The Long Sword (17 page)

‘Yet I will say that I would expect the King of Cyprus, the commander of the
Passagium Generale
, to fall on his knees and kiss any missive the Pope sends him,’ said the older man, with his head high and his eyes boring holes in the king.

The king glared for a moment at the older Frenchman. I knew that the older man must be Philippe de Mézzières, the king’s chancellor; I had letters for him and had heard him described. The king pursed his lips and stalked across the great hall, opened a door, and paused.

‘It may be your fondest desire that I be shackled hand and foot to your damned crusade, Monsieur de Mézzières, but it was never mine.’ He went through, and slammed the great oak door behind him.

The silence was like that of the pause between strokes of thunder.

‘Let’s go,’ I said, very softly. My instinct was to obey the orders of the king, however childish, and not get caught up in some courtier’s drama. I had been a squire for the Prince of Wales, and I knew something of princes. Quick to anger, and often deeply regretful later of letting the mask slip. But very conscious of the rules.

I was trained for this. I knew to bide my time, hide my emotions, and remain a knight. But I was angry.

I felt … humiliated. I had come a long way, and somehow had grown used to the armour of authority that was the habit of St John. Indeed, I felt that my
Order
had been humiliated. I was angry, and to my shame, I took it out on poor Marc-Antonio. Out on the street, he dared to ask what had happened.

‘We were tossed on our ears,’ I spat. ‘Because our clothes are dusty and unsuitable.’ My tone and my glare carried a clear message – he and his whining were at fault.

His face fell. In fact, it didn’t just fall – it collapsed like an undermined stone tower.

It’s a small thing, for a man who has killed. You’d think I was hardened to it, but I had been with the Order for more than a year, and the collapse of his face, the twitch of his mouth – it was as if I’d kicked him.

I promise you, I didn’t think of it at the time. I was so furious that I almost missed my mounting, and when I was up I found that I’d left my arming sword with the door ward. Fuming, I had to dismount and reclaim it.

He bowed. ‘The king’s had a hard day,’ he said, in good French.

I considered a nasty reply, and thank God I bit my tongue and acted the part of a knight. I nodded, forced a smile, and bowed.

But between getting our own inn, finding our clothes and bribing a pair of maids to iron our things – we couldn’t get back before darkness fell.

Nerio finally put a hand on my arm. ‘Sir William,’ he said carefully, ‘I am going for a glass of wine and some beef. I recommend that you do the same.’ He didn’t wait for my expostulations, either, but took Fiore by the shoulder – took Fiore, for the love of the good Jesu; Fiore, who he affected to despise – and left our rooms and went to the head of the inn stairs without looking back at me. Fiore went with him willingly enough.

I suppose I had given them a difficult afternoon. In fact, I had behaved badly – disappointment and humiliation bring out the worst in most of us. I was left with Marc-Antonio. He kept his head down and kept laying out clothes and trying to boss the maids, who ignored him and went back and forth, heating their irons in a box by the fire. The box, of course, kept soot off the irons so that they were clean.

I still didn’t apologise. I sat there, my black mood further darkened by the abandonment of my friends, until the maids lit tapers and I smelled the beautiful smell of resin in the torches. The smell woke me from my mood, and I went down and ate, but my companions were scarcely civil. Twice, Fiore looked at me in a way that suggested he was considering physical violence.

I went to bed early. As a consequence, I rose with the dawn. I dressed plainly and left a message that the others should not wait for me. My anger was gone, replaced, as it often is, with a sort of guilt complicated by fear – fear that I would be humiliated again and fear that I had behaved badly with my friends and it couldn’t be fixed; a common fear for a young man, I think.

I had no experience of this particular world. I’d been a minor servant, and now, to all intents, I was a sort of ambassador. I didn’t know the rules, but I knew damned well that if I went back as the Order’s representative to King Peter, I would go alone, test the waters, and do my best to avoid public humiliation. And spare my friends. And, perhaps, apologise to them.

I was dirty, and I decided to wash. I managed to find a bathhouse. Like Bohemia and High Germany, the bathhouses of Poland are correctly notorious as dens of vice, staffed with scantily clad women whose single layer linen garments stick to their bodies in the steam in a most attractive manner.

