Hawkwood

by Jack Ludlow

  Hawkwood’s concern was that dal Verme would follow up this coup by coming upon him and his men, who were without enough weapons to put up even a token fight. With a voice going hoarse from shouting and under the banner saved for him by his squire, Salmon, he ordered them to follow him.

  The army that got across the Adige further downriver was a sorry sight, bedraggled, near to weaponless, on horses with no saddles or reins. There was only one choice: to head for Padua and face the derision of the population against such a proud force that in six months had gone from puissance to ridicule.

  As the man in whom faith had been placed, Hawkwood took the lead ahead of Novello as they entered the city. If he had been the one to argue for a halt, the Englishman felt the ultimate responsibility, for he had let that argument stand. He was prepared for rotting vegetables, brickbats, even stones, but not for that which he received.

  The news of the debacle had run ahead of them, but so too it seemed had the information of how many men his prompt action had saved, many of them sons and brothers; the population of Padua came out to cheer Sir John Hawkwood and throw their hats in the air. Women sought a kiss and their menfolk a hand, freely given in both cases. Even more surprising, when he returned to Florence the city was set en fête for his arrival. He had stood high in the estimation of many but never had he risen to such heights of regard.

  ‘Truly, Donnina, if I had known of this I would certainly have lost an army more often.’

  CHAPTER TWENTY-EIGHT

  Hawkwood was soon back in the field and riding hard, even if the strain of doing so was beginning to wear out his ageing body. It took a hard look to see how afflicted he was for no word of complaint passed his lips and when it came to making decisions in the field the mind was as sharp as ever, as was his appreciation of what could and could not be done. He came to realise that if Milan was strong, so was Florence, for despite the vicissitudes of the last twenty years both had increased their wealth and areas of land, not diminished them.

  The bankers flourished in both, feeding courts all over Europe as well as a strapped and divided papacy with loans. If the odd one went sour and a banking house collapsed there were rich merchants willing to take their place in a game where the rewards were commensurate with the risks, while even in more mundane exchanges – armour and weaponry for Milan, cloth for Florence – trade had increased by multiples.

  It was a war short on major engagements, a series of skirmishes and clashes that tended to be indecisive. Hawkwood, by manoeuvre and ambuscade, kept the Visconti Viper from sinking its fangs in and that was sufficient; Florence did not have to beat Milan, it just had to not lose against her.

  The day he rode through the gates with Giangaleazzo’s own banner was one to savour, a flag he threw from the balcony of the Palazzo Vecchio into the dust where it was abused by the populace, spat on and worse, before being torn to shreds for souvenirs. After a year of fighting and the costs involved, the owner of that banner realised what his great opponent had known since he rode bedraggled into Padua. From that realisation of stalemate the offer of lasting peace was proposed.

  Negotiated in Genoa, solemnised in Florence, all the leading figures were there and for the first time since he and de Coucy had nearly taken him captive, Sir John Hawkwood clapped eyes on his enemy. Giangaleazzo still had some vestiges of the handsome youth he had been, with his full head of hair and moustaches, but it was overlaid with the lines of toil. What the Viper observed was a warrior now walking stiffly and it took no great imagination to see that Sir John Hawkwood was not the man he had been, or reported as such, even up till a year ago.

  Donnina came along to look upon her cousin and see if there was an ounce of family concern, not surprised when someone with whom she had grown up, albeit of different ages, declined to even acknowledge her. She was on hand to support her husband, the thirty-year age difference between them now fully marked in her continuing beauty against his wrinkled features as he took a place of honour.

  The great parchment scrolls were produced, studied and waxed with the appropriate seals and signatures, to bring to an end a conflict that had drained the coffers of the two wealthy communes to no purpose; they stood where they had at the outset.

  ‘Is it truly ended, Husband?’

  ‘My sweet, it is never ended for those here, for they are jealous that one might outstrip the other. They will be at each other again before long but for me, well, I think enough has been done and you know what my mind is set on.’

  ‘I cannot come myself to a decision.’

  ‘And I will not pressure you to do so. I know it is hard to contemplate, but I have lived away from England thirty years now and I hanker to go back before my old bones expire.’

  ‘The climate is cold and wet, you have told me that yourself. Your bones will be better served where we reside.’

  ‘Not always. Who could say that Milan is always warm and Florence ever dry? But I have said you must decide for yourself, as must the girls, but I would like our son John to accompany me.’

  That engendered a frown.

  ‘I promise he will be free to return should he wish it, but I should like him to see my birthplace and his grandsire’s grave, to look upon London where I spent many years in poverty. And I am assured of an audience with the King and he will attend with me. In addition there is much there by way of inheritance.’

  ‘The return of which would ease our present difficulties.’

  ‘What is in England must stay there and remain a secret between us to those with whom we mix.’

  An honoured son of Florence now, Hawkwood was, for all his successes in battle and plunder, burdened with debt. The Lady Donnina had spent most of her time while he was campaigning writing to bankers, agents and past employers, demanding sums of money that were years outstanding. Ransoms were unsettled too, or had passed through so many grasping hands, each demanding a fee, as to be of little value when finally realised, while all the while he had the costs of maintaining that which he owned.

  If it was kept hidden and would scarcely have been believed had his situation been made public, Sir John Hawkwood was struggling to meet his obligations. Janet, now fifteen, was betrothed to a knight of Friuli and given away at a ceremony in San Donato, saved from sale once but threatened once more. With the coming of peace the future did not promise much in the way of reward and he had had to sell objects of value to finance Janet’s dowry.

