The Long Sword

by Christian Cameron

  On the plains, there were no inns and few farms, and while we saw herds in the distance more than once, we were not accosted, but neither were we hosted and feasted, and we ran low on food and had to hunt antelope. Our spear throwing was up to the challenge, and I spent a happy afternoon teaching my squire to lay a snare and take a rabbit. And to cook it.

  I cannot remember if I stopped to consider that I was riding across the world on a feckless errand to find the commander of a crusade that might never happen. Or why a commander would ride away from his crusade. I suspect I thought about it, but I was young enough to enjoy the adventure that was offered to me, and that day, that month, that summer, I was offered the steppes and the antelope, the golden wheat, and the matching hair of the lovely maidens of Poland and Bohemia.

  We had been a month and more on the road when the spires of Krakow came into sight on the horizon, and such is the flatness of the ground that we had a full day’s ride ahead of us yet, and we lay a night in the Monastery of Saint Nicolas, well out in the country. But the abbot put us immediately at our ease and told us that our quest was fulfilled, and that both the Emperor and the King of Cyprus were at Krakow, preparing a great tournament with all the best Knights of the Empire and Poland.

  The abbot was a talkative man, with excellent Latin, our only common tongue, and he told us a great deal about what had transpired, and very little of it to the credit of the Emperor. If the abbot was to be believed, the Emperor had no interest whatsoever in a crusade, but was far too politic to say so, and was holding a tournament to allow King Peter to recruit knights – but Nerio, whose Latin was as much above mine as my swordsmanship was above Marc-Antonio’s, came away with the impression that the Emperor’s hospitality was wearing thin, and that the Cypriotes were expensive and perhaps troublesome guests for the people of Krakow. I remembered that Nan had told me when I was in London that the guilds had given a feast of four kings – the King of France, the King of England, the King of Cyprus and Jerusalem, and the King of Scotland – and how much it had cost the guilds and the alderman of the city.

  When Nan told the story, I had been more interested in her, and her face, than in her tale. I had no idea, then, that I would meet Peter of Cyprus.

  Any road, the last few leagues, I was as careful as I could be; I saw enemies behind every fence post and inn sign, and my hand was always on my sword and my purse, but looking back, I think we outrode our adversaries, if indeed Robert of Geneva had sent more than the one team of knights. So despite my caution, or perhaps because of it, eventually we reached the inn that bore the arms of the King of Cyprus, and several other blazons across the front.

  We dismounted. It was evening, and the sun shining in long rays through the dust. In Krakow, and indeed all of Poland, the greater portion of the buildings are constructed of logs and wood, and the great inn was no different, although it smelled like any other inn from London’s Southwark to Verona; that indefinable air of hospitality and good beer and flees.

  We’d crossed half the world to get there, or so it seemed, and then we stood in the street while Marc-Antonio held our horses, straightening our clothes and sorting out all the packets of letters. The Emperor was in the castle and would have to wait for another day.

  We paused to wipe off the dust. Nerio’s squire, Alessandro, produced a brush and did his best. I was wearing a peasant’s cote over my red surcoat, to protect it from the dust, and I stripped it off. Fiore emulated me, and Nerio looked meaningfully at our pack horse where we had good clothes. Italian clothes.

  Marc-Antonio shrugged. ‘It will take an hour!’ he whined.

  Whine or not, I knew he was right. ‘Very well,’ I said, or something equally masterful.

  Brushed and combed and still smelling strongly of horse, we walked up the steps, past the porch that was packed with cut firewood, and entered through the great front doors that were pinned back, wide enough for a wagon and team to ride through. A door ward looked us over and made a face.

  ‘What do you mean, sir?’ I asked. He pointed mutely at my sword, and I unbuckled it off my heavy plaque belt. Fiore did the same, and then Nerio.

  Nerio’s sword was one of the finest riding swords I’d ever seen, all blue and gold with a heavy gold pommel that held a saint’s relic, or so it was said. The door ward’s eyes all but popped. He bowed to Nerio again, thus instantly reinforcing my desire to own the very best sword money could buy. Swords command many kinds of respect.

