The Long Sword

by Christian Cameron

  After ten more minutes of his fidgeting Emile raised an eyebrow.

  ‘Have you no conversation, Ser Fiore?’ she asked, a little too bluntly, I fear.

  Fiore recoiled in fear. He stammered, and retreated, a man who was unbeatable with a sword, worsted in moments by a beautiful woman.

  The last visitor in the rotation was Juan.

  Seeing Juan was somehow very like seeing Emile – or like wearing your best old shirt, the one that fits perfectly and is worn to uniform comfort. He did not hem or haw, he did not stammer, nor preen.

  ‘Your lady is very beautiful,’ he said, sitting on my bed. His Catalan accent made his French charming.

  Emile flushed, which made me love Juan for ever.

  He leaned over me. ‘I have prepared a complete chronicle of our lives without you,’ he said with the tone, the exact tone, of the old priest who read to us during meals in the commanderie of Avignon.

  Emile smiled. ‘I must feed Isabelle,’ she said. ‘Please excuse me, gentlemen.’ She curtseyed, and Juan bowed graciously. Emile reached out and touched my hand, and departed.

  Juan watched her go. ‘Par dieu,’ he said and grinned at me. ‘Let me see … where was I? Ah, Nerio Acciaioli has taken a new mistress! And she, defying convention, is young and beautiful!’

  I must have snorted.

  ‘He has also managed to forget her name only once,’ Juan went on, ‘and – well, no more should be said.’ He pretended to roll up a scroll and toss it over his shoulder. ‘We leave aside the hunts, the ridings abroad, the secret visits, and the new clothes as of no interest.’ He mimed the opening of a second scroll. ‘Ser Fiore has stunned the company by spending his days, not in frivolous conversation, but in the practice of arms. Suddenly this appears to be his consuming passion.’ He went on until I was convulsed with laughter, the knitting bones of my ribs grating together until tears came to my eyes and suddenly he was holding both my hands.

  ‘Oh, my friend, I’m so sorry!’ He shook his head. ‘In truth, I’m bored to death without you. Hurry and get well – we’ll ride abroad, slaughter your enemies and …’ he laughed, ‘and doubtless borrow money from Nerio. Is it true? That it was the fine lady’s husband?’

  I wheezed. But some secrets were not mine. I shook my head.

  He shook his. ‘I think you are a liar. Listen, if you die, we will rip off his balls and make him eat them. We have sworn it.’ He leaned close. ‘They say he is at Mestre, with the army. We’ll kill him, yes?’

  This from one of my brothers in the order. Juan was always my favourite.

  I wish I had told him so.

  A beautiful pair of galleys were fitting out across a narrow arm of the lagoon. Because I watched them every day, I learned a great deal.

  Listen, much of the rest of this story is tied up in ships. I grew to manhood in London, with one foot in the sea, and yet I knew almost nothing of its ways. I had been to sea; I’ve crossed the channel a hundred times in everything from the royal flagship to various fishing busses and smugglers with a pair of oars and six sticks that float.

  But life as animate cargo does not a sailor make.

  Thanks, however, to the old monk Fra Andrea, I learned much of the terminology from the comfort of my bed. I learned that the two low, sleek predators fitting out across the lagoon from my window at St Katerina’s were galia sottil or ‘light’ galleys. Fra Andrea pointed out that if I rose from my bed and hobbled as far as his rose garden, I could see the massive elegance of a galia grossa towering over the narrow streets of Mazzorbo, the small town on the back side of our island.

  The galia sottil was not like any ship I had seen in England. We have galleys – King Edward had a dozen – but they are simpler vessels and built smaller. Even the ordinary galley had twenty ‘banks’ of oars a side. Each bank is in fact a bench, set slightly diagonal to the keel of the ship, where the rowers sit. In a Venetian galley, there are three rowers on a bench, and all of them have oars, but save in the direst emergencies, only two men row at any time, which allows a constant rotation of manpower.

