The Long Sword (12 page)

The perfect sword … it is a very intimate thing.

When I find one such, I think of it constantly. Listen, I remember once I saw a woman through the curtain of a shop; she was raising her dress over her head, trying something for a seamstress, perhaps, and all I saw was the line of her side, and that ell of her flesh stuck with me for two days, filled my waking thought, found its way into my head even while I prayed. And so it is with the right sword, so that the memory of the perfect weight across my palms will follow me out of a shop and into church.

Well, she was not to be had in Bologna.

But I did enjoy three days with Ser Niccolò and his knights, and I drank a great deal of wine with Nerio and was surprised to find how much he and Fiore disliked each other. I mislike it when my friends cannot make accord, and this was the most instant dislike between two friends I’d ever experienced. I suspect that Fiore resented Nerio’s familiarity – and his riches. And Nerio was not used to being thought to lack anything, but Fiore found him wanting as a man-at-arms. I have no idea why. Nerio looked quite dangerous to my eye, and I’d killed a great many more men than my Friulian friend.

To complete the complexity of my existence, Fra Peter and Father Pierre had decided that they would arrange for Juan to be knighted in Venice. But as he was from a great Catalan family, this involved a good deal more preparation than a cook’s boy from London got on a battlefield, and they wanted it kept secret, so I was handed a list of things to purchase and things to do and letters to write, all without letting Juan know. This, of course, had the unfortunate effect of letting Juan think I was ignoring him.

And finally, while I was writing letters, I mustered my courage and wrote to Emile. That is to say, I helped Sister Marie compose a circular letter from the legate to the bishops of the Duke of Burgundy about pilgrimage and crusade, and in it were dates for pilgrims who wanted to accompany the crusade to Jerusalem, assembly points at Venice and Genoa, and other points. When I copied the legate’s letter out – to Sister Marie’s surprise – I made sure that my name had been included among the list of routiers turned to soldiers of God, and she
had
included it.

It took me most of my last day in Bologna to copy that letter. Three hundred lines, and two small errors, and we covered them both. I had not entirely wasted my time with the monks in London, and no donat at Avignon escapes without some copy jobs, unless he is absolutely illiterate, which is increasingly frowned upon in the Order.

Sister Marie wore heavy Venetian spectacles to copy and they made her look like some avian monster, owl-eyed and beaked. But when she pulled them off she looked human, almost homey. ‘Sir William, I would never have marked you down as a writing man. My thanks, I would not have finished in time without your clerking.’

‘Sister Marie …’ I paused. My petty troubles with Fiore and Juan had suddenly made me more careful than was my wont with other men and friendship, but I am in general a blunt man, and I ploughed on, ‘I would not have taken you for a sword hand, but as you are, can we not be friends?’

She met my eye – I’ve said it before, but she never flinched from eye-meeting like a normal woman. I suppose girls are trained to it and nuns, perhaps, are trained out of it. At any rate, she raised an eyebrow. ‘I suppose we could be friends,’ she admitted.

Well, she was not the warmest of women. But she wasn’t my mother or my bed warmer; she was the legate’s Latinist. And witting or not, she had been my ally in writing to Emile.

All told, I suppose we were a week in Bologna, although it seemed a year, and when we rode east for Venice, crowds cheered us in the streets. Leaving Bologna, we were a small army; two dozen knights and donats of the Order, brilliant in scarlet, Lord Grey at our head with the papal banner; Ser Niccolò and his score of men-at-arms as brilliant as angels from heaven; another dozen volunteers from Bologna with their harnesses and their warhorses and carts full of belongings they were taking east. And with another twenty priests and nuns and clerks, as well as squires and pages and servants we had at least three hundred horses in our cavalcade.

Fra Peter had command of the whole, and I found myself commanding the donats. The older Knights of the Order were quite content that I do so: they stayed close to Father Pierre. There were almost a hundred Knights of the Order heading for Venice that autumn, but only half a dozen chose to ride with the legate. Or perhaps that was Father Pierre’s choice. A big column of knights ate up the countryside and devoured more bread and more grass.

