‘Messer d’Oro might even be said to have saved my life,’ he said, the first I’d heard so much praise from him. ‘I reckon that he’s kept me alive and in humour for two months.’
Lady Bianca had care written on her face, but for a moment the lines around her mouth were erased, and she smiled. ‘Come, brother,’ she said. ‘So much praise must tire you.’
Count Amadeus laughed. To me, he said, ‘She has always mocked me.’
‘Someone has to,’ Bianca said. But, quite spontaneously, I thought, she put a hand on my arm. ‘Please protect my brother,’ she said. She glanced at her husband. He smiled.
That was … chilling.
‘I imagine a lord so bold and debonair might be difficult to guard,’ Galeazzo said.
‘He is a pleasure to serve, my lord,’ I said. Really, if you think about it, there was no other possible answer. I could tell that Galeazzo was either enjoying a grim joke, or issuing a threat, or both – I didn’t want to seem threatened, or even aware. I have often found this the best way to respond to a threat; the pretence that you never understood a threat to have been made can defeat the project entirely.
‘Guard him nonetheless,’ Bianca said clearly. ‘I would be devastated if anything were to happen to him.’ She looked at her husband, who smiled and inclined his head.
‘And this is my daughter,’ she said. Her ladies parted – they were all beautiful, as beautiful as any women I’d ever met, except perhaps the Emperor’s court in Krakow – and in the midst of them was Lady Violante.
Sometime you gentlemen must tell me your first impressions of that lady. I saw her at thirteen – she was still far more girl than woman. But the beauty of face was already there, and the curious eyes. Too open, and too demanding, and too … too much. I have seen those eyes on archers after the sack of a town, but never on a thirteen-year-old girl.
I bowed. She said something conventional.
Lady Bianca took my hand. ‘But you must be the Countess d’Herblay’s husband!’ she said. Then her hand went to her neck – a gesture that betrayed unease. ‘Of course, I am sorry. D’Herblay was her first husband, and he is dead.’
What could I do?
Count Amadeus said, quietly, ‘I am well satisfied that Messer d’Oro had nothing to do with d’Herblay’s death.’ I had never loved him more than that moment. He didn’t need to say it. But silence would have been damning and I happened to see the look on Galeazzo’s face.
I knew in one flicker of his heavily lidded eyes that the viper had spoken to Turenne and perhaps to Florimont de Lesparre as well. I knew. And I knew that some part of this had been stage-managed, either to discomfit me or to humiliate the Count of Savoy.
‘D’Herblay died at Alexandria,’ I said.
‘You were there?’ Lady Bianca asked.
‘I was,’ I said. ‘I was there with the Order of Saint John.’
That was not in their little play; and Lady Bianca had already warmed to me, so she put her arm through mine in an affectionate way. ‘Emile grew up with me,’ she said. ‘At least, during the summers. We used to ride together. I hope you will take her a letter, and perhaps some silks.’
Everyone breathed out. Perhaps nothing had ever been intended, or perhaps Galeazzo, who was a great one for what he called ‘testing’, merely wanted to see what I was made of.
Young Gian Galeazzo came, at last. He wanted to see my sword.
‘How many men have you killed?’ he asked.
‘Enough to go to Hell for it,’ I said.
He turned quickly.
‘If I am not careful,’ I added.
He wasn’t listening. He asked some questions about Alexandria, and frowned. He was a slight youth, but handsome enough, in a heavy-lipped, northern Italian way. His sister had certainly got the lion’s share of the good looks, but he had his mother’s upright carriage and his father’s burning eyes. He was dressed well, but plain enough, in a good red wool doublet and silk hose.
‘Once you held the city, could you not have killed all the Saracens there?’ he asked.
It seemed to me a terrible question from a sixteen-year-old.
I shook my head. ‘The sack was bad enough, my lord,’ I said. ‘And an army, no matter how large, cannot really massacre a city the size of Alexandria. And men – even soldiers – may hesitate to kill …’
Galeazzo snapped his fingers. ‘I have not really asked the count here so that you could instruct my son in ethics,’ he said.
