The Long Sword

by Christian Cameron

  Since then, I’d been to Italy and seen enough frescoes to dull the edge of my wonder. And men in their twenties are critical of everything; I was, by then, a hardened man of the world, and I looked at the frescoes with less awe and more judgement.

  A pity. The awe was more worthy. I have the knowledge to judge a lance strike, a sword thrust, or the placement of a battery of gonnes, but I’ve never painted a stroke.

  This time, I stood in the Pope’s audience chamber in harness, with the red surcoat adorned with the white cross over my armour, and a small shield with my own coat-armour in the right quadrant: a knight-volunteer of the Order. I wore gold spurs and a gold belt of plaques and a sword. I’m quite sure that I looked very fine, perhaps finer than Fra Peter, whose scarlet surcoat had seen more wear and who eschewed the earthly vanity of a gold belt. I was not as splendid as Lord Grey, and Miles Stapleton rivalled me, but that only meant that our party looked martial and, at least in my memory, puissant. Sister Marie-Therese wore black, as did the two priests of Father Pierre’s entourage, one Scottish Hospitaller priest, Father Hector, and one Italian, Father Maurice.

  And then there was Fiore, in his plain harness and red coat. But we’d brushed him and mended him and I’d put him in my second-best doublet, and his golden hair made him look like a military saint.

  Father Pierre, who was, of course, a bishop, nonetheless knelt and kissed the Pope’s ring and there was a low murmur between them. Juan, my friend, the great Juan di Heredia’s nephew, winked at me. He, too, was resplendent in gold and scarlet and harness, and as he was apparently the richest of the lot of us, he, too, glittered. In his case, he had a superb sword worth ten of mine, and a single ring with a ruby that was worth more than my warhorse and my harness.

  Altogether, we made up Father Pierre’s entourage. We were his household, and we’d been gathered for the crusade. Father Pierre was the least resplendent – despite being the Archbishop of distant Crete, he wore his Carmelite habit, and his plain dress was echoed by the Pope himself, who wore a magnificent chasuble over his plain Benedictine habit.

  As Father Pierre kissed the Pope’s ring, I saw that Fra di Heredia was also in harness, and that he held a magnificent white banner embroidered in gold. He was the Pope’s standard bearer.

  I think it was seeing the standard that made it all real. I had heard the talk. I’d been present for the negotiation. But Anne gave odds on the Passagium Generale, the crusade, being cancelled. Fra Peter was more cynical than I’d ever heard him, decrying the waste of time and money and manpower that had allowed the movement to be delayed and delayed.

  But now, it was happening. One of the papal secretaries read out a scroll, and my Latin was good enough to make out that Father Pierre had just been promoted to be Patriarch of Constantinople.

  A sigh went through the hall. It is an empty see, an appointment without a church, because, of course, the Emperor of Constantinople was a schismatic, a follower of the Greek heresy. But the appointment said everything. We were going on crusade to take Jerusalem, and I had heard rumours that we would go to Constantinople – or that the Emperor would join us. Why else appoint a Patriarch?

  And then, in his slow, elegant French, the Pope appointed Father Pierre the papal legate. Legates were the commanders of the ancient legions of mighty Rome, and it was difficult to see the slight figure of my spiritual father, shoulders bent like a peasant’s, as the military commander of the legions of Christ.

  But Lord Grey was summoned and appointed the Gonfalonier – the standard bearer – of the legate. And Fra di Heredia placed the papal banner in his hands.

  We bowed, and one by one we filed in front of the Pope, and he blessed us. When I bent to kiss the hem of his garment, he placed his crozier on my shoulder.

  ‘I remember you,’ the old man said.

  I raised my head.

  ‘Pierre, you seem to have a taste for Englishmen,’ he said.

  Father Pierre laughed. ‘Perhaps they have a taste for me,’ he said. ‘But they are very brave.’

  ‘You had the smell of a routier when last I saw you, young man,’ the Pope said.

  It is not easy to make a witty remark to the most powerful man in the world while you kneel at his feet in eighty pounds of armour. My memory is that I grunted.

