The Long Sword

by Christian Cameron

  The leper got away – no one likes to catch a leper – but the mite was trapped by the man with the bloody mace. He caught the little man in the corner where two warehouses came together in a jumble of garbage and old roofing, and he grinned.

  ‘Watch this, messieurs!’ he shouted with glee, and the mace rose—

  Fiore stripped it out of his hand. His horse pranced out of our line, he flowed through the other mounted man and dumped him in the gutter and backed his horse to our line before the podestà’s men, still milling about like a stag hunt at the kill, could react.

  The podestà’s face grew red-purple. He pointed at Fiore. ‘Arrest that—’

  I put a hand on his reins. ‘It is bad manners to attack people during Mass, my lord. You have just attacked these poor people while the Patriarch of Constantinople, the Ambassador of the King of Jerusalem, was saying Mass.’ While in my head I applauded Fiore’s action, I would have traded the life of a beggar for a little peace.

  The podestà opened his mouth. Some men despise anything that brooks their authority and this was one such. He didn’t hate me as a Milanese or as the podestà – he just hated me for not cringing.

  ‘We are knight-volunteers of the Order of St John, if you are too fucking ignorant of the habit of the Order to know.’ I’d had it with trying to be polite. ‘Unless you want to see your whole city under interdict, kindly clear the way.’

  The podestà glared at me, but short of ordering his men to attack mine, there wasn’t much he could do.

  The man-at-arms in the mud got to his feet cursing. He stomped to his horse and called to Fiore, ‘I’ll know you again, fuckhead!’

  Nerio laughed. ‘And we will know you by the smell.’ His contempt was beautiful. It hurt the podestà’s thugs more than our blows might have.

  And I was sure that we could take them. Just at that moment, I would cheerfully have made the streets of Genoa run with their blood.

  Sometimes I think I am the wrong man to command an escort for a living saint.

  On the other hand, we got to our inn alive.

  I had nothing to do with the negotiations, which is probably for the best. I had developed an instant contempt for Genoa and I’ve never changed my mind.

  Everywhere in Genoa, there are slaves. In Venice there are a few, mostly Moslems. In Genoa, there are thousands. They displace the working poor – anyone of any power has slaves, not servants. Men have slave mistresses and when the slave woman bears children to the master, they are also slaves. Our innkeeper told his wife that every time he fucked their servants, he was making them money.

  Need I go on? Slavery rotted their families, undermined their morals, and made them petty tyrants. To say nothing of the sins it engendered in the slaves themselves. I have seen slavery in many places – God knows that Moslems themselves will enslave anything that moves – but a Christian slave in Egypt has every possibility of freeing himself by work and is protected by laws even as a slave.

  Bah! I’ve been told that it is worse elsewhere, and that my hatred of the Genoese is as foolish as any other hate. Perhaps. But I hate them the way most Englishmen hate the French – they are a nation of slavers and tyrants, with the morals of merchants and the courage of assassins. False, treacherous, cunning without wisdom, vulgar in display, ignorant, utterly without honour!

  You can see why it was best I had nothing to do with negotiations.

  The legate met with their senators for eight days. During those eight days, we guarded our inn and fought the podestà’s men.

  They never stopped coming at us. Their honour, or whatever honour they felt they had after careers attacking the weak, had been threatened, and every man-at-arms on the city payroll made it his business to gather near our inn and make comments. By the fifth day we were threatened with outright attack.

  The innkeeper wept and wrung his hands and said they’d burn the inn. I distrusted him utterly, and while I was off escorting Father Pierre, Sabraham knocked him on the head and locked him in the basement.

  After that, we were under siege. The difficult part was getting the legate through the streets to the palace each day. Sabraham and his men scouted routes every night, after dark, and I began to go out with the man; he clearly knew things I didn’t, and I was eager to learn.

  I learned a great deal about roofs, and how to climb them; about ambush sites in a city, and about stealth.

  And about ruthlessness.

