Sword of Justice

by Christian Cameron

  It was well into the afternoon when I finished. My fingers were cramped and none of my recent injuries were fully healed, and so a day sitting on a high stool and leaning into my writing (my hand is too heavy) had tired me; my shoulder burned, and my hip was cold and ached as if I was at sea.

  I got up from my seat, sanded my wet ink, and, while I waited for it to dry, I stretched. First my arms and then my legs and hips, which scandalised the two clerks. I was sure they’d be gossiping about me for many days to come.

  When the ink was dry, I rolled the parchment carefully, fitted it in a scroll tube, and buckled my sword over the gown I wore for comfort. It was hot in Venice, and my plain brown robe was as much clothing as I really fancied; in addition, it went well with all the clerks and monks that worked in the commandery. I ate a bite with Stefanos and Demetrios, my Greek pages, and then set off to spend some money.

  I hadn’t had anything new since Famagusta, and one of the reasons for my plain brown robe was that almost everything I owned was worn, salt-stained, dirty and, in many places, coming apart. My arming coat, once the pride of the company, was as tenuous a collection of fabrics as the Holy Roman Empire was of princes, and my hose were all through at the heels, the knees. My toes stuck out, too, and I couldn’t take my boots off in public.

  Besides, my two Greek boys needed clothes. Their Greek padded hose and uncut cotes stood out in Venice, and might cause trouble in Rome.

  The three of us took a boat across the city. The Hospital is in the richest part – the tailors and cloth-cutters I wanted were not. We went over to the landward side of the city and spent two hours wandering through streets so narrow that at times Stefanos could touch both sides at the same time. My sword drew stares: no one but Arsenali – the carpenters and caulkers who built the city’s warships – wore swords in the streets. Finally I stripped it off and gave it to Stefanos to carry, while Demetrios carried the purse.

  I remember the pleasure of the shopping, if not the actual purchases. The boys were happy, and I dressed them in my red and black livery as if I were a great lord, and bought them zepole, a Venetian sticky treat made with pure Cypriote sugar. I saw a jeweller at work, a woman with her head bent over her craft, at a booth on the street. I watched her carving wax, and I bought from her a reliquary cross. From another jeweller I purchased a set of beads, ivory and coral in colour, and fashioned a rosary from them. It was the most precious thing I had ever owned. I saw a gold-hilted baselard and thought of Fiore’s wager before the assault on Corinth. It was a pleasant afternoon.

  I didn’t see the count that evening. Instead I had dinner with Carlo Zeno.

  He looked at my brown gown. ‘You have to dress better than that in Venice.’ We had met in a small square by his neighbourhood church, and he took me to a tavern for dinner. ‘If my father invites you for dinner,’ he said, ‘and he will, you’ll need better clothes. The rosary, on the other hand, is quite nice. Local?’

  I told him I’d spent the afternoon shopping. Then we whiled away a few happy hours arguing about politics and war. Zeno was Venetian through and through – to his fingers’ ends, as the French said. It was almost refreshing to hear such a biased account of the events of the world. To Carlo Zeno, the Pope, the Turks, the Mamluks, the Byzantine Emperor, the Holy Roman Emperor, the kings of England and France and the Count of Milan were all to be viewed through the lens of Venice, and they were good or bad as suited the needs of La Serenissima.

  I trudged back to the Hospital after Zeno left me to visit his mistress. I missed my friends. Fiore was headed for Udine, or there already; Nerio was in Greece and Stapleton was in England, and I felt their absence. I felt the lack of Emile as well, make no mistake, but visiting her was always by way of a holiday. I used to have Nerio and Miles and Fiore by my side every day.

  I was lonely.

  Venice is a city that stays awake late, and I wandered a bit around the Hospital along the Fondamenta dei Furlani and through the streets crowded with newly built tenements, mostly full of Greeks. My two pages found cousins, however distant, within an hour, and I found myself drinking sweet wine with a shipwright from Constantinople. He was good company, and knew more about the applications of mathematics than I had ever heard from anyone. His Italian tried me, but the conversation ended my evening well enough, and I walked back to the Hospital before the doors were locked.

