The Ill-Made Knight

by Christian Cameron

  ‘Mortimer?’ Chaucer nodded. ‘I understand he’s going to Italy.’

  ‘Italy?’ I was thunderstruck.

  ‘Italy?’ Juan said, obviously delighted.

  ‘Italy?’ asked Sam Bibbo. He’d listened to every word without comment.

  Sam Bibbo told me that evening he’d like to go to Italy. He said it would take him a week to tie up his affairs and leave the royal guard, so we sailed for Calais without him, but by the time we’d arranged to travel with an English pack train bound for the fair at Champagne, he arrived, with two horses, his weapons and armour.

  Our first night on the road, after I’d introduced him to Fra Peter, we sat on our saddles, both of us sewing. I might have stepped back five years.

  ‘Why?’ I asked. ‘You were royal archer?’

  He shrugged. ‘I took a wife,’ he said. ‘She died in childbirth. All my friends are dead, or in the companies. I don’t have a trade.’ His steady eyes met mine in the firelight. ‘Three weeks ago, we drove stags and hinds for the King and his court, and a dozen ambassadors. Thirty hours in the saddle and on foot, moving animals; guiding nobles decked out like merchants to their shooting stands; or frightening the beasts along the woods. Driving ’em to their deaths.’ He looked at the fire. ‘Half the lads hadn’t been at Poitiers or any other fight. Archers are yeoman’s sons, now, or better. It’s not the way it was.’ He looked away. ‘Like as not it’s all in my head. Mayhap I was away too long.’ He sewed a dozen stitches and looked up. ‘No one to talk to, neither. Neighbours all think I’m some sort of freak. Or a dangerous killer.’

  That was a hell of a long speech for Sam Bibbo.

  The next night, he said, ‘You taken religion, young William?’

  I sat back. Had I?

  He went on, ‘I mean to join one of the companies. If you are going to Avignon with the Knight, we’ll part at some point.’ He was embarrassed. He made a face. ‘Rather go with you.’

  I leaned back. ‘Sir John Hawkwood invited me to join him,’ he said. ‘He told me to raise ten lances.’ I shook my head. ‘But I’m bound for the crusade, Sam. And I will not be foresworn.’

  Sam tugged at his grey beard. ‘Huh,’ he said, and that was it for a day or two.

  The ride back to Avignon was harder than the ride north, for a dozen reasons. The countryside seemed more dangerous – we were attacked east of Paris by men so desperate and skinny they seemed like another species. We had to trade watches at night. Sam was a vital addition, and I could see him and Fra Peter growing, if not closer, at least to some sort of arrangement.

  We were in the Auxerre, less than a day’s travel from the tree where I’d almost been hanged, when Sam spoke up while we sat chewing rabbit.

  ‘Sir Knight, a bird in England told me you was bound for Italy. Is it true?’ he asked.

  Juan sat up straight.

  ‘Perhaps,’ Fra Peter said slowly. He looked at his wooden bowl.

  ‘Why would a Knight of St John be in Italy?’ I asked. To me, it sounded like walking into a Southwark brothel – a little too much temptation.

  ‘Italy is . . . at the centre.’ Fra Peter shrugged. ‘Of a number of things.’

  Juan hardly ever spoke up. He was often silent, his lively eyes darting about, and when I had him alone, sometimes he’d boil over with questions, asking me ten or twenty things at once. But that night, his curiosity – and his pent-up desire to fight, like any normal boy – burst forth.

  ‘What things?’ he asked. ‘Why? Why Italy? Because of Rome? he war with Milan?’

  It was as if he had just discovered the power of speech. We were all silent after his outburst, and then we all laughed, even Fra Peter.

  ‘Where do I begin?’ he asked. ‘I suppose it is about history, and about money.’

  ‘Money?’ asked the Spaniard. ‘How can a crusade be about money?’

  More laughter. Is anything more amusing than a seventeen-year-old?

  Fra Peter sighed. ‘Do you know what it is to be a Knight of St John?’ he asked quietly. ‘We are supposed to heal the sick and fight to defend the Holy Sepulchre, but Jerusalem was lost before I was born and I’ve never even worked in the hospital.’ He glanced at Juan and rocked his head from side to side. ‘I may be for Italy, yes. King Edward asked me to take a message to your Hawkwood. He made it clear that in doing this, I would be helping the cause of the crusade.’

