The Long Sword (5 page)

He went off to hear Mass, and I went to my little cell. I collected the letters and jogged out the gate, down the same alley …

I saw the movement out of the corner of my right eye.

The smaller one had a heavy dagger in his right fist, point down, the way most men use a dagger, and he thrust at my head as he leaped. But he’d played this game before – he was a leering bastard with scars, and I saw all that by the flicker of the torches on the Hospital gate.

As I ducked and pivoted to face him, I raised my left hand to ward the blow, and he flowed around it, changing his blow to the other side, a backhand, descending blow at my right temple.

And four weeks practice on the road paid off in one heartbeat.

Unbidden, my right hand rose and covered his right wrist as my left hand passed close to my face, warding me from his point, and in fact he struck his point into the palm of my right hand because I was slow and it was dark, but I was already flowing on, ignoring the pain. My right hand gripped his, and my left rose, the point slipped out of my flesh, and I grabbed the blade and pushed at it, my fingers clumsy with blood and pain, but the grapple on his right wrist and the turning motion did its work and he let go the dagger as I spun him out and to my left, passing my left foot behind his, breaking his arm at the elbow and then throwing him to the ground, a foot on his arm, and his own dagger into his throat.

But there were three of them.

The other two had hung back, and I didn’t go to the ground with the small man, but killed him with my back straight and my head up, so I saw the next pair come.

They had cudgels.

Cudgels are not to be spat on, friends. A stout oak branch can break a sword or turn a spear, and a strong man can break your arm right through your harness or break your head. Two big men with cudgels are long odds.

‘He killed Jacques,’ the nearest man said, as if I’d done him a favour.

The other man spat.

Both of them flipped their cudgels from hand to hand.

They didn’t even ask me for money.

I settled my weight, and as the nearer of the two tossed his cudgel again, I struck.

He missed his grab at the cudgel, and he was stabbed. I used the blade in his body as a lever to move his weight into his friend’s path – if such men have friends – and I left the dagger there and passed with my right foot, and the screaming man collapsed over his partner’s blade in his chest, and the last of them cut at me and missed.

We were at an impasse.

He swung at me, half-hearted swipes from out of distance. And then he began backing away, and I followed him.

He was no fool. A soon as I followed him, he stepped in and swung.

I was ready and in time, and I stepped off line and avoided the blow, turning him.

He cut again, angry and afraid.

I moved with the blow, followed it, and caught his wrist; he pulled back sharply, and I rammed his elbow over his own head and threw him to the ground.

My own dagger, which I hadn’t drawn, flowed into my hand.

I was standing on his wrist, as the Order taught, and as I had lowered my weight my knee may have already cracked a rib or two.

But I’d just had an interview with Father Pierre, I had other things on my mind, and I’d just killed two men.

I put my knife at his throat. ‘Saint John commands you to change your life,’ I said. I rose, sheathed my dagger while watching him, and walked away down the alley. The second man was already dead – my stab to the heart had indeed gone straight in.

I prayed.

I didn’t see the third man get up. But I was aware, painfully aware, that I had killed two men. Letting the third live was a poor consolation to the other two. And yet …

My hands shook.

My hands were still shaking when I reached the tavern. It is odd that always I react in fear after a fight is over. Sometimes, especially if there is a crowd, I’m terrified before a fight. Luckily, the fear never gets into my head
while
I’m fighting. But by the time I made it back to the table with the priests, I could barely walk, and my breathing was shallow.

I took a sip of wine and had to go outside and throw up my dinner.

Glorious. All glorious. Isn’t it?

I expected Juan or Fiore to come find me, crouched in abject misery by the stables, but it was Anne who came with a cup of soft cider and a hot, wet cloth.

‘I’m sorry, my sweet,’ I said.

She smiled. In fact, I think I scared her. ‘What happened?’

‘Men attacked me.’ I drank the cider and it stayed down.

‘Did they abuse you? Take your purse?’ She put a hand to my head in the way of mothers the world over.

‘No,’ I said. ‘I killed them.’

She didn’t know what to say to that, so she said nothing, being wise. After a while, Juan leaned out the door of the inn and then came out and saw me, saw Anne, and bowed. ‘Ah, Sir William, the priests must be abed, and crave your letters.’