‘Not my uncle Bernabò’s soldiers,’ Gian Galeazzo said. He smiled. ‘Or my father’s, or mine. If we order it done, it is done. Perhaps we should have marched on Jerusalem, Pater.’
‘Let us secure Bologna first, my son,’ Galeazzo said. ‘Then Jerusalem.’
‘Can we come to an agreement, cousin?’ he said, turning to Count Amadeus. ‘I believe we have found that our roads lie together. And besides, it would so please my lady wife, were you to come with us to the wedding.’
‘And other things,’ Count Amadeus said.
Galeazzo glanced at me. I was the only man in the room who was not one of his family or retainers.
‘Perhaps you would allow your man to take my son for a sword lesson,’ he said.
‘I do not need a sword lesson from a foreigner,’ Gian Galeazzo said.
‘Perhaps,’ the Count of Pavia said carefully, ‘you would go and have a sword lesson with this worthy knight. I would hate,’ he said gently, ‘to have to say this again.’
I knelt by Count Amadeus.
He nodded. ‘Of course, I would be delighted to see your son so instructed,’ he said. ‘Messer, be so good as to take this young man and teach him a little of your prowess.’
‘You are sure?’ I asked. ‘I could send for Fiore.’
He smiled. ‘That might be a trifle severe for so young a man, don’t you think?’ he said. His eyes were calm.
I felt the tension, but I was willing to wager that the count did not feel under threat.
‘Go, messer,’ he said.
I rose. I bowed to Lady Bianca, and then turned to bow to Lady Violante.
It was a small thing, but it jarred me.
Gian Galeazzo had moved to his sister while I addressed the count. He had his hand on her neck – his fingers wrapped her white neck from behind. It was … wrong.
He didn’t hurry to take them away. His eyes met mine.
‘What will you teach me, I wonder?’ he asked.
Violante hissed. Like the very viper. It was a surprising sound from a small woman.
‘Hush, good sister,’ Gian Galeazzo said. ‘Come, English knight.’
We walked out together. He did not want to match swords, I could tell.
‘What will you teach me?’ he asked again.
I shrugged. ‘Do you have a master-at-arms?’ I asked.
‘Three,’ he said with some derision. ‘One for jousting, one for riding, one for the sword.’
‘You do not enjoy the exercise of arms?’ I asked him. ‘My lord?’
He smiled with apparent warmth. ‘Why spread your own legs when you can hire a strumpet to do it all for you?’ he asked sweetly.
I might have bridled, but I had met sixteen-year-old boys before. ‘Perhaps,’ I said. ‘Although if you have a philosophy tutor, you know that reasoning by analogy has its dangers.’
‘Oh,’ he said. ‘I had no idea you knew words like “philosophy” and “analogy”.’
‘I even know words like “tutor” and “strap”,’ I said.
‘You wouldn’t dare,’ he said.
I shrugged. ‘Not for a casual insult. But try me, my lord, and we’ll see. And since you disdain the art of arms, I assume I can throw you to the ground and humiliate you pretty thoroughly and you can’t do anything to defend yourself.’
‘I’m not so bad,’ he sai
d.
‘Let’s find out. Where is your salle d’armes?’ I asked, and in three minutes we were at the magnificent stables. There were three other young men following us, and they were clearly his friends. When we climbed the steps to the salle, they joined us.
I saw Demetrios in the stables, working on our horses, and I sent him for Francesco and Fiore, if they could be found. And then I asked my young lord to take up a sword.
‘Let me show you by how much I am your master,’ he said instead. He pointed to one of the young men. ‘Attack him, Alonzo.’
Alonzo drew his sword and his dagger. He was perhaps a year older than the young lord, and he had seen some fighting. His sword and baselard were sharp. I had to assume he was some lordling’s son.
He was more than a little hesitant in the way he held the sword.
I picked up a wooden waster off the rack. ‘Don’t be foolish,’ I said in my capitano voice. ‘Sheath your sword.’
‘Kill him,’ the count’s son said. ‘I’ll make it good.’
The young man stepped into my range, and I broke his sword with one blow.
Hard wood isn’t like steel.
