The Long Sword (42 page)

Father Pierre showed some of the strain he was feeling by shrugging. He rarely indulged in displays of temper or even impatience, but the near-defection of the Genoese contingent, sailing its own route to the rendezvous with an unknown number of French and Imperial men-at-arms, and now the possible desertion of the Venetian military fleet, was sapping even his boundless good humour.

I bowed to Lord Contarini. ‘May I have leave to consult with my friends?’ I asked. I looked pointedly at Fra Peter, who followed me out of the meeting. To my surprise, so did the king.

I found Fiore, Miles, and Juan at a fire, cooking bacon on sticks. Nerio’s squire was doing it for him – Nerio was watching a woman bathe.

There was some consternation when my friends discovered that they had the king and Philip de Mézzières in attendance. We provided wine as well we could. In the background, our
galia grossa
was repacking her stores at a great rate, surrounded by a fleet of small craft who were loading bulk cargo over the side. The oarsmen were assembled on the beach in neat rows, every man with his javelins and his sword and coat of mail. Venetian oarsmen are excellent soldiers as well as providing the motive force for their fleet.

‘The Venetians are mounting a subordinate expedition to chastise the Turks who are attacking Christian shipping,’ I said.

‘Where?’ asked Nerio, suddenly interested.

I probably showed the depth of my ignorance on my face, having little idea where Negroponte was. But the king came to my aid.

We recreated the wine-shop map with sand and pebbles. ‘East of Attica is an island that is rich and well-castled,’ he said. ‘It is allied to Venice.’

Nerio whistled. ‘My father has manors there,’ he said. ‘By the devil, gentlemen,
I
have a manor there, on the coast of Thebes facing Euboea.’

‘Kindly do not swear by the devil while you wear the cross of Saint John,’ Fra Peter said.

Nerio flashed an eyebrow. ‘But of course, and I was foolish to speak so,’ he said in a tone that robbed his words of any conviction.

I looked at the king.

Mind you, you must imagine my friends all bowing or kneeling in the sand.

He glanced at Nerio. I think he was amused by the young Florentine’s bluster. Perhaps it was like calling to like. His mouth wrinkled in a wry smile, almost like a sneer.

‘I would like you gentlemen to stay with the Venetians as volunteers,’ he said. ‘I would esteem is as a great favour – the more especially if, having chastised the Turks, you ensured that Lord Contarini continued to Rhodes. Without these galleys, I lack the strength at sea to accomplish anything of this
empris.
’

I snuck a glance at Fra Peter, but there was no help coming from that quarter. Fra Peter didn’t have to worry about King Peter’s attempts to woo Emile; on the other hand, he was charged with protecting the legate, which was probably a more worthy concern.

‘Your Grace,’ I said. ‘Yet I am a mere knight, and not a great magnate of France or England. I have not power to keep a lord of Venice to his promise.’

Fra Peter allowed himself a smile. ‘You are, however, the officer of all my volunteers, and if I send you – or rather, if the legate sends you, and the other volunteers of the order, it seems to me unlikely that the admiral will maroon you or strand you far from the crusade.’ He nodded to me. ‘Sir William, you have a famous name. Contarini asked for you.’

Well. There’s fame for you.

Nerio nodded vehemently. ‘Is this a council of war? Sir William, are you asking my humble opinion?’

The king and Fra Peter frowned at Nerio’s open derision. But I nodded.

Nerio bowed. ‘I, for one, would be delighted.’

Fiore made an Italianate motion of his head, one that had as much pitch and toll as a ship in a storm. ‘If there is fighting?’ he said, as if that summed up all that needed to be said.

Miles Stapleton grinned. ‘Against the Turks?’ he said.

Juan beamed. ‘I will fight the Turks,’ he said.

In fact, we had twenty more donats, knights and men-at-arms. But their enthusiasm was unanimous.

Nerio and Fiore went to the great ships, the round ships, to see if we couldn’t find a few ‘volunteers’ from among the so-called ‘crusaders’, the routiers and mercenaries in the holds of the great ships. Men like me. Or like the man I had been.

I returned to Contarini and swore to follow his orders. We brought him almost forty armoured men, stiffening his marines. They were a mixed bag of crusaders, routiers and volunteers, and included some famous men – we had the Baron Roslynn from Scotland, who is today the Earl of Orkney.