When I passed him, he had the good grace to say ‘Sorry, Brother!’ Juan was never a prude about women. And he knew Anne from before.

But I bowed to Anne and mumbled something, used her cloth to wipe my face, and went inside, where I managed to say something civil to the two Scotsmen, one from Hexham, and one from the Western Isles, a place called Mull, which seemed such a commonplace name that it made me laugh. But, according to him, there’s a great monastery there, and a nunnery, out on the very edge of the Great Western Ocean. Truly, God is great.

As it proved, they were passing so close to John Hughes’ home that they engaged him as a guard and thus got him on their French passport, solving all of his travel problems. The Scots are far more popular in France than the English.

I hugged him. ‘Go well,’ I said, and I gave him twenty gold florins.

‘Christ, I can buy a new farm for that,’ he said. ‘Milady gave me the same,’ he admitted.

I shrugged. ‘You’ve kept us both alive. I’ll think of you, sitting by your fireside in whatever godforsaken hamlet in which you settle. Go be a farmer and forget your wicked ways.’

Hughes grinned then and we hugged, and hugged.

‘To think I almost killed you in an inn yard,’ he said.

‘No, I almost killed you!’ I answered, and we both laughed.

‘Make me a promise?’ he asked.

I nodded.

‘If you see Richard Musard, kick him in the crotch for what he did to Milady, and then help him up. For me. I miss him.’

John Hughes shrugged as if he couldn’t help himself. ‘Good fortune out east, Sir Knight. Come to Kentmere and tell my children tales of the wars.’

‘All right, John. I will,’ I said. ‘Go in God’s grace and stay safe across France.’

I awoke the next morning and had no idea where I was, but my companion smelled like lavender and spices. I looked down at her when she rolled towards me, and she was Anne, and I was in her garret room in the inn, which meant her three friends were shivering out in the narrow hall or under the eaves.

She leaned over; we were on a pallet of linen filled with new straw, and it smelled healthy and wholesome, as Anne did. She drank water from a pitcher and gave it to me: it had mint leaves in it and I remember that trick still. Her breasts were heavy, white against her brown arms, and the mere sight of them aroused me, despite my painful awareness that I had just broken my oath. In fact, my cheek hurt.

I’ve known many a witty titbit exchanged between lovers at this point, the first sally of the morning so to speak; I’ve heard recriminations and I’ve heard love babble.

She lay back, unworried by her nudity. ‘A girl does prefer a soldier to a priest,’ she said. She rubbed a hand over the muscle in my belly. ‘Do you know that Cardinal Talleyrand is dead?’

Cardinal Talleyrand had been appointed the Cardinal Legate of the crusade. He was leading it, and he was paying for a great deal of it. He intended to be Pope, after all.

Women are different from men in this way, I think. She was already flushed – I won’t go into details – but she intended to start our day as we’d ended the last, and yet she could talk church politics with me.

I could see nothing but her lips, her nipples, the sharp line of her side where it met her hip.

At some point another girl pounded on the wooden partition. ‘Stop your lechery and let us dress or we’ll all be beaten!’ she said.

Anne responded by pushing her hips up into mine and making a little emphatic noise.

‘Marie had a customer, a papal courier,’ she said. ‘From the coronation at Rheims,’ she went on, her voice raising a little, speaking in the rhythm of our lovemaking.

I’m sure we talked of other things. But I can’t remember them.

See now, I’ve made Monsieur Froissart blush.

Almost the first person I met outside the inn while I was still tying my points of my hose to my doublet, was Father Pierre Thomas, with Miles Stapleton.

Miles waved. ‘Did you spend the night in the inn?’ he asked. Another boy might have said it with malice, but Miles was an innocent, and he looked at me without guile.

Father Pierre winced.

‘I did,’ I said simply, having learned a variety of lessons from my time at the Hospital. ‘Father, do you know that Cardinal Talleyrand is dead?’

I hated Talleyrand – well, I disliked him, but he was in some ways the power behind Father Pierre. Pierre Thomas came from Talleyrand’s home of Perigord, and had, it was said, been a peasant on his estates. And of course, he was the papal legate for the crusade. And the next Pope, or so we all guessed.

