The Green Count

by Christian Cameron

  Whichever it was, we drove them out of the yard, and the mangonel only loosed one more time. By then it was noticeably cooler, and there was rain coming in. I could smell it, even above the carrion reek. We were trapped in a hot tower with twenty-five dead men or more, and the smell was bad.

  I’ll tell you something funny, though.

  Sometime after the attack on the second floor, a cat emerged on the third floor. He was a tom, with a big head – scrawny, a feeder on scraps and mice. He purred like a hawser running over a board, and men began to pat him – hardened killers, men who’d just stormed a tower. Every hand seemed to stretch for the cat, and Rob Stone fed it some sausage that every man of us would have fancied, even from his bloody hands.

  About sunset, the Turks came in armour. They had a ram; they’d made it out of tables and a roof beam, and they didn’t have enough overhead shielding. We dropped roof tiles on them, and our archers shot shaft after shaft.

  The ram hit the inner gate.

  The whole building shook.

  ‘Fuck,’ Hector Lachlan said.

  He’d stood there all day, and now I was standing with him, because my sense of the strength of the inner doors was that the axes and mangonel had weakened them enough that they might give. Nor was I wrong.

  The archers drove the ram out of the courtyard, but the respite was brief.

  The mangonel shot three times in the time a priest gives a sermon. That machine’s captain knew his craft; each bolt struck within a palm’s breadth of the others, and the iron bar holding the gate together bent, and on the third shot, one of the braces popped right off, all its clenched nails ripped free.

  Then the ram was back, flying across the killing zone, and into the gate, and one door ripped free, opening perhaps a hand’s breadth.

  Marc-Antonio had a spear, and he put it into a man on the other side and lost it; another Turk pulled it out of his hands.

  The makeshift ram slammed in again.

  The German squire handed Marc-Antonio his big spear.

  ‘Two more,’ Pierre Lapot said. ‘Bet you five ecus.’

  ‘Done,’ l’Angars said. ‘I say three.’

  Lapot won. On the second blow, the gate snapped back, and there was the yard, red as blood in the sunset. There were ten Turks, but fifty more came out of the shadows, out of the stable and the other towers.

  I didn’t have the men to hold.

  ‘Back!’ I called. I pulled Hector back. Then I leaned past him, crossed with a big Turk in plate and maille, and backed a step, made a wide slash, flicked my blade from low to high, and threw the handful of sand I’d kept in my left hand into the man’s eyes.

  I needn’t have worried. I had Fiore behind me, with a spear. He killed the man with sand in his eyes, and then the tide of the running men broke on us. I got my feet one step up, and the world was narrowed to two men wide.

  I retreated another step.

  It’s odd, but what I remember is not hunger, thirst, nor the pain in my hands. What I remember thinking was that it was all perfect. I was probably the best armoured man – the only man in my company in sabatons. There was nothing for the Turks below me to hit, and Fiore and his spear were as well armoured on the next step. Their sabres were hampered in the bad light and narrow quarters; my sword, held at the half-sword, was ideal.

  Our archers began to loose down the stairwell.

  Even to this, there is a rule. That is, the men below must loft shafts to strike a man higher, and avoid their own; but of course, a lofted shaft strikes the roof of the stairwell and loses all power. But the men above have the pull of the earth on their side, and drop their shafts on their enemies.

  When they’d taken some arrows, they charged us. They were brave, and they were desperate. Of course, they had no water but through the gate, and they knew what I did not about the fight on the beach and outside the town.

  I can’t tell you a thing. I stabbed and covered, I’ll guess. I didn’t die. Isn’t it odd? I remember the cat, but not the fight on the stairwell. It was like a nightmare, I suppose; something bruised my left forearm right through my vambrace, and I have no idea what it was, but I wager it was an axe.

  It went on and on.

  I remember a spear shaft coming between my feet and skewering some poor bastard two steps down and vanishing in a flash, like a viper’s strike.

  I remember when the pressure loosed so suddenly that I went down a step, and then again.

  And then we were in the gatehouse, and they were running.

  I knelt, but not to pray. Or, I did pray, after a bit, but I knelt because my knees would no longer hold me up.