  ‘Well, well. Go with God, my son. I am pleased to see you are a knight, and still a volunteer. Will you go on this crusade?’ Pope Urban II asked me.

  ‘Holy Father, I will,’ I managed.

  He smiled. ‘There,’ he said to Father Pierre. ‘One soul saved, if we lose the rest.’ He put his whole hand on my head and blessed me.

  I suppose we stood around for a long time, but I don’t remember it. What I do remember is Fra Peter listening to a page, one of the Order’s, I believe. I saw him stiffen, and I knew what that meant.

  The Order has signals, hand signals, we use in the field. He made one to me, then.

  The signal meant ‘A l’arme!’

  We were forced to stand on the steps of the palace by the arrival of prelate with an enormous retinue – a hundred men-at-arms and fifty religious – and I think that we were all relieved to be out of the palace. Father Pierre was silent, already, I think, planning his next step. Fra Peter was looking out over the plaza. I had loosened my sword in its sheath and checked my dagger.

  Juan shook his head on the steps and hit me lightly with his beautiful gloves. ‘I look like an angel come to earth, but the Pope talks to you!’

  Juan thought his voice was low, but Father Pierre stopped and looked up. He was a small, slim man and his wool robes all almost buried him, but his smile pierced like a Turk’s arrow. ‘Juan, do you know the story of the prodigal son?’ he asked.

  Juan shifted. ‘Excellency, I spoke only in jest.’

  Father Pierre – really, the Patriarch and legate was far too powerful a man to be called ‘Pater’ – nodded. ‘Listen, the Pope rejoices, as he should, in the redemption of a single sinner.’

  Juan looked at me. ‘Perhaps Fiore and I should commit more sins,’ he said.

  ‘Be ready,’ Fra Peter hissed.

  Fiore turned and loosened his sword. Juan looked at me.

  Fra Peter was just raising a hand for silence when we saw the men-at-arms of the prelate’s entourage approaching on the street before the palace, their flags a mixture of sable and argent on some men-at-arms and azure and argent on others, all riding behind a gonfalonier bearing a banner that bore the arms of the house of Savoy, a white cross of Saint Denis on red ground.

  Is it happenstance that the great enemy of my youth bore the exact opposite of the arms of England and Saint George?

  At any rate, they were on horseback, arrogant as Frenchmen, and refusing to give way to Father Pierre’s smaller retinue.

  My hand tightened on my sword hilt.

  I had last seen that man lying in the mud, where Fra Peter had put him with a single blow while I sat with a halter around my neck waiting to die.

  The Bourc Camus. He hadn’t changed. That is, he was clean, neat, and his eyes passed over us with obvious contempt. ‘Clear the steps, priest,’ he ordered the papal legate. ‘Your betters have need of them.’

  The magnificent knight to his left on the caparisoned horse, in crisp dark blue embroidered with silver – that was the Count d’Herblay.

  D’Herblay didn’t see me at all. His eyes were on his kinsman (not that I knew that at the time), the Bishop of Geneva.

  But the Bourc’s eyes came back to me.

  There is a great deal of worldly satisfaction in the shock of an enemy. He was dismayed and I rejoiced.

  But I was no longer so very young, nor so afraid of all the world. Or perhaps I was simply inside the warm aura of my priest, and thus immune from the anger of Satan’s messenger.

  I smiled at him.

  He was surrounded by his own men, and in the e
ntourage of a prince of the church – if Robert of Geneva did not yet have the cardinal’s hat, he would. Anne had told me that he was superbly rich in his own right, commanded all his family’s connections, and was, in addition, one of the best minds the church had produced in twenty years.

  The bishop was craning his head to see what had disturbed his arrival; he was in a chair, carried by eight liveried men. He was quite young, with a bulbous nose and no chin to speak of. His eyes were wide set, and seemed to question everything.

  By my side, Fra Peter said ‘Do not draw.’

  I had already used my thumb to break the seal of sword to scabbard. I had slid the sword an inch free, ready to pull her free, all without any conscious thought. This, on the steps of the papal palace.

  And yet I was not so far wrong.

  The Bourc was still mounted. So was d’Herblay.

