All this went through my head in a moment. The young woman was unknown to me, and I pointed her out to Emile.
‘Goodness!’ Emile said. She was delighted. ‘Beautiful. I will find out directly.’
Emile had the confidence of the beautiful aristocrat; she had no hesitancy in pronouncing the girl ‘beautiful’. And she was. She had brown hair that hung far down her back, a crown of flowers and a kirtle of golden silk. She was ‘somebody’; even her red leather shoes spoke of her station, and her very slim waist was girded with a chain of gold, which she took off and wrapped around Fiore’s arm.
Oh, my.
‘I think I’m about to be made an object lesson,’ I said.
Emile kissed me, and very softly bit my lower lip, something that has always inflamed me. ‘I want my knight to be the best knight,’ she said.
It was like a shock – the look in her eye, lecherous and demanding. Courtly love need not end with marriage – far from it. My lady made her demand as she had every right to do.
I bowed, and vaulted onto my courser. My lady love had borne three children, and she still stood straight as an arrow, and she wore her kirtle over her naked body on a hot day, and nothing, for me, had changed since the first day on the bridge when I fought the Jacques for her and under her eye.
Prove your worth.
Fiore was, with Nerio, and Richard Musard, my first and best friend. But by the law of arms, we put that aside when we went into the lists. He was going to attempt to unhorse me for the slim lady in the golden kirtle.
I was going to return the favour, for the slim lady in the blue silk kirtle.
I had a new helmet, of which more later, but I did not feel that it was up to the rigours of jousting, and settled for my old and somewhat dented great helm, newly painted red and with one of my lady’s sleeves floating from the crest. I took a moment to pray; I find that a prayer can put me in the right space for fighting, and after I prayed, I imagined the cross of the lances …
My horse was in a fine state – fully worked up. I’d practised all spring. I sometimes beat Fiore, even then. Nothing was impossible.
I kept my lance erect as long as I could, so that Fiore would not slam his lance atop mine and void my blow. And I did not aim at his shield; I went for the crest on his helmet, where a fine piece of golden gauze floated.
Fiore’s lance slammed into my shield and split it, but the shaft shattered like glass.
My lance had torn the golden veil off his head and I rode down the list with that dainty bit of silk dangling like a brag from my crenellated lance tip.
I was coming to Fiore’s end of the lists, so I rode to the golden girl and placed the silk in her hands.
She flushed.
I turned my horse and trotted back, and popped my visor. There was Fiore, and I saluted him, and he gave me a glare of hate.
I suppose I rolled my eyes. The crowd was cheering me, and my wife’s eyes were big enough to bathe in, all the way from where she sat by the princess.
‘Sir Fiore requests that you take up a lance of war to engage in the next course,’ a herald said to me, as Marc-Antonio got water into my mouth.
I spat the water, took a drink, and patted my horse’s neck. ‘Tell Sir Fiore that such is my love for him that I would never consider using a lance of war against him,’ I said.
I picked up a lance with a crenellated tip. So did Fiore; he wasn’t lost to reason.
But he was coming for me with blood in his eye.
I decided to go for his visor. He had a new helm, a great helm with a visor in the Italian style. The visor was broad and a little flat for my taste, and I thought I might be able to seat my coronal, the tip of the lance, against his eye slit.
Seventy paces away, Fiore decided that my old helm had enough dents in the front that he could seat his coronal against it.
We charged. Both horses seemed to know that this was the important course; both were tired, but in excellent condition, and we exploded into the lists like bulls into chutes at a fair. I got my lance into the rest under my arm, and my tip came down …
My lance exploded. It was the strangest feeling, and my hand hurt for half a day. I had to let go of the butt of the lance; my hand was numb. I rode by Fiore and he was untouched – not even rocked – but his lance was gone too.
The crowd was roaring. Almost everyone was on their feet, and I had no idea why. I just rode down the list, empty-handed, because I’d dropped the broken butt of mine, and I waved at the crown and turned.
This time, when I saluted Fiore, he reached out his hand and we touched our fists together. The crowd roared again.
