A handful practise the art – really practise it. Fewer yet understand it; even fewer have the kind of cold rage that allows them to kill without mercy or passion. They are the most dangerous, but they are bad knights, because a killer without mercy is nothing but a killer – a rabid dog who needs to be put down. I have known a few such, as you will hear.
Bah, I lose my way. My point is that in this huddle of good men-at-arms, every head nodded understanding, and yet I could tell from the confusion of their bodies that not one in ten understood a word he said. Good men-at-arms smiled fearfully and hoped he would not call on them to demonstrate anything else.
I still laugh to remember it. Why is it that none of us is really brave enough to step forward and say, ‘Aye, master, I have no idea what you just said?’ Eh? To swordsmen or priests or even wives, I trow.
And yet we did learn that spring. If Jerusalem hardened us into something a little special, if the Holy Sepulchre made us something other than brutes, it was Fiore who gave us the art, and there were not fifty men-at-arms and archers in God’s creation with a better understanding of the principles of fighting with spear or lance, sword or axe. Marc-Antonio, my squire, showed every sign of being a fine man-at-arms; Achille, Nerio’s squire, who seemed too soft for a life of war, proved to be an incredibly dexterous swordsman. One day he disarmed me and I had to embrace him. And, of course, Sir Bernard and Sir Jason and Sir Jean-François were the best of knights and yet seemed to learn willingly enough, something I have often noted in the truly excellent. Prince Francesco’s son joined us often, sometimes with three or four friends. Only one of his former companions had stuck with him through the changes he was experiencing; he had served as a man-at-arms and his friend Alessio had followed him to war. That spring, both of them worked hard with Fiore, to master the art of arms.
And what Fiore did for the art of arms, Rob Stone and John the Kipchak tried to do for the archers, honing them at every skill: fletching their own arrows, or long bowls at extreme ranges, or rapidly rolling arrows off their fingers, loosing and loosing again, while they ran. John made most of the English at least passable at shooting from horseback with Hungarian bows we bought from a Turk merchant. And Rob Stone, Gospel Mark and John all spent time making every man, even our Kipchaks and our Greeks, at least passable while dismounted on the flat.
It was all beautiful, if preparation for war can be accounted beautiful.
And I’ll bore you for a moment and say that my children – and by then they were mine – were part of the delight. Young Edouard had begun to play with swords, rising eleven years. Fiore said twelve, but the boy wanted a sword, and he’d begun to use rough and tumble too often on his sister, so I made him a waster and sent him, across his mother’s tears, to the prince in Mytilene and to Sir Richard Percy, to be a page and a squire.
It was as well I did, as you shall hear in time.
And playing with my daughters – a little one, too young even to hold up her head or focus her eyes, and an older mite for whom there was no doll as perfect as her sister, and she struggled like a saint with her own feelings of sisterly jealousy. The same Turk trader who had the bows had a load of silk, and I bought some and Emile made her a doll like a great lady, and she called it ‘Lady Emma’, and Lady Emma lived with her other ladies from Venice and Savoy. And I, the great knight, was betimes a horse, and betimes a huntsman to a princess, and a juggler, and a fool.
Great days.
Ascension Day was nearing, and we were in the very peak of training, and Fiore himself declared that he would do nothing for the last week, so that no man would miss his moment for a sprained wrist or a broken finger. Training hurts; men are covered in bruises and abrasions that shopkeepers never know.
Regardless, it was our first day free of training when the herald came on a small galliot flying a fine banner of the Virgin in a blue cloak, and under it the arms of Savoy. I walked down to the beach to meet him, thinking that perhaps it was the count himself; some said he would attend the tournament.
The herald bowed deeply, as if I was a great lord. Which, to be fair, I was, at least at a remove – I was lord of my lady wife, and she was a great lord. And I had three small lordships in my own right: one on Cyprus, that paid in gold; one on Lesvos, where I lived; and one in the Italian Alps, which I had never seen.
