My spear had lugs below the head, like a crossbar. A ghiavarina, they call it in Italy. I got my bare left foot up one step, my spearhead shot forward, my opponent tried to cross and my crossbar caught his axe-head.
In a breath, my spear-point was buried in his forehead. I cleared it by swinging the butt up into his mate’s axe. It was clumsy, but I tied his weapon and Marc-Antonio killed him with a flick of his wrist, putting his spear-point through the maille under his arm and into his lungs.
The spearmen on the upper steps were hampered by their own friends, and as my first victim fell off my spear-point, I swung my spear into the shin of the next man. Foolishly he tried to parry my cut; he had leg armour that would have done it for him. Francesco killed him over my shoulder.
I went up a step. There were two more men, now, just hurrying down the steps – one in full harness, and one still struggling with a big gorget, or neck guard.
The second spearman tried for Marc-Antonio. I put my butt-spike into his hip, inflicting little damage, and then I pushed with all my weight, collapsing his body structure so that he sat back on the stair above him. He lost his spear in the fall and I was up another step, my spearhead buried in the thigh of the man with the gorget, who screamed and fell, fouling my legs. His mate above me had a longsword, which he swung, grabbing for my spear with his other hand.
I shortened my grip until I had the spearhead in my right hand, the haft of the spear like a long tail behind me. The Catalan with the longsword tried a thrust and I turned it; he raised his arm for a heavy cut and I popped his elbow with my left hand, turning him. He backed a step and then another and I was on him, clambering over the man I’d dropped with a stab to the thigh. This one was the last. He cut, and backed, and cut, and I thought he must be someone’s squire – brave, and not very good, cutting from out of distance and giving ground when he didn’t have to. I followed him like a wolf follows a wounded sheep. At some point I’d caught my spear up in both hands, point up and back, butt-spike a little forward. Behind me, the man down on the steps surrendered to Marc-Antonio.
Perhaps we climbed six steps.
Then he was on flat ground. He had nowhere to run. He put both hands on his sword hilt and attacked.
My counter broke his arm and threw him to the ground, just as Fiore taught us. I didn’t even kick him in the head. I was at the citadel.
The gate was closed. There was a postern, a smaller gate, set in the main gate. It was locked. I know; I pulled at it, because we needed a miracle. I thought the last man out from the garrison might have left it open.
Still, no one was shooting at us.
‘Take him,’ I said to Marc-Antonio. I guessed him to be someone worth a ransom. The squire, I mean.
The walls were about twenty feet high. Our ladder would make it to the top of a wall, but the man climbing it would be under fire from all three turrets.
I walked back down the infernal steps, my greave pounding my bare instep, got back on Gabriel, which was as hard as anything I’d done all day, and rode back to the second gate. I found Gospel Mark; it took me so long that the sun was rising. I could hear a little by then, and I managed to get him and Ewan to bring the ladder. The bloody thing weighed a ton, but the archers were full of spirit; after all, we’d almost done it.
We were like hounds that have scented blood.
By the time I returned to the gate, Nerio was there with Fiore. They were mounted, looking up at the gate, the three towers, and the lit window.
The sun was just cresting the horizon.
Nerio pointed at the ladder and spoke. I couldn’t hear him well, but he was clearly delighted. Marc-Antonio spoke a bit, and then took a horn off his belt and sounded it. I heard it distantly, as if Marc-Antonio was far away.
The archers erected the ladder.
There was no one shooting.
I was damned if I was letting Fiore be first on the ladder, or Nerio. But Nerio insisted. Marc-Antonio sounded the horn once more; high above the gate, a shutter opened, and Nerio started up the ladder.
I got my foot on the bottom rung, ignoring Fiore’s hands on my back.
A woman’s voice shouted out. Isn’t it odd? I couldn’t hear what she was saying, but I knew it was a woman’s voice from the timbre.
The voice came again, and Marc-Antonio shouted back.
Nerio was almost at the top, and I started to climb. It was terrible – like climbing up into Heaven with the burden of your sins on your back. Thighs, calves and hips all burning, left arm almost useless, bare foot and all …
I drew my arming sword, one-handed, at the top of the ladder. Nerio was still at the head of the ladder, leaning on the stone.
