The Long Sword

by Christian Cameron

  Fiore stepped back from poor Miles, who was a sweat-soaked bundle of nervous failure.

  I had, despite my laughter, been watching carefully. I had seen that, despite our ridicule, Miles had learned steadily for over an hour. But as Fiore’s criticism was relentless and accurate; eventually the younger squire could no longer concentrate on all the errors he was supposed to correct, and he began to fail. And as he failed, Fiore bore down, spitting out his criticisms fast and more insistently, because Fiore felt that somehow he was failing. Miles all but collapsed.

  ‘And now you cannot even stop a simple cut to the head,’ Fiore said, stepping back.

  Young Master Stapleton didn’t burst into tears. A lesser man might have.

  I jumped up. ‘Eh, Fiore, give the boy a rest and let’s have another bout.’

  Fra Peter gave me a slight nod, which was often his warmest sign of approbation.

  Fiore was angry, feeling that he had failed, but he took three breaths – I told you, it was the summer of breathing – so he was outwardly calm, and we took our guards and engaged.

  At the third or fourth pass, I got Fiore’s sword in a bind at the crossing, but I was so surprised at my little triumph that I didn’t move my hand correctly to place the blade on my cross guard, and got a nice cut across the back of my thumb even as I struck him lightly on the shoulder. Now, let me say, I had hit him before. He was not yet the master he is now, but it was a moment for personal rejoicing for me or Juan any time we landed a good blow.

  He smiled and pointed his sword at my hand. ‘Another pair of gloves ruined. You need to fix that.’ He seemed to be ignoring that I had hit him. ‘You rely on your iron gauntlets. In a street fight, you could lose your thumb.’

  Well, of course he was correct, and I had just ruined another pair of three-florin chamois gloves.

  I consoled myself that I had the thread and needles to fix them up, if the bloodstains weren’t too bad. Gloves were expensive.

  ‘Let me have some exercise, Sir William,’ Fra Peter said. He nodded to me – we were all knightly courtesy when we had live swords in our hands, and I recommend such behaviour to any man-at-arms. Heightened awareness deserves heightened courtesy, eh?

  Fra Peter began in a low guard, and Fiore began high. They met with a heavy crossing (I wouldn’t have risked such a heavy strike) and Fiore leaped forward to strike with his pommel – and Fra Peter passed back and took Fiore’s blade out of his hand as easily as a thief takes a purse on Cheapside.

  Fiore grinned from ear to ear, while the rest of us clapped, and I discovered that I had Sister Marie behind me.

  ‘Show me that again,’ Fiore said.

  Fra Peter grinned, suddenly one of us and very human indeed. ‘No, I think I need to have something on you, since you have youth and speed!’ But he relented, and began to demonstrate.

  The laugh of it was that it was just like one of Fiore’s dagger defences – in effect, the pommel strike turned the mighty longsword into a dagger. We all began to learn it.

  I noted Sister Marie moving her hands through the disarm.

  She caught me looking and turned away, a hot flush on her cheeks.

  I went back to practising the turning of the pommel with Juan. Miles just shook his head.

  Fra Peter put an arm around Miles. ‘Just practice what you understand,’ he said.

  Miles looked at the ground a moment. ‘I don’t understand anything,’ he said sullenly. I had never heard Miles be sullen. ‘My father’s master-at-arms says I am a very promising swordsman.’

  Fiore looked at the younger man – they were, after all, only two years apart. ‘I’m sure you are, to a provincial knight in rainy England.’ He looked at us. ‘You saw what Fra Peter has just done to me? Yes? And just like that, I am disarmed and dead. Yes?’

  Miles shook his head. ‘Yes.’

  Fiore frowned. ‘You know what the worst fault of most knights is? The one that kills them?’

  I wanted to hear this. So, it appeared, did Fra Peter. He stopped wrestling with Juan.

  Stapleton shrugged. ‘They don’t listen?’ he said.

  Fiore’s frown turned to a small smile. ‘That’s not bad. But no. It is that they think they are much better than they really are, and they are not careful. You have only one skin, Messire Stapleton. If you are careful with your blade, you can win many fights against men who should have killed you. Did you see what Fra Peter did to me? Really did?’