  English galleys also lack the apostis, which is a shelf, an outrigger that extends the width of the deck and the corresponding bulwark or fence to allow the oars to sit well out and pivot at just the right distance for the weight and length of the oar. In English galleys, without an apostis, the rower can never balance his oar, and has to use his main strength at all times just to support the weight. Fra Andrea told me that the apostis was a new invention. Fra Peter told me later that it had been well known in antiquity and was rediscovered by Petrarch, cementing the serenissima’s love of that difficult gentleman.

  I say difficult, because as I improved, he came to visit me, not once but several times. Each time he would sit and read to me, which was a delight – but he would cast Emile out of the room. He was, apparently, no lover of children, or bright sunlight, or strong red wine, or Ser Fiore, with whom he had a quarrel, sotto voce, down the hall from my cell.

  He read to me from an Historia he was composing, which was quite brilliant, called, I think, De Viris Illustribus. It cheered me to hear tales of heroism from the past; nor were his tales of patience rewarded lost on me. And who does not take pleasure from having one of the lights of the age wait upon you? He must have come ten times, and when he came with Philippe de Mézzières, I discovered that it was the Cypriote chancellor who had arranged for him to come. When spring made the lagoon easier to navigate, de Mézzières came with an equerry.

  De Mézzières sat stiffly; the sun was shining on a Venetian April, and the nuns were singing and I was allowed to sit in the garden. His equerry looked familiar – a strikingly handsome man in a plain dark jupon.

  ‘I have heard a great deal about you since Krakow,’ he said carefully.

  Emile was sitting by me, doing embroidery. We had not so much as touched, except perhaps as she adjusted a pillow, in three months, and yet we knew each other better, I think, than we ever had. One of our jokes was that she, who had spurned embroidery utterly in her youth for the pleasures of flirtation, was now growing quite accomplished at it while other women walked the same path in the opposite direction.

  At any rate, I looked at her, and met her eye as she bit a thread. She glanced at the equerry, looked back at me, and winked.

  ‘I confess to having taken a deep dislike to you, and having been mistaken,’ de Mézzières said. I was still smiling at Emile’s wink, and de Mézzières’ words wiped the smile off my face.

  But I had managed five minutes with a waster that day, and had not flinched even when Fiore struck my hand. I had Emile to watch and smile with and all was right with the world. So I rose – I was much stronger by April – and bowed. ‘I suppose it was the manner of my knighting,’ I said. I could remember clearly his face when I related my battlefield dubbing.

  He frowned. ‘Not at all, far from it. I was made knight on the battlefield myself, at Smyrna.’ He shrugged. ‘My father could never have afforded to have me knighted.’

  He smiled, his eyes on some event far in the past. Then they focused on me.

  ‘You killed de Charny,’ he said. ‘He was my friend – my mentor.’ His eyes were like daggers, like the blows of my tormentors. ‘He made me a knight.’

  Well.

  Emile shifted, put her work aside, and stood. ‘Gentlemen …’ she said. She was a noblewomen and she’d had a lifetime of listening to men start the dance that leads to blood. She knew exactly how the opening notes sounded.

  ‘He was a great knight,’ I said. ‘I met him in London during the peace, when he was a prisoner.’

  De Mézzières shrugged. ‘I would have been in the Holy Land, I fear.’

  ‘He was kind to me when I was a shop boy. In fact, he encouraged me to – to be a knight.’ Just thinking of it made my voice tremble.

  I know men who flinch from steel, and others from memories o
f steel. I am not one to carry the bad dreams, I have not been so cursed. But that day, in the spring sun in the rose garden, speaking of the great Sieur de Charny conjured him, and there he was, killing my knight, Sir Edward, with a single blow of his spear. Every muscle in my neck and back tensed.

  ‘Tell me of his end,’ de Mézzières said.

  I told it simply. ‘There were many of us, squires, mostly. The Gascons and some English knights were trying to take the king – King John of France.’ I frowned. ‘The English were all fighting to take the richest ransoms, and the French …’ I shrugged.

  Emile looked away.

  She was a Frenchwoman to her finger’s ends. Janet is, too – talk of Poitiers and they bridle. But to be fair, Emile lost a brother in the red-washed mud, and Janet lost two uncles.

  ‘Monsieur de Charny had the Oriflamme.’ Well, I told it as I’ve told you: I got him around the knees and helped bring him down.