A herald met me as Marc-Antonio handed me water.
‘The prince forbids a third meeting. You have done enough,’ he said.
I bowed. There’s nothing to be said on these occasions. You can argue later, or whine about it, but when the Lord of the Tourney says you are done, you are done.
I trotted my courser down the list to where the prince and princess and my lady were seated and saluted, and the princess threw me a white rose, which I still have somewhere. And Emile looked as if she was going to eat me right there.
Bless her.
I trotted back to my end of the lists, and Marc-Antonio held my stirrup while I dismounted. ‘What the hell happened?’ I asked, a trifle pettishly.
Marc-Antonio made a face and handed me a jug of water. Achille, who was getting Nerio ready, glanced at me, full of obvious admiration.
‘You don’t know?’ Nerio asked. He was already on his charger. ‘By the Virgin, it was pretty, Guglielmo. Lance head to lance head – a perfect strike to the tip, and both lances shattered.’ He shrugged. ‘I have never done it. Never even seen it.’
‘Five points,’ Marc-Antonio said. In Mytilene, in accordance with the French fashion, a broken lance was worth one and driving the opponent to the ground was worth three; there were a few other scores. But tip to tip counted five.
I laughed. ‘I thought I’d hit his horse or something,’ I said. Marc-Antonio got my breast and back open and off me; suddenly the hot air of Lesvos seemed cool. I finished the water, took another, drank some, and poured the rest over my head.
Fiore appeared, and gave me a nice steel embrace. ‘You bastard,’ he said. ‘Just once, I want to impress a woman, and you try to steal my glory.’
As Fiore had no sense of irony, I knew he was speaking the truth. So I embraced him again. ‘I’m sorry,’ I said. ‘But you cannot expect me to lie down. Not in front of my lady.’
‘No,’ Fiore said. He sighed. ‘Well, tip to tip was excellent.’
‘And anyway, tell her you trained me,’ I said.
Fiore brightened. ‘I already did,’ he said.
You and Hawkwood and Boucicault and the Order, I thought.
It was Nerio who found out who the girl was.
‘Genoese,’ he said. ‘Bianca by name. But not really so very Genoese, either; the family lives in Padua and Genoa and Monaco, and they’re in banking. Part of the endless Doria family. What is a woman that handsome doing with Fiore? He won’t even know what to do.’
Emile slapped Nerio, not so lightly, on the shoulder. ‘Fie on you, sir. First, because I believe that Sir Fiore knows right well what to do, and second, because you are so uncourtly as to imagine that the lady might not be able to … explain.’
Nerio laughed so hard he staggered.
‘I find myself justly reprimanded,’ he admitted, wheezing. ‘But, my dear lady, the very picture of Fiore demanding explanations …’
I tried very hard to stare out of the window. Whenever Fiore was presented with something he didn’t understand, he expected careful, minute explanations, and he would demand repetition until he felt he fully understood.
‘I need to try this,’ Nerio said, seizing a breath. ‘Oh, fair lady, I am but a poor inno
cent and need to be instructed in …’
Emile glared.
The next day was axes afoot. This was very much a northern form of sport; most of the local gentlemen didn’t even own an axe. We gave some good blows that day, and I received one from Richard Percy that almost ended my tournament. I managed to keep my feet mostly by clinging to his staff like a babe to his mother.
But Sir Jason won. He practised a little differently from Sir Fiore; his method was simpler, and to be frank, he was bigger. He didn’t take Sir Fiore down, but he staggered him and almost hooked his ankle. Watching the two of them fight was a treat. They were excellent, and we roared for them, and I explained to half a hundred Greeks near me why the axe was a fine weapon, and I was told several times that we were mad heretics. But in the nicest way.
