by Philip Kazan
From that day on I wasn’t troubled again by any randy soldiers. I had triumphed: over a grotesque oaf, over lust, over the entire species of men. I thought so, at least. Looking back through the clear and honest lens of time and experience, it is plain to me that I was incredibly, undeservedly lucky and nothing more. For one thing, the landsknecht was not, despite his audience that day, a very popular man. Even his nickname would have told me that if I’d understood those things at the time, because he was a German landsknecht and so the sworn enemy of all things Swiss. As I learnt after more time with the company, men who openly preferred other men or boys were not tolerated by the others. It was acceptable to use a boy if the natural urges that overcame a sturdy, healthy man could not find a female receptacle. It was also accepted that, from time to time, if a young fellow with little power got ideas above his station, he might find himself singled out by the more powerful men, who would use him as the leader of a pack of dogs uses his subordinates, until he learnt his place. Men who used other men in this way always claimed that they did it out of necessity. Il Svizzero was one of those who, so gossip in the company went, enjoyed these things rather more than a proper, natural man should. His friends had plainly egged him on to violate me because I had upset the natural order of things, to do a suitable, even necessary thing. But when I had humiliated him in his turn, that had also redressed an imbalance of nature. He had come after me as a righteous man set to punishing the strange boy who had burst into their world and killed one of their leaders. But it was just as satisfying to the general sense of justice that, when he had failed, and failed so dismally, he should become the all-too-willing sodomite punished for his unnatural lusts. It was my good fortune that Il Svizzero was as much on the edge of our world as I was.
Equally as lucky – and this I did understand, even then – was that the man had been so blinded by his urges that he had blundered into the most pathetic of ambushes. For all his affectation, the landsknecht had a reputation as a ferocious warrior. He had fought in the recent wars and was undoubtedly a better swordsman than Gianbattista Tascha had ever been. I only bested him because he allowed his thing to lead him blindly – for a man’s thing is as blind as a mole, no matter that it drags him wherever it wishes – into a child’s ambush. I hadn’t deserved to escape with my life.
Il Svizzero recovered from the knock I’d given him, though the surgeon had to stitch his scalp back together. But he lost his swagger, and his warlike tatters never seemed to look as dashing. He became nervous, a man who was always looking over his shoulder, and his friends, such as they had been, abandoned him. He disappeared one day, somewhere in the Liri valley, no doubt to try his luck with the papal armies and sample the fleshly delights of Rome. So the shamed sodomite lost, and I, the imitation boy, triumphed. It hardly seems fair now, though it certainly did to my younger self. But then I spent that strange and desperate part of my life in a constant negotiation with justice, with fortune, honour and with truth itself. I was becoming something I was not; I could not be what I really was. The harm that had been done to me, I sometimes passed on to others so that I could keep myself safe. How much justice was there in that? Not much for those who suffered. For me, though, justice was being served. Every day that I remained alive was revenge against the world that had wronged me. The wrong was great. And my need for revenge, though I hardly knew it, was growing every day. I hid it within myself, like a tainted lake hidden in porous rock, and there it remained, though I told myself it was a pure spring and called it justice, and honour, and truth. Like all things, concealment becomes a habit. You forget who you are hiding from. You forget who is hiding.
CHAPTER TWELVE
After that day, my life became easy. Easy, that is, to the eyes of any observer who did not know my true nature, and that, of course, was everyone. My triumph over Il Svizzero had won me respect and demonstrated that I was someone of virtue and good morals. To my relief I slipped into the life of Don Orazio’s company and vanished into its rhythms and complexities, as so many others had done before me. It is in the nature of a mercenary company to pick up strays as it journeys from place to place. I was not the first oddity to be taken in, and I wouldn’t be the last. Once the novelty of my presence had worn off, I was just Young Onorio of the Colonnello’s Lance.
The company rode down to Naples. We joined the army of the Duke of Alba and rode back again to Rome, where the Pope surrendered to us before we had even begun to lay siege to the city. The French marched down from the north to relieve the Pope. The Duke of Alba, who was a great soldier but also a prudent and exceedingly careful strategist, decided to let his enemy, the Duke of Guise, exhaust himself and his troops by chasing us around Italy. We won the war by keeping just out of range. When we finally met Guise near Ascoli, we all but destroyed his army. I watched from a nearby hillside. Don Orazio thought me too young to fight, and in any case, out of the men of a lance, only two would go into battle on any given day. I couldn’t see much: thickets of pikes disappearing into cannon smoke, the rattle of arquebus fire. It was almost dull.
The Duke of Alba went back to Spain. Don Orazio took us north and then down into the Kingdom of Croatia, where he signed a contract with the parliament there to fight the Turk. Croatia looked to me much like Italy, though the people spoke a strange language. On a day in late autumn, as we rode through the country south of Skradin, we came across a Turkish battalion with numbers a little larger than our own. Don Orazio and his squadron leaders decided to give battle. We were drawn up into ranks using the manoeuvres we had practised countless times.