I have not, up until now, described the intense faction that split Italy from the Italian point of view; I have to at least mention it to explain how I almost lost my life in the streets of Verona. The della Scalas were the lords there, and like every family of aristocrats in Italy, they belonged to one of the two competing factions – the Guelfs and the Ghibbelines. In brief, these two parties stand for allegiance to the Pope and allegiance to the Holy Roman Emperor. The quarrel is an old one and now has elements of the absurd, but the division remains lively.

Verona was a Ghibbeline city, and the della Scala, the local tyrants, were ancient supporters of the Pope. Since we served the Pope, you might have thought that we would make popular guests, but a rumour met us in Verona, to wit that the Emperor was coming to Italy with a large army to join the crusade. By some stretch of the popular imagination, that made us Guelfs – supporters of the Emperor. With papal banners at our head.

In truth, the London mob is every bit as fickle as the mob of Paris or Rome or Verona.

At any rate, we did not receive a hero’s welcome to Verona, and while we rode in through the white Roman Gate and trotted by the marvels of the amphitheatre, and the magnificence of Saint Anastasia, we were watched by a sullen crowd. Father Pierre dismounted in the courtyard of the Carmelite convent, and the Knights of the Order closed around him, wary of the people. The nuns watched from the upper cloisters like curious birds.

Fra Peter watched the crowd for as long as it took the clock to strike three, and then handed me an ivory tube with many of our travel documents. He shrugged. ‘This may be ugly. I need to be with the legate. Get to the castle and get our documents signed. Tell della Scala …’ He paused and looked at the ground. ‘Never mind. But if you can find out what this is about, I’d like to know.’

Well, we had by then a dozen donats, all fully armed and armoured. I turned to Miles Stapleton.

‘Will you play my squire?’ I asked.

He nodded. ‘Your servant, my lord,’ he said.

Nerio Acciaioli caught my bridle. ‘It could be murder out there,’ he said, pointing to the gate.

It was my turn to shrug. ‘I have orders,’ I said. ‘And Fra Peter is worried. He
never
worries.’

Ser Nerio let go my bridle and nodded. ‘Do me the kindness of waiting on my father.’

I dismounted and bowed to Ser Niccolò, who listened while his son whispered in his ear.

‘Do it,’ he said. He smiled at me. ‘You need a servant,’ he said.

It seemed the oddest thing, at the time.

There were no women in the streets of Verona, that’s the first thing I noted. The second was that there were a great many men of fighting age, all with swords. In Bologna, I hadn’t seen a sword displayed in a week. University students who wanted to fight went outside the town.

We were watched in a heavy silence as we rode, and I suspect the sheer number and quality of the men-at-arms kept us safe – a dozen of the Order’s men-at-arms and another dozen of the Accaioulos, with their green and gold banner and the Pope’s, too.

The castle was the most modern, elegant, and imposing fortification I had ever seen. It is all red brick and white marble, with palatial facades and workaday walls; a magnificent design that is equally suited to holding the city against an invader or holding an escape route against a local insurrection. The della Scala were, after all, tyrants. Not really ill-natured tyrants, although there had been trouble.

We entered by the main gate and entered a courtyard, and my spine tingled: the walls around the courtyard were full of crossbowmen, and they were watching us, their bows spanned.

Fiore whistled softly.

Stapleton played his part perfectly, riding forward with my helmet and lance and calling for the captain of the fortress.

The man who emerged from the main tower was in full harness and had a poleaxe in his hand. I couldn’t even hear him when he spoke, because his visor was down.

I didn’t have a helmet on, and I was afraid. There were enough crossbows around us to kill us all in a matter of seconds, and I had led my friends into this. And I had led the life – I could tell how close to the edge all these men were.

I turned. ‘Dismount!’ I called. ‘Everyone show your hands to be empty. Smile!’

Behind me, Nerio said, ‘Smile?’

I looked at him and made myself smile. ‘It’s harder to kill a man in cold blood when he’s smiling,’ I said. I got an armoured leg over the cantle of my saddle and slid to the ground, then walked toward the armoured man with the poleaxe.

He backed away a step.

‘Messire, I don’t have a weapon in my hands, and I have no helmet on my head, and you have fifty crossbowman pointing at me this minute,’ I said in passable Italian. ‘I come in peace, with travel documents from the Pope, who is our spiritual father. I am sworn to the crusade, as is every man here, and if you harm us, you will be excommunicated. Please open your visor and let us talk like gentlemen.’