A Catalan man-at-arms stood a horse-length away with a spear. He was in full harness, and he had the spear in a very competent garde, point down, butt high, and he looked relaxed and capable and awake.
But he took a step back.
I could hear a woman’s voice, shouting in Italian, a Tuscan dialect that I knew well, and Nerio laughing, again at a distance. I leaned against the stone of the parapet and struggled with my visor, and I took some deep breaths. The visor wouldn’t stay up or down; it was bent on its hinges. Something was wrong with the whole helmet, in fact.
The Catalan knight stood there, relaxed, his spear now at his side.
‘You are lucky to be alive,’ he said in fluent Tuscan Italian. I only understood a few words, but I got the message well enough. I was hearing better; indeed, I remember crossing myself and thanking the Virgin for the restoration of my hearing. At any rate, I thought he was boasting about how tough he was. I was too tired and my body hurt too much to do any bragging, so I continued to lean against my stone wall.
Fiore opened his visor and glanced at me. His eyes widened.
‘Oh, Blessed Virgin,’ he said.
Fiore was ignoring the Catalan knight, and both of them were staring at me.
Nerio laughed again. ‘Done!’ he called, in Italian. ‘Stop fighting!’
The woman called out, ‘We have surrendered and we will all be ransomed by Lord Renerio of Florence.’ At least, later that’s what Marc-Antonio told me. At the time I heard her as a sort of braying sound. I knew it was Italian but I was having trouble with words.
The Catalan glanced at me. ‘This is true? If I put up, you will not kill me?’
I bowed. So did Fiore. Fiore made a long speech and the Catalan relaxed. Apparently, he said, ‘You have my word of honour that no harm will come to you so long as you do us no harm.’ Fiore says that his careful phrasing was ‘because you need a long spoon to sup with the Catalans’.
Our knight nodded. He looked down into the courtyard, and gave a half-smile. Then he laid his spear against the wall. ‘I’m the only one here,’ he said. It was the first phrase that I understood in its entirety. My ears were clearing. ‘I hope you didn’t kill my squire. I like him.’
I nodded, but Fiore started. ‘Where is the rest of the garrison?’ he asked.
‘Out there, fighting you,’ our Catalan said in his accented Italian. He seemed very pleased with himself, and I didn’t blame him. A brave man. At the same time, he seemed curiously unconcerned with the fate of his comrades.
I was sagging. I could barely keep myself upright, and I had to rest my head on the stone of the wall for a moment. And then I looked down. There was blood all over my brigandine, and I had to get my basinet off.
It would not budge.
Fiore came over to me, and held my arms. ‘You will do yourself a mischief,’ he said. ‘Stay. Stop, William. You are hurt badly.’
I didn’t feel as if I had been hurt badly. That is, I hurt all over, but I did not have that feeling I knew too well, the feeling of getting badly cut, or worse, stabbed. Thrusts are the most terrifying wounds. I didn’t have that feeling, the sticky feeling when your muscles don’t work right that comes befo
re the pain of the wound.
But something was wrong. I felt light-headed, and Fiore was watching me the way a mother watches a sick child.
We tried to get the basinet off. If you have never worn one, basinets have aventails, a hood or cloak, if you like, of maille that keeps lances and spears and sword points out of your throat and chin. Basinets do not have metal under the chin, so they are fairly simple to remove.
Not this one.
Before the sun was up, I was on my knees, and the Catalan knight was helping Fiore, a knee against my shoulder. The pain was intense, and then the basinet came free.
My helmet liner was black with blood, and the whole top of my helmet was crushed. My left ear was partly torn from the flesh of my scalp and now dangled painfully. The removal of the helmet tore open the new scabs …
And I was gone.
I’ve had worse wounds, but I’ve never had any more annoying. I was only out a day, and even then, Albin told me later that I’d passed from faint to sleep very quickly and he’d never worried about anything but infection.
I awoke in a bed. It was a good bed, and my linen sheets all but sparkled in the light of a new day. Father Angelo was by the bed, reading from my Vegetius.
He glanced at me and smiled. He was unshaven, and he’d clearly sat with me all night. Want to know what men think of you? Take a wound.
