He raised an eyebrow at me. ‘Will your legate write us an indemnity?’

‘Of course!’ I said. It was against the law to seize or despoil a pilgrim or a crusader or their land or moveable property.

He looked down his long German nose at me. ‘See to it that I receive a copy with a seal,’ he said. ‘Lady, take some men-at-arms and
go
.’

Emile looked at me a moment. ‘Leave us,’ she said. ‘I thank you for your council, but I need a moment with Sir William.’

Amadeus withdrew.

When the door was closed, Emile looked at me under her lashes. ‘With my children,’ she said, ‘I will have no scandal.’

I bowed and, I suspect, protested.

‘Please give me my favour,’ she said.

I was stricken. ‘My love!’

She tapped her foot impatiently. ‘You are a fool, William. Do you imagine that I, a countess, will ride to Venice in the company of a man who openly wears a favour I gave in my misspent youth? Do you
know
what a reputation as a wanton I had at Jean le Bel’s court? I have two sons and a daughter to defend. I will not have them besmirched
with foolishness.’ She wore a look – a smile that included anger. ‘You wore my favour at Krakow. People who know me were there.’

‘Was it all foolishness?’ I asked. ‘I love you, Madame.’ Then it struck me – what she had said. ‘Oh, sweet Christ.’

‘Were you thinking of me when you made love to your Italian girl? She figures prominently in tales of your amours,’ she snapped. ‘Pamfila di Frangioni?’ She extended her hand. ‘Nay, William, it will not wash. You are a fine knight and a bad lover, and I am no prize either. So help me get to Venice and we will be friends.’

Again, I might have complained, or set her down with a rebuke – surely she had slept with her husband often enough!

But age brings a little wisdom, and my battle sense was on me. I reached under my scarlet surcoat and unpinned the worn blue scrap and knelt. ‘I am sorry I have been unworthy,’ I said, and I meant it.

She took it and laughed. ‘You really are too good to be true, William,’ she said softly.

I was old enough not to berate her, but not old enough to do what I should have done.