To my joy – even by then I was still young, only fifteen – Don Orazio ordered me into the front rank. By that time, we had adopted the tactic called the caracole, that is, where you ride at the enemy in ranks, each rank firing his pistol as soon as he is within range before wheeling away to let the next rank fire. I was a good horseman by then, and fast, because I was still small and did not weigh much. I had acquired, by various means, a suit of armour pieced together from different sources that more or less fitted me, and I had a good pistol that was absurdly heavy in the hand but with which I could burst a turnip quite reliably from twenty paces.
I sat on my horse, looking across a flat, scrubby meadow dotted with sunburnt broom and tamarisk bushes. Not very far away was the enemy, a line of bright colours and strangely shaped headgear, and banners of all different shapes and sizes waving overhead. It was hot. My armour was making me sweat, steady rivulets running down my body and soaking into my underclothes and into the linen band I had wrapped tightly across my breasts. I fiddled with the strap of my helmet, one of those tall-combed morions with an open face. Our company was silent, except for the snorting of excited horses and the occasional yell of a caposquadra, but a steady, deep thrum of drums drifted across from the Turk. Don Orazio gave the order to charge and we set off, trotting at first through the scrub and then cantering.
I had time to notice that the failing year was letting some green back into the grass before we began our gallop. I straightened my arm. The pistol felt like a block of lead and all I could think about was that I was going to drop it. Suddenly there were faces, not much more than blurs: moustaches, eyebrows, dark shapes that were mouths opened to scream things I couldn’t hear. Turbans, feathers, steel reflecting the early afternoon sun. The arrows flying past looked like a flock of little birds.
The man next to me discharged his pistol and the shock of it made me pull my own trigger. There was a sound like a sheet ripping down the middle, and then we were turning, wheeling away, doing what our bodies had learnt to do in defiance of good sense and reason. We were galloping across their front, that sound of tearing still in my ears, then back across the meadow, past the Croatian arquebusiers who were advancing in a ragged line. That was my first battle. The Turks retreated, and the Croatians chased them until they came face-to-face with a much larger force and ran away, by which time we were inside the local castle, celebrating our victory with Venetian wine. Capo
squadra Sebastiano Morelli – who had, since the day I had fought Gianbattista Tascha, sometimes acted as a species of unwilling guardian, though no one had asked him to do it – came and sat with me in the corner where I was cleaning my pistol. I’d only fired it once, and I hadn’t even drawn my sword.
‘Congratulations, Onorio,’ he said. ‘You did well. I thought you would.’
‘Thank you, Caposquadra,’ I said.
‘It was a tight thing,’ Sebastiano went on. ‘Their musketry was good, for Turks, and their cavalry gave us a fright. It would have been good if someone had noticed them hiding behind that ruin.’
‘Cavalry?’ I hadn’t noticed any cavalry. I hadn’t noticed any musket fire, but that, no doubt, had been the tearing sound. I’d shut my eyes reflexively as my pistol had gone off, and when I’d opened them again, all I had seen was smoke.
‘What did you think of them, eh? All that screaming? Wild desert men from Syria, most likely. The second rank had a hot time.’
‘I thought we would attack again,’ I said, though I hadn’t at the time. I’d just followed the lances back to the rear, where I’d joined in the shouting and backslapping, even though I’d still been almost deaf.
‘What, and exceed the terms of our contract?’ Sebastiano laughed. ‘Don’t worry. We’re going to attack them again tomorrow. The colonnello is renegotiating with the Croats as we speak. Another caracole, and a melee, if they give us the chance. Swords, Onorio. You’ll be in your element.’
He was right, as it turned out. It wasn’t a large battle, though bigger than the first. The main Ottoman army was elsewhere, and this was a force sent out to probe the Croats’ flank. But there was a company of janissaries, and the cavalry were spahis, Turkish gentlemen who spent their lives training for war. This time we charged, fired our pistols, flung them away and drew our swords before crashing into the enemy line. And I was not frightened. Yesterday I had fretted as we waited for the order; today I was nerveless. I’d been thinking about my father, perhaps that was one reason. War, at its heart, is only about death, and who better than a ghost to guide me into it? So as I waited in the second rank, rubbing the sole of one boot against a stirrup, working out how best to carry my cocked pistol so that it didn’t accidentally discharge and kill me, my horse or the man next to me, I remembered one of the stories he’d told Federigo and me as we’d sat at his feet under the fig tree in our courtyard. About a battle, a charge, how he’d lose himself in the great turmoil of the fray. I don’t remember the details now. Strange: now I can only remember the robin who hopped around us, waiting for a crumb from the cake my father was eating. Then, I had clung to every detail, every horror, storing it away to use in my act, all the refinements on what it meant to be a man, as imagined by a small girl.
