The Long Sword (6 page)

Di Heredia made a sound of annoyance and twirled his moustaches again.

Father Pierre looked around, for a moment more like an eagle than a dove. ‘Why now, though? When to all, the crusade seems dead?’ His eyes rested on Fra Peter’s. ‘Again?’

Di Heredia laughed. ‘Sometimes, Excellence, you are the merest child to the politics of the rotten fruit that surrounds you. Listen. The crusade was only declared to collect the tithes to pay the King of France’s ransom and to allow the Pope to recruit mercenaries for his war with the Duke of Milan. But now the Duke of Milan’s daughter will be Queen of France, yes? Now the foolish but brave King John is dead no ransom is required. Talleyrand wanted the crusade as a tool of temporal power in Italy – now he is dead.’

‘I know all of this,’ Father Pierre said simply. ‘I am a Christian, not a fool.’

‘Then you should believe, as I do, that this is God’s will!’ di Heredia said. ‘And that God can plot more thoroughly and more subtly than the Cardinal Talleyrand or the Pope of the King of France.’

Father Pierre wrinkled his nose in distaste at di Heredia’s easy blasphemy.

Di Heredia snorted. ‘King John is dead, and he has been replaced by
your
candidate, the King of Cyprus. Talleyrand is dead – who better to replace him than you? Now keep Genoa from going to war with Venice, and by Saint George and Saint Maurice, the crusade is a reality. And all the mercenaries that Talleyrand raised for war in Italy will be ours for the faith.’ He smiled like the cunning fox he was: the Pope’s version of John Hawkwood. ‘We will have to restrain the French faction. They will lose much by Talleyrand’s death.’ He leaned forward. ‘The aristocrats will not want you because you cannot be bought, and you are not one of them. There will be consequences.’ He tapped his teeth. ‘The Bishop of Cambrai has lost a great deal with Talleyrand’s death.’

Fra Peter turned to look at his brother-knight. ‘Tell us?’

‘Robert, the Bishop of Cambrai, went straight to the Pope on word of the death of Talleyrand.’ He made a face. ‘I would wager a donkey against a warhorse he asked for command of the crusade, to take the soldiers for himself and his family.’

Well might you wince, monsieur. That was Avignon. That was our crusade.

No one even mentioned the Turks.

Juan was attacked. It began to seem as if we were being targeted.

Anne told me that the Bishop of Cambrai was intending to have a magnificent audience with the Pope. ‘He thinks he will command the crusade,’ she whispered to me.

‘Who the hell is he?’ I asked. I suspect I nuzzled her neck or tried to move on to other matters.

‘The Count of Geneva’s son, the Count of Savoy’s nephew …’ She shrugged, which made her nipples move against my chest, and we moved on from church politics to other matters.

Another day of carrying messages for Father Pierre, and Anne told me we were to have an audience with the Pope. She laughed as she shrugged out of her shift. ‘Do other girls talk about leaves and flowers and poetry?’ she asked. ‘I feel I have gone from being your light of love to your spy.’

Of course I assured her of my ardour.

She shrugged. ‘You’ll leave me soon enough,’ she said. ‘Your Father Pierre has an audience with the Pope. May I tell you something serious? Your Father Pierre … people love him. But no one in Avignon can imagine how he has come to win the Pope’s ear.’ She leaned over me. ‘Would you – could you – arrange for him to bless me?’

The path of love and lechery is never a straight one.

The next afternoon, I took a pair of scrolls to the Carmelite house, and another across the city to one of the Roman cardinals. I knew I was followed, and I was growing very careful. When I returned to the Hospital, I had time with Father Pierre. We prayed together, and he showed me a meditation that I still use with my beads, and then he asked me if I wished to confess.

I am a poor liar. It is one of my best virtues, I think. I confessed Anne, and begged him to shrive her.

He shrugged. ‘I would bless her soul for her own sake, but for yours I will demand that you not sin with her again,’ he said. He didn’t smile, but there was a smile in his voice. ‘The sins of the young,’ he said softly.

On the eleventh of June, we were summoned to the papal palace for an audience with the Pope – Urban II, a French Benedictine whom I have mentioned before.

The last time I’d had an audience with the Pope, I’d stood in a dull brown cote and clean hose and had tried to listen to what my betters discussed while I looked at the wonders of the ceiling over my head and the rich frescoes on the walls.

