The Long Sword (41 page)

Emile slumped back against the brick wall. ‘Oh, my God,’ she said.

I watched the king. ‘Shall I go?’ I said.

She put a hand to her face. ‘Do as you like,’ she said.

Then she burst into tears. They weren’t the loud tears women and children use to get their way, nor the sobs you hear with heartbreak. They were quiet tears, and they sparkled in the last light, which is the only way I knew for sure she was weeping.

I summoned my courage. Let me tell you, I can stand the charge of cavalry better than face a woman in tears, and I knew what I had to do without apparently being able to will my limbs to move.

Step by step I walked to her.

If I tried and failed …

I saw, in a levin-flash of the mind, that I had enjoyed my spring with her because it had no tension. Because I didn’t have to engage or risk her good opinion, or discover what she really thought, or what, or whom, she loved.

One more step.

It is one of the hardest moments in the Art of Arms, to make yourself step forward into a blow. Every sinew cries out for a retreat, with its guarantee of safety – a pass back, and the opponent’s sword whistles harmlessly through the air.

But you will seldom win a passage of arms by retreating.

If you pass forward and make your cover, you have your adversary at
abrazare
, the wrestling distance. The close distance.

I suppose it is risible to you gentleman that I saw that last step as a combat pass, but I drove forward on to my left leg with the same effort of will that I would make to face Fiore’s sword. I felt the tension in the muscles, and I raised my arms, and I put them around her shoulders, enveloping her.

She raised her eyes. Took a breath. And her head snapped round, so that she was looking, not at me, but out over the lagoon. ‘If you hadn’t come,’ she said with bitter self-knowledge, ‘I would now be in
his
arms.’

By the suffering of Christ, she was soft. Hard and soft against me.

For some time, we only breathed.

I was supposed to say something. As a knight, it was my duty to avenge my honour. But I was unmoved. I wasn’t without jealousy, but … she was in my arms.

Bah! I was not unmoved. I was uninterested in her life with the king.

‘Do you understand me, William?’ she asked.

I shrugged.

I tried to kiss her, and her lips brushed mine, but then they were gone. And yet her hands crossed behind my head and she leaned back to look at me.

‘When I was young, I was quite the wanton,’ she said.

‘So you have said,’ I put in, which may have been ungallant and was certainly unnecessary. She frowned.

‘No, listen, if you wish to kiss me. Listen.’ She stepped back, out of my arms. ‘I would kiss any boy who put his lips on mine. Any one of them who wanted me. It was enough … merely to be wanted.’

In a way, it was like the blows in the village square. Not because it should have hurt me, but only because it hurt
her.
She hated saying these things.

‘I had the reputation of a slut, and I was almost proud of it, or pretended so.’ She laughed, but the laugh was wild. ‘But my father was rich, and powerful, and made me a good marriage. To a man who held me in contempt, because I came as soiled goods to his bed.’ Now I had her eyes on me in the dying light, and now I could feel every blow as she stuck herself with words. ‘His contempt spurred me to
greater efforts.’

I wish I might have thought of something clever to say.

‘And then I met you,’ she said. She bit her lip. Slowly, she said, ‘William, I would like to say that after you … but no. I have had other lovers.’ She looked me in the eye. ‘I did not come to constancy in a single leap,’ she said with her old humour. She narrowed her eyes. ‘I find it … difficult,’ she said.

She turned away. ‘You know what would be easy? It would be easy to be your mistress. Or the king’s!
Par dieu
, I’ve never climbed such heights.’ She turned. ‘Perhaps both of you at once.’

Oh, I writhed. Women were not allowed to speak this way of love. But she was angry. I think now – but no. I will take some secrets with me.

At any rate, she smiled. ‘But at some point I had babies. And babies make changes. Do you know?’

‘Know what?’ I asked.

‘Edouard – my son.’ She smiled. ‘He is yours. D’Herblay has no idea.’ She laughed and she leaned back against the brick wall, and I didn’t care about any of it. She was the most beautiful woman I had ever known.

