Our guide was gone. Of course he was gone, the false traitor.
The two bandit crossbowmen were dead. We had no one to question and we were in the middle of the Apennines with night falling and wolves howling.
Luckily, we were a strong company and well supplied. We built a camp at the stream-side, made Alessio as comfortable as we could, built three big fires, and Ewan brought down a deer. He killed it almost a mile away, and we had a bit of an adventure dragging the carcass through the darkening woods with the wolves pacing us, but the cooks made a risotto and the archers toasted the best cuts of the deer, and the count showered Francesco and Alessio – and me – with praise.
‘Ah, Messire d’Oro, the next time you see adventure looming, please do not ride off and leave your poor lord to his hawking,’ the count said.
‘I will remember,’ I promised.
Later, over wine, I brought up the organised nature of the attacks. ‘These were not mere brigands,’ I said. ‘Italian brigandi do not have arbalests and horses and swords.’
Francesco nodded. ‘My lord, I have not been in Italy since I was a boy,’ he admitted. ‘But I think those were professional soldiers. Genoese.’
‘Hired killers,’ the count scoffed.
‘My lord, someone is trying to kill you,’ I said. ‘It is not my duty to speculate, but—’
‘Then do not speculate,’ the count said. ‘What do you intend tomorrow?’
‘Straight up the hill at dawn,’ I said.
And so we did. We went up that hillside when it was still dark under the trees, for all that the sky was pink. We spooked a good stag halfway up the hill and we all laughed, because, even though we were not all old huntsmen like Ewan, we knew enough to know that a stag of twelve tines had not got that old by wandering past a bunch of armed men. That is, if the stag was there, the Genoese were not. We made the top of the ridge before the sun did, and we had the whole camp moving an hour later, and it was an adventure, a good adventure. Mayot rode with Alessio now, and the two chatted amicably, and the count was in a fine mood, praising the day and the countryside. Alessio was armed but could not wear his helmet and aventail; instead, he had a thick gorget of cloth wound round his neck. He claimed it did not hurt.
We went up and then we went down, and late the second day from Bologna we reached the shores of Lake Bilancino and made camp again. We didn’t have the luck to poach a deer the second night, but on the other hand we hadn’t been attacked, either, and we set watches and drank water and told some stories, and listened to the chorus of wolves on the hillsides above us. In the morning, a shepherd offered us a six-month-old lamb, and we took her, and his directions as well, and fifteen minutes later we began to cross an arm of the lake on a small ferry. It took the boat ten trips to get all of us and our horses across, and most of the horses had to be untacked and swim, but we made it. Then we were moving well, and we were at the monastery of San Marco in Florence before Vespers, descending out of the hills, and without the loss of a man. Our only loss had been Alessio’s riding horse.
Of course, Florence was itself a possible source of danger, but there, the count took over. If I have made him sound foolish, or tyrannical, he could be both of those things, but in truth, he was, and remains, a fine lord – bold and preux. He demanded an escort from the Florentines, and we received one and we entered the city from the north.
Florence may be the most beautiful city in the world. Surely hundreds of men have told me that it is, and if they ever finish their Duomo perhaps it will be, but I look at Florence the way a man may look at the beautiful wife of a good friend; she is beautiful, but she is not for me. The streets are clean, and the sheer wealth of the place seems to flow like a river of silver through the heart of the town – and Florence is huge, larger than London. Indeed, and I think I have said this before, Englishmen may count themselves prosperous and fortunate, but Florence, Milan, Venice and Genoa are each richer and larger than London. Or Paris.