  Before darkness fell, Miles came to the outer gate with John. Forty minutes later we were relieved by all the knights of the Order, with Fiore’s friend the Admiral of the Order in charge and forty of their red-clad mercenary men-at-arms. He saluted me. I was, for one of the few times in my life, too tired to talk.

  We stumbled down the hill or were carried by Savoyard men-at-arms, themselves covered in blood and ash. The Turks had held the outer walls until mid-afternoon after losing the fight on the beach. Two of the Green Count’s friends had been killed: Simon of Saint-Amour and Roland de Veissey had both been knights of his Order of the Collar. Two more of his great nobles were also dead, Girard Mareschal and Lord Jehan of Hiverdon, and some hundreds of other men.

  The count himself had fought for over an hour, hand to hand. I later heard him say it was the hardest fighting he saw in his entire life. Prince Francesco told me that the fighting at the edge of the beach had been unbelievably savage.

  I missed it all. Frankly, I doubt I missed a thing.

  They had a Greek church in the lower town set up as a hospital, and the count’s own physician and some serving brothers from my Order were all working there. I got Hector Lachlan onto a clean pallet of straw, and a dozen other wounded men. Pierre Lapot had a leg wound, Aldo had a deep puncture in his left arm, and Marc-Antonio was wounded. In fact, I was wounded, l’Angars was wounded; Francesco Orsini had two cuts in the backs of his legs, because he hadn’t worn maille below the waist and the sabres got to him. Everyone was hurt somewhere, we were all exhausted, and only Fiore seemed un-hit. Of my little company, I had twelve dead – almost a fifth of our numbers.

  A serving brother, one of the many Brother Johns my Order sported, was bandaging my hands with clean linen. He’d sponged my arms and hands clean, or clean-ish.

  Fiore sat unmoving on a priest’s chair, or perhaps a choir-stall chair. When I say unmoving, I mean he didn’t twitch. He was like a corpse.

  But just after I told Hector Lachlan that I owed him a hundred florins and he needed to live to collect, Fiore opened one eye. ‘Better than Alexandria,’ he said.

  I had my harness off, and was barefoot in the nave of the church when a page came for me.

  ‘If you are not too sore hurt,’ he said with a bow, ‘His Grace the Count of Savoy and His Grace the Prince of Lesvos beg your attendance.’

  I nodded. And Marc-Antonio came up, despite his wound, with a bowl of warm water and my filthy fighting hose, which he laced back onto my doublet. And then I put my shoes back on my feet. I could walk, if only with a sort of rolling gait. It was a day later before I found I’d broken a toe at some point, and I had a puncture wound right through my greave and into my shin – an arrow from the fight on the catwalk, I guess.

  Well, and my hands kept bleeding through the bandages, and the salt in my sweat continued to burn the lacerations on my back.

  And I was hardly the worst wounded man. I was merely the only one ordered to attend his lords.

  I stumbled and rolled along in the wake of my page, who, I could see, had a wound of his own. He was about fifteen, and blond, and handsome, and he had his left arm held stiffly.

  ‘You are wounded?’ I asked.

  ‘Nothing like you, My Lo
rd!’ he said, a little breathlessly. ‘But it hurts,’ he admitted.

  ‘Worse tomorrow,’ I said. ‘Don’t be afraid of it. But keep it clean. Hear me, lad?’

  Same advice Master Peter gave me for my first wound, I think.

  They were in another Orthodox church – a smaller one, with a beautiful hanging lamp in silver.

  Still hanging, I noted.

  Not looted. The count might be a popinjay, but he had his Savoyards under command.

  I walked down the nave to where they were seated. The Green Count wore his arming coat – green silk velvet, of course – and emerald hose. The Prince of Lesvos wore blue and gold; he had a fine, fur-edged gown over a sweat-stained doublet, and there was blood on his right hand. Richard Musard was waiting on the count as if he were his page, handing him a cup with a deep bow, and the count was drinking from a magnificent cup of crystal.

  I made a reverence on one knee.

  Count Amadeus looked up. Saw me, wiped his lips with a cloth.

  ‘Wine for Sir William,’ he said.

