The Long Sword (27 page)

She called for her servants to pack. I had a two hour nap, and when I woke and bathed, two of her men servants shaved me and dressed me in beautiful clean clothes and a pair of deerskin boots worth as much as a good riding horse.

I would like to tell you that the loss of Emile cut like a sword, but I was too tired and too sure that we were in immediate danger. And perhaps I was a cocksure young man who thought he could have his way with his woman in the end.

Bah. We’re all fools with love, are we not?

The sun was high in the sky when six men-at-arms rode out of the alley behind her little palace – for her ‘town house’ had more rooms than half London. She wore her harness and we had no pack mule. We had a wet nurse with a baby boy, mounted on a donkey and wrapped in a dozen blankets, and two young children in the panniers of a second animal, a large Spanish mule with a nun mounted on it. She was the children’s governess.

Her captain, Jean-François, told the gate we were bound with the children for the abbey on the heights above. It was a fair story, as we had no baggage and darkness was a mere four hours away.

The gate accepted the story at face value and we were away into the snow of late autumn in the Alps.

I longed for an ambush in which I could prove my love with my sword, but none eventuated. Men underestimate women constantly, and I’ll guess now that Robert of Geneva never believed that a mere woman would take her babies and ride through the snow. I’m sure her husband didn’t even see her as human. But she was. In truth, she would have been a great captain, had she been born a man. Did I not say that audacity is everything, in the dark? Hah! Audacity is everything all the time. And she had it.

We rode over the mountains and down the French side of the passes as far as Turin, and we were unmolested; indeed, we were virtually unnoticed. I had time to be jealous of my lady’s attention to everyone but me and I had time to get to know her children. I was the odd man out: while I was forced to live with her men-at-arms, I was not one of them. They were professional, but not like my comrades in Italy nor yet like my comrades in the order. I suppose I was an arrogant prick, but they were scarcely friendly.

And not a single bandit showed his face.

An hour’s ride north of Turin, I made my decision. I rode up to Emile in a shower of snow and bowed in the saddle. ‘My lady countess,’ I said.

She offered me a cold little smile. ‘Monsieur?’ she asked.

‘I left my squire to recuperate in an abbey above the western gates of Turin,’ I said. ‘I should go and reclaim him.’

She nodded. ‘Of course,’ she said.

Well,
par dieu
, I could tell she was angry, but I was sufficiently a fool to not understand why.

‘May I catch you south of Turin?’ I asked.

She shrugged. ‘I may stay in Turin some days,’ she said. Her eyes met mine, and there was the rage again. ‘But I imagine that you are none too anxious to meet Sir Richard Musard.’

That made no sense to me at all. ‘I have no fear of Sir Richard,’ I said.

‘Really?’ she asked. Her eyes touched mine again, and they were hot and full of the emotion she kept out of her voice. She had her youngest wrapped against her, and she looked down at her baby and smoothed his hair before pulling the wool wrappings carefully around the little head. ‘My understanding is that he has sworn to kill you?’

I lowered my voice. ‘Richard Musard was my best friend,’ I said hotly. ‘He betrayed me to the Bourc Camus and your husband, Madame. They sold me to the French authorities.’

‘And when you escaped, you avenged yourself on him by taking his wife,’ Emile said. ‘Yes, I know it all full well.’

She rode on.

One by one, her men-at-arms passed me on the narrow trail. I thought of a dozen responses.

Par dieu
, gentles, of
course
that’s how Richard told the story. But I hadn’t seen it coming and had no defence.

It took me a day of riding through the mountains to realise that when Emile reached Venice, I might be able to send for Milady. And then Emile might change her mind.

Because, in the meantime, I had hours to think about just what my love had heard of me. And even to consider those things I had actually done. I can remember riding, and wincing, physically, to think of the times I’d been unfaithful. Writhing in the saddle, cold and weary and
mortified.

I have always been a fool for a fair lady, and no mistake.