  I think it was the fifth night; we were prowling near the market, looking for a safer route to get the legate to the northern part of the city. I climbed across a board that had been left over an alley by one of Sabraham’s men, got my feet under me – heights are not my best thing – to find one of Sabraham’s soldiers, Maurice, cutting a man’s throat. The man died hard – terrified, pissing himself, with a look of horrified unbelief on his face.

  ‘Thief ?’ I asked.

  Sabraham spread his hands. The motion said more clearly than words that Sabraham didn’t care a damn who the man was. ‘We cannot be observed,’ he said.

  Later, as we went up the corbels of a church with a rope, Sabraham said ‘One of the podestà’s men.’

  On the sixth day, we got the legate through the streets by misdirection, using Sister Marie’s apprentice as our bait. The French monk was hit with a rock and brought back unconscious. I’d been with him, as part of the misdirection, and my beautiful surcoat was smeared in excrement.

  By mid-afternoon, they were all around our inn, and threatening to burn it. The arsonists were the podestà’s men, of course – responsible for keeping order.

  We were all in full harness. Juan was with the legate, as was his new squire, a Catalan boy of good family, who had relatives in Athens. Nerio had found him for Juan, but that’s another story.

  Sabraham was out with his killers, and I had Nerio and Fiore and Marc-Antonio and Alessandro and a dozen unarmed clerics to protect.

  We’d shuttered the windows. The yard was defensible, but we needed a garrison twice the numbers we had.

  ‘What can we do?’ Marc-Antonio asked. He was in his breast and back, formerly my armour, now his. He’d lost so much weight that he could fit my old harness. I was in my new stuff.

  Nerio was, for once, at a loss and we could hear them clamouring outside.

  ‘They burn the inn, and then what?’ Fiore said.

  ‘Then there’s no one to defend the legate. They invite him to stay at the palace. He sickens and dies.’ I shrugged. That was Sabraham’s scenario.

  Nerio’s eyes met mine.

  ‘Anyone you can buy?’ I asked.

  He smiled. ‘I wish. This is Genoa. They hate Florence.’

  ‘And they hate the Church,’ I added. ‘At least, the Guelfs do, and they seem to be in power right now.’

  A window broke.

  I had a moment of clarity. I asked myself how John Hawkwood would deal with the situation, and the whole thing revealed itself to me. It unrolled like a carpet.

  It may have been the first pickaxe of the first pioneer undermining my devotion to the order, but at the time—

  ‘I have it. Are you with me, gentlemen? It won’t be nice.’ I looked around. ‘It is a routier’s solution.’

  Fiore grinned.

  Ser Nerio laughed aloud. ‘Good,’ he said. ‘I’ve about had it with doing the right thing.’

  I went out the main gate of the inn with one of the matron’s caps tied to a roasting spit. Fiore was at my shoulder, looking humble, and Sister Marie followed us, demure and harmless.

  We were mocked, and yet, in the process of telling us that we were sons of whores and mere children and various forms of sexual deviants, our tormentors emerged from their cover. I knew the man across the street immediately, and so did Fiore – the whoreson Fiore had dropped in the muck.

  I leaned out. ‘Send someone to talk!’
I roared.

  Whoreson laughed. ‘Come out and surrender.’

  I shook my head. ‘I have priests and nuns here. Tell us what you want.’

  Whoreson swaggered towards me, master of the situation, and slapped his gauntleted hand against his cuisse. ‘What I want is that catamite right there!’ He stepped to the right to get a better view of Fiore, ignoring Sister Marie.

  She tripped him, Fiore slammed a fist into his head, and we had him. But I wanted more, and I took a long stride into the confused rabble, kicked a man in the knee, got a hand under his aventail and dragged him back.

  Fiore put Whoreson on the ground with a knife-tip at his temple.

  Now the little square in front of the inn gate was as silent as a tomb. I pushed my prisoner through the gate and Nerio slammed him into the gatepost and then dropped him.

  ‘Go away,’ I shouted. ‘Or come at us, and see what happens.’