He looked at his broken sword for a moment, and in that moment my point went past his shoulder, my ‘blade’ went across his shoulders, and I threw him, hard, into the wall. He bounced.
The same throw I used on Albornoz. It’s a good throw.
I picked up his baselard and jammed it between the floorboards, which had finger-width gaps because it was, after all, a stable. Then I used the heel of my boot to kick the hilt until it broke. It was a pretty weapon – a match for the sword.
‘That was foolish,’ I said.
I expected the count’s son to go to pieces, or perhaps to order his other friends to attack me, but instead, he nodded.
‘My, my,’ he said. ‘I am impressed.’ He sketched a little bow.
‘I’ll fucking kill him,’ the young man on the floor said.
‘No, you won’t, and if you go for him again he’ll probably kill you,’ the young lord said. He nodded to me. ‘I have never seen that done. Teach me that.’
So I did. It is one of Fiore’s standard motions, taken to its logical extreme, at least the way Fiore taught it to me; the throw is just a turn of the hips.
The change in the young man was so drastic that it was as if I was dealing with another young lord entirely – an attentive, polite young man. And the one I’d tossed into the wall muttered a lot, pouted, and went down the steps just in time for Fiore and Gatelussi to come up them.
Is there anything more embarrassing than trying to teach a complicated pattern in front of the man who taught you?
‘And this is?’ Gian Galeazzo asked.
‘My sword teacher,’ I said. ‘Messer Fiore dei Liberi. A knight of Udine.’
Gian Galeazzo nodded. ‘And this other man?’
‘You have heard of the Prince of Lesvos?’ I asked.
‘My grandmother is a Doria and Genoa is close enough to throw a stone at,’ the boy said.
‘This is his oldest son. Francesco Gatelussi.’
Francesco bowed.
Gian Galeazzo bowed. He looked at me. ‘I was misinformed about you,’ he said. Then he turned to Fiore. ‘You teach me,’ he said.
Fiore spread his hands. ‘Sir William is adequate,’ he said.
Gian Galeazzo shook his head. ‘Why learn from the student when I can have a lesson from his master?’
It was a good point, but no one likes to be commanded by a stripling, especially an arrogant stripling. However, Fiore took over. And in the end, that was a pleasure, because Fiore was insensitive and even brutal, and had no care for the boy’s rank, if he even fully understood it. And Gian Galeazzo was one of those annoying students who try to ask you why they have to do this, and isn’t this other thing better, and can’t they turn your sword like this …
Fiore took the sword out of his hand by turning the pommel and then threw him to the floor, almost casually.
‘No,’ he said. ‘That would be stupid.’
Now, Fiore has told me I am stupid not less than one thousand times, from the day we met to the last time we played together. I was hardened to it, but the Count of Pavia’s rich son probably had little experience of it, and he was ashamed and that made him angry.
He tried several little ways to get back at Fiore and after the third, I stepped in.
‘My lord,’ I said.
He glared.
‘Messer Fiore is not a patient man, and he is not a sword tutor to princes,’ I said. ‘Believe me when I say that if you annoy him, he will break your hands.’
The young man paused.
I bowed. ‘Listen: we have misunderstood each other. I think your father … meant something by this lesson. But we mean nothing more than to give you good instruction. You cannot fight Fiore. Believe me, young lord – I can barely fight him, and I am pretty good. So please, accept the lesson, stop playing, and let’s return to your father.’
He said nothing – not even an inclination of the head. But later when, soaked in sweat, he accompanied the three of us back to the great hall across the perfectly manicured lawn, he suddenly turned to me.
‘You give good advice,’ he said. ‘And you are correct. I mistook you for a bravo. I see now you are the real thing. How much for you to serve me?’
That was all. That was my introduction to Gian Galeazzo and, indeed, to the Visconti.
We went back into the hall. Count Amadeus and Count Galeazzo were signing some papers. Lady Bianca was gone.
Count Galeazzo rose and looked at his son in surprise. ‘Well?’ he asked.
‘I learned a great deal, Pater,’ Gian Galeazzo said. ‘Indeed, I learned more than you might have intended.’
