‘And from there comes your love of Dartmoor,’ said Richard. ‘I remember our first conversation. Do you? At Lydford. We talked about my Moor. Now, you and I share one thing in common: we both love that … that rather unlovable place. I understood it then, and I have not forgotten. So you are not so great a mystery as I had thought – there are some intriguing rumours in the stories I have heard. But’ – he squinted appraisingly at me down his nose – ‘it will serve.’
‘Men of lowly birth must tell stories if they are to claw themselves out of the muck,’ I said coldly. ‘Captain de Sol cared only for a man’s thoughts and his deeds, my lord, and I have never needed to give my pedigree to any man. I am not ashamed of my birth, though you scorn it. And I came by what I have with nothing but this head and these hands.’
‘Dear me, calm yourself ! I saw you on the field of Saintes – you do not need to prove your worth to me.’
‘How kind of you, my lord,’ I muttered, thinly.
‘You are a wanderer, Sir Petrus – Sir Petroc, I might say. And yet you have never forgotten your home.’
‘Well, you are right. I have not. What of it?’
‘There is a manor on the southern edge, near Cornwood. Three knights’ fees it has, fifteen hides of wood and ploughland. It is a good living. A river, two mills, a village. A fishpond as well. The house is no Venetian palace, I’m afraid, but a good Saxon pile with a decent roof and a new tower.’
This, I thought, was why Richard was the richest man in England. He could anatomise men like a surgeon – or an Inquisitor. And he had found his mark. Even as I searched for the words of appropriate disdain with which to disappoint him, my mind was searching through scraps of memory for a manor near Cornwood. And fifteen hides – that was almost two thousand acres. A river? That would be the Erme, running off the Moor under the stone teeth of Stall Down. Dear God, that was beautiful country. For a moment I thought I had the deep brown scent of a north wind off the moors in my nose. And then I found I had padded back to my chair. I blinked, trying to clear this foolishness from my head.
‘You could give me the whole Moor, from Okehampton to Ashburton, but if it came without my freedom, I would …’ I snapped my fingers.
‘Sir Petrus Blakke Dogge, you are an English knight, an Englishman, despite your Italian ways. If you were to take a manor in England and hold it, you would be declaring yourself a subject of our English king. Is that too great a thraldom for you? If you would deign to serve my brother in that way, I would relinquish my claim on your service. Now, is that fair enough?’
Richard had found me out. A man like me had no business with a heart. And worse, one with a heart’s desire. The earl could have offered me his brother’s throne and I would not have taken it. But a hillside in Devon?
‘My lord, the fact remains that this is a difficult task. Perhaps you think too highly of me. What if I accept your commission, but come back having failed to carry it out, as I surely will? What then?’
‘Then you will still be bound to me, save that then I will question your loyalty. You will find that a disloyal vassal who has something his lord covets is as secure as a field mouse come reaping time. And there will be Innocent, who does not love you. Spit in the street, and he will have you burned. Perhaps, Petroc, if you do not succeed, it might be best to seek a glorious death – a crusader’s death. Because I can assure you there will be nothing glorious for you in my displeasure.’
‘You forget my partner – my wife, Lord Richard.’
‘Do not threaten me with a woman. There are ways to deal with a scold, Petroc. For her sake as well, I advise you to succeed. She is here in Lyon – how nice. You married for love, like me. I appreciate that. Understand it. But do you remember Cardinal John of Toledo?’
‘He murdered my oldest friend – so indeed, I do remember him.’
‘Dear me. I had heard. The man’s methods … The point is, Petroc, that he gets the job done. As I say, I understand love. But I cannot protect your wife, for example, from Cardinal John and his very capable lieutenant – Rodolpho, is he called?’
‘Remigius,’ I said through clenched teeth. ‘Cannot, or will not?’
‘Oh, you decide!’ laughed Richard. But there was something in his eyes as he did so, and I wondered, for a moment, if he was warning, not threatening.
‘Then I have no choice.’
‘I am glad you see it that way.’
‘But why must I go with the crusade? Surely it would be simpler just to sail across to Egypt straight away? I know the way to Cairo, my lord.’