I had, in fact, counted months and seen a certain hint of freckles in Edouard.

‘So?’ I asked.

In a fight, there’s a moment when you throw the blow.
The
blow. And long before it hits, you savour it. When your opponent’s sword reaches for it and fails to find it, you have time, long indivisible aeons of not-time to savour the blow.

Mind you, sometimes your opponent makes his parry, and you are shocked to have such a perfect blow stolen from you.

But my studied nonchalance was the equal of her self-anger.

She turned. Slapped me playfully. ‘I’m pouring out my soul!’ she said.

I looked out over the waters. ‘Just tell me when I can kiss you,’ I said. ‘I’ll listen until then.’

She choked. I can’t say whether she sobbed or laughed. Perhaps both.

Then she shook her head. ‘I think that I am asking you not to kiss me,’ she said. ‘I believe my choices resolve down to none, or many. I choose none.’ She looked at me under her lashes. ‘Why are you not disgusted? The king would be disgusted.’

‘Only after he was finished,’ I said. I smiled. ‘At least, if he’s like Nerio.’

‘Yes,’ Emile said. She smiled slowly. ‘You understand? Truly?’

I shrugged. ‘I have been some dark places. All I hear you say is that you, too, have been to them.’

She shuddered. ‘And you?’

I frowned. ‘Emile, I have killed men for money.’ I turned, getting my back to the wall. As if it was a fight. Perhaps it was. ‘You know what I have gained from Father Pierre? A sense of my own sin.’ I smiled. ‘And I’m mortally certain that if you put the bastard who took my horse in front of me tomorrow, I’d cut his throat.’

Her mouth twitched.

‘So what penance shall I assign myself, when I know the next sin is just at the end of my sword?’ I asked and took a chance. I put my lips on hers, left them long enough to be sure, and then stepped back. ‘I love you. Would you prefer to wait for marriage?’

‘You’ll kill my husband so that you might marry me?’ she asked. She met my eye with her head half turned, and I think her amusement was genuine. ‘I don’t think we will be able to count on Father Pierre for that wedding.’

She made me laugh. Christ as my Saviour.

Because the answer was –
yes.

The next day, after training with the Order, I was summoned by de Mézzières. As I expected, I was left alone with the king.

He motioned to me to rise from my deep bow. ‘Is a certain lady under your protection?’ he asked.

I think I laughed. ‘I doubt that she needs my protection,’ I said.

The king grinned. ‘
Par dieu
, monsieur, you are a man after my own heart. When this is done, come to Cyprus. I will give you lands and men, and you can one of my lords.’

You still won’t get Emile in your bed
, I thought.

ALEXANDRIA

1365

We sailed in early July. My body was healed, and I left behind me my revenge on d’Herblay, my fears for the Bishop of Geneva, my new-found love of Venice, and my hatred of Genoa. I had had this experience before, leaving London to go to France. War is always a sea voyage – if you return, everything is changed. Even you.

We had perhaps four thousand men-at-arms, the cream and the riff-raff of all the men-at-arms in Europe that summer. We had the best of the Italian knights and many of the best French professionals; there was a rumour, right until we sailed, that du Guesclin would join us, and I wished for him. We had some very good English knights, as I have said before, and a surprising number of Scots and Irish – not that I can always tell the two apart. But the Leslies had brought men from the isles west of Scotland. They were, every one of them, as good as Kenneth MacDonald and his brother and Colin Campbell.

Mostly, we had the scrapings of Poitou and Gascony, desperate men in armour whose outward rust belied the state of their souls, their purses, and their general discipline. Yet these same men were as tough as old saddle leather and as careless of danger and pain – vicious old mongrels who would bite any hand if paid. What the masters seemed to ignore is how they behaved when
not
paid.

But just then, between Venice, Cyprus, the Pope and the Accaioulo, we had gold.

Sabraham used some of the gold to buy informers within the brigands, so that we might work out any plots against the legate. He was thorough, and he trusted no one. Even me. Later, as you will hear, he shared some information with me, when he had no choice.