‘You have a tendency to do so,’ Galeazzo said, and his displeasure was obvious. He looked at me, and then at his son. I bowed.
‘Your son was an excellent pupil,’ Fiore said. That was the problem with Fiore: he didn’t really do social convention well, and he had forgotten that, as he hadn’t been introduced, he couldn’t speak.
Perhaps the Count of Pavia was above such concerns. He looked at Fiore. ‘My son was an excellent pupil?’ he asked. ‘I am …’
Fiore shrugged. ‘Boys are all fools,’ he said. ‘He is less foolish than most.’
Count Amadeus worked hard to cover a smile at his cousin’s discomfiture. And Gian Galeazzo shocked me by grinning – the most natural expression I had seen from him, and the first that was not somehow planned or practised.
‘Well, well,’ Count Galeazzo said. He felt he’d lost a point somewhere, but I didn’t know what it was.
‘Sir William is the best blade I have ever seen,’ Gian Galeazzo said.
Well. That little piece of adolescent praise was to haunt me a long time.
‘Is he?’ Count Galeazzo said. He looked at me. ‘I will remember that.’
And he did.
November kept a sting in her tail, and although we rode into Lombardy in weather that might have suited a late summer in Tuscany, we rode into the Alps in winter.
Travel in winter is very difficult, but it is not impossible, unless there’s heavy snow or an avalanche, and again, our long string of spare horses made the very difficult merely hard. There was no question of making camps as we crossed the mountains, and we stayed on the major roads and went through the Mont Cenis pass, still on what most pilgrims considered the main route of the Via Francigena.
Most days we were up at first light, stumbling into the stable yard of an inn that made us pay in hard specie for minute quantities of straw and oats for our warhorses. We slept in our clothes and were lucky if we got our boots off. In the mornings we’d be out of our blankets with no hope of bathing and rarely hot water to shave, let alone time to strop a razor or hone it. The servants s
crambled to fend for themselves early enough that they could serve us food. We knights scrambled to get into our harnesses and see to our horses, all so we could ride out of the inn gate into a brilliant day, or a shower of stinging snow or, worst of all, a little burst of freezing rain. Then seven or eight hours of sodden progress, occasionally passing other parties, or making way for a heavy wagon, on a road never more than three horses wide and sometimes reduced to a single trail the width of a horse’s rump, with a four-hundred-foot fall on one side and a wall of sheer rock on the other. The weather wasn’t yet cold enough to fill the paths and passes with snow so that they became untenable, but twice we passed long sections where we had to go single file. The lead men were breaking trail through knee-deep snow, and the horses had to guess where to put their feet, despite all of which, we didn’t lose a man or beast – switching horses often seemed to be the key to managing everyone’s good spirits and fatigue. But from Susa to Barberaz above Chambéry, we were in the mountains on the border of the principality of Savoy. Even when we climbed all day, the great peaks like Cenis herself towered above us to right and left, and when we had a snowfall, the world was white and the sunlight could hurt your eyes and make it hard to see.
We were a large party, and merchants wanted to travel with us. We ended up with a convoy of almost thirty carts and various mules, horses, and single pedlars on foot. After two days of dealing with their various lethargies and quarrels, I had Sam Bibbo put them under discipline, and I told all the merchants that if they didn’t obey me, I’d make sure they didn’t get to France. Then I moved them into our column and put l’Angars in command of half the lances, in the rearguard. I kept Fiore to be the principal bodyguard for the count, along with Richard, so that I could command the column. Richard was a fine man-at-arms and a deadly fighter, but Fiore could handle anyone I’d ever met.
We sent Ewan or Mike Burns forward every day, sometimes with three archers, sometimes more. They would ride as far as our next inn, make arrangements, find beds or at least warm floors, and ride back, examining the travellers en route and asking hard questions in the taverns about bandits and strangers. In stories, the mountains sound trackless and bandits attack suddenly. In real life, the Alps are well travelled and you just can’t hide twenty horsemen. They leave a lot of hoofprints, they chew up a ford, all sorts of marks betray their presence, and when they stop, they need a lot of straw and oats. That’s why a party as large as ours was so safe.
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