The Long Sword (21 page)

I held it up to him and smiled.

He smiled back and rode over. ‘I did my best,’ he said in French, ‘but it was too late. The judges called the contest.’ He laughed. ‘Because in a moment your Italian gentleman was going to take the Emperor’s horse to the stake, and that would have been too humiliating!’ He stripped the gauntlet off his right hand and extended it.

His goodwill was evident – he was as big as me, handsome as a God, and a year or two older. We shook hands, and people began to cheer.

He reached down and patted the redhead on the cheek. ‘Oh, how I wish I had been on your team.’ He smiled. ‘Your king rides like a Turk or a Tartar. Or a Pole. The Emperor is too – cautious.’ He shrugged. ‘Or he assumed that he would be allowed to win.’

‘Those were beautiful sword bows,’ I said. ‘You put me down – such a light sword!’

‘My father says you can defeat any armour if you hit it repeatedly in the same place,’ he said. ‘Look, the judges are gathering us.’ He gave me a lopsided grin. ‘I wish I’d taken your horse. But I could not – your friends were on me as soon as I got you.’ He nodded. ‘We should fight again. I am Heřman z Hradce. In Latin, you might say Hermanni de Novadomo.’

I bowed, head throbbing. ‘William Gold,’ I said.

We rode to our respective teams – cheered, I’ll add, by the crowd. I’ll note here that I’ve seen this many times – the crowd
wants
to see men behave like knights, to exchange words after the blows, and behave with dignity and good cheer. Surliness is the very antithesis of chivalry.

There were five judges, and they sent us to our inns and pavilions. I managed to ride through the streets to the king’s inn without tumbling off, and I waved and smiled as best I could, but my ears were ringing and I had a sharp pain in my head. By the time we dismounted, I had a lump in my scalp where the sword blows had dented my helmet that was soft and mushy and blood oozed from it each time I touched it, which was too often. And another on my forehead where I’d fallen face-first to the ground. I’ll skip ahead in this catalogue of minor injuries and say that my neck was stiff for a week because apparently my bassinet’s beak had dug into the soft earth when I fell and twisted my neck.

Ah, the glories of the tournament!

That night we entered the presence of the Emperor himself, who received each of us and gave us gifts. If he was bad-tempered from being unhorsed, I never saw a sign of it, and his behaviour was … Imperial. He complimented Fiore, praising his skill, and he gave Nerio his hand. I received a warm smile and a beautiful golden cross, worked in enamel – this is it, here. I still wear it. I’ve pawned it a dozen times but always had it back, eh?

He said something very quietly to Nerio, who flushed and bowed and came back to us holding a beautiful gold and silver cup with a ruby in the base. Nerio whispered to Fiore and they laughed together.

‘What’s that?’ I asked. I wasn’t exactly stung – they were clearly the men of the hour – but suddenly they were whispering like old friends. I was used to arbitrating their quarrels, not to being left out of their confidences.

‘We’re both Knights of the Empire. Technically, we’re his men. He said that it was a pleasure to see that the King’s best knights were – ahem – his own.’ Nerio glanced around.

Duke Rudolf was whispering in the Emperor’s ear.

The Emperor – that’s Charles IV, of recent and glorious memory – was at the time about fifty years old, handsome, dark haired, and very strong. He was a cautious man, and he dressed elaborately and his court kept to complicated ceremonials, even at a tournament, so there was no easy approach to him, and as I have said, he was no proponent of crusade.

Rudolf bowed, the Emperor smiled, and Duke Rudolf swept down the room in his beautiful scarlet clothes. He paused near me and I bowed, knee to the floor.

‘That’s twice you’ve knocked me down, monsieur,’ he said.

‘Your Grace does me too much honour,’ I said in my best Gascon-French.

He inclined his head. ‘I’ve just done you a favour, I think,’ he said. ‘So that you will know I bear you no ill feeling. But listen, Sir Gold – take good care of your King of Jerusalem. There are those here who would do him harm.’ He looked at a cluster of men I did not know, gentlemen all, in the older French style and long boots. They were the only men there in boots.

I guessed who they were. I guessed that they were a party of knights on errantry who’d lost their horses in a town square near Nuremberg.

Nerio was close enough to hear. I did the courteous thing and introduced him, at least in part to cover my confusion, and because the blows to my head had not made me wittier. I tugged his sleeve and gestured in the direction of the cluster of Frenchmen.