I didn’t see the king again. As you can imagine, I had some thought that I had been used as Uriah by King Peter. I tried to get aboard the pilgrim ship to see Emile, but there wasn’t time. Lord Contarini ordered me aboard his flag, the
Christ the King
, a
galia grossa
of magnificent size, with the broadest top deck of any galley I had ever seen. Her hull was scarlet, and she had enough gold-work on her sides to support every gilder in London for a year. He took all five of us and our squires and pages to augment his marines.

As an aside, a Venetian usually ships noble ‘marines’ from Venice; gentlemen-marines are allowed cargo space and decent living quarters. But to press more of the crusaders aboard, Lord Contarini had left all but three of his gentleman-marine berths open.

He put to sea with fourteen
galia sottil
and two more
galia grossa
stretching away behind us down the coast of the Morea. I saw Emile and waved.

She blew me a kiss. She said something, and I couldn’t hear it, and we were past. I watched her for as long as I could, but our deep rudder turned us out of the line and I lost her behind Turenne’s
galia sottil.
And there on the bow was the Hungarian from Mestre, with his long hair wrapped in pearls. I would not have seen him except that I was staring after Emile. And then he too was gone.

I had thought the admiral a quiet, dignified old gentleman, but on board his flagship he was a tartar. He was always on deck; often, he would take the helm of his ship and steer her personally. Of course, as I knew, it was
his
ship – he owned the vessel, her cargo, and most of the standing rigging, the arms, and tools. It was from watching him, and talking to him, when the mood was on him, that I learned how little he relished taking the Venetian squadron to sea in pursuit of the Turks.

‘They sprout ships like mushrooms in a rainy winter,’ he said. ‘If we beat them, they will be back directly. If we lose?’ He looked up from the rail. ‘I’m ruined, and so is every man who outfitted a ship.’

I learned a great deal from him, and from listening to him discourse to Nerio. He often forgot we were not Venetians and he freely discussed his orders and his reasoning. Not, I suspect, because he sought our opinions: in terms of naval tactics, none of us had anything useful to offer. But as I have found since, it is often useful to speak to intelligent men – ay, and women! – if only to clarify your own point of view.

I had little experience of the sea, beyond, as I have said, crossing the channel, running up and down the Thames, and the recent voyage out to Greece from Venice. Yet now that the Venetians had left the king and the crusade behind, I discovered a whole new level of hurry, of hard-pressed sail, and hard-pressed mariners.

Admiral Contarini might have been hesitant about meeting the Turks in battle, but he was in a great hurry to reach the point where the decision would have to be made, and he pressed us hard. We had the great lateen sails rigged on both the foremast and the mainmast. When the wind was right, on her quarter, we could rig a lateen to the stubby stern mast. When the wind was dead astern, we’d rig ‘gull winged’ with one great lateen out over each side. The great galleys were odd cross-breeds, with heavy masts and a sail rig, yet the long hulls and oar banks of a galley, and I lacked the knowledge of ships that would allow me to know if they were good ships or not. The passage of time has made me a better sailor, aye, and a better judge of ships, and now, of course, I know that the great galleys of Venice are one of the handiest and most dangerous warships afloat, but they looked so little like the King of England’s warships that I had my doubts.

You may imagine that I did not express those doubts. Instead, I accepted orders and instructions and listened to the irascible old man scold his subordinates, curse his sailors and woo his oarsmen through two long weeks of Ionian summer. During that time we learned that on a Venetian galley, in a long row, the gentlemen are expected to put in their time at the great oars, and we rowed almost every day. It was excellent exercise, and the hard bellies and heavily muscled arms of the Venetian courtiers I knew were explained.

Often, Venetian gentlemen-marines are also men in training to command galleys, and as the admiral tended to forget that we were foreigners, we received instruction every day on the rudiments of navigation and operations at sea. I learned a little about taking the helm and steering the ship, enough to know that it would require a lifetime of practice to be proficient. Still, in two weeks, the group of us learned a fair amount, all except Fiore, who had at last found an element that was not his own. The sea defeated him, and he didn’t stir from his hammock except to lose his latest attempt at a meal over the side.

