The Ill-Made Knight

by Christian Cameron

  Thornbury laughed. ‘Our captain, Sir Albert Sterz.’ He rolled his eyes. ‘Full up, my arse. Look at their armour, John! That’s Bill Grice, Bob Courtney and Sam Bibbo. Christ, these are proper soldiers.’

  John Hawkwood met my eye and his eyes sparkled. ‘Shut up, Master Thornbury. I’m negotiating.’

  We settled on thirty florins a month within an hour.

  I confess I was a trifle put out when Sir John took Fra Peter to his rooms and left the rest of us to drink wine. It reminded me of Chaucer and Master Hoo.

  Juan sat by me. He pushed in when I was reminiscing with Perkin – in the main, I was reassuring him and my other former mates that I held them no ill-will for riding away when I was to be hanged.

  ‘Please?’ Juan asked politely.

  Perkin frowned at him.

  ‘What, Juan?’ I asked.

  He frowned back at Perkin.

  ‘Gentlemen!’ I said, and thumped my dagger on the table.

  ‘Why is Fra Peter speaking to this Sir John?’ he asked.

  I shrugged and drank more good Piedmontese wine. It was a little lighter and thinner than the Provençal stuff I’d been drinking, but for all that, a better flavour. The blonde lass who waggled her hips as she walked away was pleasing as well. I liked the town, and I liked the sense of . . . order that I got from the men I’d seen. There was more discipline here than de Badefol had ever managed.

  ‘I don’t know,’ I admitted. ‘But I’ll guess, if it pleases you.’

  Juan nodded. He slipped a glance at Perkin, who frowned.

  I remember thinking, Sweet Christ, why can’t they just get along?

  ‘The Pope is at war with Milan. I assume that Fra Peter brought orders for the English Company.’ I turned to Perkin. ‘How many lances?’ I asked.

  ‘With yours added?’ Perkin asked sweetly. ‘About two thousand.’

  I spat wine. ‘Two thousand lances?’ I asked. ‘Eight thousand mounted men?’

  Perkin nodded. ‘We have every village around here crammed to the rafters. We purchased food from Genoa before the winter weather came.’ He smiled. ‘We raid into Savoy when we want sport.’

  ‘Ever see Richard?’ I asked.

  Perkin smiled a lopsided smile. ‘I hit him in the head not a week ago, but his helmet turned the blow, bad cess to it.’ He drank. ‘Fucking traitor.’

  Six months with men of religion had had a certain effect on me. ‘I’m not sure that’s how he sees it,’ I said.

  ‘What?’ Perkin asked. There were other men sitting around – don’t imagine it was just me, Perkin and Juan, because there were sixty of us crammed in a little slope-sided auberge, trying to talk and listen and trade tales all at the same time.

  I shrugged. ‘Later,’ I said.

  Perkin leaned over. ‘Tell me you are staying?’ he asked.

  ‘Up to my knight,’ I said. ‘Fra Peter.’

  Later, after another round of introductions, reminiscences and war stories, we sat in another inn, the walls crowded with the heads of dead animals, and listened to a pair of musicians play. It was richer music than I’d heard in France – Avignon may have been full of whores, but there wasn’t any music but church music – but these two were fine – a pleasure to hear – and then they sang together with a woman, and the three wove their voices together like a turkey carpet. I couldn’t understand a word they said – it was Italian.

  I had just introduced Fiore to Perkin, and he began interpreting the song – gradually the other voices fell away, though, as everyone became quiet because the music was so good.

  Era il giorno ch’al sol si scoloraro

  per la pietà del suo factore i rai,

  quando ì fui preso, et non me ne guardai,

  chè i bè vostr’occhi, donna, mi legaro.

  Tempo non mi parea da far riparo

  contra colpi d’Amor: però m’andai

  secur, senza sospetto; onde i miei guai

  nel commune dolor s’incominciaro.

  Trovommi Amor del tutto disarmato

  et aperta la via per gli occhi al core,

  che di lagrime son fatti uscio et varco:

  Però al mio parer non li fu honore

  ferir me de saetta in quello stato,

  a voi armata non mostrar pur l’arco.

