Sword of Justice

by Christian Cameron

  I was ten feet away. Heads were turning.

  ‘Good evening,’ I said. I sidestepped a large Venetian, round as a cheese, and I was past Camus. I looked back, and the tall man had a hand on Camus’s shoulder. He had a louse crawling out of his high, tulip collar, and the face of a stoat. I marked him – he had to be the Prince of Achaea.

  ‘You are a dead man,’ Camus shouted suddenly.

  I kept walking, although my back was burning. I heard ‘Count Amadeus’ mentioned.

  ‘My lord, two of them are following us,’ Stefanos said. His voice wavered. His brother’s head went back and forth like an owl’s.

  I nodded and walked towards the Doge’s palace. Looking back, I saw two men in the Bourc’s red and blue, close behind us.

  The fondamenta, the street or path along the waterfront, was packed with people visiting, taking the air, or shopping in the open-air market that stretched away along the waterfront from the palace to the Arsenale. I walked along with my pages, all the way to the edge of the Dalmatian market, and then I realised that I was thinking like a landsman and not like a Venetian. I turned and walked down one of the dozens of low wharves and hailed a boat. I asked the boatman to take us to the Ca’ Zeno, and he obliged, rowing hard with his single oar. My pursuers stood dumbfounded on the waterfront, watching us row away.

  I paid a call at Ca’ Zeno and asked for Sir Carlo, who came down, a little out of sorts.

  ‘The Prince of Achaea – you know him?’ I asked.

  ‘I know of him,’ Zeno allowed.

  ‘He is here, with some bravos. He means trouble for the count.’

  ‘Foreigners and barbarians,’ Zeno spat. He raised his eyebrows as if to suggest that perhaps he didn’t mean me. ‘I’ll look into it, or my father will.’

  I had a glass of wine with him – indeed, it was a fine glass – and he talked to me of mirrors and goblets and the luxury trade out of Venice. I asked Zeno to send a boy to the count and tell him of my meeting with Camus, and then, when it was dark, we left out of the landward side through the magnificent courtyard.

  I got lost on my way back to the Hospital; it was closed and locked when I reached it. The porter was none too pleased to be wakened, but eventually, dry and warm, I tumbled into my pallet and went to sleep. I dreamed of France, of burning monasteries and the tavern we ran, and the Bourc’s men-at-arms in their white and black livery. I dreamed of men with the plague, and a boy with half his face flayed away.

  All that, just from seeing the Bourc.

  In the morning, I left my boys at the Hospital with orders to stay put, and I went by boat to the count’s hotel. I crossed the square by the chiesa di Sant’Agnese and I knew one of the men there. One of Camus’s men in the Prince of Achaea’s colours, he stood near the well head, picking his teeth and looking like a feral rat in fine clothes. I ignored him and went into the palazzo where, as soon as I was admitted, I explained the Bourc’s man to the count and Georges Mayot.

  ‘I only have the four of you,’ the count said.

  ‘Sir Giannis will come today,’ I said. ‘Tomorrow at the outside. And my lord, despite my little altercation, it would be incredibly foolish of this Prince Filippo to attack you here.’

  ‘He’s a very foolish young man,’ the count said. ‘I need to see the Doge today; it is an official appointment. Other than that …’

  Roger the pageboy appeared. He was flushed.

  ‘A messenger,’ he said. ‘My lord, there is a messenger from Prince Filippo.’

  The count snapped his fingers and a pair of servants came and brought a heavy chair. He had it placed at the head of the loggia, the east end, and Richard sat by him.

  ‘Show him in,’ the count said.

  The young man who came in looked as if he might have been cast to play Satan in a passion play. He had a black forked beard, florid skin, the nose of a drinker and a paunch, but he was meticulously dressed and wore a remarkable surcoat cut magnificently of heavy silk, bearing a coat of arms mostly unfamiliar to me. But, as it bore within it the arms of Savoy and Jerusalem, I could guess that it was Prince Filippo’s.

  The man made an unsteady bow. Up close I could see that he had grime under his nails … and he stank.

  The count’s eyes narrowed.

  ‘You can’t hurt me!’ he said, drunk as a lord. ‘I’m a herald!’

  The count sighed. ‘Yes,’ he agreed. ‘State your business and be gone.’

