The Green Count

by Christian Cameron

  Miles Stapleton laughed.

  I turned and he was standing behind me, looking the other way, back towards our camp. The leaves, as I have said, were gone fromt he trees, and you could see, in a hazy way, quite a distance.

  Out, past our camp, past the rising smoke that meant we’d be discovered the moment the enemy got one man to the top of this ridge. Past the pyre, past the scrubby trees …

  Into the estuary, where a galley flying the Gatelussi colours was rowing with laboured strokes up our arm of the delta, maybe a mile away.

  We watched until there could be no doubt – until we lost the galley’s mainmast in the trees.

  And then we forgot fatigue and ran back down the ridge to camp.

  An hour later we were freezing cold on the catwalk of the heavy galley – ninety damp, cold men huddled like sheep in a biting wind that was driving us out to sea.

  But we had the emperor, and Fiore was alive.

  Fiore almost died. Indeed, he was months recovering, even though the bolt barely scratched his side. The arm wound was terrible, and turned septic. As you will hear, if you stay another night.

  Marc-Antonio’s looks were not improved, but he began to recover in a day.

  Regardless, we had the emperor. We left forty horses for the local peasants or the garrison’s survivors; no great loss. In the end, we had six dead. We delivered the emperor into the hands of his own officers, and the Count of Savoy’s, on the first day of January. The weather was dark; there was snow falling, and we were chilled to the bone. No, that doesn’t do justice to our level of cold. It makes me cold just to describe it.

  The count didn’t come down to meet me, or to congratulate us. He and Richard Musard had been shooting crossbows for amusement, and the count went straight into the citadel of Sozopolis with his knights, to greet the emperor and welcome him.

  Musard came out to meet me. I was still in the stables, having borrowed horses so that the emperor could ride into what was, after all, his city. I had on my new kaftan lined in wolf fur and I was still cold, and my broken foot was like a club tied to my leg.

  Richard caught me almost alone. John the Kipchak was an important officer now, and never had time for my horse, and Marc-Antonio was recovering in our barracks with Fiore, surrounded by every brazier that we could afford to buy and feed with charcoal.

  Almost alone – Nerio was waiting for me, twitting me for being such a ninny as to curry someone else’s horse, while Miles Stapleton helped me.

  ‘You got him,’ Musard said.

  ‘We did,’ Miles said. He grinned in satisfaction. ‘We really did.’

  Richard shut the stall behind him. ‘I wish I’d been with you,’ he said. Then he gave me a wry grin, a look I hadn’t seen from him in many year. ‘He’ll never thank you for it,’ he said. ‘In my count’s creed, you just made him look bad. Again.’

  But he had a tenth of a smile on his face.

  ‘You could thank us, for him,’ I said.

  He laughed. ‘I could,’ he said, ‘But I have to imagine that you have a more tangible reward in mind.’

  Nerio had been cleaning his nails with a little tool and now he raised his eyes, and just for a moment, I saw the darkness there. ‘Not really,’ he said. ‘Do you know your precious count is my debtor, and my cousin’s, for thirty thousand ducats?’

  Richard paused. ‘Yes,’ he admitted.

  ‘So we don’t really need much in the way of material rewards,’ Nerio said quietly. ‘But you keep insisting we do.’

  Miles Stapleton surprised me a great deal. ‘Which,’ he said, with some intensity, ‘might cause us offence.’

  Richard nodded. Wisely, he was silent.

  ‘I came here today,’ I told Richard, ‘To be quits with the count. I’m sorry he sent you. But I am taking my company and leaving. You might mention that we have Antonio di Visconti with us, as well. The count is not my paymaster, or my lord in this, and he declined my homage – I owe him nothing, and I can’t say I’m any too fond of him. So please bid him a polite farewell. You might mention that my lady wife will be returning to her estates for a while this summer. I do not expect her to be molested. Indeed, I may accompany her to be sure.’

  Richard might have spluttered, but he didn’t. ‘He’s a great man, William,’ he said. ‘I’m sorry you have not seen him at his best.’

  I shrugged. ‘I served a great man, Richard. He was truly great, and he was always good to great and small alike.’ I shrugged. ‘Father Pierre Thomas is dead. I will not expect to find another this side of Heaven, so instead, I think I’ll go back to Italy.’