Shall I go on? They really are splendid, and if priests don’t want men to fornicate, why did God make women so beautiful? Eh? Answer me that. By Saint George, I was in a much better mood when I emerged, clean in body if slightly soiled in soul. The woman who washed me – I can still see her, because she smiled all the time and nothing so becomes a woman as a smile – she was a good leman, luscious and lovesome and very tall. And very apt for the game.

Hmm. I digress too much. I think perhaps old men think too much of the pleasures of the body, eh? But by Saint Maurice, sirs, I had my sport, and discovered that she spoke some little Latin, and we amused each other thoroughly, chanting prayers back and forth in the steam.

‘You are a nun?’ I asked her, and she laughed.

‘Never in this life,’ she said. ‘And you are no priest.’

‘I am a knight,’ I said with all the pride of Lucifer.
Ego miles.

She clapped her hands together. I suspect that it is a universal truth throughout the Christian world that women – working women – prefer soldiers to priests. Mayhap not when the soldiers are burning your barn, but in a bath or a bedchamber –

‘You are with the King of Jerusalem?’ she asked.
Tu es cum rege Hierusalem.
Not the best Latin, perhaps. She was saying I
was
the king of Jerusalem –
su es
should have been
sis
. ‘You will fight?’

I snorted water.

She said something in Polish, not to me but past me. Across the little linen screen that hid us from the other tubs, a girl’s somewhat shrewish voice shouted back.

I must have looked my question. She swirled water and looked demure, a fetching trick for a girl wearing two yards of wet linen. She was in the tub with me by then. The better to wash me, of course.

The shrewish voice said something that caused my girl – Katerina, that was her name! – to look surprised. She shouted back, and a male voice shouted indignantly.

‘King of Jerusalem’s men fight last night,’ she said. ‘Drunk. Stupid.’ She shrugged, indicating that this was the limit of her Latin and that any fool knew how stupid men were. ‘drunk’ and ‘stupid’ were conveyed with hand signs.

When I went to fetch my clothes, I found them neatly ironed. A closed-faced young woman, clearly not amused by the goings-on, was busy killing lice in a pair of hose with an iron so hot it made the wool sizzle and the insects pop. They were not,
par dieu
, my hose. But the service was good and I paid her. Who wants to put on dirty clothes on a clean body?

And at the desk, the table where money was taken, I counted over my silver cheerfully enough. The man at the desk was enormous – fat and tall. He smelled as if he had never used the services of his own establishment. Despite which, he had a smile almost as winning as Katerina’s and I gave him a small tip as well.

‘Speak French?’ I asked.

‘
Non volens
,’ he said.
Not willingly.

I laughed. The Poles are a nation of Latinists.

But I left with my mood changed, and sin made me humble. Aiming for the humility practiced by Father Pierre, I went back to our much plainer inn – although it still sported a dozen coats of arms, including, I say with pride, my own red and sable. I had Marc-Antonio dress me, ignored his sullen looks, took the packets of letters and went to the king’s inn, which I entered through the kitchens. There, cutting capons and rabbits with heavy knives, were two enormous women at the main table, and at the next table, two equally fat women were putting eggs and bread in a basket with a tall pitcher of new milk and some cider. I couldn’t understand a word they said – Polish is not in my list of languages – but they giggled a great deal and waggled a sausage at each other. I blew kisses at them and snagged a piece of bread and a cup of cider, and watched the great hall from the kitchen door while my eyes grew used to the gloom.

De Mézzières was there, and silver and white, now dressed in more practical clothes, and with his arm in a sling. With them were a dozen other men in arming clothes and younger men who looked to my practiced eye like squires. There was armour all over the floor and on benches long the far wall.

I could see that now I was the one who was overdressed, and my embroidered scarlet pourpoint, the very best of Bolognese fashion, was as out of place today as my dusty riding clothes and riding boots had been the night before. But it is far better to be overdressed than underdressed.

I could see the king, in his shirt, waiting while a pair of squires laced his arming coat. I caught de Mézzières’ eye.

He nodded and came towards me. ‘From where do you come, young man?’ he asked. ‘I must apologise for yesterday,’ he said quietly. ‘The king had had a very difficult day.’

‘My lord, I am from the legate, Pierre Thomas, in Venice. I left Venice on the first of July.’ I bowed.