Duke Rudolf exchanged bows of near equality with Ser Nerio. ‘Ah – Accaioulo the Younger? We were allies at Florence; how do you come to the company of this English Lancelot?’

Nerio smiled at me. ‘I took a fancy to his red hair. In truth, Italy is better with Sir William in Poland.’

‘Oh, my lords!’ I protested, or something equally foolish. My head was not working well, and the room spun each time I drank wine, and I was thirsty.

King Peter came and we bowed again – knees to floor, hats off – and he paid us all sorts of compliments. I was still trying to work out who might do the King of Cyprus harm, or why, when the Emperor summoned the judges.

My enemy of the morning, for so I thought of him, opened a scroll and began to read, in courtly French, through a list of the achievements and encounters of the tournament and the jousts that had come before. I’ll give the judges this much: they had sharp eyes for the encounters. The King of Cyprus was adjudged the best lance, and he went forward humbly to receive his prize, a hawk with gold jesses and bells. The hawk was magnificent – a true Icelandic peregrine. The victor in the foot encounters was none other than my Bohemian friend, who was showered with applause and kisses from a great many beautiful women, and who bore away his prize, an axe inlaid in gold with verses from Luke. There were prizes for archery, which I had not seen; for riding and for courteous behaviour and even a prize for the man who had been unhorsed the most times, given by the King of Poland to a German knight who bore the good-natured laughter with a sanguine air and seemed pleased to go away with a pretty gold-clasped purse and a velvet cushion which he flourished amidst laughter.

And then the Frenchman began on the events of the mêlée, naming the participants. The room fell silent. The Emperor was referred to as the ‘Count of Luxembourg’, which was, I gathered, part of an elaborate fiction by which a great lord might fight under a lesser title so as not to discomfit his opponents – a very courteous act.

I feel I have to mention, for Monsieur Froissart’s delectation, that the King of Cyprus and the Count of Luxembourg bore the exact same arms – did you know that? What a herald’s nightmare that must have been. But for the duration of our time in Krakow, the king displayed only his arms as King of Jerusalem – white and gold – and never the arms of the house of Lusignan.

I have strayed from my point like a courser leaving the lists. As my Frenchman described the mêlée, he and the other judges had it dead to rights, and in fact, my own description here owes a great deal to their observations. Heh, messieurs, you know that when the visors closes, you see little but the man in front of you! But they had seen it all, and every man received his due.

Even me.

I was surprised to hear the man I’d loathed in the morning mention my role, and my name kept coming up – Chevalier d’Or – and I began to grow uncomfortable as men around me looked at me. Well, I had been the first to put my sword on the Count of Luxembourg, and I had captured two horses, these things were true …

And then they were cheering!

By God, messieurs, that was one of the proudest moments of my life.
I was chosen as the best man of the
mêlée
.
Me!
I suppose I should have seen it coming, and Nerio and Fiore say they knew all evening, but in truth – in truth, I felt more than a pang of guilt, my friends. I think that either Nerio or Fiore was the better man – and certes, it was Fiore who taught me how to throw men to the ground from the saddle.

I blushed so hard that my skin felt as if it was on fire. Nerio told me later I was as red as an apple from head to toe when I went and knelt before the Emperor and the judges. Men cheered and applauded, and women curtsied and looked at me under their eyes.

The Emperor was seated on a throne of wood and ivory. While the cheering went on, he said, ‘I understand that you were knighted by Hannekin Baumgarten?’

‘At Florence,’ I said, in something of a daze.

He touched my shoulder with a sword. ‘Let no man ever doubt your knighting,’ he said. His smile may have been a bit grim, but he was a good king, a good lord, and he played his role. He laid the sword he’d just used across my hands.

It was a miracle of red and gold that sword, and it had a belt and scabbard to match. It was a king’s sword – I couldn’t tear my eyes off it, and my right hand ached to grasp the hilt, but even a bumpkin like me knew that was lese majesty of the worst kind.

It was one of the finest swords I have ever owned. Eventually I’ll tell you how I came to lose it, but for the moment, I can only assure you that I would show it to you gentleman if I still had it. A Tartar has it now, I’m fairly certain.