  The prince rose from his seat, and with his own hands, fetched me a chair.

  I was dumbfounded.

  I collapsed into the chair.

  ‘We are sensible that the outcome of today’s fighting is largely due to you,’ the prince said.

  Count Amadeus looked away, as if he wanted to be somewhere else.

  The prince went on, ‘Your Mongols turned the tide on the beach. And when we saw the cross flying from the citadel tower …’ He looked at me. ‘Men cheered you.’

  ‘Your son fought well,’ I said. ‘He is wounded, but it should be nothing.’

  Prince Francesco smiled his rare, genuine smile. ‘Ah,’ he said, clearly pleased.

  ‘I would like to have that banner,’ the count said. He ignored the prince. ‘I will have it embroidered, and it will become a standard for Crusaders. Is it true that the cross was painted in blood?’

  ‘The blood of brave men,’ I said. Of course, some of it was mine, and some of it was Turkish. But they were all equally brave.

  The count nodded. ‘I wish I had been there. A great feat of arms.’ He looked at Richard. ‘I thank you.’ He said the words as if they were teeth pulled from a man by a mountebank – they came out so unwillingly.

  I rose and bowed, somewhat unsteadily. ‘No thanks are required, my liege,’ I said. The word ‘liege’ was like a needle in his flesh, I could tell; even Musard writhed a little. He didn’t want me as a vassal.

  Good. I still like the scene. I was too tired to give a fart.

  The prince nodded and rose and took me by the elbow. ‘I’ll see Sir William to a pallet of straw,’ he said.

  The count didn’t rise. He gave a nod and drank wine. I still hadn’t received any.

  I rolled back down the nave of the church with the Prince of Lesvos all but holding me up. He led me out, and we walked – I hobbled – along the street.

  The Prince of Lesvos, warlord of the Eastern Aegean and veteran pirate, does not walk you home like a lovelorn girl, for nothing.

  ‘He should have made you governor of this place,’ Prince Francesco spat. ‘You took the town. Fuck him. He’s a fool. And he just wasted his pretty little army on the Turks.’ He laughed bitterly.

  ‘Wasted, Your Grace?’ I asked.

  ‘He lost more than a hundred men. Three of his own nobles. For nothing. The Turks are not our foes. You know what he should have done?’ the prince asked me.

  I suddenly knew I was being tested. I was also aware that two large men-at-arms were behind us on the cobbled street.

  We came to the hospital and I bought time by entering, crossing myself, genuflecting to the Host at the altar. The Greek Orthodox priest nodded.

  I was too tired to be tactically brilliant. ‘I suppose he could just have sailed by,’ I said. ‘Together you have forty galleys. What fight could the Turks have made?’

  ‘None,’ Prince Francesco said. He sounded satisfied. ‘Fighting ruins armies. His little army is probably ruined.’

  ‘Ruined?’ I asked, too tired to follow.

  He shrugged. ‘Perhaps I speak too harshly. What losses did you take?’ he asked.

  ‘My master archer,’ I said. ‘Seven men-at-arms, a squire, and four archers.’

  ‘Christ risen. Out of how many men?’ he asked.

  ‘Sixty-eight,’ I said.

  He was silent a moment, and the big man-at-arms in the door nodded at me, as if to commiserate.

  ‘How long before they are ready to fight again?’ he asked.

  ‘Three days?’ I said, and then looked at him. ‘Or longer. I take your point, Your Grace. Losses hurt. I will be a long time filling Ned Cooper’s shoes, and half my lances will be in chaos.’

  ‘Every manoeuvre that your lad Stapleton taught them will have to be relearned with different men in different vital roles,’ he said. The way he said ‘Stapleton’ would make you laugh. ‘And the new men have learned that death is real.’

  I’d seldom heard a fighting man speak so candidly. ‘You advocate avoiding war?’