But when we attacked, I understood. My body understood. It was my years of training, of course, but it was more: I – Onorio, Onoria, whoever I was – dissolved. I fired, threw my heavy pistol into the white teeth of the man in front of me, drew my sword, twisted and turned as my horse plunged through the wall of men, stabbing and hacking, my mouth wide in a silent yell, because I had no voice that day. And I knew exactly what to do. It was so simple. Guns went off next to me – an arrow tinked against my helmet – these were voices telling me, You are alive! You are alive! I was with my comrades, those men, those other men. I rode, and slashed, and saw how force – the weight of our horses, our armour, our fury – met resistance, human flesh, rage and fear, and what happened. Simple, predictable, like throwing stones into a stream and making the water go this way or that. The enemy was water, and we were the stones. A tall man with a taller white headdress waving a red and gold flag appeared in front of me. I ran him through the throat and took the flag as it fell. The water parted for me. When the cavalry came at us with their lances, I felt nothing but joy as we met them, because I saw that they couldn’t stop us. We turned them and chased them through the olive groves to where the arquebusiers were waiting. There was blood then – I remember the horses screaming as the guns killed them, and not the men. Those I saw die in battle, those I killed or helped to kill, come to me when I sleep, or when I pray. But in battle, they were water, nothing but water, and I was the rock for which they parted.
I was given my own lance after that, the youngest caposquadra ever known in Don Orazio’s company. The colonnello had been given his patrimony back by then – Pope Paul had died, and the new pope was a friend to the Emperor and to Tuscany. Some in the company had feared that the colonnello would retire to his lands now that he was a marchese again, but when I had asked him, he’d just scoffed. ‘I’m a soldier, not a farmer,’ he’d said. Don Orazio, who had more or less ignored me after getting me to kill Tascha for him, had taken me under his wing since I had captured the janissary standard. I see now that he had been watching me from a distance, seeing if I would live or die in those first days and then, when I survived, steering me gently to where I would flourish. Now that I had my own lance, he had begun to take me into his confidence, in so far as he ever let any man get close to him. I came to know him well, but I think I owed that to the circumstances of our meeting – I had surprised him, and he was a man not easily surprised – and to the fact that he had revealed to me how he had schemed to get rid of Tascha, though he had probably been honest with me because he thought I’d soon be dead. He had also discovered that I was educated, which made me a rarity among mercenaries, and for the first time in my life I was glad that Bartolomeo had drilled the principles of mathematics into me across so many tedious hours. From Don Orazio I learnt the hidden, humdrum things that keep a mercenary company on its feet: accounting, supply, the law of contracts. How to manage fundamentally unmanageable men.
How to avoid them, too. I had no one who could be called a friend, but this was my choice. The one great friend of my life had betrayed me. Whenever I felt lonely, which was often, I would recall the eyes of Federigo Ellebori watching me across the table at the feast of Santa Celava. He had known. Perhaps he hadn’t been happy, but he’d known. So apart from Don Orazio, who was much too grand for me to ever call a friend, I kept even the people I needed at arm’s length: my pages, who came and went; and my second-in-command, a Roman called Paolo. About ten years older than me, who wore his bushy beard in the combed-out German fashion, he’d been one of the men who had egged on Il Svizzero, but since then he had become strangely devoted to me. I scared him, I think. Paolo was one of those men with a mind that is lively but lacks capacity. He needed to understand things, but didn’t quite have the quickness to manage it. I was something he didn’t understand at all. I think – no, I am sure – that I scared him, but I fascinated him too. It was my strangeness, of course. He was the type who paid money at fairs to see the mermaid or the talking monkey. To him, as to the other men, I was either a freak or a madman, but to soldiers, both of those things can be lucky. Paolo kept close to me because I was a curiosity, but also out of superstition. I didn’t really care, as he was a good cavalryman and the lance did as he ordered.
We left the Kingdom of Croatia when the parliament there ran out of money to pay us. A year later we were in France, lured by the war that had broken out between the true Church and the Protestants. Don Orazio made a contract with the Duke of Guise, who had only recently been our enemy, and we fought at the Battle of Dreux, charging with Maréchal Saint-André to rout the Huguenot infantry. Dreux was a bloodbath: our company alone lost thirty men. Sebastiano Morelli was wounded and froze to death in the night before we could find him. The living was good in France for us: we were on the side of the king and we were winning. It was a fat country and we barely needed to lift a finger to keep ourselves fed. I looked after my men. It was in France that I began to earn a reputation as one who worked as hard off the field of battle as on it, a man who made sure that his men’s purses were as full as their bellies and who dealt out justice with an even hand. We joined in the siege of Orléans, but then our employer was assassinated by a Huguenot, after which a treaty w
as drawn up, and we were jobless. That was a strange time: no wars were being fought in France, in the lands of Italy or Germany. Spain was at peace. So were the Low Countries. We had no choice but to go east again and hope someone would pay us to fight the Turk.
As we travelled and fought and travelled again, I grew into a man. I grew, anyway. I would never be tall, but I reached a respectable height: tall for a short man, you might say about me. I was and still am of slight build, a little wider in the hips than most men, a little narrower in the shoulders. My voice would never recover from Augusto’s belt. As Don Orazio had guessed, my voice box had been crushed, but this meant that no one was surprised when my voice never deepened. These were the rudiments of my disguise, but fortune continued to help in other ways. My breasts never grew to any great size, perhaps because I began to bind them before they had even begun to develop. My lunar cycle, too, came late and never brings much blood, though it has always pained me horribly. I quickly learnt to use rags, and to wash them in secret.
