The Fools’ Crusade

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by Pip Vaughan-Hughes


  ‘Oh. And you were going to turn it against him, I suppose? I cannot imagine how this concerns me, but … what is it, this Drug?’ I should not have asked, but by the flash of amusement that darted across his face it was plain that he had known I would.

  ‘I confess that I understand too little of such things,’ said the cardinal. He laid his hand thoughtfully upon the matted locks of Herr Nibelungus, turned the alchemist’s head and thumbed the eyelid open, so that the eye, dull now and quite filmed with dust and dried tears, stared wearily at the centre of my chest. ‘Frederick von Hohenstaufen, though – the creature makes every sort of devilry and maleficence his affair. It is not to be wondered that he set his heart on this … this trumpery.’

  ‘Is it poison?’ I tried again, grudgingly. The cardinal did not answer, but tapped again at the circle of devastation on the workbench.

  ‘Well, it isn’t subtle,’ I muttered. ‘The emperor … you put some in his wine, he drinks it and his head springs off ? Messy, but spectacular. On the other hand, arsenic does the same job with less fuss, and I do know where to find that.’

  ‘No. This is, I believe, what it does when it is not disciplined.’

  ‘Discipline? This is alchemists’ talk, Your Eminence.’ I wiped my forehead. It was close in here, and I was beginning to sweat.

  ‘But no, Sir Petrus. This was not alchemy, and he was not concocting some fabulous poison. The Drug is apparently a weapon, nothing more nor less.’

  ‘Apparently. You’ve said that before, Cardinal John. Apparent to whom, exactly?’

  The cardinal spread his hands, as if disclaiming any responsibility, but there was a lupine gleam in his eyes that gave him away.

  I regarded the earthly remains of Herr Nibelungus. ‘And if this is a weapon,’ I countered, not bothering to keep the scepticism from my voice, ‘how do you know? It is either imaginary, like most things alchemical, or useless. Why not simply train men to cut off their own heads with the swords they already own? ’Twould be simpler.’

  ‘We have been assured that it is neither imaginary nor useless. Hohenstaufen has spent a great deal of money on concocting it. The substance is known in the East, but its secret has reached us here through the Mussulmen, and only in tiny drops: an ingredient here, a ratio there …’

  ‘But what does it do?’ I insisted.

  ‘It blows heads off. Isn’t that enough? And the Mussulmen say it hurls lances and stones, sprays fire, knocks down walls.’

  ‘I haven’t heard of any such weapon. Besides, that sounds like witchcraft, Your Eminence.’

  ‘Do you believe in witchcraft, Sir Petrus? If so, you surprise me.’

  I did not believe in witchcraft, any more than I believed in the Church’s magic that turned wine into blood and back again, but that was none of the cardinal’s business.

  ‘If it isn’t conjuring, what is it?’ I demanded.

  ‘Chemistry it is, my son, chemistry. And while we in Christendom have been lucky enough to remain in ignorance of the Drug, it has been a scourge in the lands of Cathay for a thousand years.’

  ‘And now you have decided that the time is right to bring the scourge here? It is not for me to question the Holy See, but …’ A huge black fly whirred out of the sun glare, brushed my ear with its tiny bristles and landed with a faint plop in the tarry pool of drying blood on the alchemist’s neck. ‘Do we really require this? Are we not killing each other fast enough?’

  ‘The question is, my son, who judges? Come. You have seen enough of this.’

  We stepped out into the street. The sunshine was so bright that it pierced my eyeballs and set my blood throbbing deep in the bony warren of my temples. I pressed my fingers hard against my closed lids and watched purple light bloom inside my head and burst into a hundred tiny golden bees, buzzing bees. I opened my eyes. The buzzing was coming from beneath my feet, where a legion of flies were lapping at the dark river of gore that had run out of the door towards the gutter. Ivo the novice was watching it with pallid fascination. He started guiltily when he heard us. Remigius slipped from the shadows and stood, alert, hand on a hidden weapon at his waist.

  ‘We are leaving!’ John said to the novice. ‘Get some men from the cloister. Have this cleared up, my son, and send every scrap, every crumb in this room over to my lodgings.’

  ‘What about him?’ stammered Ivo, plainly terrified.

  ‘Have him burned. Do not leave one speck of ash. And don’t forget his head.’

  ‘So the emperor wants the Drug simply to use against the Holy Father?’ I asked the cardinal. We were walking back through the alleys towards the river, Remigius padding a few discreet paces behind.