During these lessons I got to know Contarini’s Venetian gentlemen better. His captain was Messire Vettor Pisani, a famous sailor and merchant. Pisani had a great name as a fighting sailor, and we heard tales from the sailors about his exploits against the Turks, the Egyptians, and most especially against the Genoese. He was in his forties, tall and weather-beaten, with a great nose like the prow of a ship and cheekbones so high and sharp he might have been a Tartar. He had a vast dignity, for a man of his age; he seldom spoke unless he had something to say, and his silence was sometimes more effective than Contarini’s diatribes.

I learned about him and his history from Carlo Zeno, one of the Venetian gentlemen. Zeno didn’t like me when I came aboard, and I heard him, at meals, make slighting reference to my poor Italian. I might have bridled, but I was working very hard on my temper, and Pisani gave me yet another example of a dignified chivalry. So I smiled at Zeno whenever we met, and refused to accept his ill humour. When the officers began my sea education, he mocked my ignorance.

I was, I confess, angry. I’m sure I showed it, and his mockery continued. I bit my lips and tried to listen when Messire Pisani showed me how best to grasp the tiller and taught me some of the Italian words of command. A galley is strange animal, which is a country of its own. It speaks Italian, but does so with both Greek and Arabic words thrown atop the Italian.

I walked about the ship after exercise each day, chanting my new words to myself. I’d say them to Marc-Antonio when we wrestled, or to Fiore when we fenced. Zeno would walk along the
corsia
, the central gangway, with his hands behind his back, saying the same words – aping me, in other words, while the oarsmen laughed.

I bit the insides of my cheeks.

Nerio laughed at me. ‘Smack him,’ he said. ‘He’s a Venetian – he’ll resent it the rest of his life, but that will be the end of this.’ Nerio grinned. ‘Venetians are good haters.’

Fiore was no use; he was virtually prostrate with seasickness.

Use, however, made him master, and by the time we reached Piraeus under the magnificent hill of ancient Athens, Fiore was at least able to keep his feet at sea and could engage in some practice of arms. The Venetian gentlemen, Carlo Zeno and Gianni di Testa, were both young men, but they had each served in a sea fight, and had participated in many drills and exercises at sea, and with their help we practiced clearing the central gangway, repelling boarders, clearing the little poop behind the ram – the spur – and protecting the helmsman’s station.

The Venetian marines both used spears in sea fights. We practiced with spears and with longswords. As far as we could tell, each weapons offered some advantages. The spear gave you reach, and offered no threat to your oarsmen – remember, in a fight on a galley, your own motive power is sitting in vulnerable rows not more than a few inches on either side of where you set your feet. On the
Christ the King
the rowers were set low, so that the benches were below the height of the gangway and the rowers’ heads came up to the marines’ knees or slightly higher. This required a man using a longsword to be judicious in wielding his sword from the lower guards.

I know this, as I clipped a rower in the head with a wooden waster one afternoon off the Hand, south of the Peloponnesus. He was quite kind about it when he came to, but the incident made me more wary of heavy blows from low guards. And of course, Messire Zeno mimed my bad sword cut and made the rowers laugh.

It was not all bad. Several times Zeno held forth, very intelligently, on matters of navigation, or on history, ancient or modern. He knew the Levant well, having served all over for Venice or as a mercenary for the Turks, who he rather admired. He’d been an exile for some time. I had a hard time hating him, even when he was mocking me.

It was also during this voyage that I fell in love with the stars. At sea, you can see them all, thousands and thousands of them. It is not like watching the stars on land. It is, instead, like communing with God. At first I dreaded night watches, but I fell in love with stars, and then the watches passed in learning their names.

At Athens we paused to take on water and dried food, and the admiral had most of the Venetian ships sell off their heavy cargo, if indeed they had shipped any. We were told to take a few days to rest.

Nerio explained that the Duke of Athens – also the King of Sicily – was not always a Venetian ally, but that summer, with the crusade at sea and the Venetian fleet supporting the Achaean lords in their attempts to stem the Turkish tide, the Duke of Athens was very friendly to Venice indeed.

We had the pleasure of riding up to the great and ancient citadel of the Acropolis, which some men call ‘the castle of Athens’. Many of the antiquities are in ruins, of course, but the magnificent church of Saint Mary is in the ancient temple of the Virgin Goddess of the Greeks, and part of it is now the ducal palace.