Well. I started my life of arms as a cook’s boy. I am never less than delighted by the deference of my peers or my people, as it is new to me every day. I suppose I imagine I’ll wake one day and find that I’m turning a spit and it was all a boy’s dream, eh?
Ah, the herald. So he hands me a scroll. I still have it. It summoned me with my full knight service for a feudal levy for the Count of Savoy, at Constantinople, three weeks hence.
I was dumbfounded.
Now, in truth, the count was in his rights, but only just, and in an absurd way. No vassal could actually be summoned under Savoyard law to fight in the Holy Land; that part was absurd. He was stretching a point, because Emile was in the Holy Land. But the reality of the situation was immediately obvious when presented: he’d have to pay us all wages, and he couldn’t really summon me with all my service – that is, all of Emile’s service – yet, despite the absurdity, I had the men to satisfy him, because I had a small company. I actually had forty men-at-arms and forty archers – the whole service that Emile would owe if, for example, the Green Count summoned her at Turin.
The herald admitted over dinner that many of the count’s men-at-arms were sick and more had gone home after Mesembria fell apart.
I looked at Nerio.
‘I want to go to Didymoteichon, just as we planned at Christmastide,’ Nerio said. ‘I want to have friends on the Ottomanid side of this game.’ He looked out of the window. ‘But … he is your lord, and I imagine he’ll esteem it a favour.’
‘No, he will not,’ Emile said. ‘He will take it as his due. He makes outrageous demands and later pretends it was all a jest.’ She shrugged; she was not one for pouting. ‘He can be a good lord. But when he is not …’
The herald looked as if he might explode in defence of his lord.
I nodded. ‘Forty days,’ I said.
The herald looked at me.
‘Marc-Antonio,’ I summoned my squire. ‘Take this fine young man and show him the delights of Methymna.’
When the herald was gone, I spoke to Emile and Nerio frankly.
‘I know the law of arms,’ I said. ‘He gets forty days from when we respond, travel time included.’ I shrugged. ‘Two can play the game of loyal retainer. We have to go to Constantinople anyway, and by then, travel alone will have used eight days. Thirty-two days, and we’ll end perhaps five days from Didymoteichon. Just in time to meet the Turks. We can send John and half a dozen Kipchaks across the lines to make sure that this Suleiman understands that we are accepting his invitation for, let us say, the first of July.’
Nerio nodded. ‘And your feudal lord can pay the cost of transport!’ he said.
‘My other feudal lord has to accept the condition,’ I said, and looked at Emile and drank wine. The Prince of Lesvos also had my knight service.
I sent the young herald back with our decision: the Green Count had to pay our transport and my other lord had to agree.
We arrived in the city of Mytilene a few days before the tournament. I wanted to talk to Prince Francesco, and to enjoy the good life of his court. He had jongleurs from Achaea and from Florence, and a singer from Provence. He kept a magnificent table, and, for an old pirate, he was the finest lord I’ve ever known – as good and bad a man as Hawkwood. And his son had grown on me – a difficult young man but increasingly a good companion.
Prince Francesco was originally a Genoese. He’d come out to Outremer in the fifties with a fleet of warships, and he’d ranged the coast of the Levant, taking prizes and burning and looting, a sort of sea-routier. About the time that the Black Prin
ce was knighting Hawkwood at Poitiers, the Emperor of the Byzantines was marrying his daughter to Gatelussi and granting him a semi-independent principality on Lesvos, Chios, and Lemnos. These are the easternmost portions of Christendom since the fall of Acre; Methymna, on Lesvos, is only about three sea miles from Asia. Gatelussi got a bride and a fine little kingdom, and in return he provided the Emperor with a fine fleet and a very modern armed fist. The Gatelussi were excellent paymasters; they hired the very best mercenaries in Italy – Germans and English and Italians and Bretons and Gascons – and brought them out to the Aegean, where their superior training and armour gave them mastery of the seas around the islands.
I have always expected to retire on my estates there. It’s a fine place, and with plenty of fighting. Francesco is an enlightened despot: his taxes are low, because he makes his income off terrorising the Turkish coast; his men-at-arms are too busy to brutalise the peasants. He is a patron of the arts.