There is probably a sermon in what came next; there I was, with a magnificent new sword across my hands, burning to look at it, to draw it, to make it sing through the air; but, by the iron-clad laws of
courtoise
, I could do none of these things, but instead I stood patiently, accepting the plaudits of my peers, the good-natured insults of my friends, and the downcast eyes, lingering glances, and soft fingers of the maids of court, who gathered around me like moths to a summer candle.

Did I say
patiently
? I lie. I had Emile’s favour pinned to my shoulder like a talisman, and I was acutely conscious that I had not spent the hour before the fight on my knees, or even considering God’s existence. Instead, I had lain – well, swum – with a bathhouse girl.

Certes, messieurs, don’t trouble yourselves on my account. It did not worry me unduly, except that I felt no urge to any of the fine ladies who surrounded me. And I was unprepared for the open friendliness of the knights. They praised me lavishly.

May I be frank? I was tempted to cry. It was so much the opposite of everything I had experienced with the Prince of Wales.

At some point, my Bohemian knight came and offered his hand and we embraced. He began a somewhat formulaic praise of my martial virtues, and my feelings must have shown on my face, because he smiled and paused.

‘You dropped me like the butcher fells the ox,’ I said. ‘Why aren’t you the best knight?’

He laughed. ‘You and your friends won the game for your king, and no mistake. But no false pride. May I say a true thing? If you fight as long as I have fought, you will be the best man in a dozen tournaments, and then they’ll never give you the prize. This one will have it because he is a king’s son, and that one will have it because they don’t like you, and a third will have it because the marshals didn’t see the brilliant blow you threw.’

I laughed. I was new to the tournament, and I could already see the justice of his remarks.

‘And then, when the judges see you as
better
, it is even harder to win. And men fight you differently; they do extravagant things to score on you, or they turn into hedgehogs and turtles to avoid taking blows, and they make it impossible for you to win. Yes?’

I nodded. Nerio nodded. Even Fiore nodded.

Sir Herman shrugged. ‘So, today, at a great tourney, you took the prize. I, who am a great knight, say you deserve it, but I also say – take it! The next time you are the best, Lady Fortuna may not be so kind.’

I sat with him at dinner. His lady was a beauty – her name was Kunka, a Bohemian name, and she had long dark hair and great beauty of manners as well as of figure, making small motions with her hands as she talked, that looked like dance. Indeed, the Bohemians were some of the most elegant men and women I’ve ever seen, easily the rivals of the Italians or the French for courtly manners and sumptuous clothes, beautiful ladies and magnificent horses – and fighting. I would not like to face an army of Bohemians in the field.

His lady leaned over to me and ran her hand over Emile’s somewhat frayed blue favour. ‘This belongs to your lady?’ she asked. She was the first woman to ask about it.

‘Yes,’ I said, or something equally short. I was not at my best; a pinnacle of knightly fame, and I was reduced to monosyllables. Especially in Latin.

She glowed with satisfaction. ‘You love her?’ she asked.

I grinned. ‘Always,’ I said.

‘But she is not anyone here?’ Kunka asked.

I shook my head. ‘No. She is very far away. She is from Savoy.’

‘Like those gentlemen who cannot take their eyes off you?’ my Bohemian gentleman asked. ‘They are all Savoyards. From Geneva.’

Well, I was dull-witted, but not so very dull-witted as that. ‘Yes, she is from Savoy. But not, I think, with any of those gentlemen.’

Kunka put a warm hand on mine. ‘And your lady … will you be faithful to her tonight? With every girl at court ready to throw herself in your lap?’

I was looking for something courtly to say, but her eyes smouldered.

‘Listen, Englishman. I am the very Queen of Love of this tourney, and I challenge you as you are a knight to remember your lady.’ So the smoulder was not lust, but anger.

I bowed at the table. ‘Lady, you are so wholly in the right that I can only swear on my honour to abide your challenge.’

She smiled, and her knight smiled.

Later in the evening, when my sword was still undrawn, and I was surrounded – indeed, I was cornered as thoroughly as a stag of fourteen tines is backed into a cliff by hounds and hunters; there I was, alone, with fifteen women about me. Their bodies were young and beautiful, their eyes open and shining. Their hair was uncovered, delicious to smell. Nerio had stood by my side all too briefly, engaged one fair maid in conversation and taken her hand, leading her away to discuss poetry, or so he claimed. Fiore was nowhere to be seen. My Savoyards were not even in the same hall, and I suspect I’d forgotten them.