  Richard surprised me by embracing me. ‘Wait an hour,’ he said. ‘Do not leave in anger.’

  Oh, I was tempted. My foot hurt. But I thought of what my lady had said; that my greatest gift to her would be good relations with the count.

  Nerio sneered.

  But Miles put a hand on my shoulder. ‘Don’t be a fool, William,’ he said in English.

  So I cooled my heels in the count’s cold antechamber while he entertained the emperor. Richard went in and out, with wine, with a document, with a pen case, and with a magnificent cloak lined in wolf hide. He smiled at me every time.

  I did some praying. I find that when I’m tempted to pettiness, prayer is often the answer.

  But I couldn’t help thinking of the day I’d spent on my knees with the King of Cyprus.

  However, after two hours, Richard came to the anteroom and summoned me. He bowed as if I have never met him and brought me by the hand into the count’s borrowed hall.

  There he sat in emerald magnificence. The emperor was already gone.

  He looked up as I entered. ‘I’m sorry, Sir William,’ he said. ‘I would have seen you sooner.’ He didn’t rise, or offer his hand, and I knelt. I wasn’t going to, but I did.

  He gave me his hand, and I clasped it.

  ‘Stay,’ he said. ‘We have not seen eye to eye, Sir William. Sir Richard has even told me, with some force, that perhaps I owe you an apology.’ He smiled, and for a moment I saw a more complex man than the green popinjay. ‘Instead, you must settle for my thanks. You may have my thanks – my grateful thanks. For the rescue of the emperor – and my scapegrace cousin Visconti, and some other things.’

  I probably smiled.

  He nodded. ‘I owe your friend Nerio a considerable sum of money. In turn, I need the emperor to pay some of the costs of my expedition, in order to pay Nerio. You understand me, sir?’

  ‘Yes, Your Grace,’ I said.

  ‘The emperor has just engaged to cover my debts,’ the count said. He looked out the window and shrugged. ‘So you and your friends might be said to have saved me from ruin.’

  I should have said something gracious, but all I could think of was the words That’s right, mate.

  The count nodded sharply, as if my silence confirmed something.

  He reached for a rolled piece of parchment. Richard brought him a magnificent seal.

  ‘This is a legal instrument proclaiming my approval of your marriage,’ he said. ‘I suspect it will be more valuable to you than anything I could give you.’ He took my hand again. ‘You are now my vassal for six estates, Sir William. Will you swear to me, putting your hands between mine?’

  The wax hissed as the seal bit into it. I could smell the sealing wax. And Richard’s smile was dazzling.

  Odd. Instead of hating him, I was about to be his vassal. In truth, I could not afford to say no. That was the reality of being a small man in this world; even as a knight of some renown, I could not say ‘no’.

  The vassal of one of the greatest knights in Europe. A sort of unassailable position, if you like. I was already kneeling.

  I swore.

  He kissed me on both cheeks. ‘Tell Emile that I think perhaps she chose wisely,’ he said.

  I went out
, still unsure whether I’d been cozened or rewarded, and Richard embraced me.

  As it turned out, it was good that he did – good that’s the way I left him, that time.

  ‘By the way,’ I said, producing a scrap of parchment from my purse, ‘Janet sends her best regards.’

  He flushed. The red suffused his dark skin. He broke open the little note. I don’t think he even noticed that it was sealed.

  He walked away from me, paused under a narrow archer’s window, held the scrap to the light, and read.

  I knew more than a moment’s qualm. I didn’t know what was in it. I knew I’d written to her asking for a note for Richard; that seemed like a lifetime ago.

  He shook his head violently, and then, after what must have been two readings, he folded it closed and slapped it against his thigh in irritation.

  He glanced at me. Shook his head. ‘Fuck,’ he said.

  I nodded. Hoping this was good.

  In the end, we packed all our people into two ships and sailed for Lesvos. Anxious as Nerio was to try for his inheritance, winter is not a good time to ride abroad, even in Greece. And our company was too good to lose to disease; I had the money to keep them and I wanted to see the orange tree, and the woman who sat beneath it.

  We touched for two days at Constantinople and Pera. I lost a few men to the fleshpots, but most chose to winter with me in the Aegean and campaign for Nerio, and gold, in the spring. With the promise of Hawkwood in the fall.