  I tried to offer my papers, but the door ward merely bowed silently and indicated the inner door.

  We went into the inn and found the King of Cyprus and all his court inside. There were twenty knights there, and as many noble squires, all dressed in the latest Italian modes, with tulip-throated pourpoints and collared shirts as if every one of them was Ser Nerio or Ser Niccolò.

  Every head turned to look at us.

  A handsome man in white and silver approached us from the right.

  ‘By what right do you enter our lodging?’ he asked.

  I bowed and again offered my papers. ‘My lord, I am a courier carrying letters for the King of Cyprus,’ I said.

  The man in white and silver frowned. ‘You are not dressed for court,’ he said.

  By that time, my eyes had become accustomed to the light of the interior. The walls were whitewashed, the ceilings were high, even to the rafters, and two great fireplaces lit what, in England, would have been an old-fashioned great hall of logs rather than stone. The heads of deer and elk and bear studded the walls, with tapestries nearly black with age and a magnificent reliquary in silver and gold with jewels that had to have been the property of the king, because it was too rich for any tavern.

  Between the fireplaces was a great chair with a beautiful fur of shining black sable hanging over it like a quilt, and sitting on the fur was a young man, not much older than me, in a cloth of gold jupon and hose of red with pearls in the shape of swans as embellishment. He was frowning, playing with a child’s toy of a stick and a ball connected by a string.

  He caught my eye. And rose with the sort of athletic fluidity that Fiore has, and Fra Peter. I strive for it: it is he mark of a great man-at-arms.

  He moved like a greyhound, all long legs and stride. And he moved with purpose, crossing the great hall in ten paces, and his courtiers moved out of his way. He threw the ball-and-stick toy at one of them and the man caught it.

  No one needed to tell me that this was Peter de Lusignan, King of Cyprus, King of Jerusalem. Men said he was the best lance in the West; the best knight in Christendom.

  I went down on one knee.

  Nerio and Liberi emulated me.

  ‘De Tenoury, tell these three that I am prepared to imagine that they are here on important business,’ the king said. ‘But to enter my presence dressed as peasants is to dishonour their master, whomever he might be, and me as well.’ He all but spat. ‘I’ve had enough of being humiliated today.’

  Silver and white leaned over me. ‘You heard his Grace,’ he said. ‘Come back when you are properly dressed. Or come in by the servant’s entrance.’

  I was well trained – the order drills etiquette as well as all the other knightly skills. So I kept my head bowed, but I growled, ‘I am a knight and a servant of the Order of St John and I am here with messages from the legate and the Pope.’

  The king bit his lip and looked at an older man in blue and red standing near him. When I say older, this gentleman was perhaps forty, with grey in his blond hair and lines on his face. His blue eyes flashed over me.

  ‘If your Grace wishes to order these men away, of course he may,’ the man said.

  ‘But, de Mézzieres? My faithful pilgrim? Always, your voice has that hint of censure. Please, share with us the nature of our failings.’ The king’s voice rose and fell a little more than was necessary.

  De Mézzières bowed. ‘Your Grace, it is not my place to
put any censure on your royal head. Yet …’

  ‘Yet?’ asked the king, and there was an obvious warning in his voice.

  ‘Yet I will say that I would expect the King of Cyprus, the commander of the Passagium Generale, to fall on his knees and kiss any missive the Pope sends him,’ said the older man, with his head high and his eyes boring holes in the king.

  The king glared for a moment at the older Frenchman. I knew that the older man must be Philippe de Mézzières, the king’s chancellor; I had letters for him and had heard him described. The king pursed his lips and stalked across the great hall, opened a door, and paused.

  ‘It may be your fondest desire that I be shackled hand and foot to your damned crusade, Monsieur de Mézzières, but it was never mine.’ He went through, and slammed the great oak door behind him.

  The silence was like that of the pause between strokes of thunder.