Ah, Chaucer. You know Sabraham, eh?

Later, in June, I heard that there had been a mysterious riot among the Gascons, and three men had died – with crossbow shafts in their heads. An odd sort of riot; Sabraham’s sort.

We left the lagoon, and loaded the ships, and I relaxed.

After all, we only had to fight the Saracens.

After a day at sea, it became clear to me that our hosts, the Venetians, had very different goals than the Pope, the legate, or the king. This didn’t surprise me unduly; I was a professional soldier, and I was aware that employers were often at odds with their own soldiers over strategy – but having Nerio in the next hammock on board the
Saint Niccolò
gave me direct access to his Florentine perspective on the Venetians and the Genoese, the Pope and the French. He knew more of Venetian policy than Ser Matteo Corner, who commanded our magnificent galley. Every night, whether we were in one of the small ports of the Adriatic or nestled stern first on a beach cooking on the hard-packed gravel, we’d debate the possible targets of the crusade.

Miles Stapleton assumed we’d go directly from the rendezvous at Rhodes to assault Jaffa, the port for Jerusalem. He described this one night, and Fra Peter laughed aloud. He was sitting on a folding stool, checking the leather straps on his harness and rubbing oil into them to protect them against the salt air.

‘Jaffa isn’t so much a port as an open beach,’ he said. ‘It’s unprotected in bad weather.’

Miles nodded. ‘Ah, but God will provide us good weather. And it is the closest port to Jerusalem.’

Fra Peter shook his head. ‘We need a good port where we can take water and food; a port that can be defended from the Egyptian fleet.’

One of the French Hospitallers looked up from his own armour. ‘Acre?’ he asked.

The older men debated Acre and Tyre, both ports that had been held by Christians, almost within living memory. Acre had fallen almost eighty years before, to the Mamluks. Tyre had been lost through infighting and sheer foolishness.

I had never even seen a map of the Holy Land. I suppose that I thought of the world as a vast plate with Jerusalem at its centre, and I assumed that, like any great city, it would be easy to reach.

Fra Peter scratched his chin and went back to his leather. But another night, in a waterfront taverna on Corfu, he sat tapping his teeth
with his thumb, clearly impatient at my poor geography. He took the hulls of pistachios for cities and used wine to draw coastlines.

‘Look,’ he said, as much to me as to Miles or Lord Grey. We were all shockingly ignorant of the Levant. ‘This is Anatolia, which juts like a sore thumb out of Asia. Two hundred years ago it was all in the hands of the Greeks and many Greeks live there yet. Here’s Greece and Romania … here’s Venice.’ He drew the coastlines in broad sweeps. ‘Under Anatolia’s thumb, the coast of Syria runs almost straight south.’ He placed pistachios. ‘Here is Venice, up in the armpit of the Adriatic. Here’s old Athens, out at the end of Greece. Here’s Constantinople, where Asia and Europe meet. The Dardanelles, the Pontic Sea, the Bosporus, the Euxine, which is ruled by Genoa and the Bulgarians, these days. Here to the south of the Dardanelles are a mess of Greek islands, some held by the schismatic Greeks, some by the Genoese, and a few by our Order – Lesvos, Chios, Rhodos. South on the coast of Asia-Syria is Tyre. South of Tyre is Acre. South of Acre is the open beach of Jaffa near Jerusalem.’ Fra Peter clicked down the last city, and a silence fell.

Matteo Corner was nodding along. There were twenty of us sitting in the July heat, most of us the legate’s men. Corner put a finger on the pistachio hull for Jerusalem. ‘You have been?’ Corner asked.

‘I’ve made a dozen caravans,’ Fra Peter said. ‘It is the ultimate duty of our Order, to escort pilgrims to Jerusalem.’

Corner smiled cynically. ‘I have been as well.’ He shrugged.

His shrug was dismissive, and I was as shocked as if he’d blasphemed. ‘Surely, messire, it is a fine city?’