  It was the day the sun’s rays had turned pale

  with pity for the suffering of his Maker

  when I was caught, and I put up no fight,

  my lady, for your lovely eyes had bound me.

  It seemed no time to be on guard against

  Love’s blows; therefore, I went my way

  secure and fearless-so, all my misfortunes

  began in midst of universal woe.

  Love found me all disarmed and found the way

  was clear to reach my heart down through the eyes

  which have become the halls and doors of tears.

  It seems to me it did him little honour

  to wound me with his arrow in my state

  and to you, armed, not show his bow at all.

  Darkness fell outside, and when I went out into the sharp night air to piss, I heard wolves. There’s a moral there, I have no doubt.

  When I went back into the inn, there was a boy from Sir John. I went with him, and met the famous Albert Sterz.

  Sterz was German, from Swabia, and as tall as me, if rather heavier and older. I’d seen him of course – seen him at Pont-Saint-Esprit and elsewhere – but he was a knight, and one of the commanders of the companies, and I was, well, a squire.

  But he took my hand with every evidence of good will.

  ‘I hier you haf a fine array of lances,’ he said. I won’t weary you with my attempt to imitate his Swabian accent, but he spoke fine English.

  I stammered something.

  ‘Your arrival couldn’t have been better timed,’ he said.

  Fra Peter sat by the chimney on a stool. His face was blank.

  The next morning, he had all his kit in the street at first light. I curried his horse from habit, fetched him some bread and wine from a surly girl whose night had clearly not ended early, and broke my fast with him. We prayed together, and then he went out and looked over his horse.

  ‘I can’t stay,’ he said. He seemed to be talking to his saddle. ‘William, these men are not . . .’ He paused and took a breath. ‘You like it here?’

  ‘They are better than when I last saw them,’ I said. ‘Better disciplined. Better fed.’

  He grimaced. ‘They’ve turned every woman in the town into a whore, and every house into a wine shop. They are even now planning to descend into Lombardy and burn the fields and kill the peasants.’ His eyes met mine. ‘For their master, the Pope.’ He looked away.

  I understood. ‘And you brought the orders,’ I said.

  ‘Orders from the Pope – suggestions from the King of England,’ he said. ‘Do you know that the Visconti of Milan are providing a great deal of the money for the King of France’s ransom?’

  I hadn’t known. I tried to work it out.

  Fra Peter smiled. ‘I’ll have pity on you. The Chancellor – of England – told me that as long as the King of France’s ransom is unpaid, England keeps the rents and income of twenty counties and a hundred castles. And while that ransom is unpaid, and English garrisons sit in the mightiest fortresses of France, the King of France is powerless to end the truce, break the treaty, go to war or on crusade. You saw what the companies did to France.’ He started to pack his mule, and I stepped to the other side of the animal to help. ‘France is to be kept crippled.’

  I bit my lip. ‘Fra Peter, I’m sure they all have Christian souls, but I’m an Englishman. So, when we make war on Milan, we do it for England?’ I confess I grinned. ‘I can’t say I’m worse pleased.’

  Fra Peter pulled a cord tight and tied it off. ‘I’m an Englishman, too. But I’m a knight of the church – and watching the destruction of the riches of France sickens me. Is Italy now to be treated the same? I’m s
worn to crusade, and without France, there will be no crusade.’ He got one end of a forty-pound bag of grain, I got the other and we hoisted it over the panniers onto the mule and began to tie it down. ‘Have I shown you this lashing, William?’

  ‘Yes, Fra Peter.’

  ‘Perhaps I’m just old, and sick of the whole thing. I’d like to fight other men like me, in an honourable way, in a good cause, and not rape anyone in the process.’ He shrugged. ‘I shouldn’t tell you this, but Savoy demanded of Father Pierre Thomas that we order the English out of his province. He told Father Pierre Thomas that until the companies are gone, he will not swear to go on crusade.’

  Well, I’d caught rumours of this at Turin.

  ‘What did Father Pierre Thomas say?’ I asked.

  ‘Can you guess, William?’ he asked. He smiled at me over the saddle.

  ‘I guess he informed the Count that the crusade was an atonement for his sins and not a matter of political advantage,’ I said.