  ‘Mosh grashioush lord,’ he said, his voice tight and high. The man was terrified, and drunk.

  Amadeus passed a hand in front of his face.

  ‘My own lord, the grashioush lord Filippo of Achaea and S-s-savoy, deshiresh a meeting, ash your lovink … lovink …’ The man’s fear, and hiccups, overwhelmed him.

  ‘Nephew?’ the count finished. He looked at Richard. ‘This is a calculated insult.’

  ‘He wishesh to meet with you today, lord, in a way that might be …’

  ‘Is this really a message? I do not think this man is really a herald.’ The count was not amused. ‘Throw him in the canal.’

  ‘No, great lord!’ the herald cringed. He tried fawning. ‘Grashioush lord! My prince sheeks only peash … A meeting to your mutual benefish …’

  ‘I can’t understand a word,’ the count said.

  Perhaps I’d listened to more drunks than he had. ‘My lord, he says that the prince wishes a meeting, to your mutual benefit,’ I said.

  ‘No,’ the count said.

  ‘You mush!’ the herald whined.

  ‘Throw him in the canal,’ the count said.

  ‘You cannot harm me!’ said the herald. ‘My pershoun ish shakred!’

  ‘Harm?’ The count smiled thinly. ‘You need a bath. Take one, at my expense.’

  I didn’t need to move. Richard grabbed the man by the shoulders, Mayot took his feet, and they threw him from a third-floor loggia into the canal. He screamed all the way down and he floundered about a bit in the water, but he was a Venetian. He hauled himself out of the canal on the far side, pulled off the surcoat and threw it on the pavement.

  I hoped that he had been well paid.

  The count looked at his hands, as if considering cutting his nails. He glanced at me.

  ‘As I was saying,’ he said, ‘I have to visit the Doge. Do you have other clothes?’

  ‘They should be ready, my lord,’ I said. ‘May I ask why we are going to the Doge?’

  The count smiled, as if this was the right sort of question. ‘I’m not precisely sure, although it is always an honour to wait on the Doge, who is, let’s be honest, the most powerful prince in Christendom. But I believe we will discuss the Union of Churches, and by God, Sir William, with God’s grace and a little fortuna, I will win Venice as an ally.’

  I nodded. ‘I will collect my new clothes, my lord.’

  He nodded. ‘Kindly do, and attend me to the Doge.’

  I left Richard to tidy up and I went out in a rented boat – first to fetch my sword, which had been cleaned and sharpened by a cutler while the new scabbard was being made. It looked very fine. I carried it, with the sword belt wrapped about it, and went to fetch my clothes. My seamstress had a set of braes and a beautiful new shirt for me, and she poured me a bath with her own hands and gave me a screen, as well as a suggestion that I could leave it open.

  Only one cote-hardie was done, but that was enough, and I was clean and neat in new wool and linen as white as snow, head to foot, when I returned to the Hospital, where three pairs of fighting shoes and two pairs of boots had been delivered. I put on a pair: too tight. Annoying, but I was in a rush and I wet them in my washbasin to stretch them and then went out, a half-cloak over my arm. I picked up my pages, and we made a good show, all red and black and black and red. My hose were cut and panelled in the latest fashion so that stripes of red and black were set vertically on one
leg; I had had time to put on the chain and badge the count had given me. I lacked gloves. I missed Fiore – he always had gloves.

  Have I said it yet? I missed my friends.

  At any rate, it was not yet noon when I returned to the count’s lodgings. Richard and Georges clucked with approval at my clothes.

  ‘Very Venetian,’ Richard said, eyeing my cote-hardie.

  He himself was in unrelieved green, with the same chain I wore and then a collar of the Order of the Swan, the count’s knightly order, at his throat. He too had a sword.

  ‘Who are we leaving here with the servants?’ I asked.

  Richard paused.

  ‘We have to leave a sword or two here,’ I said. ‘Richard, you know Camus. He’ll kill the donkey, the cat, the dogs, and eventually the linkboys to make a point.’

  Mayot raised an eyebrow.

  Richard nodded. ‘He’s right,’ he sighed. ‘Damn. This is not the homecoming we expected, and Filippo has stolen a march on us.’