  Naturally, I said nothing of all this to Father Pierre, but there was no hiding the two men bound to chairs in the common room.

  He raised an eyebrow. ‘Let them go. I have what I came for. I would like to leave as soon as possible.’

  I pushed them out the gate with good humour. They had heard nothing of our planning, and we were free to go. Sabraham and I had made a plan – not an elaborate plan, but one that would have appealed to every routier I knew – in the kitchen.

  Back with the legate, I said, ‘No dinner at the guildhall? No solemn Mass to mark the occasion?’

  Father Pierre looked away. He was shattered; I could see his eyes full of tears. I had missed the signs, and I was frightened. You have to understand, he was a pillar, a tower. I don’t think I had ever seen him so used up, and so unhappy.

  ‘I have paid a high price for the crusade,’ he said. ‘These men …’ His eyes met mine. He was struggling against saying what he felt. Father Pierre’s lapses of hot-blooded humanity were both a relief to us – and a terror. But he knelt down on the inn floor and prayed for guidance, and then he rose. ‘Let us leave this place,’ he said.

  I found Nicolas Sabraham looking at me from the kitchen door.

  We smiled at each other.

  Our smug self-assurance lasted as long as it took to draw a breath, and then we heard the unmistakable sound of breaking glass.

  Marc-Antonio ran for the stairs, but he was too late.

  The innkeeper had escaped.

  I was the third man into his room, and I instantly realised two things – that his room was over the kitchen, and that someone had unlocked his shutter. There was no other way he could have got out the window.

  He’d jumped on to the stable roof and then was gone.

  ‘I think he knows what we plan,’ I said to Sabraham.

  He frowned. ‘If we’re quick—’

  ‘True as the cross,’ I said.

  It took long minutes to get the horses saddled. Sabraham and his men went out the back of the tavern. We’d lost our hostages and our plan was betrayed – someone had let the innkeeper go. Who?

  Before the legate’s horse was out in the yard, I could see men in harness moving in the alleys.

  But I had two cards to play, as well. No, to be fair, Sabraham had the cards.

  In Genoa, every free man has a crossbow. It is their favourite weapon; silent, mechanical, good at sea or on land. Every free man from Monaco to Liguria has one, and my greatest fear was a storm of bolts. It was evening in winter, already full dark. That had to cut the odds a little.

  And the podestà’s men were overawed. They gave us space, and they were not well-organised. I’m going to guess that their Milanese master didn’t trust his lieutenants, so, as he could not appear himself, they were rudderless.

  The quarter hour struck in the neighbourhood church. We had ten mules with all the legate’s goods, mostly desks and a portable altar and other necessaries.

  We kept the gate closed.

  Father Pierre looked at me. His face was pale and he was deeply unhappy.

  ‘I must ask you what you have been driven to do,’ he said.

  As if in answer, the first part of Sabraham’s plan came to fruition. Down on the docks, a warehouse burst into flame.

  Bah. Arson has an ugly name, but war without fire is like sausage without mustard, eh?

  The same free citizens who own all the crossbows are the same men who fight the fires – and own the cloth. They left us, if they’d ever been watching us, and ran to fight the fire on their waterfront.

  We opened the gate to the inn and started through the streets.

  The podestà’s men didn’t fight the fires. They were still out there, and the innkeeper had spoiled our surprise for them. We’d planned to start a nice little riot between the local Guelfs and Ghibbelines, but the podestà got there first, or so a panting Sabraham reported to me as we cut north.

  It was Verona all over again, except that I had my doubts that we’d be allowed out the gate.

  Two streets north of the cathedral, we had our first fight. A mounted fight in the dark is no joy at all – the noise of the steel-shod hooves on the cobbles is so loud that you cannot hear commands, or screams, and the sparks from the horseshoes and the swords give the whole thing a hellish feeling. We were hampered by a long tale of mules and non-combatants. Our opponents were not hampered by the least notion of honour, as they demonstrated by killing Father Hector at the first encounter – a priest, and he unarmed.