Regardless, he gave me a cup of small beer, and I drank it greedily and then two cups of water. My head swam every time I raised it, and it was wrapped in bandages like some sort of tight turban, but I was quite expert at being wounded. I worked my various limbs and muscles, and everything seemed good except my left shoulder and my left hip. The hip was stiff and cold; the shoulder was not broken, but was almost immobile anyway. I was wrapped in linen, prickly with heat.
‘Master Albin sewed your ear back on,’ Father Angelo said. ‘There were quite a few wounded. He went to see to them.’
He showed me my basinet, or what was left of it. The visor still worked – the pivots were intact, a miracle – but the onion top, the long spike, was crushed in and the whole top of the helmet crumpled like vellum tossed aside by an angry scribe.
I had a new helmet, which I had commissioned in far-off Brescia. I’d tried it on but never worn it. ‘I’ll need a new helmet,’ I muttered.
Father Angelo was glaring at me. Glare is too strong a word. He was watching me with a look that held a reprimand. ‘Is that all you think when you see this?’ he asked. ‘L’Angars says you were hit in the head by a stone as big as a house, and you lived. He thinks it’s a miracle from God.’
I laughed. ‘He’s lucky it didn’t hit him,’ I joked.
Father Angelo shook his head. ‘The word that comes to mind is “thankless”,’ he said. ‘God preserved your life.’
I thought that my friend Jiri, the armourer in Venice, had preserved my life, but I understood, and the crumpled basinet stood on the sideboard in mute testimony to God’s mercy. I prayed, and Father Angelo prayed with me.
‘What happened to the women?’ I asked.
He nodded. ‘I found them, with l’Angars. They are in the hall, making food.’
‘The rest of the garrison?’ I asked. ‘Our own casualties?’
‘Lapot is wounded, of the knights, and l’Angars. Lord Renerio’s squire, Achille, is in a bad way. Ricardo ’All, of the archers, is dead, and four others wounded badly.’
Ricardo ’All was Dick Hall, who’d joined us the summer before. He was English, from Lincoln. A hard-drinking man, and now dead.
I said a prayer for them.
‘Master Albin is with the wounded,’ he said. ‘The garrison is mostly intact, and outnumbers us; we have over a hundred prisoners.’
Nerio pushed into the room, carrying a tray. ‘So as soon as you are done malingering in bed,’ he said, ‘I’m going to need you on your feet.’
On my feet proved a bit of a misnomer; my hip was in a bad way, and I couldn’t bear the weight of harness or walk well, but I could sit in the hall and give orders. So I did. Nerio was securing the lower town with Lachlan, and then he was out with the Kipchaks, and then he was engaging local stradiotes.
It turned out that one of the reasons our surprise had been so complete, at least until the slingers heard us on the hillside, was that Nerio’s uncle, Angelo, the bishop of Patras, had died just a week before. The Catalans had been ready for weeks, waiting for Angelo to attack them; they relaxed when they heard of his death.
His death had another effect that Nerio had never anticipated. Angelo’s men-at-arms appeared on our third day in the fortress, and assumed that Nerio would take them on. There were about sixty lances, most of them men I remembered from the year before, when Angelo Acciaioli had hosted the Green Count and negotiated with him. They swore to Nerio on the spot, and so did most of the Catalans who’d survived our attack; that was life in Morea. Or Italy, really.
Let’s discuss the benefits of chivalry for a moment.
We’d killed about twenty of them – mostly the crossbowmen in the tower. We didn’t rape their women, and we took prisoners, like the man on the stairs I put down and the squire I dropped at the top. Consequently, the Catalans had no reason to hate us; it was all business.
See? Chivalry. If you must kill people for your living, best do it with grace and honour. And rules.
By the time Nerio had been in possession of Corinth for a week, a Venetian merchant round ship came across from Naupactus, and sent a longboat in cautiously. I sent Marc-Antonio aboard, and he came back with the captain, who climbed all the way to the top of the Acrocorinth to visit us, because he was our old friend Carlo Zeno.
By then I could stand without too much pain, and we embraced, although even that hurt my shoulder.