  ‘Let’s go,’ I said, very softly. My instinct was to obey the orders of the king, however childish, and not get caught up in some courtier’s drama. I had been a squire for the Prince of Wales, and I knew something of princes. Quick to anger, and often deeply regretful later of letting the mask slip. But very conscious of the rules.

  I was trained for this. I knew to bide my time, hide my emotions, and remain a knight. But I was angry.

  I felt … humiliated. I had come a long way, and somehow had grown used to the armour of authority that was the habit of St John. Indeed, I felt that my Order had been humiliated. I was angry, and to my shame, I took it out on poor Marc-Antonio. Out on the street, he dared to ask what had happened.

  ‘We were tossed on our ears,’ I spat. ‘Because our clothes are dusty and unsuitable.’ My tone and my glare carried a clear message – he and his whining were at fault.

  His face fell. In fact, it didn’t just fall – it collapsed like an undermined stone tower.

  It’s a small thing, for a man who has killed. You’d think I was hardened to it, but I had been with the Order for more than a year, and the collapse of his face, the twitch of his mouth – it was as if I’d kicked him.

  I promise you, I didn’t think of it at the time. I was so furious that I almost missed my mounting, and when I was up I found that I’d left my arming sword with the door ward. Fuming, I had to dismount and reclaim it.

  He bowed. ‘The king’s had a hard day,’ he said, in good French.

  I considered a nasty reply, and thank God I bit my tongue and acted the part of a knight. I nodded, forced a smile, and bowed.

  But between getting our own inn, finding our clothes and bribing a pair of maids to iron our things – we couldn’t get back before darkness fell.

  Nerio finally put a hand on my arm. ‘Sir William,’ he said carefully, ‘I am going for a glass of wine and some beef. I recommend that you do the same.’ He didn’t wait for my expostulations, either, but took Fiore by the shoulder – took Fiore, for the love of the good Jesu; Fiore, who he affected to despise – and left our rooms and went to the head of the inn stairs without looking back at me. Fiore went with him willingly enough.

  I suppose I had given them a difficult afternoon. In fact, I had behaved badly – disappointment and humiliation bring out the worst in most of us. I was left with Marc-Antonio. He kept his head down and kept laying out clothes and trying to boss the maids, who ignored him and went back and forth, heating their irons in a box by the fire. The box, of course, kept soot off the irons so that they were clean.

  I still didn’t apologise. I sat there, my black mood further darkened by the abandonment of my friends, until the maids lit tapers and I smelled the beautiful smell of resin in the torches. The smell woke me from my mood, and I went down and ate, but my companions were scarcely civil. Twice, Fiore looked at me in a way that suggested he was considering physical violence.

  I went to bed early. As a consequence, I rose with the dawn. I dressed plainly and left a message that the others should not wait for me. My anger was gone, replaced, as it often is, with a sort of guilt complicated by fear – fear that I would be humiliated again and fear that I had behaved badly with my friends and it couldn’t be fixed; a common fear for a young man, I think.

  I had no experience of this particular world. I’d been a minor servant, and now, to all intents, I was a sort of ambassador. I didn’t know the rules, but I knew damned well that if I went back as the Order’s representative to King Peter, I would go alone, test the waters, and do my best to avoid public humiliation. And spare my friends. And, perhaps, apologise to them.

  I was dirty, and I decided to wash. I managed to find a bathhouse. Like Bohemia and High Germany, the bathhouses of Poland are correctly notorious as dens of vice, staffed with scantily clad women whose single layer linen garments stick to their bodies in the steam in a most attractive manner.

  Shall I go on? They really are splendid, and if priests don’t want men to fornicate, why did God make women so beautiful? Eh? Answer me that. By Saint George, I was in a much better mood when I emerged, clean in body if slightly soiled in soul. The woman who washed me – I can still see her, because she smiled all the time and nothing so becomes a woman as a smile – she was a good leman, luscious and lovesome and very tall. And very apt for the game.