Fra Peter sighed. ‘Do not confuse the earthly Jerusalem with the Heavenly, young William. The earthly city is neither very large nor very holy. And it’s only trade is the pilgrim trade.’

But Fiore leaned forward. ‘And then comes Africa?’ he asked, tracing the outline of the Syrian coast in red wine on the table.

Matteo Corner nodded. ‘Yes. This triangle is the Sinai.’

I had a pleasant shock. To hear the names of places from the Bible as real landmarks!

Corner kept sketching. ‘This is the Nile delta. The delta is enormous – a hundred leagues across, with several cities and three or four navigable branches. This is Cairo, where the Sultan lives, here at the
base of the delta. Here is Alexandria.’ He placed another pistachio. ‘Here is Damietta, where Saint Louis met defeat.’

Alexandria. If Jerusalem was the holiest city in the world, Alexandria was the greatest, founded by the mighty conqueror himself on the burning sands of Africa. I had grown to manhood listening to the Romance of Alexander; indeed, there were men singing verses from it in the fleet. And in Sienna, in Genoa, in Venice and in Verona we heard constantly from merchants who had sailed there of it’s fine harbour and magnificent waterfront, of the power of the Sultan, the ancient library and lighthouse, the early Christian churches now used by heretics.

Matteo Corner shook his head. ‘When I first saw Alexandria, I thought I was seeing the heavenly Jerusalem,’ he said. ‘It must be ten times the size of Venice.’

Fra Peter nodded. ‘You could fit London in it over and over,’ he said. ‘The whole of the new city is walled, and the walls have forty great gates, and every one of them as well-fortified as the gate castles of London, or better.’

Sabraham nodded. ‘Their customs take is greater than the whole income of the order,’ he said. ‘I know.’

Nerio leaned back. ‘Have you gentlemen read any of the crusading manuals?’

It turned out that most of the Knights of the Order had, although I had not. I had read Llull, though.

Fra Jean, a Provençal knight, nodded, and leaned forward eagerly. ‘Saint Louis thought the same as the author, that the Holy Land could only be conquered by way of Egypt.’

Fra Peter said nothing, but tapped his teeth with his thumb and stared at the candle on the table.

Nerio smiled his careful smile. He flicked a look at me and when he spoke his voice dripped with an entirely false adolescent innocence. ‘Is it possible we will attack Alexandria?’ he asked.

I thought Fra Peter might break his teeth, he tapped them so hard.

Fra Jean shrugged. ‘We do not have the men, even if we had God’s fortune and the best knights in the world, to take Alexandria.’

Lord Grey, who was usually the most reticent of English gentlemen, leaned forward with enthusiasm. ‘I believe, gentlemen, that with such a legate and such a king to lead us, we might accomplish something.’

Fra Ricardo Caracciolo joined us and added his weight to the argument. ‘The best crusade launched in a hundred years – and we will fall like a lightning bolt wherever we land,’ he said.

Fra Peter glanced at me. ‘What happened when you attacked Florence last year, Sir William?’ he asked.

I was knighted
. But I knew where his thoughts lay. ‘We had fewer than four thousand men-at-arms, and we assaulted the barricades,’ I said.

Every head turned.

‘We seized the barricades of one gate, and held them for a time,’ I went on. ‘But Florence is a city with fifty thousand men in her, and so great that we could not be serious about a siege; we could not surround her walls, nor seriously threaten her. Had her population sallied, we might all have been taken or killed.’ I smiled at Ser Nerio, because I knew the Florentine had been present.

He laughed. ‘Indeed, unless one was told that the English were at the gates, it was hard to know. Farmers brought their goods, the wine was cheap, and the money markets almost unaffected.’ He shrugged and smiled at me. ‘I mean no offence.’

‘None taken,’ I said.

Fra Peter nodded. ‘But this is what I meant. Six thousand men do not even offer a threat to a city of a hundred thousand or more. I suspect even Acre is out of our reach. We might do better seizing a city or two on the Asian shore to secure the Order’s islands.’