  ‘He turned your pommel strike,’ Stapleton said.

  ‘He used my arrogance against me,’ Fiore said. He smiled. ‘That’s how to win any fight.’

  Behind me, Sister Marie laughed. ‘Women would rule the world,’ she said.

  That was the day that I discovered that mild Sister Marie, the Latinist, was an accomplished swordsman. She fenced with Fra Peter after he had us secure all the views into the stable yard. She was tall for a woman, but had nothing like the muscle or the height of a belted knight, and her weapon was an arming sword, the sort of weapon I’d grown to manhood using with a buckler. I’d seen her with her sword and her buckler while we were crossing the bandit-infested passes east of Turin, but what of it? Most women who travelled had weapons, unless they were so rich as to have men-at-arms or so poor as to have only a dagger or an eating knife. Many nuns carried staffs or even cudgels to discourage rape and thievery.

  Sister Marie moved like a snake. I had never seen anyone move as she moved. She leaned well forward, so that whichever foot was moving, her weight was out in front of her, and her sword led everything. She passed forward and forward, changing from guard to guard, and it was all alien to me, but like a lethal dance.

  Fiore’s eyes shone. ‘This is very interesting,’ he said. ‘She appears to strike from out of measure, yet it is all deception. She dances forward offering a strada, but it is all a lie. She has no line. She engages where she wishes.’

  It was not so very different from the sword and buckler of my youth except that we tended to circle, refusing to take a guard until our opponent crossed some invisible distance. Sister Marie flowed from one guard to another, sword over her left shoulder, down by her left hip, up over her head to turn Fra Peter’s cut, and then she was in at him, her little buckler over his sword arm. He wasn’t having that, and he spun and kicked her and she leaped – and giggled. And cut backhanded at his arm. He covered with his pommel high and the sword falling over his hands, blade pointed at the ground to the right, and struck crisply with both hands and she covered with her sword and her buckler, a move I knew well. I suspected that if he’d cut with all his force, he’d have opened her head; even as it was, her buckler moved.

  Each of them tried to bind, but her sword, while quicker, was lighter, and as the edges bit into each other, Fra Peter turned her blade down and touched her very carefully on her forward leg.

  She leaped back and saluted him and bowed.

  ‘Fra Peter, it is too seldom that I get to face a swordsman,’ she said.

  He grinned. ‘And you a poor weak woman.’ He shook his head. ‘If I had to fight in a wool gown, I doubt I could do as well.’

  She raised an eyebrow. ‘If you plan to pity me, perhaps I should just shave you.’ Her eyes glittered.

  Fiore stepped forward. ‘May I have the pleasure of a bout?’ he asked.

  She looked him up and down. ‘I have to copy letters,’ she said. ‘You must promise to be careful.’

  He frowned. ‘Are you suggesting that I lack control?’ he asked.

  She shrugged. ‘Messire, you have put a spear through Sir William’s cheek, cut his thumb, pinked Messire Juan, and worn the poor English squire to a rage.’

  Fiore looked hurt. But he bowed.

  Fiore was so tentative that she mastered the first cross and touched him on his sword arm. And then she turned her sword in the same wind as she had lost to Fra Peter and although she d
idn’t touch him, Fiore stepped back and bowed. ‘You might have hit me,’ he admitted.

  ‘Yes,’ she said, and stepped forward again, this time warding his guard with her buckler as she advanced.

  Fiore lifted his weapon and struck her lightly on the side.

  She stepped back and laughed. ‘Usually, after I hit a man twice in two crossings, he folds,’ she said.

  Fiore frowned. ‘Why?’ he asked.

  Fra Peter stepped between them. ‘Juan is waving. Sister, put up your sword before the university provost arrests us all. Fiore, she played you. From the moment she accused you of having trouble controlling your blade, she was controlling your actions.’

  Fiore wiped an arm across his face and frowned at me. ‘It is like facing a rival fencing master,’ he said.

  As Sister Marie disappeared up the steps behind the stables, Fra Peter collected the swords. ‘She is a rival fencing master, Messire dei Liberi. She teaches monks and nuns; indeed, she has a special licence from the Pope to do so anywhere she goes.’