  But I did have an audience in the Hall of Blacharnae, with the empress and the emperor. Fiore was too badly off to attend; Miles and Nerio came with me, and we knelt to the sovereign we’d rescued, me with my swollen foot like a ball and chain dragged behind me, and heard them tell us that they were bankrupt, and there was no treasure with which to reward us. Indeed, it proved that the emperor had had to promise money he didn’t have to get the Green Count to release him, and hand over the port of Gallipoli and the citadel of Sozopolis.

  But he did give us all titles; Nerio still uses his in his documents. I have used mine once or twice.

  On the way down the steps of the palace, Nerio laughed, pulling on his best gloves.

  ‘I do believe this Green Count is the greatest routier of all,’ he said. ‘And yet, it appears to me that there’s to be no money from this empris.’

  On the last day of January of thirteen hundred and sixty-seven, we sailed into the little harbour of Methymna, and landed our little army to great rejoicing, at least from three children, a woman grown, two religious sisters and a great many squawking gulls.

  And Emile kissed me, although she was so pregnant she was nearly round, which, I’ll add, I was clever enough not to mention. Nerio found himself company for the winter, and Fiore was almost immediately better for my wife’s ministrations; we had hired one of Guy Albin’s assistants with his permission and we had his exact instructions. Young Francesco Orsini went home to his father, willingly enough.

  ‘I want to be a knight,’ he said.

  That made me smile. ‘Soon enough,’ I told him. Marc-Antonio was also ready to be a knight; I hoped that the prince would knight them both, in the spring. Then I settled into being a husband, a lord, and soon enough, a father.

  We knew the good doctor Albin was looking for a new employer. I sent him a letter, and when he didn’t come, we settled for a pair of Greek midwives for the birth of our daughter, Cressida – an event of pure joy, and a joy to me still, the lovely thing. Just fourteen this year; she may yet be taller than I am.

  And in the excitement of the birthing, we lost the world outside. We were, instead, a family; we dined together, and Emile began to show me two things I have ever loved since – hawking, and fishing with a rod. She recovered from her birthing so fast I wondered at her, and we roamed about as spring came on, riding, or we’d sit and talk with Nerio and Fiore and Miles.

  I was happy. Happiness seldom makes a tale, but there it is. My people were happy; Rob married the wiry lass from Constantinople, Katrina, and he had the whole company as witnesses.

  You may think it odd that it took me weeks to remember the document that the Green Count gave me, but it did; we were well on into Lent when I found it in the leather bag where Marc-Antonio stowed my maille when it was clean. I laughed, and took it to my lady, and presented it to her on bended knee.

  She began to read it, and Cressida played with the dangling green seal, her pudgy arms waving.

  Then she leaned over and kissed me. It was a good long kiss, like her old kisses. I had just learned that the weeks after having a baby are not a woman’s most amorous, and that kiss was worth the wait.

  ‘You might have told me sooner,’ she said. And my failure to remember the grant (which, I confess it, gave me powers over more land than I had ever imagined) led to a fair amount of mockery from Bernard and Jason and Jean-François, who were annoyingly mock-obsequious, insisting that I was their ‘liege-lord’ until I wanted to take my sword to them.

  Nerio, I remember, was playing cards with his leman, a Greek girl. He looked at me for a moment while Jason, whose humour and loud voice had returned, mocked me. Then he smiled. ‘By God, William,’ he said. ‘you may be richer than I am.’

  The thought terrified me.

  I took refuge in helping Fiore as he had helped me. He’d never had a bad wound; I saw him every day, and as soon as he was strong enough for food, I made him walk a little on the walls, and every day our walks grew longer, so that by Easter he could sit a horse. We rode across the island to the prince’s court for Easter at Mytilene, and Fiore rode with us, as did all of John’s Kipchaks, who made enough riot to be English.

  John’s Kipchaks were all the wonder at Mytilene, and they were all baptised at the great Feast of Easter, and then gave a show of trick riding and archery that I have never seen equalled. And the prince proclaimed a tournament for Ascension Day, to be held in his castle of Mytilene. Young Francesco beamed. I had a quiet word with the prince about Marc-Antonio.