De Mézzières looked at me and blinked like a man facing bright light. ‘Legate? The Cardinal de Perigord is surely the legate,’ he asked.

‘My lord, the cardinal is dead, and the Pope has appointed Father Pierre as the Patriarch of Constantinople – and the legate of the crusade.’

French was the
lingua franca
of the Cypriote court. Every head turned.

I bowed again, keeping Father Pierre’s humility before me. ‘I have a packet of letters for you from Venice,’ I said. I handed him a heavy set of envelopes. ‘This one is from Messire Petrarca, as well.’

De Mézzières paused. He was about to speak, but the king waved at me.

‘Ah! The courier of last night, now dressed in the latest Italian fashions to make us all feel dowdy.’ But despite his words, the king smiled, and his smile was warm. ‘Come here, sir, by me. And ten thousand apologies for my surliness of last evening.’

I bowed. ‘It is nothing, your Grace. I have letters from the papal legate—’

‘Who, it proves, is none other than our well-beloved friend and father in Christ, Pierre Thomas! I have ears, sir, and I can hear when you speak.’ He held out a hand. ‘We are impatient to read the words of our fathers, Holy and spiritual.’

I placed his letters directly in his hand.

‘Were you charged with any particular message?’ he asked carelessly.

I bowed my head. ‘I was asked to tell you to come as quickly as you might, to Venice, where your army awaits.’

‘Hmm,’ he answered. ‘Tell my legate that I will come when it suits me. Tush!’ he said, grabbing my arm. ‘Say nothing of the sort. That is only my surliness speaking. Are you by any chance a jouster?’

It was like talking to Ser Niccolò, except that if you were quick-witted you could follow the jumps Ser Niccolò made – his conversation was all connected, and often strung together with bits of scripture and quotes from the ancients. King Peter simply moved from one topic to the next without a shred of warning.

It was like fighting.

‘Your Grace, I can run a course,’ I said carefully.

‘Do you have other men in your train?’ he asked. ‘That is, who can handle a lance and not make fools of themselves or me? Can drink a cup of wine and not cause an incident at a dinner?’ His voice rose as he spoke, and silver and white – I assumed that he was the Sieur de Tenoury since I’d heard him so addressed – cringed.

‘Your Grace—’ de Mézzières said, and his tone urged caution.

‘I will not be gainsaid in this, de Mézzières.’ The king spoke with great vehemence. ‘We are challenged and we will fight.’

No one in the hall was looking at me, or the king. All of them were attempting to slide under the oak floor. I had been a squire when the Prince of Wales was angry – I had even been the target. I knew exactly how they felt.

I was still kneeling in front of the king, and my eyes were cast down. ‘Your Grace, I have two men by me who can run a course.’

‘You have horses? Arms?’ the king asked eagerly.

I wondered what I was getting Fiore and Nerio into. Perhaps I should have considered carefully, or been cautious. Or remembered the humiliations of the evening before.

Perhaps, but I am not made that way. ‘Your Grace, we have horses and arms, and we are completely at your service.’ Some devil made me raise my voice. ‘The more so as you are the Pope’s appointed commander, therefore I am your knight.’

Then the king turned the full sun of his smile on me. ‘By Saint Maurice and the Holy Passion, monsieur, that was well said.’ He nodded. ‘I ask you, Sir Knight, to rally your friends and join us here; display your arms at my window, and serve with me this day.’

Yes, I fought in the Grand Tournament of Krakow.

Now, if you gentlemen have been listening carefully, you know that I had never actually participated in a tournament. I had certainly practised for them, and several times in my career I had the honour of fighting in deeds of arms, but I was – and am – a soldier, and tournaments are for the richest and most powerful lords.

I do not need to explain this to you, gentles – but Aemilie has never served in arms, have you, my sweet? So let me tell you how it is. To participate in a great tournament, you must first of all be invited. In the romances, of course, knights on errantry simply arrive at the tournament field, lance in hand, already armed – but that is pure fantasy. In this world, tournaments are very expensive affairs, with thousands of ducats spent on building the stands, on decorating an entire town, on the costumes of the knights, and on actors,
jongleurs
, bards, and food – and that’s before a single course is run.