‘It is the greatest feat of arms of the age,’ he said. ‘I confess I’m jealous.’ He looked out over the Gulf of Corinth. ‘This could be a great port,’ he said thoughtfully.
‘That’s what I intend,’ Nerio said, and the two of them spoke almost without pause, from afternoon through Vespers, about how to improve the warehouses and the port facilities. To me, it was all wishful thinking; Corinth was a pleasant, backwards town with small houses and nothing to ship, that I could see, but the two of them seemed afire.
After Mass, I asked Zeno if he had space in his huge ship to take twenty lances to Venice.
He smiled. ‘And here I thought there was no cargo,’ he said.
We haggled and haggled. I’m not particularly good at haggling, but luckily, Marc-Antonio filled my need, arguing that we could ride over to Patras and use any hull that came in, or even return to Thessaloniki where Genoese shipping touched. But, in the end, we settled on a sum that seemed a fortune to me, but which everyone proclaimed fair. And, although I was leaving the wild Irish and, to my great sorrow, the Kipchaks, with Nerio, I still had seventy men and hundreds of horses to move. The round ship could take all the men, but only half of our horses.
It took us another week to find another ship, a horse transport that was sitting at Negroponte, just down the coast from Corinth, left behind by the Green Count. I hired her, and her captain, another Venetian, and brought her up to the south beach at Corinth. Now I relate this purely for your amusement, but the two ships could see each other, and my little company loaded into both ships – most of the men into Zeno’s round ship on the north beach, but l’Angars and the pages and Gascon men-at-arms and the rest of the horses into the horse transport. Here’s the jest: the two ships were perhaps five hundred paces apart, but the horse transport was hundreds of miles farther from Venice, because she had to sail all the way around Morea to get into the Adriatic, whereas Zeno’s round ship was only five good days from Venice, because we were in the Bay of Corinth. That tiny stretch of land separates two great seas. The Romans attempted to cut a canal through. You can see the gorge they cut – it’s incredible. I assume they
used slaves. But they gave it up, or the Emperor lost interest.
Zeno filled his holds with our baggage, and then he loaded currants, which were the best export that Corinth had: dried, sweet fruit. He also loaded a dozen heavy tuns of malmsey, a rich, sweet wine, and some Turkish silk.
It was hard to leave Nerio. I’d already lost Miles Stapleton; I’d sailed away from Emile. Now, on a beach at Corinth, I was going to leave Nerio, who, of all the friends of my youth, was perhaps the most like me. I admired him, most of the time; I emulated many of his little mannerisms, because he was such an effective nobleman, in ways that I had never learned as a boy. Being a cook and being the son of the world’s richest man are two very different lives, I suppose.
He paid for both ships. He did it on the sly; I didn’t know until we reached Venice that, in addition to paying our wages and the success bonus for storming the Acrocorinth, he also covered our ships. But I know he wept on the beach.
‘I feel that when you sail away, my youth is gone,’ he said. ‘Without you and Fiore, I will be a much worse man.’
Then he handed me a contract, which I still have. At that time I was relatively new to being a contractor, in military terms. I’d served with Hawkwood, but I had little experience of contract law.
Nerio, on the other hand, was the only knight I ever knew who would draft his own legal documents.
‘This is a new form of contract,’ he said. ‘It is a condotta in Aspetto.’ He shrugged. ‘It means I am offering you a stipend to be available to me in the future. I will pay to bring you here.’
I nodded. ‘Of course,’ I said.
‘How much?’ Marc-Antonio asked, and we all laughed.
PART TWO – Italy
August 1367 – March 1368
We landed in Venice on a sunny August day with the haze so thick that you felt as if it weighed on your shoulders like armour. The sun pounded through it like boiling water pouring through a cloth. Zeno’s round ship entered the Lagoon on a breath of east wind and had to tack back and forth; our five-day journey had taken ten days, and we hadn’t even had a storm to distinguish our trip – just blasts of African heat so intense that tar dripped from the standing rigging to stain the holystoned white oak deck. Our horses were deeply unhappy, but alive, and Zeno, a good friend and an excellent captain, put us at Pellestrina on the Lido islands. We slung two sicker horses onto the wharves, while the healthier chargers followed Gabriel straight into the water and swam ashore.
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