Told this way, the life of arms sounds delightful. But of course, you are exhausted when you finish even one bout; three times in the list on foot and you begin to prove your worth. And the blows hurt, despite the armour – muscles tear, bones crack. Not always, but sometimes. It can be hard to rise the third day, much less the fourth, and do it again. It is practice for war; in some ways, it is worse than war. There is no rage of battle to buoy you up, and everyone watches everything that you do; you are on stage, and the audience is other knights. Any error is discussed – bad temper, dishonesty, a foul blow …
All the things that seem to come so naturally when you are hot and tired.
It is meant to be difficult. A tournament is not to test your skill in arms. You are assumed to have skill. It is meant to test your chivalry. If you don’t think that the social skill of chivalry has practical military application, you are not listening well. Of course skill at arms matters. On a dark night, when you propose to climb a pile of rubble and storm a breach full of Turks, men will follow you if they think that you are an expert killer who will bring them home alive. But they also follow you because they think the loot will be fairly divided – because they think that you will see and speak of noble actions, not steal the credit from some lesser man who does something remarkable, not leave a wounded comrade to die alone when it all goes to shit.
I can tell what kind of leader a man is by the way he treats his squire in the moments before he goes into the list. A little fear, a lot of anticipation – a man can be full of himself just then.
An excellent time for abruptness, or temper.
But gentilesse in these conditions is a sure sign of military grace.
Sir Jason won with the axe. He was splendid, and almost too humble, and when he knelt to be kissed by the princess, he later told me that he felt like a fake. This from a man whose backhand axe blow can knock me from my feet.
The fifth day was the sword on foot. So many men were injured that they had eliminated the spear; swords were relatively safe. It is too bad – the spear is one of my favourite weapons.
In the very first fight, Nerio and Fiore took themselves out of the deed. I have no idea what was said, but both men grew heated and, exactly like the first day, they both struck, very hard, and the point of each longsword went through the other’s visor. Each punctured the other’s cheek; both bear the scars to this day, and neither man could eat whole food for a week.
Let me make this simple. They were the two best swords. Percy was good, and Bernard was almost as good as me. But it was mine to lose.
I lost. I lost to Bernard; he surprised me, a sudden, brilliant direction change that he must have practised very hard, and down I went. In his last bout – with, of all people, Marc-Antonio – he was careful. Marc-Antonio landed some stout blows, and for a moment I thought my once pudgy squire was about to win a deed of arms, but Bernard knew his own limits and his fatigue. He finished with the same brilliant throw that had put me down, and was crowned with laurel and allowed to kiss the princess.
I have fought many times in many deeds, from Poland to Spain, England to Morocco. I fought once for the Khan of Tartary. But that was one of the hardest lists and best fights I’ve known. So much skill, so many gentlemen who’d practised so hard, with such good masters. Before a year was out, I’d be facing men in front of a crowd of twenty thousand in Milan, but the lists at Mytilene had the better men.
I had some magnificent bruises. And a fairly ugly gore: someone’s spike or sword point had slipped between the plates of my brigandine and gone a finger’s width into my side.
My wife had always liked a little blood. Which is good, as I always seemed to have a little to share.
I like to think that’s the night we made our son.
Prince Francesco loaded his galleys immediately after the tournament. In fact, while the tournament was still ongoing, I saw four dismantled trebuchets being laid under the benches of a galley, which startled me, as I had thought the prince had said we would not be supporting the Green Count against the Turks. However, while I had been sitting with the prince watching Bernard beat Marc-Antonio, he’d turned, as if we’d been in conversation all along, and nodded. ‘Tell your other master you may serve with him,’ he said. I sent Marc-Antonio to the Green Count as soon as his hangover wore off.
Emile was making her own plans to travel to Venice. Our spring of pleasure was at an end; her steward was begging her to return to her estates – my estates – in Savoy, and she could not live forever on Lesvos, pleasant as it was. She and Sister Marie and Sister Catherine, who looked after our children, were planning to take her household knights, covered in honour from the lists, and go home. It was Emile’s contention that she could return to Venice in time to meet me in the autumn; I doubted it.
So, four days after the tournament, as my borrowed Lesbian galley was packed with food, and a horse transport with horses, on the beach under our castle, she was also packing, for a different trip. We chatted; we had decided, as if by mutual consent, to maintain the pleasure of our amorousness in Mytilene and not to be so serious. We did well, right through the evening. It rained, and we made love in our bed.