  ‘He wants it, we understand, because – listening to fools like Nibelungus, no doubt – he has come to believe that sooner or later it will be known all across these lands, and no one will be able to stand before the ruler who has the most of it, and who knows how best to make and use it. A notion he has picked up from his Mussulman friends.’

  ‘And the Curia thought that, if such a thing existed, the ruler who controlled that power must be the Church.’

  ‘Of course.’

  ‘God be praised,’ I said, dutifully – convincingly, I hoped.

  ‘But I think Herr Nibelungus has satisfactorily proved that the emperor has been wasting time and money on a … Perhaps you are right, Sir Petrus. On witchcraft.’

  ‘Well, it has been an interesting diversion, if nothing else,’ I said, suddenly keen to get as far from Cardinal John as might be possible within the walls of Florence. ‘But I’m still curious. What was to have been my part in this?’

  ‘You are, my son, one of the richest men in Christendom.’

  ‘You are too kind. The bank, in which I am a partner, has been blessed with some success.’

  ‘And that has made you, as I said, one of the richest fellows in this or any other land – well, will you allow, this side of India?’ It was a casual jest, but I was meant to be flattered.

  ‘If you insist, Your Eminence,’ I said with exaggerated good grace.

  ‘You saw, back there, what the world is coming to,’ said the cardinal. ‘No longer a battle between believer and infidel, or true believer and heretic. No. This is a war between the godly and the godless.’ He stopped, to make sure I understood what he had just told me. ‘The Holy Father’s crusade shall succeed, with or without the so-called Drug – and I would suppose without, judging by what we saw today. Make no mistake: the godly, and the godless. My concern today is merely to ensure that you have chosen the right side. For the godless, my son, the godless shall not stand.’

  ‘Are you telling me, Your Eminence, not to make loans to Ghibbelines?’

  ‘I am telling you, as a friend, a fellow Englishman, that the Holy See would wish for such a rich and powerful banker to take the side of God.’

  ‘Or? There is an “or” implied in your words, Cardinal.’

  ‘Of course there is, my son.’ John of Toledo smiled and held out his hand. The gold ring of office gleamed.

  I had had enough of this strange dance. My clothes still reeked of the Drug and of Herr Nibelungus’s roasted flesh. I had no doubt missed the bootmaker. And now this cardinal … I blinked. The ledgers I had been toiling through were full of the proof that I could buy and sell a man like John of Toledo eight times over, and yet here he was, stealing my time and threatening me into the bargain. If Pope Innocent wanted a loan, let him knock on my door himself and show me his collateral. So far I had seen nothing but a room full of smoke and a dead man.

  ‘I have business to attend to,’ I said, ‘and my time is considered an expensive commodity by those who wish to buy it.’ I stepped back, away from the ring and the frozen smile of its owner. ‘Good day, Your Eminence. I wish you a safe return to Rome.’ The incurious folk of the city were flowing around us like water in a flooded ditch. Cardinal John opened his mouth to speak, but I had already given him a stiff bow and walked off into the crowd.

  Chapter
Two

  The next morning, spurred by my lingering guilt over abandoning my duties the day before, I rose early and went to the bank before business had begun. I let myself in, thinking to be alone, as I was still puzzled by yesterday’s odd events and thought the ledger room would be a good place to turn my thoughts over. But Isaac was already there, sipping a cup of hot water and herbs. I almost told him about John of Toledo and the dead alchemist, but decided not to burden him. Isaac was no longer young, and though he professed to love running the Florence office, I had noticed, this visit, that his shoulders were beginning to stoop a little. Surely, I thought now, we could find some younger man to do this work? Isaac was a partner – the captain had seen to that – but he deserved some rest, and besides, I missed him in Venice, a city he far preferred to Florence. I would dine with him tonight, I decided, and see what he had to say on the matter.

  ‘How goes this young day?’ I asked him.

  ‘Delightfully!’ he replied. ‘A party in Montpellier, whom I thought was about to default, has settled his account in full. Pisa is making overtures about a loan.’

  ‘Delightful indeed,’ I agreed. ‘Isaac …’

  ‘Yes, Patch?’ Isaac was making his way absent-mindedly towards the counting room, and I followed him. It was a damp stone room at the heart of the palazzo that Captain de Montalhac had chosen for his bank, but someone had lit a small fire in the hearth, and there were a couple of finely carved chairs with Saracen cushions upon them. I waited until we had settled ourselves.