Since then, I’d been to Italy and seen enough frescoes to dull the edge of my wonder. And men in their twenties are critical of everything; I was, by then, a hardened man of the world, and I looked at the frescoes with less awe and more judgement.

A pity. The awe was more worthy. I have the knowledge to judge a lance strike, a sword thrust, or the placement of a battery of gonnes, but I’ve never painted a stroke.

This time, I stood in the Pope’s audience chamber in harness, with the red surcoat adorned with the white cross over my armour, and a small shield with my own coat-armour in the right quadrant: a knight-volunteer of the Order. I wore gold spurs and a gold belt of plaques and a sword. I’m quite sure that I looked very fine, perhaps finer than Fra Peter, whose scarlet surcoat had seen more wear and who eschewed the earthly vanity of a gold belt. I was not as splendid as Lord Grey, and Miles Stapleton rivalled me, but that only meant that our party looked martial and, at least in my memory, puissant. Sister Marie-Therese wore black, as did the two priests of Father Pierre’s entourage, one Scottish Hospitaller priest, Father Hector, and one Italian, Father Maurice.

And then there was Fiore, in his plain harness and red coat. But we’d brushed him and mended him and I’d put him in my second-best doublet, and his golden hair made him look like a military saint.

Father Pierre, who was, of course, a bishop, nonetheless knelt and kissed the Pope’s ring and there was a low murmur between them. Juan, my friend, the great Juan di Heredia’s nephew, winked at me. He, too, was resplendent in gold and scarlet and harness, and as he was apparently the richest of the lot of us, he, too, glittered. In his case, he had a superb sword worth ten of mine, and a single ring with a ruby that was worth more than my warhorse and my harness.

Altogether, we made up Father Pierre’s entourage. We were his household, and we’d been gathered for the crusade. Father Pierre was the least resplendent – despite being the Archbishop of distant Crete, he wore his Carmelite habit, and his plain dress was echoed by the Pope himself, who wore a magnificent chasuble over his plain Benedictine habit.

As Father Pierre kissed the Pope’s ring, I saw that Fra di Heredia was also in harness, and that he held a magnificent white banner embroidered in gold. He was the Pope’s standard bearer.

I think it was seeing the standard that made it all real. I had heard the talk. I’d been present for the negotiation. But Anne gave odds on the
Passagium Generale
, the crusade, being cancelled. Fra Peter was more cynical than I’d ever heard him, decrying the waste of time and money and manpower that had allowed the movement to be delayed and delayed.

But now, it was happening. One of the papal secretaries read out a scroll, and my Latin was good enough to make out that Father Pierre had just been promoted to be Patriarch of Constantinople.

A sigh went through the hall. It is an empty see, an appointment without a church, because, of course, the Emperor of Constantinople was a schismatic, a follower of the Greek heresy. But the appointment said
everything.
We were going on crusade to take Jerusalem, and I had heard rumours that we would go to Constantinople – or that the Emperor would join us. Why else appoint a Patriarch?

And then, in his slow, elegant French, the Pope appointed Father Pierre the papal legate. Legates were the commanders of the ancient legions of mighty Rome, and it was difficult to see the slight figure of my spiritual father, shoulders bent like a peasant’s, as the military commander of the legions of Christ.

But Lord Grey was summoned and appointed the Gonfalonier – the standard bearer – of the legate. And Fra di Heredia placed the papal banner in his hands.

We bowed, and one by one we filed in front of the Pope, and he blessed us. When I bent to kiss the hem of his garment, he placed his crozier on my shoulder.

‘I remember you,’ the old man said.

I raised my head.

‘Pierre, you seem to have a taste for Englishmen,’ he said.

Father Pierre laughed. ‘Perhaps they have a taste for me,’ he said. ‘But they are very brave.’

‘You had the smell of a routier when last I saw you, young man,’ the Pope said.

It is not easy to make a witty remark to the most powerful man in the world while you kneel at his feet in eighty pounds of armour. My memory is that I grunted.

‘Well, well. Go with God, my son. I am pleased to see you are a knight, and still a volunteer. Will you go on this crusade?’ Pope Urban II asked me.

‘Holy Father, I will,’ I managed.

He smiled. ‘There,’ he said to Father Pierre. ‘One soul saved, if we lose the rest.’ He put his whole hand on my head and blessed me.