  The next day, I had a note from the count, bidding me attend him later in the day. I started my morning early, in a street of merchant venturers, bankers and moneylenders. Some were Jews, some Christians, but my man, David – the merchant I had met at the count’s palazzo – was prepared to buy the remaining third of my saffron. I got from him a fine price, the highest I had been offered yet. I probably could have had more, but he was so polite that I lost interest in haggling, and instead we shared a small glass of white wine and some cakes at his stall, and Marc-Antonio handed over all our remaining saffron, including his own. He was not just a good squire, but a good Venetian; he’d bought his own saffron.

  ‘But I haven’t paid you,’ David said. ‘And I cannot until I raise a little money …’

  I shrugged. ‘I am at the Hospital,’ I said. ‘Send me a boy when you are ready to pay.’

  Then he smiled. We clasped hands, and Marc-Antonio raised an eyebrow at me as we walked away.

  ‘You trust him?’ he asked.

  ‘Yes,’ I said.

  Then I sent him to the count and took my pages to the street of the armourers, which wasn’t far from the Hospital. I bought daggers for my two pages and belts to hang them on, and then I went to see Jiri, the northern armourer who kept his shop in Venice. By a stroke of bad luck he was in Brescia, so I had to talk to his assistants instead.

  They assured me, however, that I could be fitted quickly. It may seem odd to you, given how poor I had been, but it was only visiting the shop that recalled to me that somewhere in my baggage I had a new helmet, one that I had never worn in tournament or combat. I had to hope it would arrive with l’Angars and the horse transports. Otherwise, I commissioned a new harness entire, cap-à-pie, or perhaps neck-à-pie, so to speak, in the new Brescian style, with a hard ridge down the centre of the limbs and some latten edging for show.

  ‘Brigandine?’ the assistant asked. ‘Or a multi-piece plate? Or even a single plate, master, if that suits you?’

  The two assistants convinced me that all-white armour was the coming thing: that a solid breastplate was worth the money. I didn’t mention that I’d owned one, second-hand, after Poitiers. Boucicault ruined it, I think, or maybe I lost it when I was arrested by Camus; I can’t remember.

  ‘Maestro Jiri will be back in eight days,’ Davide, the older assistant, promised, ‘after the feast of Saint Eusebius.’

  I admitted that I had never heard of Saint Eusebius.

  Davide shrugged. ‘A saint. Doubtless a very holy man.’ His shrug was Venetian. ‘But Milanese, you know?’

  I laughed.

  My two pages were proud as Pontius Pilate with their daggers and belts and matching cotes. Meanwhile, there I was in my frowsy old brown gown, ruined low boots and hose so frayed that there wasn’t any part of them I could show with decency. It was too hot for a hood, and I was wearing a straw hat I’d picked up in Greece. I confess it, I looked anything but a successful capitano.

  That day we went to the shops behind St Mark’s Square. The first shop I entered had a dazzling array of good English and Flemish wools, and lost my custom because they ignored me not once but twice for better-dressed potential customers.

  The second shop, on a calle that ran north of the square, was not so choosy, and the tailor came out in person to wait on me. We found a fine piece of scarlet, as supple as doeskin and almost as thin as silk, brilliantly dyed in cochineal. We haggled for a hood and hose and a cote-hardie. I had planned to buy a pourpoint in the French fashion, cut and padded and stuffed, but in that ye
ar, in a Venetian summer, men were wearing unpadded garments, cut very tight and a little long. The tailor produced a nice piece of black wool, Flemish, almost like a velvet, for my cote-hardie and offered to put on long tippets, which is to say, hanging sleeves like leading strings for an infant. They were all the rage in Venice.

  In the end, I bought three of everything, and he sent me up the calle to a middle-aged woman who measured me for underclothes, that is, shirts and braes.

  I remember her well, partly because she was a jolly woman with a fine loud laugh, but mainly because she made me strip naked.

  ‘Don’t make me guess,’ she said. ‘I’ve seen the Doge as God made him, and the archbishop too.’

  She looked at the braes I took off. ‘You have been in prison?’ she asked.

  ‘No, Siora,’ I answered, one of my few words in Venetian. ‘I am a soldier.’