  I could tell from the set of his mouth and the movement of his eyes that he recognised Father Pierre. And remembered him and his role. But more – his eyes kept going back to my priest, and I thought of di Heredia’s warnings.

  ‘Clear this hedge priest off the steps,’ he shouted to his men-at-arms.

  Then a great many things happened at once. All of us, even the nun, closed in around Father Pierre. We were his bodyguard and, even then, we had already begun to practice how we would defend him, if it came to fighting: on the crusade, of course. It had not occurred to any of us that we’d defend him from an animal like Camus on the steps of the papal palace, but we locked up around him in a few heartbeats.

  Camus put spurs to his warhorse and aimed it at Father Pierre. He had a staff in his hands, the sort of baton that commanders carry, and he cut down at the nun who, by ill-chance, was in front of all of us.

  She got an arm up, but he cut hard. I heard her arm break, but she didn’t flinch, and her struggle cost him time. As her action bought us a few moments, I pushed past Father Pierre and caught Camus’s blow on my crossed arms. My steel vambraces were easily proof against his oak baton, although I felt each blow. He threw three, very fast, and half a dozen of his other men-at-arms were charging us on the steps.

  If this seems insane to you, remember who he was. And what he was. And what Robert of Geneva has become.

  I had never faced a foe in full harness, but without a weapon or a helmet. A man can spend a great deal of effort protecting his own head; indeed, the piece of armour everyone gets first is a helmet. But by Camus’ third blow, I had his tempo. My left hand trapped his descending right, just for a moment, and my fingers closed on the cuff of his gauntlet covering his wrist.

  The oak staff carried on and smacked me in the nose, a light blow that nonetheless almost took me out of the fight, and my right hand closed on his baton and I almost screamed with pain. It was only a few days since I’d had a dagger blade in the palm – and despite all that I managed to get my left on to the flange of his right elbow cop. I pulled.

  He came off his horse. The horse was trying to bite my face – a warhorse does that – but Father Hector put his crucifix into the horse’s teeth with a two-handed blow that would have done honour to many a belted knight and the horse reared, finishing Camus’s attempts to retain his seat, and they went down, the horse one way, and Camus at my feet.

  To my left, Fiore had another man-at-arms flat on his front and was kneeling on the man’s back, and Juan and Fra Peter had their arms up, covering Father Pierre. But more and more black and white men-at-arms were closing in, and it finally penetrated my head that this might be a real assassination attempt and not mere arrogant happenstance.

  The blue and white men-at-arms took no part. They merely watched.

  Miles Stapleton put a horseman down by throwing himself under the man’s arm and lifting his foot. And Lord Grey opened the papal banner, so that every man in the Place de Palais could see the papal arms in glittering gold on white silk.

  I had the Bourc at my feet. ‘Call off your dogs,’ I shouted, and rotated his arm a little farther in its socket. It was already dislocated.

  He screamed. That scream got more attention than any call to arms – four paces away, a mounted soldier reared his horse and fell back. D’Herblay had his sword in his hand. He pointed it at me and shouted.

  ‘Let him go,’ Father Pierre said, gently. He put his naked hand on my armoured one, and lifted my thumb. My hand was locked in place on the Bourc’s arm. I was rigid with anger, with shock – with not-really-suppressed violence.

  ‘I’ll kill you all,’ Camus said. ‘I’ll kill you and then I’ll flay your souls in hell.’

  Father Pierre shook his head, his mild eyes unmoved. ‘No, my son, you will not.’

  ‘I am not your son!’ roared Camus. Even then, his right shoulder dislocated, a swarm of men-at-arms around him, he went for his dagger.

  I was too slow.

  Fiore dei Liberi was not. He stripped the dagger from Camus’s left hand as if he was taking a pie from a street seller. Fra Peter picked up the oak staff that Camus had dropped and held it high.

  The Savoyard prelate was just watching. He wore his gown with long black gloves so that he appeared entirely black except his head, where his ferocious, inquisitive, bulging eyes and his narrow, chinless face made him look more like a cat than was quite right. If he cared at all that one of the captains of his escort was lying flat with his arms pinned and his own dagger at his throat, he betrayed nothing but an intense interest, as if we were a troupe of travelling players performing something vaguely obscene. Those eyes of his!

