Prince Francesco nodded. ‘My lord, I grew up on the politics of that coast – Genoa and Montferrat and Monaco. It is the same. It is the same. Religion is not the dividing line here any more than it is at home. The King of Bulgaria will make common cause with the Turks if it wins him a kingdom. Suleiman Bey will attack Uthman Bey with the help of the Emperor if it will get him a city in Europe.’
I met Richard’s eye. I had a notion, then, of how much time he must have spent managing his master’s chivalric urges and his politics.
But the Green Count nodded slowly, and a smile crossed his face. ‘Well,’ he said. ‘Where to next?’
Two hours later, I released all of the Turk garrison, and I gave them their warhorses, although we kept their fine herd of remounts. I clasped hands with young Bayzid Mohamet after I had led him and all his men through the trebuchet battery, where six hundred Greco-Genoese oarsmen were sweating off their sins and dismantling a league of sandbagged entrenchments. Richard Musard and I had arranged it all, so that every man we had was out at once – all the knights, every man-at-arms and archer, all the oarsmen and marines …
‘He says, if he’d known how big our army was, he’d have surrendered the first day,’ John translated.
I just smiled.
‘He says, his father thought there was a treaty … and that you Christians were … far away.’ John was trying not to laugh.
‘Tell him that the Emperor is thinking of new arrangements. And these towns were never part of the treaty between old Uthman and the old Emperor. And tell him that you think we’re just the vanguard of a mighty army; the King of Cyprus and the Knights of Saint John are coming, too.’ I nodded to the Turkish captain.
Remember, we had just sacked Alexandria.
Bayzid galloped off in a haze of dust, desperate to warn his father that the Christians were on the march.
A small Turkish pirate boat sailed close to the wind, lateen sail tight as an altar cloth at Easter, with two Gatelussi galleys giving chase right to the low stone harbour wall of Tepecik, when a hail of Turkish arrows from the harbour tower drove them back.
Just then, a storming party emerged out of the dust near the town with two scaling ladders and went for a tower, and the whole garrison turned out, dashing for the new threat.
The Turkish pirate galley kissed alongside the pier, her oars in, coasting. It stopped as two men leaped onto the pier and cast lines around the bollards, which groaned as they took the weight of the little ship.
And then we burst up from under the sweltering tarps amidships on the Turkish galley. Fiore was there, and Nerio, Prince Francesco’s son, Francesco, Richard Percy and Richard Musard and a score or more others. We’d lain under that evil, hemp-oil-stinking tarp for an hour, wavering between boredom, terror and sea-sickness, and every man of us was delighted to be ashore.
None of us had ever been in the town before. We got on the pier, fetching swords dropped in the bilges and all the other accidents of war, while the oarsmen, mostly Genoese, picked up their crossbows and their javelins and came ashore behind us.
Perhaps two dozen Turks formed at the base of the pier to stop us. Arrows flew; Marc-Antonio got pinked.
One volley from the oarsmen shot them flat. The survivors ran before we got to them, and we followed, more like a wave than a compact mass; these things have to be done all at once or not at all. We went up through the town, climbing steep streets only wide enough for three men. Twice we had sharp fights, but we had numbers and armour, and as soon as any group of Turks made a stand, the oarsmen would sweep through alleys and side streets and take them in the flank or rear. We got to the land gate, a small gatehouse of stone, and the Turkish captain threw down his spear and surrendered. It was, in its own way, a perfect attack, and as we’d lost no men and our blood was relatively cool, the taking of the town was not followed by one of those scenes from Hell so common in Europe – nor like Alexandria. We didn’t outrage the women, who were, after all, Christian Greeks.
The banner of Savoy went up over the gate, and it proved that some of the Green Count’s routiers had successfully taken a tower. It turned out that the count had led them in person. We’d refused to allow him on such a daring and risky empris as the attack on the harbour, and so he’d run off and stormed a tower with one rickety ladder.
I was the first man from the storming party to reach them.
‘Messire Guillaume,’ the count said. He embraced me as if we were old friends. ‘I saw the galley come in. Brilliantly done, sir.’
Well, well. I found his praise sweet. It is hard to dislike a man who treats you as an authority. That night I was much in demand, and I served the count and the prince at table, along with Richard Musard.
‘You see?’ Musard said. ‘He really is a great man.’
‘He is growing on me,’ I confessed. The way in which he had conceded my point – that is, the prince’s point – about command showed a degree of restraint and graciousness that I hadn’t seen from him in Bulgaria.
Just after the taking of Tepecik, a fly landed in the ointment of my pleasure in the campaign, but the blessing, or the fly, was not unmixed.
The fly took the shape of Florimont de Lesparre. He arrived with a dozen Gascon men-at-arms on a small galliot flying Cypriote colours, and he presented himself as a captain in the service of the King of Cyprus.
We were lying in the harbour of Tepecik, about twenty miles from Constantinople. The little town had a fine harbour and made a good place to refit. So we lay there, protected from weather and Turks, arranging to ransom our captives and loading water. I happened, by good or bad fortune, to be aboard the count’s great galley when de Lesparre came in, and I knew the bastard as soon as he stepped aboard. He was politely received by the count’s people, but the count, who was sitting aft under an awning, drinking wine from his silver cup, sensed my feelings and put a hand on my shoulder.
‘Messire Guillaume?’ he said courteously.