I suppose we stood around for a long time, but I don’t remember it. What I do remember is Fra Peter listening to a page, one of the Order’s, I believe. I saw him stiffen, and I knew what that meant.

The Order has signals, hand signals, we use in the field. He made one to me, then.

The signal meant ‘
A l’arm
e
!’

We were forced to stand on the steps of the palace by the arrival of prelate with an enormous retinue – a hundred men-at-arms and fifty religious – and I think that we were all relieved to be out of the palace. Father Pierre was silent, already, I think, planning his next step. Fra Peter was looking out over the plaza. I had loosened my sword in its sheath and checked my dagger.

Juan shook his head on the steps and hit me lightly with his beautiful gloves. ‘I look like an angel come to earth, but the Pope talks to you!’

Juan thought his voice was low, but Father Pierre stopped and looked up. He was a small, slim man and his wool robes all almost buried him, but his smile pierced like a Turk’s arrow. ‘Juan, do you know the story of the prodigal son?’ he asked.

Juan shifted. ‘Excellency, I spoke only in jest.’

Father Pierre – really, the Patriarch and legate was far too powerful a man to be called ‘Pater’ – nodded. ‘Listen, the Pope rejoices, as he should, in the redemption of a single sinner.’

Juan looked at me. ‘Perhaps Fiore and I should commit more sins,’ he said.

‘Be ready,’ Fra Peter hissed.

Fiore turned and loosened his sword. Juan looked at me.

Fra Peter was just raising a hand for silence when we saw the men-at-arms of the prelate’s entourage approaching on the street before the palace, their flags a mixture of sable and argent on some men-at-arms and azure and argent on others, all riding behind a gonfalonier bearing a banner that bore the arms of the house of Savoy, a white cross of Saint Denis on red ground.

Is it happenstance that the great enemy of my youth bore the exact opposite of the arms of England and Saint George?

At any rate, they were on horseback, arrogant as Frenchmen, and refusing to give way to Father Pierre’s smaller retinue.

My hand tightened on my sword hilt.

I had last seen that man lying in the mud, where Fra Peter had put him with a single blow while I sat with a halter around my neck waiting to die.

The Bourc Camus. He hadn’t changed. That is, he was clean, neat, and his eyes passed over us with obvious contempt. ‘Clear the steps, priest,’ he ordered the papal legate. ‘Your betters have need of them.’

The magnificent knight to his left on the caparisoned horse, in crisp dark blue embroidered with silver – that was the Count d’Herblay.

D’Herblay didn’t see me at all. His eyes were on his kinsman (not that I knew that at the time), the Bishop of Geneva.

But the Bourc’s eyes came back to me.

There is a great deal of worldly satisfaction in the shock of an enemy. He was dismayed and I rejoiced.

But I was no longer so very young, nor so afraid of all the world. Or perhaps I was simply inside the warm aura of my priest, and thus immune from the anger of Satan’s messenger.

I smiled at him.

He was surrounded by his own men, and in the entourage of a prince of the church – if Robert of Geneva did not yet have the cardinal’s hat, he would. Anne had told me that he was superbly rich in his own right, commanded all his family’s connections, and was, in addition, one of the best minds the church had produced in twenty years.

The bishop was craning his head to see what had disturbed his arrival; he was in a chair, carried by eight liveried men. He was quite young, with a bulbous nose and no chin to speak of. His eyes were wide set, and seemed to question everything.

By my side, Fra Peter said ‘Do
not
draw.’

I had already used my thumb to break the seal of sword to scabbard. I had slid the sword an inch free, ready to pull her free, all without any conscious thought. This, on the steps of the papal palace.

And yet I was not so far wrong.

The Bourc was still mounted. So was d’Herblay.

I could tell from the set of his mouth and the movement of his eyes that he recognised Father Pierre. And remembered him and his role. But more – his eyes kept going back to my priest, and I thought of di Heredia’s warnings.

‘Clear this hedge priest off the steps,’ he shouted to his men-at-arms.

Then a great many things happened at once. All of us, even the nun, closed in around Father Pierre. We were his bodyguard and, even then, we had already begun to practice how we would defend him, if it came to fighting: on the crusade, of course. It had not occurred to any of us that we’d defend him from an animal like Camus on the steps of the papal palace, but we locked up around him in a few heartbeats.