Nerio smiled cynically. ‘The king would like that,’ he said.

Fra Peter narrowed his eyes.

Nerio shrugged. ‘The King of Cyprus has made his reputation seizing small Turkish ports in Cilician Armenia and the Levant,’ he said. ‘It is good for Cyprus, good for
trade
.’ He sighed, blowing out his cheeks theatrically. ‘You needn’t worry – Alexandria is safe from the force of our arms. Genoa is sending a contingent, and Genoa is the Sultan’s ally. The Genoese would never allow us to attack Egypt.’

Indeed, the Genoese contingent did not meet us at Corfu, as they had promised, but sailed for the Peloponnesus and thence to the Genoese possessions on the coast of Asia. We discovered this while lying in a small port on the west coast of the Morea, my first visit to Greece.

It was fine country, with rich farms and splendid weather, if hotter than a blacksmith’s shop, yet dry and with a breeze. And Nerio took us all to see the ruins of an ancient temple close by the beach where out ships floated.

When we returned to the beach, several of the Venetian ships were like beehives for their activity. Venetian oarsmen are citizens, and they camp on shore under awnings when they can, and it takes time to unrig these awnings.

I found Fra Peter with the legate and the king. He waved me to him, and I approached them, made my bows, and received Father Pierre’s warm smile as a reward.

‘The very man,’ Fra Peter said.

Lord Contarini was one of the two Venetian admirals in charge of the ships. He was remarkably old for a knight, with one eye milk white, a long brown scar across his forehead and wispy white hair. He was sixty-five years old. He turned his good eye on me.

Father Pierre caught my hand. ‘Listen, Sir William. The Turks are at sea – indeed, they have taken a series of towns facing Negroponte. A Venetian colony.’

Contarini laughed. ‘Not a colony, or I’d have more authority there. An ally.’

Fra Peter nodded. ‘Be that as it may, the Venetians feel that they need to—’

Father Pierre shook his head gently. ‘Venice, the Emperor of the East and the Pope have a treaty for the mutual protection of Christians in the East,’ Father Pierre said. ‘I helped to negotiate this treaty, and now, I’m afraid, we need to give it some …’ he paused.

‘Teeth,’ snapped the King of Cyprus and Jerusalem. He grinned at me. ‘The Venetians would like to take their galley fleet and sweep for the Turks. They swear they will still make the rendezvous at Rhodes.’

‘What of the pilgrims? And the soldiers?’ I asked. In fact, I cared little for the mercenaries in the holds of the great Venetian round ships, packed like armoured cordwood. But I was worried about Emile, who was aboard one of the two ships that carried non-combatants, most of whom were wives of the crusaders.

King Peter nodded. ‘They should go the shortest route to Rhodes, my lords.’ He glanced at me. ‘The Venetians don’t want to pay the routiers. So they won’t take them to relieve Negroponte.’

Ah, Christendom. We had an army of excellent professional soldiers under our hatches, but Venice didn’t want to pay. Venice wanted the Pope to pay.

I bowed to Fra Peter. Very softly, I said, ‘I can’t see how this involves me, Sir Peter.’

He scratched under his chin, thought the better of it in such august company, and looked at Father Pierre. And tapped his teeth with his thumb.

The legate nodded his head to Lord Contarini.

The elderly Venetian sighed. ‘
Misericordia
! You
gentilhommes
would like the Serenissima to pay your mercenaries, and I, too, would like such an army, but I have not been given a ducat. I am commanding the largest fleet that Venice has one the seas, and if you gentlemen,’ he nodded to me, ‘would
volunteer
, I believe that I could run the Turks out of the Ionian. At least for long enough to cover the rendezvous of the allied fleet at Rhodes.’ He shrugged. ‘If they are left uncontested, surely it is to the disadvantage of all of us?’

‘There is the Roman fleet at Constantinople,’ the legate put in.

‘Six
galia sottil
,’ Contarini said with something like contempt. ‘In bad repair. They will cower inside the Golden Horn until their brothers, the Genoese, come to rescue them.’