  ‘Oh, Christ be with us,’ she muttered. ‘At least you smell clean.’

  I noted that my braes were, indeed, well-stained; and wet saddles had … well, left them looking as if I had been very ill, many times. Brown. Laugh if you must; when you are in the field, with a company, you cease to think of such things.

  I was glad for my long gown. Perhaps it made me look old, but it covered all my other shortcomings.

  ‘You want five sets,’ the woman said. ‘Not three.’ She nodded emphatically. I never had a chance.

  I went back to the tailor, who measured my arms again. I have very long arms, as all of you will allow, and all my life, tailors and armourers have had to re-measure me to reassure themselves.

  ‘Day after tomorrow,’ the tailor said. I paid him half of his outrageous price in advance. Everyone must be a little profligate once in a while; indeed, I enjoy spending money far too much.

  The tailor’s attitude, which had been pleasant all morning, became downright obsequious when I produced hard coin. He became my informant and my guide to all the luxuries of Venice. He sent me to a cousin, who made fine shoes and boots, and then he sent me to a jeweller’s, but the man didn’t do the kind of enamel work I had in mind. I had seen the sort of belt that I wanted; all the Savoyards had belts in gold or silver, with their arms in enamel on the plates. I’d seen them in Constantinople, but in Greek styles, and I was determined to have one, but I had to walk about, take a boat, and try three jewellers before I found one who could do the work.

  The price made me blanch. Two hundred ducats for a belt seemed like a terrible waste of money – almost the cost of my new harness, or of Gabriel, my destrier.

  I paid. I was determined to be fine; if I was going to accompany the Green Count to Rome, I needed to look the part of a prosperous captain of lances, or so I told myself.

  And finally, I went to a scabbard maker and left my beautiful longsword. The scabbard fittings were still beautiful – gilded bronze and enamel work, almost as good as new – and the hilt was still fine, although the cross guard had been hit quite a few times and the gilding was almost gone. But the leather of the scabbard was worn through to the wooden core in places, and constant wear had bleached out its original, vibrant red to a pinky-tan that looked uncomfortably like rotten meat.

  Then I took a boat to the chiesa di Sant’Agnese and walked to the back of the count’s palazzo. I left my pages in the kitchen and went up into the appartamento, where I found Richard.

  ‘I thought …’ he said, looking around, ‘I thought perhaps you’d … be around more.’ He shrugged. ‘Anyway, the count is entertaining a Foscari, and you can’t be seen in that gown.’

  ‘What’s wrong with my gown?’ I asked. But I knew.

  ‘You used to dress so well,’ Richard said.

  I was tempted to say ‘we used to rob nuns for the money’, but Richard didn’t appreciate that kind of humour. ‘Why does he want me?’

  Richard led me into a corner. There was no privacy at all in that house except out on the balcony, and I thought of suggesting that they all move to the Hospital. ‘There are rumours,’ he said. ‘The Prince of Achaea is coming here, to meet the count. My lord sent most of his people away yesterday; we’re thin on the ground.’

  I nodded.

  ‘You need to be here,’ Richard said. ‘Where’s your company?’

  ‘Chioggia,’ I said. ‘I sent Marc-Antonio for half a dozen of them yesterday.’

  Richard nodded.

  ‘You fear an attack? In Venice?’ I asked. I was, frankly, baiting him. He was always a little more cautious than I, but this seemed foolish. No one attacks anyone in Venice.

  He shrugged. ‘The Prince of Achaea is like something from pagan times. My count’s death would solve most of his troubles.’

  I pulled at my beard. I knew that Richard was serious, but I found it difficult to really value his worries.

  He changed the subject. ‘You have ordered new clothes?’

  ‘Why? Should I?’ I asked, baiting him.

  We played cards until the Foscari was gone, and then I was summoned to the loggia by the count, who didn’t seem to notice my fusty brown gown. ‘You have sent for men-at-arms?’ he asked.

  I nodded.

  He waved at a page; at Roger, in fact. I was getting to know the household, and his favourite page was Roger de Lors. The boy was fifteen and ready to be a squire. He is a knight now; I saw him in Italy last year. In those days, he had the hardest head of the count’s servants and he usually carried the purse.