‘Spies, Black Dog. There are spies everywhere. The pope spies on the emperor, as well he might; and the emperor watches everything that Innocent does. Frederick has eyes in Egypt, and many between here and there. This way, you’ll be covered by the confusion of war.’
‘So be it.’ Gritting my teeth, I rolled up the pope’s letter and hid it away in my tunic.
‘Excellent,’ said Richard, and leaned back, cool and easy in his chair. ‘Between a lord’s wishes and a subject’s actions there are no choices to be made. I am delighted to find your loyalty so strong, Black Dog. Now you had better be gone. The king will be halfway to Egypt by now. The fun will be over by the time you join him.’
Chapter Ten
Iselda was not at the inn when I got back, and I passed an hour clenched with foreboding, until she breezed into our chambers carrying some packages from the market. When she saw my face she dropped them onto the rushes and took my outstretched hands. I hugged her until her bones creaked.
‘Ow, Patch! That hurts! Whatever is the matter?’
It poured from me, angrily, from tight jaws, and the colour drained out of her face as she listened.
‘So what did you say?’ she whispered, when I had told her Richard’s offer.
‘I said yes.’
‘Ah.’ Iselda’s mouth had formed the O of a thought about to be made word, but no word came.
‘I could only say yes. Christ’s bloody hands!’
‘Oh, Patch – now what?’
‘The problem is that I think I actually meant it.’
‘Meant it how? You call Louis Capet your friend. And for God’s sake, we almost got away! We almost escaped …’ She sank down among the rushes and covered her face with her hands. I sat down next to her.
‘I was a drowning man, and a little shard of wood drifted past. I thought, listening to that smug bastard, What if … What if this will really get us away? Away from this. Away from us, who we’ve become.’ I put my arms around her. ‘Louis is not my friend: the friends of kings are other kings. He’s my generous patron, and he owes us a vast amount of money. For that reason alone I would have refused Richard. But only if I had had a choice, and I didn’t. No, I meant it because if I can keep my head, perhaps we can really be gone.’
‘Only if you come back alive.’
‘Right.’ I sighed. ‘This had to happen sooner or later. You cannot paddle in the marsh and expect that the leeches won’t find their way into your flesh. I’ve got what I deserve.’
‘There isn’t much point in feeling sorry for yourself,’ Iselda said gently.
‘No. But I have to betray a man I like – not to mention an entire bloody crusade, thousands of men with wives and little ones – at the bidding of a creature I loathe. I’ve spent a lifetime fighting Rome, and now I’m the pope’s spy. His serpent.’
‘So what will you do?’
‘I’ll go. To Egypt, at least – join Louis and the army. And then … But that’s not the point. I’ll be stained. We’ll be stained. Even if no one knows except Richard and Innocent, we’re ruined. They’ll have their fangs so deep into our flesh that we’ll be helpless slaves until they bleed us dry and throw us to the Inquisition. And that’s only if Innocent succeeds in getting rid of Frederick von Hohenstaufen, which is a long shot. If he doesn’t, we’ll have the emperor trying to kill us into the bargain.’
‘A nice bargain,’ muttered Iselda. ‘I say we should sli
p away now, right this minute.’
‘We can’t. Richard’s got men watching the house.’
‘Well, this is grim,’ Iselda said, lightly. But there was a tremor in her voice. ‘They won’t go away, will they?’
‘I doubt it,’ I sighed. ‘I’m not scared of Richard. He isn’t an evil man. He’s a businessman, really. Like me – greedier than me. But this is Rome’s doing, and I think that along with all the bluster, Richard was trying to warn me. Innocent has declared himself against us. We’d have to slip away to … to join the Mongols.’
‘What makes you think the Mongols would take us?’ said Iselda. ‘But I’ve an idea: we could go now, to Egypt, both of us.’
‘And deliver Innocent’s letter?’ I stared at her, puzzled.
‘Sod the letter. We escape. They understand banking and suchlike. We could start again. And we’d be nearer the spice entrepoˆts.’