Marc-Antonio was eager to go, having spent too much time on his knees and too much time eating gruel and, I gathered later, too much time defending his virtue from one of the more lecherous monks. Well, close a hundred men in a small box, and see what happens. But I had had time to think of many things, and I was profuse in my thanks to him for saving me in the village fight, and he was, perhaps unsurprisingly, delighted at my praise. When we camped, I made him go through the postures of defence, and we traded a few blows – gently, as our swords were sharp and he was inexperienced. But the sword I’d taken from the blue and white was a good one and all those days in the saddle were habituating my squire to life with and on horses.

At any rate, we made good time out the gate, and with the help of a pair of shepherds, we cut south and east, bypassing Turin on the plain below us and riding through an early snowfall. I was wary: we were no longer ahead of our foes, or so I reckoned. But we made the passes unharmed, and high in Saint Bernard we caught up with Emile and her party in a monastery. She was withdrawn, and in fact I saw her only at a distance. She was avoiding me, and that was yet another blow.

For the next four days, we travelled like two separate groups, the two of us, and the nine of them.

We were well over the pass, and on our descent, dismounted to lead our horses, when I fell. I was showing off every minute, I now confess, riding too hard, scouting too far, wearing all my harness all the time, trying to earn back her good opinion in the foolish ways boys woo girls. But high above the plains of Lombardy, I tried to ride over the narrow remnants of a bridge instead of crossing lower down at the temporary ford. I was driven by no nobler motive than that Jean-François, her captain, had ordered his men not to try the bridge as being too dangerous.

Three steps across and my riding horse paused, lost his footing on the icy logs, scrambled, and then we were in the rushing water. Autumn is not as bad as spring in the passes, but the water rises, and trickles of meltwater from summer can be swollen by rain to raging torrents.

I went all the way under, and my riding horse came down atop me driving my hips into the stone bed of the stream.

The shock of the cold stole my wits, and my full harness held me under for a long time, long enough that I might have screamed for breath; long enough to repent my sins, and wish that God had granted me time to commit more of them.

And then Raoul, my riding horse, shook himself and rose to his feet and his weight was gone, and the stream was narrow enough that I got my head above water by getting my elbows on a rock before the current swept me away. I went a horse-length downstream and was thrown on a sloping boulder. And there I might well have drowned except that Jean-François was there with a spear. He wrestled me from the grip of the icy stream. Water ran out of my harness, my helmet drained down my back, and my helmet liner was soaked through, all my arming clothes were inundated, and I was very cold.

Jean-François got me to the far bank, and Marc-Antonio had my horse. I was almost in another world: I had come so close to being dead, and I had the oddest view of the world.

Emile came up while I was mounting. ‘We have to get him to a fire,’ she said with her devastating practicality.

Perhaps I made some feeble protest. I felt terrible; terrible as a man who led men, and terrible in that the cold was like a vice on my feet, my head, my hands. Only the warmth of the horse between my legs steadied me, and when the wind blew I groaned.

‘Thanks,’ I managed to Jean-François.

He smiled, the first time I’d seen him smile.
‘Bah! ce n’est pas rien, monsieur
,’ he said. ‘If you are not from these valleys, it is a simple mistake to make.’

An hour later I was all but inside the fireplace in a wealthy farmer’s house at the top of the valley, and warmth began to make it into my hands and feet, but the cold had settled deeply and I was sick.

I do not remember much of that illness, except that I woke to find my head in Emile’s lap. She looked into my eyes.

‘You are a fool,’ she said.

It was the nicest thing she’d said to me in two years.

Or perhaps I dreamed that.

When I returned to consciousness, it was to find that we were snowbound. The snow lasted two more days, and we played cards and sang and I became friends with Jean-François and his men, close enough to exchange a few blows with them in the stable yard. They were very good for country trained men, and Jean-François had a cut to the hands with a feint that caught me again and again.

Thanks to Fiore, though, I had things to show them, as well.

And Marc-Antonio got better every day. He was still fleshy, but no longer plump by any means, and his angelic face now had a harder line to it. He’d been in the saddle for three months.