  Fra Peter gave Father Pierre a gentle but very commanding shove away from the Bishop’s men and towards the open steps to our left. ‘Move, Excellency,’ he said.

  Now the blue and white men-at-arms were also moving, working their way to block the ends of the street. Robert of Geneva leaned down from his chair to speak to his cousin d’Herblay.

  Father Pierre was not used to being called ‘Excellency’ and he didn’t react at once.

  ‘By Satan, I will find the peasants who are your father and mother and flay them alive,’ the Bourc Camus spat at Father Pierre. This, let me say again, on the steps of the papal palace.

  ‘You are like a child,’ Father Pierre said. ‘You seek to break things—’

  ‘Don’t patronise me, you low-born hypocrite. You were born on the dung heap, and I will fling you back to it.’ Camus’s voice had taken on an odd, sing-song chant and a sibilant hiss.

  Father Hector had his crucifix in Camus’s face, and Liberi had the man pinned, despite his demonic strength – demons, for all the aid of the netherworld, have a hard time with one shoulder dislocated and the other locked by an expert man-at-arms.

  Fra Peter stopped talking, caught Father Pierre around the waist and carried him away.

  I found that I was standing over the nun. Her face was white and her left arm was clearly broken, but she got to her feet without using either hand, rolling forward over her hips like a knight. She tucked the broken arm into the cord that bound her habit and met my eye. I moved my head, indicating that she should follow Father Pierre and then I looked past her at Liberi.

  He had the tiniest smile on his face. With a look of pleasure on his narrow face, he rolled Camus off his hip and threw him down the steps and into his own men-at-arms.

  Chaos ensued – shrieks, bellows of pain – and under their cover we slipped away to the left, moving fast. Juan was one step ahead of me. None of us had drawn our swords.

  ‘At them!’ shouted d’Herblay. But Fra Peter had chosen an alley, not the street itself. The sacrifice of our dignity gained us ten valuable steps on our enemies, and their horses only hampered them in the press.

  At the base of the steps, I saw that Fra Peter was already running – in full armour, carrying a grown man – to the left into an alley, as I said, the Rue des Mons. The two priests followed, and then Juan and Fiore and the nun. I paused and looke
d back, ready to make a fight at the narrow mouth of the side street.

  D’Herblay was coming.

  I drew my sword. Father Pierre was no longer there to stop me.

  The alley was so narrow that only one horseman could pass and that with his head brushing the overhanging houses. And d’Herblay’s posture and his seat on the horse betrayed that he did not want to enter the alley first. He and another man jostled for position at the mouth of the alley, where the old palace gates had been forty years before.

  I stood, my heart beating like a troubadour playing a fast dance. But I had my sword on my hip – Fiore’s dente di cinghiale.

  But d’Herblay reined in. He shouted something. I’m sure it was an insult, but I didn’t care. He didn’t dare face me.

  There was no further pursuit – and the Savoyard bishop was still watching us.

  As a group we were deeply shaken. Violence can impart a dangerous air of unreality to events, and the demonic – and I use that term deliberately, messires, for the nature of Camus’s outbursts shook even the gentle Father Pierre.

  Our Italian priest returned to the papal palace, escorted by Juan, to deliver a strongly worded protest that was written by Fra Peter. Father Pierre was already moving on to other things: to the revolt on Crete, which remained his see, and to his duties as papal legate. In an hour, he was a functioning prelate again.

  I found it hard to breathe. The nun, Sister Marie, had her arm set in the hospital. I remember that part, because the Hospitaller cleared a ward for her, as if having a woman in the place might spread a contagion. But he also sent for sisters of his own order from their nearby house, and they came quickly, surrounding her with kindness.

  I spent enough time with her to glean that she was not as shocked as one might expect from a Latin Secretary.

  Fra Peter gathered us all in the chapel after vespers and we prayed together. The shock of the open violence so close to what we all thought of as ‘home’ didn’t wear off immediately.

  It was almost midnight before Fra di Heredia arrived from the palace. I was not included in whatever he discussed with Fra Peter.