He sat before me on a stool, while a servant fitted him with a sabaton that was slightly too small. He was trying a new harness; he planned to open the tournament himself.
‘I have, hmmm, agreements.’ Here the old pirate smiled like a fox. ‘Hmmm, with most of the Turkish rulers this year,’ Francesco said. ‘I won’t be fighting alongside your Green Count. And anyway, he has no army – most of his men-at-arms are sick.’
‘I gather that new lords reached him from Savoy and Cyprus,’ I said. ‘Crusaders.’
Prince Francesco laughed. ‘Fucking crusaders,’ he said. ‘The most useless …’ He looked at me. ‘I don’t mean the Order, or the professionals. But a bunch of Frankish lords with no idea what the conditions are here, no military training, no idea except to kill infidels.’ He shook his head. ‘Some of my closest allies are infidels. Old Uthman was far more reliable than the Pope.’
Once I might have been shocked. But now I was a veteran of Outremer. I knew, now, the dividing line between Christianity and Islam that had once seemed so stark was, like everything, a matter of shades of grey. I thought of the young men I’d met in one of the Turkish towns – curious, eager to dispute with us about the Trinity. I thought of the Dervishes. About the curious things men believed.
‘I can see,’ Prince Francesco said, ‘that you are now one of us. So I say, another season of your Green Count harrying the Turks will only fragment good alliances. And anyway, he’s attacking the wrong Turks.’
‘Wrong Turks?’ I asked.
‘He’s attacking the Ottomanids and not the Karamanids. He probably can’t tell them apart,’ the prince said with contempt. Then he turned, with a sharp intake of breath. ‘Careful there,’ he said.
The armourer looked rueful.
‘I need to open a rivet, lord,’ he said.
‘Just don’t open my foot,’ the prince said. ‘Although, Sir William, now that I consider it, the Emperor might like us to … bluster … in the direction of the Ottomanids. They are dangerous allies.’
I changed tack. ‘Will you go to do the deed of arms at Didymoteichon?’ I asked.
‘I probably won’t break a lance,’ the prince said, playing with his beard to hide a smile. ‘But I’ll be there, making a treaty with the Ottomanids for the Emperor. They have too much of our ground behind Constantinople already; your Green Count should have retaken Adrianopolis instead of Mesembria.’ He shrugged. ‘But … with my fleet sitting off the coast to make sure everyone knows we mean business.’ He nodded at a seat brought by a servant. ‘Sit, William. You treat me like a great lord. I’m just an old pirate.’
A very successful pirate …
‘The Emperor is out of money; he paid thirty thousand ducats for Mesembria and Gallipoli. Now he needs to raise more funds. He needs to settle soldiers in the north, and stop the bloodsucking leech of a Church from taking all his money.’ Francesco snapped his fingers and I was given wine. ‘We need five years of peace,’ Francesco said.
I toyed with my goblet, which was heavy and solid silver. I understood all his points, and he was my other feudal lord. ‘So you forbid me from joining the Green Count?’ I asked.
He shrugged.
‘May I offer a suggestion?’ I asked.
He sat back and flicked his beard. ‘You’re a smart lad, for an Englishman. Tell me.’
‘The Green Count is going to make war on the Turks without the Emperor’s permission,’ I said.
‘Against the Emperor’s express request! It’s as if he thinks war in Outremer is a fucking sport and he’s going to hunt inside the garden,’ Francesco spat.
I met his eye. ‘What if, instead, the Emperor were to appear to be in control of the Green Count’s expedition? Would the Turks not have all the more reason to negotiate?’
‘Is this Nerio’s idea?’ the prince asked.
‘No, my lord, all mine,’ I said.
‘He’s rubbing off on you, and you may yet become Italian. So you go to serve the Green Count, and I hover off the coast with my fleet, and the Emperor and I pretend we’re running the show.’