‘No one likes an apostate, my love. We’d have to convert, and still no one would trust us. We’d be grubbing for a living, still putting on a mummery for priests—’
‘Oh, fuck everything! We nearly did it, Patch!’ Iselda got up and threw herself onto the bed. ‘We almost got away.’
‘No, we didn’t,’ I said gently. ‘It was an illusion. We were just sitting in Innocent’s cupped hand the whole time.’
‘Meaning what? That it’s impossible?’
‘No. But when a wolf is caught in a trap, he gnaws off his own leg to get away. That’s what it’s come to. Going on crusade, betraying Louis – I have to set my teeth against my own flesh.’
‘If you deliver the letter, Louis might win anyway – it’s war, isn’t it? Louis will be safe whatever happens. He’s King of France, for Christ’s sake. His hands are bloody, no matter how pious he claims to be.’
‘I’ll probably be killed before I manage it – perhaps that’s the point. I don’t know what’s going to happen, Iselda. War … we both know what war is like. I can hide in the confusion until I can work out what needs to be done. You’ll be safe in the meantime.’
‘What makes you think that?’
‘Because you will be the Banco di Corvo Marino. This letter nonsense is …’ I sat down next to her and lay back, looking up at the dark beams. ‘It’s a distraction. It has to be. Innocent wants our money, because he’s a greedy swine, and because he thinks that if he doesn’t get it, the emperor will. Innocent knows that I understand what he’s after.’
‘So he thinks that you’ll do whatever he says, because otherwise he’ll just loot the bank? Can’t he just do that anyway?’
‘Not quite. There are still rules. Louis would protect me. So he’s set me up to betray my protector. It’s exquisite, really. So while I’m off doing that, it’s in Rome’s best interests to keep us earning.’
‘I can look after myself anyway,’ said Iselda, grimly.
‘I know that,’ I said, pulling her down next to me. We lay like brass plates in a church floor, gazing up blandly at the ceiling. ‘But no one else does. You’re a woman, remember?’
‘I do occasionally remember.’
‘Well, that’s all we have. They think I’m scared, and you’re weak.’
‘I’m weak and scared.’
‘Me too. But we’ve made it this far.’
‘Maybe it’s a dead end.’
‘Maybe. But the wolf doesn’t think that when it starts chewing its leg. It can’t. Unless you want to jump into the Rhoˆne with me and have done with it, there’s only one choice.’
‘Either way, I don’t think I’ll ever see you again.’
‘But you might, if I chew hard enough.’
‘Then sharpen your teeth, my love.’
I had to leave in a hurry, for there would still be boats leaving Marseille for Cyprus, and if I made good time down the river I might catch one. Three days I spent alone with Iselda, defying Richard – alone, save for the distant watchers who lingered, almost respectfully, on the edge of our sight. We walked for hours on the banks of the Rhoˆne, and sat on the strand, looking southwards down the low, sluggish river. It was hot, and thunderstorms were rising like vast yeasty loaves out of the mountains, but they never broke, just sat upon us with their heat and leaden weight. Summer was coming to an end reluctantly, petulantly, and if ever a man should have longed to be out at sea it ought by rights to have been me. But I could not bear to leave Iselda.
This was not one of my trips down to Florence. This time I was leaving on a longer journey. And I was going to war. We made light of it all as we wandered about, waiting for the storms that never came, skipping stones across the water. It was there, though, as heavy as the air above. I might not come back. I might well end up dead in Egypt. Only as the sun set on the day before I was to leave did Iselda take my arm as we walked through a narrow passage near Saint-Martin-d’Ainay, and force me gently against the wall. Placing her palms against my chest she leaned against me, pinning me. I could feel her heart beating through her hands.
‘Don’t be brave,’ she said. ‘Don’t.’
‘I will not,’ I said, trying to smile, but seeing the flicker of dread in her eyes. ‘I’m not brave at all.’
‘Ah, but you are. Do not be clever, either. Don’t do anything. Just … let the others fight.’
‘I will be careful, Iselda. You know me.’
‘Swear it! Here.’ She grabbed my hand and thrust it under her tunic to where her heart pumped between her breasts. ‘Swear on my heart and yours that you will not die.’
