The Long Sword (9 page)

‘I’m not,’ said a man from behind Fra Peter. ‘Vowed to poverty. Ser Peter Mortimer, how fare you?’

The man addressing my knight was one of the handsomest men I ever saw, despite being more than half a century old, as I later discovered. He was also one of the most richly dressed men I’d ever seen, as out of place in the cloister of Bologna as a nun in a Cheapside chophouse. He wore a green silk pourpoint, stuffed and quilted, with a band of gold at each wrist and a collared shirt that emerged from the collar of his pourpoint like a white flower, a fashion I’d never seen before. He also wore a sword, which was unheard of in Bologna; a longsword, the kind that Fiore favoured, gilded steel on the cross guard and a jewel in the pommel, which was a wheel of gold. His hose were gold and green, and he wore a profusion of gold rings and a gold collar that matched the gold plaques on his belt.

He and Fra Peter embraced like old comrades. In fact, I discovered that this prince and Fra Peter
were
old comrades.

‘Let me buy you some saddles,’ he said. ‘Peter, it is the least I can do.’

Fra Peter shook his head. ‘Nicolas, I could not.’

‘We accept!’ I said, leaping to my feet. I had on my own plaque belt, the heavy belt that showed my status as a knight. Mine was silver with heavy gilding, and was worth roughly the price of my ransom: that’s what we used to say they were for. I realised that I looked incongruous – knights don’t sit about repairing horse tack and mule saddles.

But the prince took no heed. ‘Here’s a man of sense – your squire, I doubt not?’

Fra Peter raised an eyebrow. ‘No one’s squire, my lord. This is Sir William Gold—’

‘Ha! The Cook!’ cried the prince. ‘But I know of you, of course! Knighted at Florence, attacking my home city! My bastard brother wrote and told me every cut, every blow. He said you were the best
caveliere
he had ever seen.’

Too much praise can be as confusing as an insult. ‘My lord has the better of me,’ I said, a little stiffly.

‘Ah, my pardon!’ he bowed.

Fra Peter laughed. ‘William, this is the richest man in the world and one of the best knights I’ve ever met. Ser Niccolò Acciaioli, of Florence. And Naples. And the Morea?’

‘I am no longer Baillie,’ Acciaioli said. ‘I remain Count of Melfi.’ He raised his eyebrows. ‘A fine accomplishment for a man who started as a baker’s errand boy, eh?’

‘I started a cook, my lord baron,’ I said. Acciaioli seemed to boil with energy and good humour, and I had to like him. His neat pointed beard and perfectly groomed hair were the height of Italianate fashion. His eyes were large, and almost never serious.

‘So this is true?’ Acciaioli took my arm. ‘I think we are both the better for humble origins. Eh? Do you love chivalry? My heart says you do.’

This man was an assault on the senses: rich, quick of wit, brilliant – and penetrating. ‘Yes,’ I said.

‘He’s not easy to share a campfire with, either,’ Fra Peter said. ‘Has Father Pierre brought you here?’

Ser Niccolò shrugged. ‘I could make excuses, but yes. My Lady Queen has sent me with some letters of support, and I will arrange some funds.’ He smiled at me. ‘Do you like to spend money, Messire Le Coq?’

‘At least as much as any banker I’ve ever met,’ I said.

Ser Niccolò laughed. ‘Well struck. Although let me tell you that in my family, they think my talent for spending gold a fault, not a virtue.’

Fra Peter interrupted him to introduce the other squires. He embraced Juan. ‘I know your uncle,’ he said. ‘You must be close to your knighting?’

Juan blushed to the roots of his hair.

Ser Niccolò looked at Fra Peter.

Fra Peter shrugged. ‘It hasn’t been talked of, but he is ready.’

I felt like a fool – I had been knighted and I hadn’t thought about Juan.

Miles Stapleton bowed to the Florentine. ‘Messire is a famous knight,’ he said. ‘I have heard of your exploits in Greece from my father.’

Ser Niccolò made a face and grinned. ‘It is good to be both handsome
and
rich
and
good at arms,’ he said. He laughed. ‘Come,
i miei amici
. Let us go to the streets of Bologna and see the papal legate’s retinue better equipped.’

Fra Peter caught at his trailing sleeve. ‘Niccolò!’ he said in rapid Italian, ‘You shame us! We can raise the funds for saddles.’