‘Yes, my lord,’ I said. ‘And the Emperor can repeatedly and pointedly state that he “finds the young Crusaders difficult to control” and other such platitudes. The same platitudes that Venice and Genoa make to each other …’ I smiled. ‘And then, when we negotiate at Didymoteichon, the Ottomans will know that we have teeth. And you’ll get your five-year truce with them.’
Francesco was pounding his armoured thigh with his hand, laughing. ‘Jesus Christ, the same bullshit that Uthman used to say when he snapped up one of our towns!’ he said. ‘By God, Englishman, you have a head on your shoulders. I like it. And I have a terrible reputation for duplicity and brutality.’ His eye twinkled. ‘I’ll make use of it.’
The tournament at Mytilene was magnificent as only the very rich can afford magnificence. We all had new pavilions of silk, at the prince’s expense; need I say more? Everyone was in their best and, somewhere in Milan and Bohemia, armourers must have broken their guild rules and stayed up night after night to get so much polished steel into our hands. A galliot arrived two days before the first list was due to open and disgorged a small fortune in finished plate armour, straight from Genoa. There was a fountain by the fortress, rigged to give wine and not water, and the wine was delicious. At first, peasants and townspeople came in mobs to fill bottles and clay jars, but then the Gatelussi steward began opening casks just to give away, and the fountain ran on.
We ran our first courses in brilliant sunshine, and the good weather held all the way to the last day; it sprinkled rain from time to time, but it was not ever actually raining on the lists. The flowers remained in bloom, and the ladies of the town and the court, and my own lady wife, vied with Natura for the beauty of their apparel. Long dangling sleeves and high collars were the order of the day in France and Italy and Cyprus, and for the first day the ladies wore magnificent overgowns that might have been seen in Rheims or Ghent or Pavia. But by the second day, when the serious courses were being run a-horse, most of the women were in kirtles alone; the balance of beauty shifted slightly, from the richness of a brocade or a sweltering velvet to the curve of a hip or breast. As the heat of the second day built, so did the heat of the fights: hundreds of beautiful women with only a single layer of silk or linen covering them, stitched as tightly as craft and mothers would allow, has a certain effect on the fighting spirit, and a surprising number of men were stretched full length on the sand of the lists. The prince forbade Fiore and Richard Percy from having a third course after each pierced the other’s visor with a lance of war; the prince’s son Francesco unhorsed Nerio, and Nerio’s rage was quick and hot. Fiore’s comment that more practice might have brought him victory did not do anything to cool his anger.
Young Edouard waited on Sir Richard Percy as a page, and bore himself well, even when he had to control an angry horse that lifted him like a doll. I was watching him, even as Francesco dropped Ner
io – shoulders set, head high, determined to hold the horse he’d been given.
Marc-Antonio rode in arms, the first time I had allowed him. He was not Galahad, nor yet Lancelot, but he held himself well and was never unhorsed, although he came close to going down against Percy. Achille, Nerio’s squire, was excellent as well, holding his own against wily older knights like me and managing to score a point against Fiore, breaking his lance despite Fiore’s attempt to use his lance at the cross, as he taught. Alessio, the young prince’s friend, was unhorsed by Percy but kept his seat against Fiore.
I was adequate, but Jean-François stretched me across my saddle as he had on Cyprus. I didn’t come off. Otherwise I broke most of my lances easily; Sir Bernard and I broke three and received a great many flowers and a long burst of applause.
But it was Fiore’s week. Aside from his very dangerous encounter with Percy, he rode perfectly, dropping men left and right, and his score was unassailable by the time I reached him. I was surprised by his fire; he was clearly playing to win. I didn’t want to be unhorsed, and I was on the stage of chivalry: Emile was watching. So I went and kissed her, to make the crowd roar, and it was then that I saw a young woman throw her arms around Fiore – not an everyday sight, I promise you.
Aha, thinks I. That’s how the sail is setting.
Fiore fell in love in odd ways and quirky moments; his last lady love, so to speak, had been Janet. Not that she ever returned his fervour, but he learned a great deal from it; despite his lack of intuition, he understood the art of courtly love surprisingly well. Perhaps because he read books and memorised things.
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