It was one of the few times I’ve ever seen the man hesitate. Then his face took on its habitual look, his eyes calmed, and he nodded. ‘No,’ he said. ‘But this is not the place to speak of it. We were walking to the river, but now I think we will go to the Hospital.’

I had seldom seen Father Pierre agitated or walking more quickly than his determined, workman’s stride. But now he did, and when he reached the Hospital, he sent for the Baillie, the local commander, Sir Juan di Heredia, and his own staff. Miles Stapleton was there, and so was Father’s Pierre’s Latin secretary, a nun called Marie. About whom you will hear more of later. But she was an exceptional woman – she would have to be, to be the Latin secretary to the best mind the Church had produced since Aquinas. Lord Grey was also there.

‘Can the crusade survive this blow?’ Father Pierre asked.

Di Heredia shrugged. ‘And be stronger for it, truly. The King of France was always a broken reed, and Perigord (that’s what they often called Talleyrand, after his title) would have used the crusade solely to further his own ambitions.’ Now, di Heredia knew what he was about when he spoke of furthering personal ambitions – he was the most ambitious man I’d ever met, with a finger in every political pie. Related to half the crowned heads of Europe, he had been raised with the King of Aragon, and he intended to make himself Grand Master.

I see you both smile. Well, he
is
Grand Master, is he not? Forty years and more, the order was the servant of the Pope and the Doge of Genoa, eh? However much the truth hurts, let us face it. And the Catalans and the Aragonese had had enough.

But that’s another story. Suffice it to say that I sat as a belted knight and a volunteer and watched di Heredia, who had once chased me out of Provençe when he was the papal commander and I was a mere routier, a brigand. I might have hated him for that, or for his avarice and ambition, which contrasted so sharply with Father Pierre’s saintliness. But di Heredia was a fine soldier, a good knight, and it was he who had made the decision to accept me into the Order. Knowing of my past.

Enough digression. Di Heredia twirled his moustache – he was very much the Spanish grandee – and smiled, leaning one elbow on a great table that clerks used to cast accounts.

‘Now the legate will be
you
,’ he said, smiling at Father Pierre.

Father Pierre made a face. ‘I have no worldly interest,’ he said. ‘No one will make me the most powerful man on the Crusade, nor, I think, am I fit for the role. I would prefer to be the legate’s chaplain, and try and keep him to humility and God’s purpose. If a crusade is
ever
God’s purpose.’

At this, Fra Peter and di Heredia both winced.

But di Heredia leaned forward, his dark eyes twinkling. ‘I have the
interest
,’ he said. ‘My earthly king and your friend the Pope have the
interest
.’ He sat back. ‘Talleyrand was too powerful and too French. You are everyone’s priest. Will you accept?’

Father Pierre leaned back and thrust out his jaw. ‘With King John and Talleyrand both dead, surely the Pope will simply cancel the
Passagium Generale
. Or allow it to expire.’

Fra Peter glanced at me. ‘Indeed, my lords. In England last year, the Prior there told me, quite frankly, that King Edward saw the entire crusade to be a false emprise. A mummer’s play to hide the use of papal funds to pay the King of France’s ransom.’

I remembered the trip to England – a very happy time for me, as I have said. Being young and full of myself, and my sister, I’d completely missed Fra Peter’s deep disquiet. Indeed, one of the most difficult aspects of serving the Order was, and is, the divided loyalties. Fra Peter was a good Englishman. And to be told by his immediate superior, the Prior of England, that the King of England saw the crusade as a crass political manoeuvre to support the crown of France – by God, that must have hurt.

Father Pierre smiled, at me, of all people. ‘I, too, have heard this. And perhaps it was true, although I assure you, my friends in Christ, that God moves men in mysterious ways, and that a
Passagium Generale
declared falsely to support the King of France might, in the end, serve God’s will. Do you doubt it?’

Di Heredia nodded and twirled his moustaches again. ‘That’s what I hoped that you would say. I will suggest that the Pope appoint Peter of Cyprus to command the expedition, and you, my good and worthy priest, to be papal legate.’

Father Pierre’s mild blue eyes met di Heredia’s falcon’s glance. ‘As long as you and your king and the Pope understand that I have no higher interest than the will of Christ on earth, so be it,’ he said. ‘But I am not the man to listen to the Doge of Venice or the King of Aragon’s interests.’