  De Mézzières locked his eyes in mine. ‘Is that how you would want to die?’ he asked.

  Now I took a breath. ‘On a stricken field, with my sovereign’s banner in my fist, feared by every foe and loved by every knight? Taking twenty men with me?’ I grinned, and for a moment, I was not a man who had been beaten to a pulp by brigands. I was Sir William Gold. ‘By God, sir, give me such a death and I will embrace it.’

  De Mézzières rose and bowed. ‘I mistook you for another kind of man entirely. The king, who is your admirer – and I – pray daily for your recovery.’ He glanced at his squire, who grinned.

  Now we were all standing. ‘I would rather not have killed him,’ I said. ‘I can only say that he would not let himself be taken.’

  De Mézzières looked away. ‘No. He would not.’

  Emile put a hand on his arm, her face still full of concern. ‘Please, the waiting has gone on so long. What of the crusade?’

  De Mézzières frowned.

  Emile smiled at me. ‘I think we could all sit,’ she said. The squire, a bold rascal, smiled with her.

  We sat again. De Mézzières had so much dignity that he found sitting difficult. His back was so straight it never touched the back of the wooden chair that had been brought for him.

  But he sighed, looked at Emile, and shook his head. ‘Genoa has done everything in their power to block this expedition,’ he said. ‘Nor has the Pope been forward, precisely, with the promised money.’

  Emile nodded. ‘My chamberlain in Geneva says that the money collected in Savoy will not come here, and that the Green Count and the Savoyards will mount their own crusade.’

  De Mézzières shrugged. ‘The worldly vanity of the great lords is past anything I could ever have imagined. Sometimes I must admire the Turks and the Sultan in Egypt. Islam is not divided as we are. Nevertheless, the issue is money. Genoa has demanded enormous reparations for our supposed faults, and Venice will not loan the king money that will go directly into her rivals coffers for the war we all know is coming.’

  ‘What war?’ I asked.

  De Mézzières sighed. ‘The war between Venice and Genoa. Next to which, this crusade is but a sideshow.’ He nodded. ‘Few enough of the men-at-arms we raised managed to hang on through the winter and those that did ate their leathers and sold their armour. We will not sail before June, at best. We need money. We need Venice to settle their revolt on Crete. We need to have our own warships repaired, and we need Venice to complete her fleet.’ He waved a hand at the two galia sottil hulls fitting out.

  ‘June!’ Emile said. ‘I will be a pauper!’

  De Mézzières bowed in his seat. ‘My esteemed lady, the king is already a pauper. This crusade has cost him three years of the complete revenue of his kingdom.’

  The equerry sat back, his attitude anything but servile. ‘I didn’t want the job in the first place,’ he said.

  I’d guessed, somewhere in the muddle of telling them of de Charny, that the equerry was King Peter incognito. He didn’t have the posture of a squire, and he was too old. But I might have known him – and I didn’t.

  Emile had known all along. What did her wink mean?

  But King Peter stood and began to walk among the rose bushes. ‘I wanted the Pope to confirm me in my kingdom so that I would not have to deal with Hugh and his claims for the rest of my life.’ He looked at me. ‘And now look – I will be allowed to ruin my kingdom and I’ll involve my subjects in a war they cannot win with the Sultan and his ally Genoa.’

  When the king stands, you stand. We were all up again. He looked back. ‘Please sit. I am not really here. Please do not listen, either. I am full of poison today.’

  De Mézzières raised a hand and stepped towards the king. ‘Sire,’ he began.

  The king frowned. ‘I know that you desire this thing,’ he said. ‘If I were allowed, I would board the first ship that could float, take my household, and sail for Cyprus, where on arrival I would kiss the ground and would never leave again. Let the Pope and Venice and Genoa have their own wars without me.’

  He looked at me. ‘I liked what you said,’ he admitted. ‘I too would die that death.’

  ‘You are willing enough to fight the Turks, your Grace!’ de Mézzières said, with an intensity that sounded to me like the remnants of an old argument, often rehashed.

  ‘The Turks!’ the king said. ‘Not Egypt! Not the Sultan!’

  Emile looked confused. ‘Are they different?’