  Hmm. I digress too much. I think perhaps old men think too much of the pleasures of the body, eh? But by Saint Maurice, sirs, I had my sport, and discovered that she spoke some little Latin, and we amused each other thoroughly, chanting prayers back and forth in the steam.

  ‘You are a nun?’ I asked her, and she laughed.

  ‘Never in this life,’ she said. ‘And you are no priest.’

  ‘I am a knight,’ I said with all the pride of Lucifer. Ego miles.

  She clapped her hands together. I suspect that it is a universal truth throughout the Christian world that women – working women – prefer soldiers to priests. Mayhap not when the soldiers are burning your barn, but in a bath or a bedchamber –

  ‘You are with the King of Jerusalem?’ she asked. Tu es cum rege Hierusalem. Not the best Latin, perhaps. She was saying I was the king of Jerusalem – su es should have been sis. ‘You will fight?’

  I snorted water.

  She said something in Polish, not to me but past me. Across the little linen screen that hid us from the other tubs, a girl’s somewhat shrewish voice shouted back.

  I must have looked my question. She swirled water and looked demure, a fetching trick for a girl wearing two yards of wet linen. She was in the tub with me by then. The better to wash me, of course.

  The shrewish voice said something that caused my girl – Katerina, that was her name! – to look surprised. She shouted back, and a male voice shouted indignantly.

  ‘King of Jerusalem’s men fight last night,’ she said. ‘Drunk. Stupid.’ She shrugged, indicating that this was the limit of her Latin and that any fool knew how stupid men were. ‘drunk’ and ‘stupid’ were conveyed with hand signs.

  When I went to fetch my clothes, I found them neatly ironed. A closed-faced young woman, clearly not amused by the goings-on, was busy killing lice in a pair of hose with an iron so hot it made the wool sizzle and the insects pop. They were not, par dieu, my hose. But the service was good and I paid her. Who wants to put on dirty clothes on a clean body?

  And at the desk, the table where money was taken, I counted over my silver cheerfully enough. The man at the desk was enormous – fat and tall. He smelled as if he had never used the services of his own establishment. Despite which, he had a smile almost as winning as Katerina’s and I gave him a small tip as well.

  ‘Speak French?’ I asked.

  ‘Non volens,’ he said. Not willingly.

  I laughed. The Poles are a nation of Latinists.

  But I left with my mood changed, and sin made me humble. Aiming for the humility practiced by Father Pierre, I went back to our much plainer inn – although it still
sported a dozen coats of arms, including, I say with pride, my own red and sable. I had Marc-Antonio dress me, ignored his sullen looks, took the packets of letters and went to the king’s inn, which I entered through the kitchens. There, cutting capons and rabbits with heavy knives, were two enormous women at the main table, and at the next table, two equally fat women were putting eggs and bread in a basket with a tall pitcher of new milk and some cider. I couldn’t understand a word they said – Polish is not in my list of languages – but they giggled a great deal and waggled a sausage at each other. I blew kisses at them and snagged a piece of bread and a cup of cider, and watched the great hall from the kitchen door while my eyes grew used to the gloom.

  De Mézzières was there, and silver and white, now dressed in more practical clothes, and with his arm in a sling. With them were a dozen other men in arming clothes and younger men who looked to my practiced eye like squires. There was armour all over the floor and on benches long the far wall.

  I could see that now I was the one who was overdressed, and my embroidered scarlet pourpoint, the very best of Bolognese fashion, was as out of place today as my dusty riding clothes and riding boots had been the night before. But it is far better to be overdressed than underdressed.

  I could see the king, in his shirt, waiting while a pair of squires laced his arming coat. I caught de Mézzières’ eye.

  He nodded and came towards me. ‘From where do you come, young man?’ he asked. ‘I must apologise for yesterday,’ he said quietly. ‘The king had had a very difficult day.’

  ‘My lord, I am from the legate, Pierre Thomas, in Venice. I left Venice on the first of July.’ I bowed.