  I flushed. ‘I see,’ I said. ‘I tried to protect her from some carters this morning.’ I thought back over various other comments I’d made. ‘She’s old enough to be my mother,’ I added. And then, ‘If she has a licence, we were in no danger—’

  Fra Peter stood up straight and put a hand to the small of his back. ‘And I’m old enough to be your father. What difference does that make?’ He nodded to me. ‘Surely you have learned from your Janet that it is one thing to have official approval and another thing to be the woman in the armour? Eh?’

  That afternoon, Fra Peter introduced Fra Ricardo Caracciolo, who had been the papal commander of the city and was now accompanying Father Pierre. He was a tall, grey-haired Italian, with heavy eyebrows and a lively laugh. We exchanged bows, and I liked him immediately.

  ‘By the Blessed Saint John,’ he said in accented English. ‘It is good to see my Order can still bring the best young knights.’

  Who doesn’t like praise?

  But his next words chilled me. ‘My squire has just come from Milan,’ he said. ‘Do you know the Count d’Herblay?’

  ‘Why?’ I asked.

  Fra Ricardo shrugged. ‘My young Giovanni only mentioned it because we know you follow the good Fra Peter.’ He shrugged. ‘The man is looking for you. Or so my Giovanni says.’

  That night, we dined with Ser Niccolò. He had a rented house – really, very like a palace. We did not eat peacock, nor was any of the food gilded. Instead, we ate a number of dishes I had eaten before, but served hot, and not on gold or silver, but on plain pottery dishes. The wine flowed freely, and was served in beautiful cups of brightly coloured glass, green and blue and yellow.

  I can’t remember everything we had, but I remember a fine dish with noodles and duck and truffles, and a game pie. And roast beef served the way the Italians serve it. Several times, Ser Niccolò would rise from his place at the head table and walk among us – there were forty men or more, and as many women, so that for me it seemed a feast in a royal court. He served wine to some, and brought a sauce to another, as if he were a page or squire.

  I sat by Ser Nerio, and after the master had offered me wine – delicious red wine – I turned to Ser Nerio. ‘His wife is very beautiful,’ I said.

  Ser Nerio laughed. ‘That’s not his wife,’ he said. ‘That’s Donna Giuglia Friussi, his mistress and the mother of two of his children.’

  Mistress or wife, she was the hostess of the evening, and she summoned minstrels, applauded a poet, and led the ladies in a fast-paced estampida that seemed more like a fight than a dance.

  After a second dance, she came to our table and we all rose and she seated herself with two of her ladies. She was warm from dancing, and she had a scent I had never before experienced, something from the Levant. ‘You are the famous Ser Guillaumo the Cook!’ she said. ‘Ah, every girl in Florence pines for you, messire. Do not, I pray you, break too many Florentine hearts.’

  ‘Madonna,’ I replied, ‘I promise that, should I ever see a sign of a Florentine lady casting an amorous glance at me, I’d do whatever I could to make sure that her heart remained unbroken.’

  She laughed, not a simper or a giggle. ‘Your Italian is good, and so are your manners,’ she said. ‘I don’t think you were ever really a cook.’

  I liked this kind of game, always have. I sat back and played with my wine cup. ‘Perhaps if we were to slip into the kitchen, I could prove myself,’ I said.

  The two ladies-in-waiting both giggled.

  Donna Giulia leaned forward, and I could smell her scent again, more like musk than flowers, and yet at the very edge of perception. Her presence was … palpable. I have known a few women like her, where up close, the impact of beauty and personality can rob you of breath. She put a warm hand on my arm. ‘You play this game very well for an Englishman. What would you make me, in the kitchen?’

  I sighed. Italian ladies can play this way for hours and mean nothing, or mean everything, where an English girl would be reduced to giggles – or a blow with her hand. I thought of Sister Marie, Donna Giuglia’s direct opposite.

  I leaned forward. ‘I should make you …’ I said softly.

  She smiled.

  ‘… dessert,’ I finished. ‘Perhaps a nice apple tart.’