  Fra Peter snorted. ‘You really are getting the hang of this,’ he said. ‘Of course, when Father Pierre Thomas speaks that way, he means every word.’

  ‘But you just told Hawkwood to continue his fight against Milan,’ I said.

  He looked at every lashing, and then gave me a great hug. ‘Go fight, William, but do your best to fight with honour. Protect the weak, war down the strong and help the poor.’ He sprang into the saddle like a much younger man. ‘When the order summons you, come. In the meantime, remember that you are not William Gold, mercenary bandit. You are William Gold, esquire, donat of the Order of St John the Baptist, and behave accordingly.’

  I wept, but I rallied. ‘Even when my opponents lie, cheat, steal and betray me?’ I asked.

  ‘Especially then. We practise chivalry because it is right, not because other men can be expected to do the same. The sword of justice – tempered with mercy.’ He laughed. ‘Remember what Father Pierre Thomas said of the church? Full of sinners? Imagine that the order of chivalry is entirely full of caitiffs trying to be knights.’

  Those words stuck in my head, I can tell you. That’s what we are. No one is without sin. No man is a perfect knight. We are caitiffs, but it is the striving that makes us better.

  He mounted on the mounting block.

  ‘Stay alive! My blessing on you, William Gold.’

  He laid his hand on my head and rode off into the dawn.

  Juan cried that he’d missed his master leaving.

  Perkin mocked him for it, and the two of them stripped to their shirts and wrestled in the tiny inn yard. I let them.

  Perkin was thrown first and hit his head, but he came back at Juan, and was put down again. Juan had been practising with Fiore, who was watching.

  Perkin rose, rubbing his head. ‘You have more wrestling tricks than a Cornishman,’ he said.

  Fiore laughed. ‘I see I will have new students.’

  We celebrated Christmas like gentlemen. It was my first proper Christmas in years, and I exchanged gifts with my friends, kissed a pretty whore under a sprig of greenery and went to Mass in a good church. I went blithely to confession, and said my beads – my new habits stuck.

  We feasted with the town – Sterz had a fine notion of how to keep the townspeople on our side, and we brought in a herd of beef from the coast at our cost. Our company was now so large that we had armourers and basket-makers and butchers. This was not a nation of thieves like the Great Company of Brignais. This was an army, like the army of the Prince of Wales or the King of France. We had a seneschal and a marshal; laws and police. Men who pissed in the streets were punished. Two days after Christmas, an Englishman tried to force a girl in one of the villages – she put a knife into his thigh and escaped, and her father complained. Sir John oversaw a trial as if he was an English magistrate, and the man was found guilty, beaten with rods and his money given to the girl. Then he was dismissed from the company.

  On New Year’s day, we rode for Lombardy. We travelled for two days down a long pass, and then, in bleak midwinter, we descended into the fields of Lombardy. I remember my first sight of Italy, and I thought that it couldn’t be a coincidence that we were leaving the Count of Savoy’s land.

  I remember thinking, with the old ways of a routier coming back, that it was the richest country I’d ever seen – even in winter.

  We rode to the gates of Milan. Milan is a magnificent city, and should, you’d think, have been well-defended. It’s well-walled, but the lords thereof are tyrants – I’ve fought for and against them, and I know whereof I speak. So they have a fortified palace inside the city to defend against their own citizens, and fortress walls to keep the likes of me out.

  Our orders were exact and our discipline was excellent. We were to rob and burn our way to the gates, killing as few men as possible and outraging no women. Sterz summoned all the leading men on the night before we raided Milan, and stood by his camp table.

  ‘What we want is to force Visconti to make peace,’ he said. ‘What we do not want is a lot of enraged Milanese demanding further war. Murder and rape won’t get you a florin, lads. Rob them, burn them out, push their sorry arses into the walls. That’s all it will take.’ He smiled.

  Sir John nodded. ‘Enough angry Milanese inside his walls,’ he said, ‘and Galleazzo might find himself overthrown.’

  We had assignments and guides – towns, monastries, fortified houses. Mine was written out, and I had a Milanese exile, a bitter old man named Bernabo Pieto. He led me through the cold winter’s night, and we stormed a house full of soldiers – killed a couple, took the rest, and turned the noble family out into the cold, stripped of jewels and gold.