  You must remember that most of us in England and in France called the Saracens ‘Turks’ and ‘Hagarenes’ and made little distinction among them.

  The king smiled at her. ‘Sweet Emile,’ he said, ‘the Egyptians have the richest port in our ocean, and trade. The Turks are pirates and scoundrels and slavers – the very Genoese of the Moslem world.’

  ‘Are not all the paynim equally our enemy?’ Emile asked. She glanced at me. I was very glad, just then, to receive her glance. The king’s attitude toward her told me that, at the very least, I had a rival. His visit here, incognito – what was I to think? There are men who can share a woman and other men are happy to share a woman with a king. And perhaps you might say I shared her with her husband, but par dieu, gentles, she hated him as much as I. She did not hate King Peter.

  De Mézzières began to speak, and the king spoke over him. ‘No!’ he said. ‘Only the fools west of Italy think so.’ He frowned. Then he shook his head. ‘I am not myself today. Sir William, are you enjoying Messire Petrarch?’

  I bowed. ‘With all my heart, sire,’ I said. ‘But not half as much as I enjoy the company of this lady.’

  Just for a moment, I was eye to eye with the King of Cyprus.

  So. And so.

  I saw him, and I saw her – in one glance.

  What I saw filled me with joy.

  He frowned, then managed a smile. ‘How fortunate, that you may see her every day!’ he said, with forced chivalry. ‘And how fortunate for us all that her husband keeps his distance. What a fool he must be,’ the king said.

  She looked away.

  Thanks to the intercession of the Blessed Virgin, it was then that the bells rang for Mass.

  The knowledge that the King of Jerusalem was my rival for Emile put something into me that had been beaten out. And perhaps to the power of adulterous love might be added some excitement for the crusade. I had been sure, until de Mézzières came, that the ships would sail without me. Easter saw me just able to go to Mass and return to my room without fainting, to swagger blunt swords with Fiore for a few minutes.

  But after de Mézzières’ visit – and the king’s, of course – I began to gain ground.

  Fra Andrea must have granted some permission or other, too, because suddenly all my friends were there. Miles Stapleton came and taught me to play chess – which is to say that I had played chess, but Miles taught me to play well. And he taught Emile as well. No man I ever met did aught but enjoy h
er company, and she was full of life that spring.

  Ser Nerio came so often that I suspected him of a liaison with a novice or a nun; nor was I alone in my suspicions.

  Juan came with Fiore. In fact, they all came together after a few scouting missions. They would sit in the nun’s parlour, and they would join Emile’s men-at-arms behind the convent where the novices and the servants hung the laundry, and we would fence. As I grew stronger, I would wrestle, box, try a spear or a staff.

  I remember one golden day, late April, I think, perhaps the fourth Sunday after Easter. I hit Fiore with a spear thrust after a cavazione – a feint. He laughed, although he’d have a bruise. He thrust back at me, and I made my cover – and he pushed it aside and ran the pole-end into my gut.

  As I picked myself up, I whined.

  ‘I suppose I’ll never be the knight I was,’ I said. I was cursedly weak.

  Fiore grinned. ‘You will be my thesis,’ he said.

  Perhaps it was that night, or the next. The Abbess of St Katherine had delivered an ultimatum and an offer, and we took dinner together with the handful of monks who had their own dormitory.

  The Abbess had offered my friends free passage into her kingdom, in exchange for nothing but their words of honour that they would not outrage, seduce, charm, or even flirt with her charges.

  Ser Nerio drank off a glass of a local wine and raised an eyebrow. ‘I would be giving up a great deal,’ he said.

  Miles Stapleton raised his eyes and sighed. ‘We are soldiers of Christ, not seducers.’

  Nerio ruffled Stapleton’s hair, which the younger man hated. ‘No one seduces a novice,’ he said. ‘You lie back and let them seduce you.’

  Juan blushed. ‘I would very much like to – to help Guillermo to make his recovery.’

  Nerio sighed theatrically. ‘Well, I will prove that I’m the best knight among us by making my knee bend to the Tigress. Although I suspect I’m the only one making any real sacrifice.’ He leaned over. ‘You don’t suppose she just needs a good fuck herself ?’