  Prince Francesco looked at the vigil light for a moment. ‘I remember my first crew – my first ship that was mine. We took a Venetian, oar to oar and ship to ship. When we were done, most of my officers were dead or wounded. I had to do it all again.’ He shrugged. ‘To be honest, I’m not sure my second crew was as good as the first. After a while I went for easier marks – took fewer risks. You will too, if you are wise.’ He looked at me. ‘I’m a weary old man. You were noble today. I am delighted you are one of my captains – Richard Percy is jealous. I am providing the garrison for this town, and yet the count refused to accept you as the captain here – said you cannot be trusted.’ He shrugged. ‘Be wary of him, Sir William. Perhaps he covets your wife, or her lands, or both. But he is not an honest brigand like the Lord of Lesvos.’ He rose. ‘I have a good estate in the farmland behind Methymna – a knight’s fee that I could deem a barony. I hope you will accept it.’

  ‘Willingly, My Lord.’ I made as if to kneel.

  He pushed me into my chair. ‘Go and sleep. Tell your Stapleton I would do the same for him, if he stayed.’

  I had to shrug in my turn. ‘Sir Miles is a rich man, and goes home to England to be married.’

  ‘Ah, well,’ the prince nodded. ‘Sleep, Sir William.’

  I saw him walk along the line of beds and bend over his oldest son. He kissed the boy’s forehead and looked at him awhile, saying nothing. And then he left.

  The next day, we awoke to find the Turks gone. The Savoyards were enraged, and promised to pursue the Turks, but I noticed a certain reticence on the part of the prince. When I met Sir Richard in the narrow streets while looking for a Latin priest to perform funeral rites, he took me aside, congratulated me warmly and without reservation in a way that warmed my heart and raised my estimation of him. Let me pause here to say that the ability of a knight to admire another knight is always worthy. The man who cannot admit admiration of others is weak. When he’d paid me a thousand compliments, I blushed and stammered, I hope, and then I looked up at the citadel. He laughed.

  ‘Our prince arranged it,’ he said.

  ‘I thought as much,’ I admitted.

  ‘You didn’t look as if you were born yesterday,’ Sir Richard said. ‘The Savoyards don’t have to live here, and we do. Now the sultan owes our prince a favour.’

  I could only find one Latin prelate, and he was the Savoyard chaplain. I will mention that there was a distinct thaw among the Savoyards after the storming of Gallipoli; several of the Savoyard lords were suddenly cordial to me, and young Antonio Visconti, one of the Lord of Milan’s bastards, was effusive in his praise. He it was who helped me engage the count’s chaplain for funeral services.

  We all rode out – that is, my little band. We rode to the back of the Tur
kish camp and fetched in our dead, all of whom were bloated and unlovely from the heat. But the Orthodox Metropolitan found us places to bury them all, and a marble carver was hired to put a slab over them; I’ve been back, and it’s still there. The Green Count’s chaplain came, and prayed and gave us a service.

  As I say, there was a definite warmth, or at least a thaw, from the Savoyards. We all felt it; the respect of other men is a tonic, if you like, and taking the gate tower of the citadel made us something in everyone’s eyes. Several of the Savoyard knights attended our service: Visconti came, and the Bastard of Savoy, Humbert, a good knight if a bit slow, bastard son of Giacomo, Prince of Achaea; and Antoine de Savoy, who was one of the count’s children, by another woman. The Count of Savoy and his family clearly had no problem siring children. And they were all big, strong men.

  We stood in the sun when the chaplain had said all the words, and I felt as if perhaps I should say something.

  In fact, they were all looking at me.

  I don’t really remember what I said. I said all the names – that’s important. And I said some of what the prince had said; that the loss of good men was a loss to everyone, because the company was like a tournament team. And I offered that, as crusaders, every man was likely going to heaven. I’m not sure I believed in my heart, by then, that killing Turks was ‘better’ than killing Frenchmen, or Germans, or Italians.

  The Savoyards shook hands, and young Antoine said some good words about the company’s prowess. When they were gone, my people relaxed.

  ‘Ned Cooper going to paradise?’ Rob said aloud. ‘He’d want the mussulman’s paradise, most like. Seventy-two virgins who wouldn’t know to tell him his prick was tiny.’

  ‘Proper job,’ muttered Bill Vane, and they all laughed.

  That afternoon, I was summoned by the prince and Sir Richard handed me a casket bound in iron, which proved to be full of silver coin in bags – fifty-nine bags.