  By morning, we’d struck to the very gates and posted the Pope’s demands there; we had twenty senior Milanese officials to ransom and we hadn’t lost a man. Milan did nothing in response – Galeazzo cowered in his palace and let his countryside burn.

  If I felt a trifle dirty from the rampage, I had 300 florins in gold from my share.

  He might have been slow on the battlefield, but he was quick enough, politically. Galeazzo reacted by hiring the most famous mercenary in Italy – the German captain, Konrad von Landau. That is, he was famous, but we’d never heard of him.

  He brought a great company of German lances – almost 4,000. He arrived in early March, and drove us back into the hills – or perhaps Albert Sterz had always meant to retire. Certainly there was no haste to our movements.

  Sterz was a good officer, but a harsh disciplinarian. When we camped, he would punish men for fouling the streets outside their tents – sensible, I confess, but not a way to win an archer’s love. He never hesitated to apply punishments, and we had the impression that not only did he like to order punishment, he liked to see it carried out, too. Some men get drunk on authority. Sterz wasn’t one of them. He merely liked the taste.

  A company of Hungarians joined the Germans. Most of us had never seen a Hungarian, but we heard they had bows which they could shoot from horseback. The archers shook their heads and said they must be puny things that couldn’t penetrate armour, and the handful of men who had fought the Turks said it was all horse shit.

  All the fears and angers of the days before battle.

  We were badly outnumbered, but we were confident. It worried me, the casual arrogance of the English.

  We had a steady stream of Milanese ambassadors coming into our camp. I became the officer responsible for meeting them and bringing them to Sir Albert, because of my good manners and genteel air. They were really emissaries, often accompanied by heralds with all the trappings of chivalry, yet they came to spy. Their intention was to count our archers and look at our entrenchments and the shape of our camp.

  So we greeted them each day with the same ten lances – mine – in full armour, and we rode them into our camp by different routes. This amused us more each day. One day, I showed them men-at-arms practising on horseback in groups of 100; the whole was an elaborate stage show, like a passion play, staged by Sir
John. The next day they rode through an empty camp – the army, right down to our whores, was behind the next ridge.

  And I was present as the Milanese offered Sir Albert and Sir John ever more elaborate bribes. I was even offered one myself.

  After a week of this, I was with Sir John after we escorted a particularly unctuous Milanese churchman back to the Milanese lines. When he was gone, I turned to Sir John. ‘If the French had offered us 20,000 florins to retreat the night before Brignais,’ I said, ‘Mechin would have taken it, split it with a half-dozen captains and ridden away.’

  Sir John nodded. He had a hint of red to his beard and moustache, and I had seldom seen him look so much like a fox. ‘That was a different empris,’ he said. ‘We had too many Gascons. Too many brigands.’ He shrugged. ‘Here, we are professional soldiers, and we have some faith in each other. I’m sure Albert would ride away and abandon the Pope for enough money.’ His eyes twinkled. ‘I would myself. A hundred thousand florins?’

  ‘Par dieu!’ I said, shocked. That was a King’s ransom. Swearing was returning to my vocabulary.

  ‘No,’ he said. ‘The world is changing, William. If we were someone’s army – your friend the Green Count’s, for example – and the Visconti offered him twenty thousand florins to go away, why, he’d take it. Twenty thousand florins is a fortune.’ He nodded. ‘But in our army, a hundred thousand florins is still only forty florins for each man-at-arms.’ He shrugged. ‘That’s one month’s pay – not enough to break the contract. It only makes it less likely the next bastard won’t hire you, or play fair on the condotta.’

  Condotta was the first word every Englishman learned in Italy. It means ‘contract’.

  Sir John reined in and looked back at the Milanese camp – the German and Hungarian camp. ‘The thing is,’ he said, ‘this is the richest country in the world. The banks are here, William. All the money comes here from all over Christendom.’ He watched as fires sprang into being, like the rising of the evening stars. My little company passed behind us, harness rattling.

  ‘In France, we took grain from peasants,’ he said as he turned and looked at me. ‘Before we’re done here, we’ll take the gold from the banks.’