  ‘Camus only had six bravos that I saw,’ I said. I wished I had Fiore, or Nerio – better, both of them. Even Marc-Antonio, who was, by then, a truly expert man-at-arms.

  But I had only my own blade. I was confident that I could take them; three years of fighting alongside Fiore had made me something of a sword.

  ‘Send to the Doge,’ I suggested. ‘Ask for an escort.’

  ‘Then we appear weak,’ Musard said.

  I shrugged. ‘Better than a fight in some calle and one of us wounded or dead,’ I said. ‘What are we playing at? The drunken herald, the man this morning? It’s as if this is a game.’

  Richard glanced at Georges Mayot. ‘They hate each other,’ he admitted. ‘It’s mutual. And the count has done what he can to Filippo, too.’

  ‘All the more reason to get a guard from the Doge. If not the Doge, send to the Arsenale for a dozen of your oarsmen.’

  ‘That contract is over,’ Musard said.

  I shook my head, frustrated. ‘This isn’t a game, Richard,’ I said.

  He shrugged. ‘I feel that you are new to us. Things for the count must be done a certain way – the count must not ever appear hesitant or weak.’

  I threw my hands in the air. ‘Then the count is playing at being God,’ I said.

  Naturally, at that moment Count Amadeus walked into the hall. ‘Monsieur?’ he said to me. ‘In what way do I play at being God?’ He was not amused.

  I made a deep reverentia. ‘My lord, I am arguing that we need to send to the Doge or the Arsenale for an escort. Monsieur Richard says that you will not accept such an arrangement.’

  ‘Monsieur Musard is correct. I will never accept such a subordination.’ The count’s eyes were afire with anger. ‘Perhaps I should reconsider having you command my escort.’ He looked me over like a farmer eyeing a prize ram at the fair – a prize ram with a bleeding ulcer. ‘You look much better,’ he said, pleasantly enough.

  I was still on one knee. ‘My lord,’ I insisted, ‘if I am commanding your escort, I have the responsibility for your safety.’

  ‘And of my honour,’ he said. ‘You must take care of my safety and my honour together.’

  I wanted to slap him. His honour, indeed. He was a great lord, a successful crusader, a man of nearly equal status to the Doge and the lords of Milan. No one would ever even remember that he engaged an escort to protect him one rainy afternoon in Venice.

  Musard was doing all he could with the weight of his glare to silence me.

  ‘Very well, my lord,’ I said. My teeth were no doubt clenched. All in all, I have served lords with far more vanity and outward display than the Green Count, but after Pierre Thomas and Francesco Gatelussi, he seemed like the most arrogant popinjay ever to walk the earth.

  ‘Good,’ he replied with a mild tone that implied that any attempt to question his will had been a waste of time. And perhaps it was.

  And you can say that I’m an arrogant ninny myself, and I confess it: pride has often headed my list of sins. But I had no trouble taking orders from Gatelussi, or Percy, or Fra Peter Mortimer.

  Bah, never mind.

  We walked across the smaller island from Sant’Agnese to the Grand Canal. Richard had his squire, Roberto, and Roger, the page; I had my two pages. I paid a boatman to carry us up the canal and right to the steps below the Doge’s palazzo, and we landed in the full heat of the day, a damp day that made even the lightest wool stick to your skin. The horizon beyond the Arsenale was so dark as to be black, or at least slate grey, and there was lightning off over the Adriatic.

  ‘Heavy weather coming,’ I said. I made sure of my sword.

  But there was no secret ambush waiting for us, and we went into the main portico and made our prayers at the little shrine to the Virgin, and then we saluted the Doge’s men-at-arms and went into the courtyard, which was larger even than the Ca’ Zeno courtyard. The walls appeared at first glance to be frescoed, but closer inspection showed them to be decorated with inlays of different-coloured marble and other stones – a marvellous coup d’œil and very beautiful. We were taken up to the apartments of the Doge, and then Musard and I cooled our heels while the count went straight in to the Doge.