Niccolò put a hand to Fra Peter’s cheek, an intensely familiar gesture, even from a Florentine. ‘By God, if I buy you a saddle for every time you saved my worthless life, I would still be the richest man in Bologna when I was done, and you would be buried in Cordoba leather. Eh? So let us hear no more piss.’ He looked at me. ‘Tell me, English Knight. What are the seven virtues of Chivalry?’

I nodded. ‘
Preux
!’ I said. ‘Loyalty to my lord, Faith in Christ Jesus, Prowess on the field of battle, Love of a Lady, Courage to face the foe, Generosity to all, Mercy to my foes and to the weak.’

‘Well said,’ Ser Niccolò said. ‘So when I practice generosity, is it enough if I give a few pennies to the poor? Listen, if a poor knight gives half his cloak to the poor, he gives more than I live when I buy you saddles.’

‘You argue like a Dominican,’ Fra Peter said.

Niccolò Acciaioli fluttered his eyelashes. ‘But of course! I was to have been a Dominican!’ He winked at me. ‘Only the chastity was lacking.’

So the richest man in Italy took us out into a Bologna evening.

He was joined at the gates of the palace by a retinue of men-at-arms, a dozen, all well dressed. He had a squire dressed in his heraldic colours and his entire retinue wore his badge, so that they made a glittering parade.

Men and women cheered his name.

Shops opened that had closed. In the street of leather workers, all the saddlers knew we were coming before we walked to the corner, and every master was in the door of his shop, bowing to the great man.

Sister Marie received a fine mule saddle with silver buckles and a matching bag which buckled behind the back of the saddle, all in fine red Spanish leather and Fra Peter spent the better part of the hour before compline protesting various magnificent war saddles, each finer than the last, ivory plaques, gilding, heraldic decoration, matched reins and bridles and straps. In the end, though, while Fra Peter denied that he would ever use a brilliant saddle in Hospitaller scarlet, I nodded to my new friend, Ser Niccolò, and while Fra Peter protested, I was arranging to bring the knight’s charger the next morning for a fitting, and promising to bring Sister Marie’s mule as well.

It was great fun. Ser Niccolò’s men-at-arms were as pleasant a set of men as the great man himself, and they were free with a jibe or a compliment. As they were all Florentines, I expected that they would hold some rancour for my attack on their city, but they seemed to have the opposite views, holding all their ire for Duke Rudolph, who they viewed as a poor soldier.

One young knight, Ser Nerio, had actually witnessed my feat of arms, and his flattery was effusive, and, to me, very sweet.

‘Were you fighting, messire?’ I asked.

He laughed. ‘I was on the walls with the ladies,’ he said. ‘My harness was in Naples with my lord, and I was home for a wedding and a funeral.’ He shrugged.

Another young knight, a blonde who had to be five years my younger, leaned over. ‘Don’t believe him! He’s so rich he has ten armours, all different, spread across Italy like his women, and he was watching from the walls because he’s a great coward.’

I thought there must be a fine pun on
amours
and
armours
but I couldn’t get it right.

Ser Nerio didn’t take offence. Rather, he laughed. ‘I rode well that night and drank deep, Antonio. While you—’

Ser Antonio turned his blonde curls to me. ‘I exchanged blows with two of your valiant gentleman, although I find now that one of them may indeed have been an Amazon.’

We all went to church together, laughing. I knew I was leaving Juan and Fiore and Miles to flounder, but I make friends easily, and I liked these men.

We heard compline sung in the Italian manner. Italian Latin is virtually incomprehensible to an Englishman and so I translated for Miles Stapleton, who gazed at the altar with pious devotion.

After church, we gathered around Father Pierre, and he and Ser Niccolò embraced. Then the Florentine lord departed, inviting all of us to dine at his house the next day.

I was up early the next morning. By then, I had discovered that Father Pierre was in Bologna to arrange grants and loans in aid of the Crusade and because he had a writ from the Pope to establish a chair of Theology at the university, which would, of course, greatly enhance the prestige of Bologna. But it meant that for the next three days he would be sitting with six other great prelates in examination of two candidates for the honour of a Doctorate in Theology.

The world is more complex than we often imagine. That the good men and women of Bologna were being pressed to provide funds for the crusade was true, but the Pope, and Father Pierre, who loved the Bolognese and had made many friends at the university, were providing value for money, a chair of theology would bring students from all over Italy and even all over Europe, and Father Pierre, himself one of the most famous theologians since Aquinas, would add enormous lustre to the founding.

At any rate, I had days to pass, and I had decided to apply myself to my new life. I curried Fra Peter’s charger and emerged from the university’s stable yard to find Sister Marie with her mule’s reins in her fist.