  The second attack occurred a few streets from the northern gate. Of course, by then, my legate and most of his people were gone. Fiore took them to the left suddenly, so that the legate would not know that we’d divided our efforts in the darkness. I was willing to lose a few priests and deacons, to be sure.

  I had a few second’s warning as my opponent’s horse caught a lantern’s light and I felt the vibration as he charged.

  I killed his horse.

  It’s not done in polite circles, and I’m sure it is the last thing the bastard expected from a knight of the order, but I was down to the training that lets a man survive the hell of France. I put the Emperor’s sword through the horse’s head and down he went. The rider behind him tangled with the first man’s dying mount, and I was backing. I gave them a moment, and then I attacked. I think I killed them both – I certainly left some marks. This in an alley so narrow I couldn’t turn Jacques. But a good horse is the best weapon; I backed all the way to the mouth of the alley even as crossbow bolts began to rattle against the stone walls.

  The whole time I had been fighting, Ser Nerio had taken the rest of our feint, our pretend convoy, north to the wall. I saw motion in the right direction – my visor was down, and when your visor is down at night, you almost might as well close your eyes.

  But I’d bought time.

  I had bought time, but when I turned Jacques, I’d lost my bearings. One scout, even with someone as professional as Sabraham, is not enough to ensure real knowledge. I got the visor open – my new helmet had a wonderful visor.

  Nothing. Except that my foes in the alley were coming, and a crossbow bolt – thanks to God, some of its force spent against the alley wall – slammed into my shoulder and ripped the pauldron away.

  There were armoured men on horse coming from behind me.

  Time to go I said to myself. I picked a direction and put Jacques at it.

  It must have been the wrong direction. Or rather, not the direction that Nerio and Marc-Antonio and the Italian Carmelite had taken, but I was too desperate to care over much. I rode as fast as the alleys and streets would allow. Once I burst through a crowd of footmen – for all I know they were innocents just out of vespers, but I was through them and into the mouth of another street.

  It was only when I emerged into the central square that I realised where I was, and how desperate my cause had become. I was almost a mile from our gate and I had a good ide
a what capture would mean.

  A dozen of the podestà’s men-at-arms burst from another street, fifty paces away. They weren’t chasing me, unless they could see in the dark like cats.

  Off to my left, by the cathedral, I heard a war cry.

  The podestà’s men reined in.

  I had no idea what was going on, but I sat on my horse, letting poor Jacques draw a breath while I did the same. Under my very eyes, two groups of footmen rushed each other with clubs and swords. In less time than it takes to tell it, a man was down, another lost his hand, and the first group broke and ran for the cathedral, hotly pursued.

  I had my bearings. I turned my horse, picked the archway that looked right in the shadows, and trotted poor Jacques up a narrow street that turned twice before running almost straight uphill. We went up and up, the houses growing narrower and more crowded, and twice I had a glimpse of the gate towers in the moonlight. I stopped in front of a fountain – really, no more than a spring in the naked rock – and let Jacques drink, but not for long. I couldn’t let him get a cramp in the middle of this.

  I heard shouts, muffled by my helmet liner. I backed Jacques. It may sound foolish, but you can hide a warhorse and a knight around a corner, at least in the dark. Two men fled past me, on horseback. They could have been the Pope and Father Pierre for all I saw of them, and then they were gone, their hoof beats ringing like the sound of hammers on anvils.

  I went the other way, up the hill and around one last corner-

  There was an open square in front of the gate, no wider than a bowling green. Men were fighting.

  None of them were mine.

  Far below me in the dockyards was a red glow where the fire still burned.

  It illuminated Genoa with the sort of flickering red that monks and nuns put into manuscript pictures of Hell, and made the armour of the men fighting in the little square seem as if made of liquid metal.

  I consoled myself that in the dark they were all Genoese, and put Jacques at the gate. It was open – I could see the lower tips of the portcullis drawn up above us. Jacque’s hooves slammed into soft flesh and hard armour and we were through the square and out the gate, and I was uninjured.