The count didn’t exactly have a triumphal entry, but our escort was of city knights and cavalry and we drew crowds, and the count, given a night to prepare, was in his emerald finery. He stayed in one of the magnificent public buildings. I was taken to a private home of a rich notary from the town council, because the Order of Saint John had no priory in Florence, which seemed odd to me. The notary was Brunellesco di Lippo; his wife, Signora Giuliana, was a distant relation of the Cornari in Chioggia, and despite the different accents, they were very fine hosts and they listened to all my stories with apparent delight. I admit that sometimes I fear to be a bore, but children do not lie, and when children listen to you open-mouthed …
Listen: I don’t tell children tales of Alexandria, and I can curb my manners to my audience, I promise you. At any rate, I kept them entertained, and I was in turn told a dozen tales, each funnier than the last; indeed, Signora Giuliana knew Messire Boccaccio and might have inspired some of his tales. She had such a fine laugh you had to laugh with her, and we had a delightful dinner.
In the morning, I attended the count and prepared to travel south for Siena. I met with the Council, briefly, to testify about the attack on the road. Then, with Francesco and Musard, I wandered the city’s shops and markets. I bought gloves, including a pair of white doeskin for Fiore, if I ever chanced to see him again; I knew he, who had little care for anything material, would adore them. I bought a small icon of Saint John from a goldsmith, and I found that I could negotiate a bill on Emile at a much better rate of exchange than I could do in Bologna, and I took another two hundred gold florins based on her and hoped that my wife would forgive me. The count had not mentioned money, and Emile had warned me, several times, that he was not the best lord for paying his bills.
I wrote several letters from Florence, and was sorry not to receive any. But too much of my time was taken attending to horses; I missed John, I missed Marc-Antonio, I missed l’Angars, and I was doing all the work myself – the command work, that is. I had to direct the military elements of the count’s household, because Mayot didn’t know the job, and I had to direct the squires and pages and make sure the horses were fed. I was, in fact, the constable in all but title, and Richard was steward, and between us we maintained the count’s household in a great city.
Our second full day in the city we all went to Mass, and afterwards the count summoned me and told me that we were going to Viterbo, south of Siena, where the Pope was.
‘Do you understand what is going on here, Guillaume?’ he asked. ‘Get the Baron of Methymna a cup of wine,’ he ordered his page.
A seat was brought. Richard sat too – an uncommon event. I got a cup of wine.
‘In what way, my lord?’ I asked.
The count looked out over the city; we were sitting on a balcony. The great doors were open, and the autumn breeze carried a scent of pine from the hills. He looked at Richard. ‘All Italy is like a tinderbox waiting for a spark,’ he said. ‘And we are riding through it.’
I could see that I had come into an existing conversation, but it was similar to one that I had had the night before with Messire di Lippo.
‘Yes, my lord,’ I said. ‘Genoa and Venice, the Pope and Milan.’
The count favoured me with a smile. ‘With Florence trying to stay neutral while she bullies Siena, with the Kingdom of Naples virtually in the hands of Cardinal Albornoz and the Pope. The Greeks need a unified west to face the Saracens; the Pope needs a victory over the Greek Church; England and France are edging back towards war …’ He shrugged, and I wondered if he was a little drunk. ‘The Florentines say that they cannot guard me, or guarantee my safety south of their border,’ he went on.
Musard nodded to me. ‘The Council has just tried to prevent us from going south at all.’
The count drank. ‘I’d have done better to bring an army,’ he said. ‘And they say that the Emperor is coming.’
‘John Palaeologus?’ I as
ked.
The count laughed. ‘Par dieu, monsieur, the next time I see my Greek cousin, I’ll tell him you said that. No, more’s the pity. I wish he was; if he abjured the Greek Heresy here, we might do something. No, I mean Charles of Bohemia, the Holy Roman Emperor.’ He glanced at me. ‘You know him, Musard tells me.’
I bowed in my seat. ‘Yes, my lord.’
‘You are a most surprising man, for a former routier, monsieur.’ There it was – the sting in the tail, as if he could not help but remind me of my low origins. He went on, ‘And they say Peter of Cyprus is coming, as well.’
‘Why is the Emperor coming?’ I asked.
The count nodded. ‘Why indeed? To bring a spark to the tinderbox, I assume. I fear that my timing is wrong. I bring the Greeks to make peace just as the Pope intends to make war against Milan, and Outremer is forgotten. You know that I have already heard here that men think we lost at Alexandria? That my crusade accomplished nothing and took no towns?’