  ‘Give Sir Guillaume fifty ducats to clothe his men in a way that is suitable,’ he said.

  ‘Green?’ I asked.

  The count glanced at me. He had a document in his hand, and there was someone in a magnificent squirrel robe, five hundred ducats worth of ‘vere’, standing in the entrance.

  ‘Emerald green or Savoyard scarlet,’ he said. He smiled – the smile of the busy man going through the motions of leadership.

  I bowed and withdrew as the man in the squirrel robe entered. I didn’t know him.

  ‘I came here to get money to buy surcoats?’ I asked. I was unused to having a master, and Pierre Thomas had only summoned us in real need.

  ‘You should attend him every day,’ Richard said. ‘I made excuses for you this morning. Where were you?’

  ‘Copying itineraries and making plans to escort you south,’ I said.

  Richard nodded, mollified. ‘I was sure—’

  I raised my hand. ‘Richard, you are an accomplished courtier and I am a plain soldier. This is Venice! My little company has been in the field all summer. I need to buy things, fix things, write orders …’

  ‘You need to do all that and attend your lord every morning and evening,’ Richard said.

  I knew in my heart he was right. We’d been courtiers before, with Prince Edward. You, Chaucer, have spent half your life in courts, so you will allow that Richard was perfectly correct. But I resented it; I wanted to roam Venice and see everything. I wanted to visit all the islands I hadn’t seen when I was recuperating from the beating d’Herblay gave me.

  At any rate, I drank a cup of wine with Richard and we read over my itinerary for Rome. He took it in to the count and returned with some notes on a wax tablet. I copied them out; the count wanted to visit Siena. I ate with Richard and Georges Mayot and we went off to church together to see the elevation of the Host. I prayed on my new beads. I was the worst-dressed man in the church, and women looked away when I was close. Oh, vanity.

  It was still light out, and the canals caught the pink light of the sunset and reflected it. All of Venice looked pink and healthy and glorious, and I decided to walk home, across the great square. I love the square of Saint Mark’s; it is like nowhere else in the world, especially at dusk, and so I gathered my pages and we took a boat across the Grand Canal and then we walked, like Venetians. It was so beautiful, so otherworldly; I had just heard Mass, and I was, I suppose, on a spiritual plane.

>   We were speaking in Greek, and I was explaining the Latin rite to the two little heretics when we entered the great square from the east. There, as we were walking in under the great arch, stood the Bourc Camus. He stood with his back to the cathedral, its brown stone rising above him like a storm cloud and casting a dark shadow across him and his brigands.

  I hadn’t seen him for years, and those years had not been kind. His face was heavier, and redder, as if he drank too much or lived outdoors all the time, and his hands were rough and crimson, as if stained with the blood of his victims.

  He was well dressed, in a fitted French pourpoint in scarlet and azure. Not his usual stark argent and sable, either, and thus almost certainly his new employer’s livery, with matching stockings that had gold tips on the ends of the garter straps, and he had half a dozen bravos at his back. They slouched around a tall, thin man in the best French fashion, a silk doublet cut to reveal a second silk doublet beneath it. He was as thin as a rake and looked a little too hungry to be well-off. The gangly man was sniffing from a pomade ball on a finger ring.

  I have no idea what they were doing or where they were going, but suddenly Camus stopped, and his eyes locked with mine. He knew me in an instant.

  ‘Get behind me,’ I said to my Greek boys.

  Camus said something and his men began to spread out, to the right and left.

  I went straight at him. I just kept walking. The arch is only twenty feet wide, and I didn’t actually think that Camus would murder me in front of half of Venice. The square was crowded with people out for an evening stroll, or just coming from Mass at San Marco. Indeed, there were a dozen other men under the arch itself.

  ‘William Gold,’ Camus shouted. His anger rang at me inside the arch, like thunder against a mountain.

  I kept walking at him. I had no sword, but I had two boys to protect. And I knew that Camus knew no rules; he just might try to kill me in public.

  ‘You have seen better days, I fear,’ he said, his eyes roving over my tired clothes.