  Now the whole table laughed; some at me, and some with me. Ser Nerio, beside me, gave me a look that told me I’d found the right path. We had skirted the marshy ground, for flirting with your host’s mistress is a dangerous game at the best of times.

  She threw back her head and laughed, not a ladylike simper, but almost a roar.

  Ser Niccolò appeared at my shoulder. He poured his lady wine and she told him of the whole exchange, word for word.

  He raised his eyebrows. ‘But of course you must go make her an apple tart. I insist only that I have some too.’ He grinned. ‘Think of it as a feat of arms. Or a task of love.’

  ‘He loves apples,’ Donna Friussi said.

  Juan glared at me, and Miles looked offended on my behalf, but given Ser Niccolò’s origins, I didn’t think he meant a slur. At any rate, I rose and took my beautiful glass of wine to the kitchen, following a page.

  The cook was a big man with a pair of enormous knives in a case in his belt, and he frowned and then shrugged. ‘Whatever my lord and lady require,’ he said, ‘it is my task to provide. You wish to make an apple tart? So be it.’

  I found that the darker of Donna Giulia’s ladies was at my shoulder. ‘This may take an hour or two,’ I said.

  She shrugged and sipped her wine.

  By the time I’d made my dough and was rolling it out, I had a little crowd. Ser Nerio was there, and Ser Niccolò, and Donna Giuglia. I had flour on my best doublet, and I was having a fine time. In fact, I was the centre of attention, and I like that well enough. And the cook had decided to humour me – better than that, he was actively supporting me, so that when I was at the point of forgetting salt in my crust, he slapped a salt horn on to the table beside my hand.

  A pair of boys chopped apples for me. I discovered that the palazzo boasted a majolica jar of cinnamon, a fabulous spice from the east – you know it? Ah, everyone does, now. I ground it myself, and held my fingers out to the dark lady-in-waiting and she breathed in most fetchingly.

  More and more of the guests found their way into the kitchens, and Ser Niccolò served a pitcher of wine to the cook’s staff. He had rented the house, and none of the staff knew what to make of him: cook’s apprentices do not usually mix with the guests. But Donna Giuglia brought musicians into the kitchen, and there was dancing, and a lady began to sing. And then, as I assembled my little pies, Donna Giulia took a tambour and raised it, and everyone fell silent, and she whispered to one of the lute players. Accompanied by only a single lute, she danced and sang to her own song.

  She was magnificent. Let me add t
hat she was so good that the fifty guests and twenty kitchen staff crammed into the corners of a great kitchen gave her both silence and room – and that she had an open strip of tiled floor no wider than a horse’s stall and not much longer, and she held us all spellbound.

  I finished my pies. I put Master Arnaud’s mark on them – I don’t know what imp moved me to do that. Perhaps just the memory of every other apple tart I’d ever made. The cook swept them away into the great oven by the fireplace, itself big enough to roast an ox.

  Donna Giuglia finished, her honey-coloured hair swaying, and every man and woman whistled, shouted, clapped their hands or laughed aloud, and she stood and swayed a moment, eyes closed.

  Ser Niccolò went and threw his arms around her and kissed her – a lover’s kiss. I had seldom seen outside of army camps a woman kissed in such a way in public, but I gathered that there were few rules that applied to Ser Niccolò.

  After the dance, it was difficult for any of us to reach the level that Donna Giuglia had set us, and we chatted. I began to tidy up the mess I’d made, and the cook and his apprentices began to look at me reproachfully, but in truth, it gave me something to do, and I didn’t want to stand idle and silent among strangers.

  Ser Niccolò came and put an arm around my shoulder. ‘Now I believe that you were truly a cook,’ he said.

  ‘While I confess, my lord, that I have trouble believing that you were ever a stingy banker,’ I said.

  He laughed. ‘Perhaps I became a knight because I was such a very bad banker.’

  My little pies emerged from the oven, no thanks to me, and carefully watched, no doubt, by the professional. But they were golden brown, and the scent alone – I’d used more eastern spices in six small pies than one of Prince Edward’s cooks would see in a month of Sundays – the scent alone suggested that the gates of heaven might be close.

  I put one small pie on a wooden trencher and presented it on my knees to Donna Giuglia.