‘Put your papers on the ground and back away,’ he said.

‘No,’ I said. ‘I represent the Cardinal Legate of the Pope.’

We stared at each other.

That is to say, I stared at his visor, and he stared at my naked face.

After some time had passed, I became angry. I took a step back, and turned slowly to face the walls. I held aloft my ivory tube and pointed at the papal banner. ‘We are
servants
of the
Pope
and we are sworn to crusade
.
’ I looked around. The impasse had lasted long enough that the crossbowmen – all mercenaries, and mostly Bretons – were tired of aiming their weapons.

‘Shut up,’ said the visored man.

‘If you harm us, you will be excommunicated,’ I said, and my voice rang off the stone. ‘Whatever you have been told—’

‘One more word and they shoot,’ growled the Visor.

‘Why?’ I asked.

‘Leave your papers and go,’ he said.

‘Why? This is an insult to the Pope.’ I put my hands on my hips. I fetched a glance at Juan and he nodded. We weren’t just young bucks with a message. We were soldiers of the papacy. I leaned toward the visor. ‘And frankly, messire, you have done nothing to indicate that I should trust you with all of our travel documents. Which …’ I raised my voice, ‘which are signed by the Pope, the King of France, the Emperor, and the council of Bologna.’

He stepped forward and placed the blade of his axe against my neck. ‘You!’ he began.

I grabbed the haft just below the head and pivoted on my back foot, gave the haft a sharp pull to throw him off balance and then slammed my unarmoured hand into the chainmail of his aventail at his neck, got my right leg behind his knee, and put him down with his own axe as the fulcrum. As fast as a crying woman draws a breath, I had his dagger under his aventail at his throat.

Everyone was very, very still.

‘I can help you up, and we can start this again,’ I said very softly. ‘Or you can die. I may also die, but please understand that you will be ahead of me at the gates.’

His eyes were not daunted. ‘You will
not
seize this castle while I’m its commander,’ he said.

‘I’m not here to seize your poxy castle!’ I spat. ‘I’m here to get the
papal legate’s travel paper’s signed.
’

All this while fifty Breton crossbowmen considered whether to kill me or not.

‘Do you know that man over there?’ I asked, pointing at Ser Nerio. ‘He’s an Accaioulo.’

‘Heraldry can be faked,’ he said. Then, ‘Very well, let me up.’

The change was too sharp. ‘Let you up? Why?’ I asked.

He raised his head and opened his own visor. ‘Stand down,’ he shouted. ‘Clearly been a misunderstanding. Stand down!’

The crossbowmen sighed all together, so that it sounded like a flock of birds landing on a pond, their wings all beating together. The knights in the courtyard watched the cup of death pass away from them, and they sighed too.

I
probably sighed.

The man who opened his visor was Antoine della Scala. The lord of the city.

He poured wine with his own hand while a pair of boys in red and white livery disarmed him. ‘The cardinal of Geneva sent word that you would attempt to seize the citadel and take the city for Milan,’ he said. He passed this as if it was a pleasantry, a matter of little consequence.

I decided that he was quite mad. His eyes glittered, and his movements were curiously uncoordinated. He spilled a little wine almost every time he raised the cup to his lips and he had spittle at the corner of his mouth.

As I was now deep inside the castle, I was more scared than I had been in the courtyard. They had my sword and my dagger, and my armour was not going to keep me alive very long against a dozen trained adversaries. Men whose master was, as I say, a lunatic.

‘The Bishop of Geneva?’ I asked.

‘The Green Count and Bishop Robert have always been a friends of this city,’ della Scala said. ‘He sent me a letter from Avignon …’

I understood. Pardon, gentles. Now that it has all happened, it seems obvious – that Bishop Robert was our enemy. But at the time I scarcely knew him, and I had no notion that a bishop, a virtual prince of the church, would attempt to undermine a crusade.

‘My lord, I can only promise you that if the weather is fair, we will quit your gates tomorrow on our way to Venice, the city of Saint Mark.’

The mad tyrant of Verona shrugged. ‘I suppose,’ he said. ‘Cavalli, have all their papers prepared.’ He turned to me. ‘There, my English bravo. Is that enough for you?’