  He sat back and looked up. The stars were just coming out.

  ‘At the same time, the Pope, head of the church, is also a worldly seigneur with temporal power and temporal lands that must be defended, in Provence and in Italy. The Pope is at war with Milan. The routiers prey on the Pope, and the Pope seeks to send them to fight Milan and the infidel. The Pope ordered me and my brothers to spearhead this effort.’ He shrugged. ‘The Pope has an army, and the commander of that army is another of my brothers, who needs more knights to support his efforts to cleanse Provence of the routiers by force of arms. And in the east, more of us hold the island of Rhodes, and there we fight the Turks. Except that we don’t always fight them – sometimes we temporize or negotiate. Does Christ care whether you make a pilgrimage to Jerusalem through Christian lands or Moslem lands, so long as you go?’ He shrugged. ‘I have heard Venetians say that the sultans rule Jerusalem better than the Franks ever did.’

  ‘And the money?’ Juan went on.

  ‘Do you know what it costs to maintain Smyrna and Rhodes? Perhaps a hundred thousand florins a year, to maintain four hundred knights and six galleys. A crusade? If we want to have ten thousand men for a year,’ – he laughed – ‘three hundred thousand florins of gold, and that’s before we feed a man or a horse, or ship them to the Holy Land.’

  Juan stared, eyes wide. ‘Holy Mother of God,’ he said. ‘Is there so much money in the world?’

  Sam nodded. ‘So, you’ll go to Italy after you visit Avignon,’ he said.

  Fra Peter spread his hands to the fire. The first hint of autumn was in the air. ‘Master Bibbo,’ he said, ‘I can’t predict where I will go next any better than a leaf on the wind. A year ago I thought that we were about to see the greatest crusade since good King Richard marched, but now, I’m sorry to say, I can’t guess when the King of England will go, or even send his son.’ He frowned. ‘I’m maudlin. So I’ll confess to you that I’m not convinced that a great crusade would be the best way to deal with the infidel. But to fail to have a crusade would itself be a blow.’ He lay back. ‘Enough lessons. When I am on the road, like this, eating rabbits under the stars . . .’ His eyes met mine. ‘It’s not a bad life.’ He lay, looking at the wheel of heaven. ‘I’ll likely go to Savoy first. And then Italy. You’ll like Italy.’

  Bibbo groused about our pace, but he stayed with us until Avignon. Messire Doffo Bardi was gone back to Florence, but his suddenly self-important nephew informed me that I had a balance of 855 florins, a small fortune. As we had come all the way south with some English and Dutch merchants, I went to the book market, bought a small and fairly undecorated copy of Galen, the old Roman doctor, with some receipts in Greek, and sent it to my sister in the care of the English merchants, with a note for her and another for Nan.

  The harness I had ordered in the spring was complete.

  I was so excited by this that somehow it took me three days to go and see it.

  Young Fiore had been back from Nuremberg for two weeks when we came.

  ‘I fought a duel!’ he said by way of a greeting.

  I laughed. I hadn’t fought anyone in five months. Well, I had played at sword and buckler in London with Juan, more for old times’ sake than anything. Juan and I had adjusted the English game to our longswords, and we would take turns cutting and thrusting at a buckler held by the other.

  It turned out that the German master in Nuremberg had been less than enthusiastic about having a foreign pupil who was critical of each thing he taught; they’d fought, and Fiore had left him bleeding and had to flee the wrath of his students.

  ‘They
should thank me,’ Fiore said with the sort of arrogance that always marked him.

  ‘Perhaps they loved the man,’ I said.

  He grimaced. ‘He may have been a fine man,’ Fiore said, ‘but he was the merest inventor of tricks, as a swordsman.’ He rolled his eyes. ‘And so many pious mouthings and mysterious sayings.’ He drank wine, and his eyes met mine. ‘A charlatan.’

  ‘You learned nothing from him? I asked.

  ‘Oh, as to that,’ Fiore grinned. ‘I learned a number of things.’ He narrowed his eyes. ‘He had a theory – he divided all fighting into two parts.’ He shrugged. ‘I will never think of a fight in quite the same way again.’

  Juan leaned over and poured more wine. ‘Then, pardon me, Fiore, but he was no charlatan.’