  ‘Isaac, do you think I should get married?’

  ‘Married? Patch, dear boy, by the look on your face I thought at the very least that King Louis had declared himself a bankrupt! Married? To whom, dare I ask?’

  ‘To Iselda, of course!’

  ‘Ah, of course you meant the lady Iselda. But forgive an old man, Patch: aren’t you already married to her, in most of the important ways?’ I nodded. ‘I take it you mean a church wedding, a … a Christian wedding? Why?’

  ‘That’s exactly what I mean, Isaac. As to why …’ I did not think my friend needed to hear of my afternoon with Cardinal John, not until I had worked out exactly what it signified. ‘I’ve begun to think that my lack of respectability, and Iselda’s, might be hurting business. It’s apparently no secret any more that we, well …’

  ‘Quite. And you are right: it is no secret, if it ever was. You do not seem, the two of you, to have tried very hard to keep it hidden – not that I think you should, not for a moment. What you do is your affair and yours alone, and I might even presume to say that Michel de Montalhac, peace be upon him, would have said exactly the same thing. In fact I am certain of it.’

  ‘You’re right, of course. Michel didn’t believe in marriage.’

  ‘I don’t think I ever heard him talk about it.’

  ‘Nor I, until … Well, when Iselda and I came back from France after he died, and you learned that she was Michel’s daughter, we didn’t go into much detail, did we?’ Isaac shook his head, intrigued. ‘Before he died, he told Iselda, and then me, how it had come to pass. The Cathars do not believe in marriage. They believe that the Church sanctifies it for the purpose of procreation, which to them is evil, as it prolongs the sufferings of mankind here in Satan’s prison.’

  ‘Satan’s prison? Perhaps I remember less than I thought.’

  ‘The world. Created by the Evil One to ensnare the light of God that dwells in all our souls. Anyway, this is not the time for Cathar theologics, but as to marriage, they reject it, but don’t see any harm in letting the flesh do what flesh does, as their sacrament, their Consolamentum, washes away all such sin and lets the soul go free.’

  ‘As simple as that,’ said Isaac, an eyebrow cocked in amusement.

  ‘Hmm. And so Iselda came into being. Michel thought of her mother as his wife in everything but name. Iselda and I think of ourselves the same way.’

  ‘But you are not Cathars,’ Isaac pointed out. ‘Or are you? You know I don’t mind one way or the other.’

  ‘No, we aren’t Cathars,’ I laughed. ‘We are not, well, we aren’t anything, really. Don’t tell our clients, though!’

  ‘I won’t. They have difficulties enough dealing with a Jew.’

  ‘So do you think it would matter if we wed or not? Don’t you think the Church might be more inclined to use us if Iselda and I weren’t smearing the whole enterprise with fornication?’

  ‘I rather like the sound of that,’ said Isaac, leaning back and sipping his tisane. ‘Why do you ask, Patch?’ He shot me a look that was so gimlet-like, so shrewd, that I dared not dodge the question. So I didn’t, not exactly.

  ‘A cardinal of my acquaintance has been extolling the virtues of marriage in a rather pointed way,’ I told him.

  ‘So?’

  ‘This cardinal is quite close to the Holy Father. Very close, in fact.’

  ‘John of Toledo?’

  ‘Christ, Isaac! Can I hide nothing from you?’

  ‘Well, you weren’t trying very hard, dear boy. “Very close to the pope.” That made me think of your fellow countryman – that, and the fact that he is in Florence.’

  ‘How did you know that?’ I said, amazed.

  ‘He’s hiding in San Frediano, in mortal terror of the Amidei.’

  ‘But—’

  ‘One of the good brothers of San Frediano is carrying on with the sister of our clerk Pero’s cousin. This is Florence, Patch. Secrecy is relative.’

  ‘Well, you are right. I had a brief audience with him.’ How much should I tell Isaac? I wasn’t sure if any of this would matter to him, or even what it meant. ‘A friendly chat. He might be thinking of borrowing money. Hence my thoughts on marriage. Perhaps the Holy See will become a proper client if I’m not roiling in sin.’

  ‘Well then, as a businessman, I exhort you to get married as soon as possible,’ Isaac said, grimacing. ‘As your old friend, I say you have money enough to build a golden island in the middle of the ocean, so it doesn’t really matter. Do as you will. What, though, would Iselda make of all this?’