  The apartments of the Doge and the offices and rooms of state were magnificent beyond anything I had ever seen in London or Paris or Prague or Alexandria. The wall sconces, for example, were of gilt bronze, cast in fantastical shapes like dragons and griffons and gargoyles, and every sconce held either two or four wax candles as good as candles in churches; silent servants bustled in and replaced them when they burned low, as efficiently as any altar guild. The state rooms were also hung with many small mirrors of steel and bronze that reflected the candlelight and the light of the great windows. Glass was one of the industries of Venice. The city produced window glass so good that we use it in London, and the windows of the Doge’s palace had a thousand panes of glass.

  We were waiting in the ‘Scarlet Chamber’, which was hung in red silk. Even on a dark day with a storm brewing over the Lagoon and the air as heavy as lead, the room was splendid. I found myself examining the tiles of the floor, the cherubs supporting the fireplace, the icon of the Virgin …

  After we had waited half an hour, there was movement on the staircase from the great courtyard to our right, and the Bourc Camus and a dozen men-at-arms in court clothes came up the steps.

  They were not wearing armour, and none of them wore a sword, only daggers. In their midst was the tall, gangly man with the lopsided smile.

  A pair of Venetian equerries, or squires of the Doge, opened the door to the Doge’s apartments to him. They bowed deeply to the newcomer, and he swept by. I suspected that this was the famous Prince Filippo, and the ushers confirmed it by announcing him by his titles.

  His titles rolled on and on, and included, apparently, ‘Count of Savoy’ as well as ‘Prince of Achaea’ and ‘Duke of Athens’. I listened attentively, my eyes on Camus. He was as surprised to see me as I was to see him, and we eyed each other like cats on a fence. Thunder rumbled out over the Adriatic. A storm was coming.

  Camus was wearing a black and white cote-hardie, and fine black hose. He looked smaller than I remembered him, but his eyes were still mad.

  I decided not to lock eyes with a madman and follow that path to the end: glares, posturing, violence. Listen: I had learned some things from Pierre Thomas and the Holy Sepulchre. I could slide back into being a simple brute, when required. But I had other weapons. And I knew, then, and I know now, that nothing separated me from Camus but the grace of God.

  So instead of meeting his eye, I took my paternoster off my sword hilt, where I had hung it, and began to pray at the icon to the Virgin. There was a small prie-dieu with a kneeler. I knelt.

  Camus’s face registered something – shock, anger, rage. He strode across the Scarlet Chamber.

  I thought he was going
to strike me, so powerful was his stride.

  ‘Prayer?’ he said. ‘You pray, Gold?’

  He always surprised me. I took a breath, thinking of the Passion of our Saviour, using the image of the crucified man on my new cross to focus my mind. I clung to the image of the Passion for a moment, and then I let go of my attempt at meditation.

  ‘Yes,’ I said.

  ‘You fucking pray? To what? The god of hypocrisy and torture?’

  Even his own men-at-arms looked uncomfortable.

  ‘I was praying to the Virgin,’ I said mildly.

  ‘Don’t you think she was just some little putain who spread her legs for the wrong man and lied about it? Eh, Gold?’ He was close to me, and his breath smelt of cloves.

  It was odd that his blasphemy had so little effect on me. Camus was evil; I had known him to claim he was Satan’s own knight. But the foolish blasphemy he spouted was more like boys’ banter than something evil.

  ‘I think everyone must consider that, from time to time,’ I said. ‘It’s an absurd story.’ I smiled, not because I was unafraid of Camus, but because that was one of Pierre Thomas’s phrases – that Christ’s story and Passion was so impossible that it must be true.

  He didn’t like my smile. ‘We kill people for money,’ he said. ‘I think I’ll kill a couple of yours, so you remember we’re whores, not nuns.’ He glanced past me, at Musard. ‘I know Blackie, there. What about those two boys. Lovers? I could geld them for you.’

  Musard walked towards me, and three of Camus’s red and blue bravos stepped out to meet him.

  We didn’t have any more cards to play, either. We were very short on swords.

  ‘You went and got famous,’ Camus said very quietly. ‘I hate that. I hate that men know you and don’t know me.’

  ‘Perhaps you should change your life and be a better knight,’ I said.

  ‘You fucking pious whore,’ Camus said, as soft as a lover. ‘Do you think that you are a better knight? Because you can kill Saracens instead of, say, nuns? Are you an idiot? It’s all the same. Sacks of meat, and blades to let out the blood. All the fucking same.’