‘I swear.’
‘And take this.’ She slipped the cord that held her little golden stag over her head and hung it round my neck. ‘Now I am with you.’
People were shoving past us on their way to supper or prayers, but Iselda did not blink. If I could see fear in her eyes, I wondered what she could see in mine. At that moment I would have given the company away with a wave of my hand if it meant we could stay here for ever, with strangers’ footsteps scuffling past, and pigeons snapping their wings in the eaves above us. But we could not, and let the growing crowd gather us in and carry us off into the hot, clamorous Lyonnais night.
We slipped out of the inn early the next day. A foetid mist hung over the rivers, where fishermen and farmers were guiding their boats silently to market, and crows and gulls were probing the water’s edge for anything dead and rotten. I had found passage on a flat-bottomed sailing barge, and the master had promised me a quick descent to Arles, where I would pick up a faster ship to Marseille. I had sent my chest and my armour ahead the day before, and now I held nothing but my old satchel. A salt-stained cape hid my fine clothes, for Iselda had laid out a costume she liked for me, brown silks striped with red and ferny green. We strode briskly through the drowsy streets. Our footsteps echoed and were lost. And there was the river. A few masts swayed, and hulls scraped gently together. My heart lurched, heavy as a stone.
Men were beginning to shout, and ropes were rattling through rings. There was a clatter of wood upon wood. A soldier strode past me, whistling. I shook the heaviness from me. I could almost hear Iselda’s heart beating beside me. What does a man say at such times? See you soon. I will come back safe and sound. Were such words ever true? My heart told me they were not. I took her hand and kissed it. There on her finger glowed the simple gold wedding band. I held up my own left hand. A thought passed between us, and without speaking we slipped off our rings. I slid mine onto Iselda’s finger, but it was far too big.
‘Here,’ she said, laughing, and put it on her thumb. Her ring fitted loosely on my little finger. I kissed it, and the tiny white line on her hand where it had rested for a few short weeks.
‘I do love you,’ I whispered. Then I stepped down into the boat.
And as the men cast off and the barge began to gather speed in the current and the breeze, I turned the little band of gold against my skin, seeing it catch the light as the sun rose over the vine-covered hills, long after Iselda had dwindled into the mist and we had passed around a long bend in th
e river. The distance between us was growing, inexorably, but in the smooth, warm metal there was a connection. Perhaps I had been wrong. Perhaps there was some magic after all.
Chapter Eleven
Cyprus, January 1249
It was the day after Epiphany when I rode through the gates of Nicosia under a dull sky and a fine drizzle. The flat plain stretched away to the mountains in the far distance, dark save for their snow-covered peaks. I had landed at Limassol on Christmas Day, but it had taken me more than a week to get here on muddy tracks that often became mires that could swallow a horse up to its chest, or disappeared entirely under rushing streams. It was a dreary time to be on Cyprus. As I had been there in the spring I knew it could be lovely, painted with new oak leaves and carpeted with wild lilies. But as I toiled up forlorn valleys with nothing but flocks of hooded crows for company, who by their mournful croaking seemed as depressed as me, I took the weather as an ill omen, and wished, yet again, that I was back in the familiar damp of Venice, sitting before the great fireplace in the hall of the Ca’ Kanzir with Iselda’s head upon my shoulder.
The main body of English knights were billeted in an old Greek palace near the cathedral of Saint Sophia, and I was shown to a small room in the servants’ quarters, which I was to share with a young man from Hereford. Symon was his name, but as it would turn out I saw him rarely, for he spent his nights out whoring, and I had the room to myself. William Longspée, the English commander, was puzzled at first by my arrival. But I told him I had made an oath to the Earl of Cornwall to free the Holy Land from the tyranny of the Mussulmen and was here with his blessing, and at that he made me welcome. He had heard of the Black Dog Knight, for I had made something of a name for myself on King Henry’s ridiculous attack on Poitou, but if he was surprised to find a sunburned man with an Italian lilt in his voice and clad in Venetian silk claiming to be a knight of England, he had the manners not to show it.
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