  Nerio shook his head. ‘I may as well stay and see the young men knighted,’ said my aged friend of twenty-five years. ‘Indeed,’ he said, ‘until the Green Count pays me, I’m too poor to field an army to invade Achaea.’

  ‘And we all like a tournament,’ Miles said.

  It was the word ‘tournament’ that sparked John’s memory, so that after a magnificent Easter feast, he came to me looking troubled and produced a somewhat battered parchment with an Islamic seal.

  It turned out that I was not the only man to forget a document.

  ‘You recall,’ he said in his vastly improved Italian, ‘you sent me to scout before I go rescue the emperor.’ He smiled. ‘With you. Rescue with you.’

  I shrugged. ‘You did all the hard work,’ I said.

  He shrugged. ‘Maybe,’ he admitted. ‘Got the tower wrong, though,’ he said, and drank some wine. ‘Anyway, you send me – sent me? Sent me scout the Turks.’

  ‘Yes,’ I agreed.

  He nodded. ‘And we steal emperor and everything. And then go the count. To count.’ He shrugged. ‘You know. Anyway, and regardless, yes? Many thing happen, and then other thing. But before rescue emperor. Before we went to meet you,’ he said with pride, ‘I meet Turk captain. Ottomanid Suleyman. He rides his border, so he says. But he said this was for us.’ John looked rueful. ‘For Count of Savoy, I am thinking.’

  I read it. I had to get help from Prince Francesco’s council, and from a Turkish merchant who came in after Easter with a cargo of saffron and hides, escorted for a fee by the prince’s galleys. When I had the whole thing, I made a fair copy myself and took it to my lord, riding across the island on a brilliant spring day with a much-recovered Marc-Antonio, leaving Emile, as beautiful as the Queen of Heaven, playing with Cressida under the orange tree.

  I knelt to present the document to the prince.

  ‘It’s an invitation to a tou
rnament,’ I said. ‘Your Grace – a Turkish tournament under the walls of Didymoteichon.’

  Didymoteichon was one of the cities the Ottomanids used to rule Greece. It was north of Constantinople, and well west into Thrace. A long way away, and yet, not so far, by ship.

  The prince read it. ‘Well, well,’ he said. He looked at the translation. He nodded. ‘On the road to Achaea, Renerio. Which reminds me that I have something for you, too.’

  Nerio bowed his head.

  ‘I think that the Ottomanids might make good friends for a prince of Achaea,’ Gatelussi said. ‘I think we should go. We’ll have our tourney here, and then we’ll visit this Suleyman. I usually take my fleet west in the late spring, just to show the world that the emperor has some teeth.’

  The prince sat back in the sunlight, complained about his age, and then nodded at a servant who produced another parchment.

  Nerio tore it open, and laughed aloud. He held it up – one single sheet of parchment that I could have covered with the palm of my hand, written very small.

  ‘You see that,’ he said. He pointed to the small seal; I knew it. It was the Genoese banker’s seal. He laughed again. ‘It doesn’t look like much, but that is thirty thousand ducats.’ He nodded to me. ‘Captain Gold, we are in business.’

  Historical Note

  I am always delighted to return to the world of William Gold. Perhaps that’s because this is what I did for my thesis, way back in my university days; perhaps it is because this is what I love to re-enact; perhaps because this world, the world of England, Italy and Outremer in the late fourteenth century, speaks to me in a way that only a few other epochs in history speak to me. All of history interests me, but I confess that William Gold’s period seems especially vibrant and especially relevant.

  Many of the characters in this series are historical personages, not creations of my pen, although I confess I’ve chosen to give them life in ways that are fictional. So William Gold himself is an historical character; he was one of Hawkwood’s lieutenants, and he really was ‘William the Cook’. We don’t know a great deal about him, which is convenient for the historical fiction writer. We do know that he was knighted on the battlefield in front of Florence, and that he was one of the captains of Venice (possibly ‘the captain’) during the ‘War of Chioggia’, which will be the climactic event of this series and was one of the most important conflicts in Medieval history – certainly the most important war about which most people have never heard. To round out his character, I have given him a lifelong acquaintance with Geoffrey Chaucer, and I have suggested that his (fictional) self might be the basis for Chaucer’s Knight in The Canterbury Tales.