  Fiore sat back, ignored a magnificent pair of breasts passing at eye level and shook his head. ‘He knew a great deal,’ he said dismissively, ‘but he couldn’t sort his knowledge from his ignorance. Like a priest who preaches the true word of God and heresy by turns.’

  Juan raised an eyebrow, turned to watch the beautiful girl pass off into the rough crowd of servants and soldiers by the wine barrels, and looked at me with one eyebrow faintly raised.

  I agreed with Juan. I agreed about the girl, agreed about Fiore’s failure to react to the girl, agreed about Fiore’s arrogance.

  All that in a glance.

  But here’s the thing. Fiore was the real thing. Fiore is to fighting what a Dominican is to religion.

  The armour fit well. Some of it was perfect, and some could have used another fitting before I left. The helmet was fine; the breast and backplates were Milanese work, altered to fit me. The arms were perfect, and the legs were a little large. But the whole sparkled in the sun, and I felt like a new man. I had not been so well armed since the morning after Poitiers.

  I paid in gold florins.

  I don’t know how long we were in Avignon – it was such a pleasant time, and such time passes swiftly. Juan, Fiore and I were inseparable, and we went to church, prayed, drank, played chess, rode about the countryside, practiced at arms, and debated the world. Fiore was a well-read man, and my trip to the book market for my sister had reawakened my spark. I bought a gloss on Aquinas and a small copy of Cicero’s letters in Latin – a new discovery from the ancient world that somehow seemed exciting to me, and the more I read, the more I wanted.

  Fra Peter was busy all the time, and once his horse was curried and fed, Juan and I had no other tasks. I had money, and I spent it.

  I think my favourite memory is waking in a cottage under the walls – a pretty place I’d heard of from a priest in the curia and rented for a few days. I woke with Anne under my hip, and we made love, then I lay with my head on her tummy and read Cicero to her.

  ‘Are you going to be a priest?’ she asked, and laughed.

  Juan had a girl, as well, and the two of them, Anne, myself and Fiore went for a picnic in the late summer hills. Fiore never seemed to have a girl. Nor did he have a boy – he was above such things. He was a priest of the sword.

  Very well! I’m boring you by remembering that some times were good times. Ingrates! I’ll go back to war and death.

  At some point – a week or two after we returned – Fra Peter had us to dinner at the preceptory, in the hall. The invitation seemed to extend to all the donats – there were forty of us by then – and to the mercenary men-at-arms who had been serving the order in the papal army. Serving the order directly, that is, paid by the prior.

  We received the Prior of Avignon’s thanks for our services – in the field and, specifically, on the embassage to England, which was more thanks than I ever received from the Prince of Wales. Let me tell you this of the Order. It could be venal, and it could be petty, and par dieu, it could bog itself down in petty politics and bureaucracy, but men were praised by their leaders and rewarded at every chapter meeting and every evening at prayer. This instant reward of even minor virtue taught me a great deal, and soothed my soul, as well. A man may change – and be rewarded for that change.

  But the Order also existed in the world of sin and death.

  Over wine, Fra Peter told us that he would be going to Italy, and that the crusade was delayed at least a year, and perhaps two.

  ‘I feared this,’ he said. ‘The King of Cyprus is on his way. He should be the leader of the crusade – he knows the enemy and the conditions – but the Pope has offered the command to the King of France. And there is more corruption involved than you’d find in the corpse of a week-old Plague victim. The crown of France and its dependents have an old claim to the crown of Cyprus . . .’ Here Fra Peter showed more anger than I’d ever seen in him. ‘Talleyrand is using his influence to block the true King of Cyprus from coming here – to keep Father Pierre Thomas from exercising his authority.’ He sat back suddenly. ‘Merely in an attempt to get his own family some land grants in the east. In truth, young masters, it is not the Turks who will defeat Christendom. We will defeat ourselves – through greed. Routiers and cardinals. They deserve each other.’ He shrugged. ‘But I am not being a good knight. My lord, Father Pierre Thomas, will be going across the Alps to speak to the Count of Savoy, and I am to escort him.’ He looked at Juan, and then at me. ‘The Pope has great hopes that the Green Count will go on crusade.’

  While I understand now what was at stake, at the time I was twenty-one years old and the shock of near death and betrayal had worn off. I had some new ideas of knighthood – and I had better armour.

  I wanted some adventure.