  ‘She won’t marry willingly.’

  ‘You’ve asked her?’

  ‘Not like that! We’ve talked about it a bit. She believes even more strongly than I do that it’s nobody else’s business what we get up to in the bedroom.’ Isaac chuckled. I thought of him as an old man but he had lived no more than fifty years, and I knew he kept a mistress, a very tall, black-haired woman, the daughter of a rabbi. ‘Don’t worry,’ I added. ‘I won’t make you wed Signorina Maymona.’

  ‘God be praised,’ said Isaac. ‘I don’t think, however, that anyone would care what an old Jew like me does. There: perhaps you should convert. I’ll have a word with the rabbi, shall I?’

  ‘Why not?’ I sighed. ‘No, you are right. Our difficulty is that we have to feign piety when we have no faith. We might as well be true heretics. The godly against the godless. Jews are godly, Isaac …’

  ‘At the moment, yes, we are permitted so to be,’ he pointed out.

  ‘So do you think it would be good for business or not? Getting married, I mean – I don’t think I would care to be circumcised at my age.’

  ‘What did you mean, godly against godless?’

  ‘Something I have heard – how the pope is styling his fight with Frederick.’

  ‘Aha. So this is about taking sides.’

  ‘Apparently so. Ridiculous, isn’t it? That they should presume to govern love.’

  ‘But they do. So am I to understand that this marriage question is bound up with the contretemps between Frederick and Innocent?’

  ‘I think it is,’ I said. ‘I’m not sure why I care, but something … I feel something in my bones, Isaac. I can hear Michel telling me to pay attention.’

  ‘Indeed. Well, we can ignore the living, but never the dead.’ He got up – rather stiffly, I noticed – and prodded a smouldering log with the toe of his shoe. ‘Do you think the bank has earned the pope’s displeasure?’

/>   ‘Not yet. I think we’d know if it had. Tell me, though: how would you say our business leans – more to Guelph or more towards Ghibbeline?’

  ‘Well, it is an interesting question,’ he said, scratching thoughtfully under his skullcap. ‘We are strictly neutral, as Michel wanted it, but of course … hmm. And it is interesting that you should ask now. Money is very active at the moment, as you might be aware.’ He peered at me from under his eyebrows, mock-stern. Isaac knew I did not relish this world, but he also knew that I did my best, in memory of Michel de Montalhac.

  ‘I know I sneaked off yesterday, Isaac!’ I said, ‘I … had to buy some shoes for Iselda. Besides, you all do so much better without me.’ We both laughed, and Isaac settled back in his chair. ‘Now then, even I haven’t failed to notice that the King of France is raising money for his crusade,’ I said. ‘That’s keeping things flowing. But go on.’

  ‘King Louis is, of course, a good customer. An extremely good customer. It doesn’t hurt to have the friendship of kings, does it, Petroc?’ I snorted. Louis Capet had made our fortune, after I had brought him the Crown of Thorns of Our Lord from Constantinople. He had paid half the coin in the treasury of France for the thing, and the Company of the Cormaran, as we called ourselves then, had taken a commission so staggering that our lives had changed for ever. And Louis had kept on paying until the last relic had left Constantinople. Now he was kind enough to borrow back the money he had paid us whenever he needed it, and as he was about to go on crusade, he needed it quite badly. Fortune – plain luck, really – was on our side, for ordinarily a pious king in search of coin might have turned first to the Knights of the Temple, but Louis had not forgotten me, his Procurer of Holy Relics. The Templars were no doubt furious; but banking, as I had been discovering, is even less fair than the general run of life. ‘Business, Patch, just business,’ as Michel de Montalhac would have said.

  ‘Yes, Louis is our most generous client,’ Isaac went on. ‘But beyond that, I am pleased to say that the Banco di Corvo Marino has finally joined the ranks of the most respectable Venetian banks, for we are now, it appears, loaning out money to both sides of Pope Innocent’s crusade against Frederick von Hohenstaufen. Yesterday afternoon – after you had gone shoe-shopping, Patch – a fellow arrived with papers from Frederick himself, requesting a very decent sum. Just last week we agreed a loan to the city of Viterbo, which I take to be a back-door approach from the Holy See. There are others – you will find them eventually.’ He slapped my knee to show he was joking. ‘Nothing better than funding both sides of a war, eh, my boy?’

 

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