Where the Alps were in winter, Lombardy might almost have been in late summer. There was plague around Padua, or so we were told by frightened refugees, and I avoided Verona as if
it
had the plague. We had heard south of Turin that there were avalanches due to the sudden thaw, and I had a notion that if we were pursued, we had a respite. But I was cautious.

Despite my tomfoolery with the stream, by the time we left our snug farmhouse south of Turin, Jean-François and his silent companion Bernard were no longer sullen companions, and when I suggested a plan of march, they were perfectly willing to accede to my wishes, with due courtesy to their mistress. We made our way south of Verona, and it was almost painful to watch Emile bloom: sun, good food and wine and freedom conspired to make her almost luminous.

By Saint George, gentlemen. I loved her full well. And every moment brought me more to love. She was a mature woman now, grown strong, I think, in motherhood and ruling good estate. And yet sometimes she was still the young woman I had known in France – playful, determined, audacious.

And there was the matter of her children. She had three: a boy, Edouard, and two girls, one just a babe in arms, Isabelle, and one a little older, named Magdalene. At first, she was scrupulous about keeping them clear of me. Or rather, the nun seemed to have them whenever I approached the countess, and when she had care of her children, I was clearly not welcome. But then, one afternoon in the countryside south of Verona, I came upon her on the lawn behind an inn, sitting on the sheep-cropped grass in a kirtle like the embodiment of beauty. She had the older girl in her arms and the boy sat watching Bernard on the close-cropped turf and Bernard was whittling – he was a
preux cavalier
, but he was always making something – toys, dolls, wooden knights for the boy. I could already see the shape of the cavalier’s great helm coming out of the billet of wood.

I could hear Sister Catherine calling her in her Savoyard French from a window of the inn. She shouted something about the child she had – Isabelle, as I remember – and something about blood. Emile leaped to her feet. Her eyes met mine – it’s difficult to describe her look. Questioning? And yet – they held some promise …

As if exasperated with herself, she put her babe into my arms, picked up the skirts of her kirtle and ran inside.

We arrived, a party of a dozen pilgrims, at Chioggia in late November. I showed my papal protection and my courier letter at the causeway and we were conducted like royalty along the edge of the lagoon into Venice’s principle out-town.

I remember most the sound of the gulls, the piercing cry, so different from any other bird. And the good, wholesome smell of sea and foreshore and fish. I’m a Londoner, if not born then bred up, and Chioggia and Venice have a great deal of London in them. Of course, my Venetian friends would say that perhaps poor London has a little of Venice in her …

Do you know Venice? Last year, during the great war – of which I’ll speak in time, if we’re stuck her long enough – I was in a position to view the Serenissima’s accounts when she was at her lowest ebb, fighting Genoa to the death.
Par dieu
, messieurs, there is more gold in Venice than in all England. The merchants of the Rialto and the Lido have more commerce than all England and all France
together.
The customs intake at Chioggia, one small port, must rival Portsmouth. In England, most men have no idea just how rich Italy is.

At any rate, I rode along the causeway the allows Chioggia and the long, narrow islands of Pellestrina and Malamocco to be connected to the mainland – or almost connected – to the terra firma at Clogia Minore or Sottomarina, as some say. It would all be a major part of my life, one day. But for the first time in three weeks, Emile brought her horse alongside mine.

‘You look happy,’ she said.

I was, too. I had discovered that I didn’t really need to sleep with Emile to enjoy her. That in fact, I loved her, and not that springtime, sap-rising thing that young people call love. I was also discovering the joy of riding, looking, smelling, tasting. It was a beautiful autumn, except for the poor people dying of the plague, God rest them.

‘I love the gulls, Countess,’ I said. ‘They put me in mind of my home.’

She smiled and looked away. ‘This town,’ she asked. ‘Is this such a place as I might buy a doll? My daughter has left hers over the mountains.’

I knew that. Every man in our party knew. The poor little sprite had wailed for fifteen days. She was not inconsolable; in fact, as long as she was happy, she didn’t mention the missing doll, but the moment anything disturbed her, the doll became the focus of her outrage. She was two and a half and spoke well – eerily well, in fact.