  The idea that the crusade was delayed for as much as two years dismayed me utterly. ‘What are we supposed to do?’ I asked.

  Fra Peter was looking at the table. The Prior fingered his beard and looked elsewhere. The other knights present, including di Heredia, smiled silently into their wine.

  The truth was evident at that table. The knights had been building up their strength – adding brother knights, donats and mercenary men-at-arms. Those men had stood the Pope in good stead when the routiers threatened Avignon, but now, with the Pope waffling on the idea of the crusade, the order was going to cut its losses. Men-at-arms were easy to find. Even donats – volunteers – cost money.

  Di Heredia looked down the table at me. ‘You gentlemen are to be released from your obligation until the crusade becomes . . .’ he looked apologetic. ‘Ahem. More . . . likely.’ He looked wistful. ‘And thus the Order loses the best fighting men I’ve had under me in many years.’

  The Prior leaned forward down the table. ‘Of course, you are all sworn to the crusade. When Father Pierre Thomas summons you, we expect you to come!’

  Juan and I murmured with the other donats and men-at-arms.

  I might have revolted. I was not so tied to my new life that having the Order spit me forth might have caused me to go back to my former life. I have seen it happen to other men.

  I lay in my bed the next morning – not lifting stones, not wearing my new harness – but thinking to myself, like a routier, that the church had cozened me of 1,000 ducats and was now letting me go.

  When Fra Peter knocked on the door of my little cell, I sprang up. I knew his footsteps. I flung back the oak door, and he was there – plain brown gown, eight-pointed cross and a smile.

  ‘Master Gold,’ he said. ‘You and Juan are to stay on and help me escort Father Pierre Thomas to Savoy, and if required, beyond.’

  ‘To Italy!’ I said.

  He raised one eyebrow. ‘Perhaps,’ he said.

  In fact, it was typical of the complete chaos of the time that having just released almost 100 excellent men-at-arms that they had paid and trained for two years, the Priory of Avignon now needed to hire a dozen men-at-arms on short notice.

  Fra Peter wasted a day chasing down a pair of our Germans who were, we heard, just a day’s ride away.

  That afternoon, after I’d cleaned and oiled my new harness, which was in no need of care at all, I went to find Juan and we went out into the sunshine. I needed mon
ey – that’s what I remember.

  Instead, I found Sam Bibbo with a pair of mounted men in patchwork harness. I remember thinking, Is that what I looked like? They were under guard by four papal officers, and they were riding very slowly.

  Sam waved, spoke to the guardsmen and came up the street to me. In a moment, I was embracing John Courtney and William Grice. They were headed for Italy, but had come south from Pont-Saint-Esprit because they’d heard I was alive. At the gate – where they’d have been disarmed – they heard there was escort work at the Temple, and they gathered their city escort and came looking for me. I hadn’t seen them since the morning of Brignais, or a day before.

  They were two men-at-arms among six travelling together. They’d fought in Brittany and in Burgundy, and they wanted better work.

  William Grice met my eye. ‘It’s hell,’ he said. ‘Sweet Christ, Will Gold, you look like St Michael.’

  ‘Please do not blaspheme,’ Juan said.

  Grice put a hand on his sword hilt and looked at me.

  ‘This isn’t hell,’ I said. ‘We don’t swear.’

  Courtney laughed. ‘He is St Michael.’

  That evening, after some wine and some stories, I sat down with Fra Peter. ‘I’ve found four men-at-arms interested in taking service in Italy,’ I said.

  He nodded. ‘Your own men.’ he said. ‘Your other life.’

  ‘I . . . still want to be a knight. A real knight.’ I found the words difficult to say. ‘I know these men. Hard men, but true.’

  He drew a breath and let it out slowly, then turned to face me. ‘Very well. My Germans have already gone – over the mountains to join Sterz in Italy. I’ll hire your routiers.’

  We left Avignon under Fra Peter’s command. We were a fine company – John Courtney and William Grice, de la Motte, Fiore, young Juan, Sam Bibbo and I. I paid careful attention to how Fra Peter led these men, who had been my men. Unlike Juan, he didn’t seem to dwell on details, like swearing. Instead, he led by example, repairing his own tack and cooking. When William Grice proved to have a nasty abcess on an old wound, Fra Peter took us to an inn and spent two days there, draining it, filling it with honey and draining it again. He was an expert physician, but then, most members of the Hospital were.