She grinned at me. ‘I’m told I have your intercession to thank for a new saddle,’ she said. That was more words than I had heard from her altogether. She spoke in French, and her French had a very odd accent, which I couldn’t place.

I bowed. On the road here I had decided that she was older than I had first thought, perhaps as old as forty. She had an upright carriage like a warrior and her eyes met mine with a frankness that was rare in women, even nuns. She never looked down. ‘
Ma soeur
, you owe your saddle only to the generosity of Ser Niccolò Acciaouli.’

She looked at me for perhaps twenty or thirty heartbeats. ‘Are you bound there now?’ she asked. ‘To the saddlers?’

‘Yes,
ma soeur
. I could take your mule.’ I noted that she held her left shoulder stiffly and I guessed her arm still hurt.

She shook her head. ‘I will be happy of your company,’ she said, ‘but I can manage my own animal. And have, the last thousand leagues.’

I nodded. ‘Fra Peter said you had many miles in that saddle.’ I wanted to convey that I respected her accomplishment. She lived in the world of men, which was no easy task. Janet had given me a taste of how hard that could be. ‘Have you made many pilgrimages?’ I asked, as that seemed the safest answer to why a woman would have travelled so far as to wear a mule saddle to the point of failure.

‘I have made a few pilgrimages,’ she said, and lead the way out of the yard.

I gathered I’d somehow mis-stepped. I elected to remain silent, but that only lasted through three crowded morning streets. A pair of carters abused her; she was a horse length ahead of me, and they yelled in their countryside dialect that she should stop fucking the Pope and move.

Just as I reached the offending peasant, she turned and smiled at him. ‘The Peace of Christ to you,’ she said.

The man fell back a step.

To me, she said, ‘I fight my own fights, Englishman.’

We walked on. Eventually, because she didn’t really know Bologna, I had to pass her. ‘Don’t I at least deserve the Peace of Christ?’ I asked. ‘The saddlers are this way.’

She narrowed her eyes. But she followed me.

At the saddlers, we had to wait while the apprentices tried the saddles on our mounts and then worked on the saddles, spreading the tree of my knight’s and narrowing the tree on Sister Marie’s. The shop had a wonderful smell of beautiful leather, wax, and oil and gilding and resin. The apprentices were well fed and cheerful, and I listened to the banter. My Italian was good by then, and I laughed when one young man let flow a stream of invective so pure and so malicious in response to a slip of his round knife that the swearing itself was an art.

I found Sister Marie looking at me.

I had no idea what I’d done to offend her, but as I felt guiltless, I answered her look with a smile. ‘Sister?’ I asked.

She frowned and looked away.

Her saddle was fitted first, and she took it and her animal and hurried away. I lingered, exchanged a few careful barbs with the witty apprentice, learned a little about leatherwork, and scrounged some leather thong and some scraps for future repairs. Leather work is a basic skill of arms, like wrestling. I imagine Geoffrey de Charny knew how to sew a good chain stitch, and I know for certain that Jehan le Maingre and John Chandos were both capable of touching up their own horse tack. A morning in a leather shop was not ill-spent. A few silver coins got me two new awls and a packet of steel needles better than any I’d ever used.

Back at the university, Fiore and Juan and Miles and I worked in the stable yard. Almost no one went there, and we had it to ourselves. Like every other part of the university, the stable yard was magnificent: bands of bricks and pale marble on two sides, with oak supports for the wooden roofing on the third and a great cobblestone yard comfortably padded in old dung. When we had all the horses seen to and all the new tack stored and all the repaired tack hung, Fiore grinned and produced a pair of blunted spears and a poleaxe.

We had been playing with spears all summer, but toward the end of our time in Avignon, Fiore purchased an English axe. The English have always been great ones for axes – the English Guard in Constantinople have carried them since King William’s time, or so I’ve been told. But just about the time of Poitiers, many of our men-at-arms gave up the spear or the shortened lance for a long-handled axe, and many of them had a back spike and sometimes a spear point. Some men viewed the poleaxe as un-knightly, and others saw it as ‘typically English’. In fact, one of the first men I knew to own one and wield it was Bertrand du Guesclin, and he was anything but ‘typically English’. Hah! At any rate, Fiore had fallen in love with the thing. So we took turns with it, and as we had no pell, we used one of the support pillars of the stables, an oak beam two handbreadths on a side. We left some fine marks in it, I promise you.