I said nothing.
The page poured more wine. The count had a slight flush.
‘I need to reach the Pope,’ the count said. ‘Messire, I have come to depend on you in the last month. But these attacks – I assume they have come from my cousin’s useless son, the Prince of Achaea, but I cannot make that accusation known. And this is not a form of warfare that I understand. You have foiled three attacks now, messire. Tell me, then – can I make it to Viterbo? Because if Italy is a tinderbox, then so is my own county, and I cannot leave my lady to face a war without me. If I die here, it will trigger the avalanche, and Savoy will be buried.’
‘May I send for my notes?’ I asked. ‘Before I advise you?’
I sent Stefanos for my itineraries. We spent perhaps an hour discussing each of the parties who were manoeuvring towards war.
‘If Prince Lionel of England is really to wed Violante of Milan,’ the count said, ‘we are looking at a new world in the north. Milan has been aligned against the Pope for a generation; they are Ghibellines and Imperial officers from far back when the Visconti came to power a hundred years ago and more. Milan and England? Against the Pope and France?’
Musard swirled the wine in his cup. ‘Milan and Venice and England,’ he said. ‘Against the bankrupt French and the Pope and the Kingdom of Naples and perhaps Genoa.’
‘Throw in the Turks and the Mamluks and the whole world is at war,’ I said.
The count sat back and threw an arm over the back of his chair. ‘And my Savoy is astride the main road between them. Right in the middle. I am a neighbour of the French and the Milanese; I am a friend of the King of England and of the Pope.’
Stefanos returned and made a good bow; he was in the great man’s presence, after all. I took my itineraries and laid them out on the table.
‘You say nothing, monsieur,’ the count accused me.
I shrugged.
‘Speak your mind, monsieur. You have earned the right,’ the count said.
Have I, though? I asked myself.
Carefully, I went in the direction of my thoughts. ‘I mislike being at odds with my Richard,’ I said. ‘But I do not see alliances of these powers. I see them like men in a mêlée at a great tournament; they band together for a temporary advantage, but they are not really allies.’
The count smiled. ‘You are a thinker,’ he said. He meant you are a thinker for a mere brute, but he didn’t say it, quite. ‘Go on.’
‘Edward of England is a great lord who plans carefully,’ I said. ‘I’m not sure I can accord the same … respect … to the Pope or the King of France. If the Visconti are all like Antonio, they are mercurial, insecure in their power, quick to take offence …’
The count held up his hand. ‘No more,’ he said. ‘Your wit is as sharp as your sword, but you make me fear for what you see in my own rulership.’
‘I only mean, my lord, that the Visconti do not make grand plans. I’ll wager that they merely poke the hornets’ nest from time to time to see what happens. Their only long-term play is to take Bologna, for which I assume they’d sell their own mothers. Or sisters.’
The count turned and looked at me. ‘Never repeat that thought,’ he said. Musard wiped the smile off his face.
The count stood.
‘I apologise …’ I began.
The count waved me off. ‘No. You are correct, but this marriage between Milan and England is a chancy thing and I cannot have anyone suggest that I was against it, or that any of my people spoke against it, perhaps representing me. Trading his sister for Bologna is exactly the worst thing anyone could say right now. In the right ears, that might be the flame to light the bonfire.’
I had seldom seen him so agreeable, and he had another cup of wine while I went over the routes to Siena and then south from there, either on the Via Francigena or the main Roman road.
‘There are a dozen places here for an ambush,’ I said. ‘All the way south to Rome – places that could be held against us.’ I had made notes of what pilgrims said; red dots and black crosses.
‘We have too few men,’ Musard said.
‘My lord, if we went south and moved fast, we could make it impossible for an ambush to be set against us,’ I said. ‘No one has the money to pay enough brigandi to cover all the routes south, day after day. But these long delays …’
‘You offer me a criticism, I think,’ he said.