  The commune had freed him from the forced loans that financed the commune’s wars but his other two daughters, growing quickly to marriageable age, required dowries too and he had no notion of where they were to be found. It was a rueful knight who complained to his wife that prior to coming to Italy he had struggled to grasp what a million was.

  ‘Twice, happen thrice that has passed through my hands, and here I am near a beggar.’

  Only the Signoria could provide relief and that took months of negotiation, in which time his second daughter, Catherine, was wed to a mercenary captain who had served under her father in the campaign that had nearly seen them both drowned. Conrad Prospergh had won Hawkwood’s affection, plus his spurs, for his cool head and outstanding bravery.

  In lieu of all his properties, manors, castles and debts outstanding he was granted from Florence future security for himself, his wife and family. Pensions were granted to him and to them in perpetuity, enough to make his children good marriage prospects and to keep his wife in the manner to which her birth and his rank entitled her. With that he could contemplate a thing which he had never experienced for more than a month: inactivity.

  It was difficult to know if that caused what followed, but Sir John Hawkwood went to bed one night, having finalised his plans to leave for England, with Donnina only promising she might follow in his footsteps at a later date.

  He never woke up from his slumbers.

  The funeral was to be as grand as the Signoria could make it and executed regardless of expense. He was, after all, the hero of Florence. Hi
s body, once washed and mourned over by his family and friends, was placed on a bier laid over the Baptistery font while the bells of every church in Florence pealed out a mournful cadence.

  The arrangements were made to honour him in a way that would mark the debt the city owed to him. On the Saturday of the funeral all shops and business were ordered to close and the bier was taken to the Piazza della Signoria, where it lay with his sword on his chest and his baton in one hand. The entire Signoria stood in mourning on the balcony of the Palazzo Vecchio looking down on the packed square filled with bishops, abbots, priests by the hundred, the leaders of the guilds and the men of the Merchant’s Court surrounded by the swaying masses of the city.

  Sir John’s own bodyguard lances stood before eight richly caparisoned warhorses, each with a liveried groom, holding his standards and the plumed and decorated helmets that had adorned him on the battlefield, to then partake in the procession to the duomo where a Mass was said for his soul and the great deeds of his accomplishments read out with Donnina, her hair shorn for widowhood, and his children, in pride of place.

  They buried his body in the sacristy but it did not long remain there, and was, after cremation, buried for eternity in the choir. After a period of mourning the time came for the city to look to the needs of his dependants, complicated by the fact that the hero of Florence had not executed a last will and testament.

  This left Donnina at the mercy of people quick to either forget or repudiate their obligations. Perhaps because she was a Visconti there was haggling over what she could be paid of the agreed pensions, which found her dealing with a very different Florence to that which had so richly and recently interred her husband at great expense.

  Hawkwood had the right of it about peace. The Viper of Milan, no Count of Virtue now, did not stay content for long; Giangaleazzo still hankered after Florence and a crown and was outside its walls within five years, preparing to declare himself king, when the fever struck him as had been prophesied. Taken back to Lombardy he died and as he did so all that he had built up collapsed, almost as if his old enemy had come back to haunt him and his ambitions.

  It took many years before Hawkwood was properly commemorated in a way that would speak to coming generations – some forty years later when Florence had just ended a war with Lucca and the original fresco to honour him was much faded. The artist chosen was Paolo Uccello and if you visit the Duomo of Florence today it is there for all to see, for if he lived a life of questionable behaviour, he is still a hero to the city he saved.

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  About the Author

  DAVID DONACHIE was born in Edinburgh in 1944. He has always had an abiding interest in the naval history of the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries as well as the Roman Republic, and, under the pen-name of Jack Ludlow, has published a number of historical adventure novels. David lives in Deal with his partner, the novelist Sarah Grazebrook.

  By Jack Ludlow

  THE LAST ROMAN SERIES

  Vengeance

  Honour

  Triumph

  THE CRUSADES SERIES

  Son of Blood

  Soldier of Crusade

  Prince of Legend

  THE ROADS TO WAR SERIES

  The Burning Sky

  A Broken Land

  A Bitter Field

  THE REPUBLIC SERIES

  The Pillars of Rome

  The Sword of Revenge

  The Gods of War

  THE CONQUEST SERIES

  Mercenaries

  Warriors

  Conquesty

  Hawkwood

  Written as David Donachie

  THE JOHN PEARCE SERIES

  By the Mast Divided • A Shot Rolling Ship

  An Awkward Commission • A Flag of Truce

  The Admirals’ Game • An Ill Wind

  Blown Off Course • Enemies at Every Turn

  A Sea of Troubles • A Divided Command

  The Devil to Pay • The Perils of Command • A Treacherous Coast

  Copyright

  Allison & Busby Limited

  12 Fitzroy Mews

  London W1T 6DW

  allisonandbusby.com

  First published in 2016.

  This ebook edition first published in Great Britain by Allison & Busby in 2016.

  Copyright © 2016 by DAVID DONACHIE

  (WRITING AS JACK LUDLOW)

  All characters and events in this publication, other than those clearly in the public domain, are fictitious and any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, is purely coincidental.

  The moral right of the author is hereby asserted in accordance with the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988.

  All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form or by any means without the prior written permission of the publisher, nor be otherwise circulated in any form of binding or cover other than that in which it is published and without a similar condition being imposed on the subsequent buyer.

  A CIP catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library.

  ISBN 978-0-7490-1958-7