And afterwards, my wife burst into tears.
‘We will never come back here,’ she wept. ‘I am a fool. I should give away my lands and live here forever. What do I want with estates in Savoy? I can have you and my children every day and an orange tree that also bears lemons.’
Once, I might have murmured some platitude about feudal duty.
But I felt it too. We were at the end of something beautiful.
The next day, on the beach, she bit my lip like a wanton, and rolled her shoulders and smiled as if I might throw her down on the beach. I kissed Maggie and my own daughter, although they were both mine by then. Edouard was staying with Prince Francesco as a page. Emile was sailing on a Genoese ship, with Fiore’s leman, to whom he was unofficially affianced, and her father, who owned the ship and disapproved heavily, but who was also somewhat star-struck by Emile and her obvious riches and nobility.
My wife patted Fiore’s hand and promised to make it all right before the ship touched at Ancona.
Then she kissed me again, and went up the plank from the beach to the galley’s stern, and walked serenely to the rail, whence she waved twice before the ship turned out into the straits and bore up for Lemnos.
She never returned. The orange-lemon tree is still there; I’ve been to it a few times, and I always cry. I have known other women, and loved them well, but my heart is in that tree, and it is the garden of my love until I die.
I was sombre when I reached Constantinople, although the city moved me all over again. However decayed she might be, she is the most magnificent city in the world, and when you have visited Hagia Sophia, you have seen a glimpse of Heaven.
I rode a borrowed horse to Blachernae to have an audience with the Emperor. That is, Prince Francesco had an audience, and I stood, bowed, scraped, and was perfectly silent, although there was something particularly gratifying about hearing my titles rolled off in Greek. And when they were done discussing the Ottomanid
s and the Karamanids and the Genoese and the Venetians and the Order and the Pope as if they were all equally dangerous rival tribes, the Emperor indicated me with the smallest motion of his hand and I approached the throne.
The Emperor, descendant of the Emperors of the Roman Empire, lord of the mightiest city in the circle of the world, had on no jewellery whatsoever. I knew why; he had pawned every jewel he owned to pay the Green Count so that the count could pay Nerio.
‘Syr Guglielmo,’ he said, making my knighthood sound like part of my name, ‘I have no treasure to heap on you, but I have a title to give, because titles are cheap. This one is not cheap; it is, I think, exactly as you deserve, you and your three friends.’
That’s when I was made ‘Spatharios’. Many Englishmen have been Spatharios. Indeed, once we formed the whole of the Emperor’s guard. But it meant ‘sword bearer’ and entitled the owner to go armed, even in the presence of the Emperor.
‘The title is as old as Rome,’ the Emperor said in his soft voice. ‘Wear it well.’
Then the Emperor looked at the prince. ‘And now, we must speak of the Church,’ he said.
I bowed deeply, kissed the toe of his shoe, and withdrew.
Gatelussi shrugged. Bad form, with an emperor. ‘If we must,’ he said. ‘Majesty,’ he added.
I can see that Froissart and Chaucer know what I’m talking about, but the rest of you do not. So, sometime in the eleventh century, about the time that William the Bastard was taking an army to conquer England, the Patriarch of Constantinople and the Patriarch of Rome, whom we call the Pope, had a quarrel. Rather, the quarrel was already quite old, and it became something not unlike open theological war. Until then, Christians in Greece and Christians in England had the same faith, and they took communion together and exchanged books in monasteries all across Europe, from Antioch to Dublin …
When the schism happened, it was almost unnoticed in the west. The west had long accepted the Patriarch of Rome’s commands; the east never had. Or so I’ll guess. But suffice it to say that three centuries of crusade and war and betrayal and savagery had deepened the divide between the Greek Orthodox rite and the Western rite to the point that each considered the other heretics, and indeed, I knew churchmen who believed that schismatic Greeks were worse, morally, than infidel Saracens.
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