I drew myself up. ‘My lord, I am not your commander. I am merely attempting to protect you. It would be easier to protect you if you were to keep moving.’
The count pursed his lips, at the edge of saying something.
Richard stood and bowed. ‘My lord, we should withdraw, unless you would like to be entertained – a game of cards, perhaps?’
‘Nay, I am not such an ogre, and I will not bite Monsieur d’Oro just because he says that I take too much time.’ He glanced at me. ‘I have to gather … consensus. To the Union of Churches. It is more vital than you know.’
‘The Prince of Lesvos said the same,’ I offered.
The count nodded.
He looked at my itineraries, laid out in geographical order, west to east.
‘The risk is too high,’ he said. ‘The war is about to start, and I am unprepared, because of a fucking fever in Dalmatia.’ He shook his head. ‘I suppose it is God’s will, but par dieu, gentilhommes, I have given my fortune and my blood for this.’
‘Sleep on it, my lord,’ Richard suggested. It was the nicest way of telling your lord that he was drunk.
I returned to Messire di Lippo’s house and went to bed late, assuming that my adventures with the count were at an end and we’d be riding soon for Savoy.
We rose in the morning to find that the weather had closed in again. There was rain in the air and the city smelled a little worse. Demetrios dressed me, and I left my sword by my bed and went out into the morning fog with a short cloak and a dagger. I had travelled fewer than a dozen steps before a shape loomed out of the fog: a mounted man, a dozen mounted men.
‘Guglielmo d’Oro?’ said a voice that was deadened by the fog.
I knew that voice.
‘Fiore?’ I asked.
A moment later the supposedly unemotional bastard was hugging me like a long-lost brother, which, in many ways, I was.
Nor was it just Fiore. It was l’Angars and Peter Albin, riding with a woman, and another man, silent and withdrawn – my Marc-Antonio. And with them were Gospel Mark and Pierre Lapot and all the rest of my cut-throats who had survived the march from Jerusalem.
In that moment I knew I could take my count to Rome. In fact, I didn’t think there was a force on earth that could stop me … us.
‘I have missed you,’ I said to Fiore. ‘I have missed all of you,’ I said to the shapes in the fog. I walked in among them, and men dismounted, and it was a merry meeting.
Peter Albin
seemed a little embarrassed. He dismounted, and I embraced him, and then he blushed – he a grown man – and gestured to his companion. I found that I was looking into the face of the pretty young whore from the Lazzaretto.
She smiled. ‘Eh, messer? You know me, I think?’
I laughed. I turned to Albin. ‘You fed her and she followed you home?’
She laughed. That was good.
‘I love her,’ Peter said. ‘I think she saved my life.’
I shrugged. ‘Fine,’ I said. Listen, out there in the polite world, perhaps men do not marry whores, although in my own lifetime not one but two aldermen of London have done so. But among the men of the Companies, many a knight’s lady started out with a little financial fornication, as an old friend of mine used to call it. Judge not, lest ye be judged.
Peter flushed again, this time with pleasure. I took them all to the count. With all of them and their grooms, pages, and squires, and all the additional horses, we had almost a hundred men, and one woman. I took Fiore and l’Angars and Albin with me to the count’s lodging and Musard carried us straight in, as delighted as I was myself.
‘My lord,’ I said, ‘this is the good Sir l’Angars, with the rest of my lances. And this is Fiore dei Liberi of Udine, the finest lance I have ever met. With these men, I believe that Monsieur Musard and I can promise you an uneventful trip from here to the very side of the Holy Father.’
The count looked like a man who’d drunk a little too deeply the night before, but he raised his head gingerly. ‘Now God be with you, monsieur; this is the best news I have heard since my ship turned out of the Dardanelles for home. But I must beg your indulgence – I cannot leave until tomorrow.’
I probably grinned like a loon. ‘My lord, with these men, I would take you to Rome even if Lucifer and the legions of Hell barred the way.’
Sword of Justice Page 27