‘That man is no friend of mine, my lord,’ I said. I was hesitant even to say it. The Green Count had not always proven himself my friend, and he’d certainly listened to Turenne’s slanders, which de Lesparre had also repeated, if you remember.
Amadeus met my eye. Truly, until that moment I had seldom been so close to him. He had my sleeve, and he was endeavouring to be private with me, even at the rail of a ship. ‘You are my man,’ he said.
At the time, I suppose I thought little enough of it.
As soon as de Lesparre saw me, he pushed Richard Musard – never a good way to seek favour, I find – and came to the foot of the count’s command deck. ‘My lord count,’ he called out, ‘it does you no honour to be seen with a man as ill-reputed as that fellow Gold.’
The count ignored him, raised an eyebrow to me, and then walked across the deck to his seat, almost a throne, under the awning. By doing so, he disappeared from de Lesparre’s view, as the command deck was a span higher than the rowing frames.
‘Come and stand by me, messire,’ the count called to me.
I stood very straight and prepared to face whatever the count might say. I walked across the deck, just as de Lesparre came up the three steps to the command deck.
One of the Savoyard men-at-arms – Georges Mayot, whom I have mentioned – met him at the head of the steps and barred his path. What I remember best was my sense of wonder as I realised that the count was planning to humiliate de Lesparre. For me.
‘You have been a good soldier for me,’ he said. He reached out his hand, and a servant put a gold chain in his hand. ‘I summoned you on whim – as much to annoy my cousin as for any other reason. Yet you came with a full complement of good men. I can’t pay you right now, but, by God, messire, I repay; service with service and honour with honour.’ He held out a gold chain, and on it was a badge emblazoned with his own arms in red enamel. ‘This is not some trinket – it is my own. I ask you to we
ar it in my name; as my vassal who has served with good loyalty, in Outremer, when men I thought better of went home or never attended their lord.’
De Lesparre was watching.
I took the chain, and the count helped me slip it over my shoulder, like the baldric of a hunting horn. I have pawned it a dozen times, but I still own it; indeed, if you allow me, I will produce it later.
De Lesparre made a sound, almost like the growl of a cat.
‘Please allow the Sieur de Lesparre forward now,’ the count said.
De Lesparre came forward and knelt. Musard followed him up the steps, looked at the chain, and grinned. Then he brushed past me.
So I stood while de Lesparre knelt. Richard oversaw the service of a plate of sweetmeats; after the count had taken some, I was offered the same dish. Listen: this may sound like no great thing to you, especially those of you who have never served the great, but this was, in public, the most intimate way of showing approval. I ate everything I was offered and drank off a cup of wine.
A bowl of rose water was brought. We dipped our hands; a page stood while we wiped our hands on a beautiful Italian towel. All this took perhaps five minutes.
‘Ah, Messire de Lesparre,’ the count said. ‘You may rise.’
‘You offend my master, the King of Cyprus, by behaving so,’ spat de Lesparre.
The count shrugged. ‘Perhaps,’ he said. ‘But as you came into my presence without my permission—’
‘By God, as the ambassador—’
‘And like many Gascons, you seem not to know your place—’
‘By God, my lord—’
The count leaned forward. ‘I have not given you permission to speak. Go away. Come back with manners. You are dismissed.’ The count beckoned to a servant for another plate of sweetmeats.
‘You are under the spell of this miscreant, and that Moor!’ spat de Lesparre.
Mayot stepped between them. ‘Out,’ he said.
De Lesparre was a very tall man, and he drew himself up. At the steps, he whirled on Mayot. ‘I make a bad enemy,’ he hissed, loud enough for us all to hear.
Mayot, who was one of the Savoyards I didn’t particularly like, shrugged with unfeigned indifference. ‘Save it for someone weak,’ he said. An excellent answer, and one that raised him in my estimation.
We took one more Karamanid pirates’ nest on the coast of Marmara, and Amadeus proposed that we go farther south and clear the European shore of the Dardanelles, the peninsula south and east of Gallipoli. As this would restore the Emperor absolute sovereignty from Bulgaria to the sea, the prince agreed immediately, and we spent the next two weeks making war with speed and efficiency. We had twenty galleys – a level of maritime superiority that no Turkish bey could match – and the Ottomanid army watched helplessly from across the straits as we swept along the coast, taking each town, freeing the Greek population, taking or slaying the Turkish garrisons and burning the Turkish shipping we found, unless Prince Francesco wanted to keep it for himself.
It might have been a wonderful time, except for de Lesparre and his mates; their hatred of me was palpable, and they lost no opportunity to pick on my people, to insult us, to dog us. Achille, Nerio’s squire, killed one of them in a dagger fight, and it was all I could do to keep him from being tried for murder before the count.
Yet the count had turned from an enemy, or at least a very cautious ally, to a true lord. Was it rivalry with Prince Francesco? Or was it Richard, whispering in his ear? Whichever way, he was constant; he protected me from the worst of de Lesparre’s slanders and made the Gascon feel so unwelcome that he sailed for Rhodes a week before the rest of us. He left us swearing that we were all cowards and miscreants and that he would go support his true lord, Peter of Cyprus, which led the count to ask why he’d come with us in the first place. Some high words were spoken.
We took the last town, Enea Cossea, which the count’s doctor, Guy Albin, who could read Greek, assured me had been the ancient Thracian town of Maitos. I thought de Lesparre gone forever; if I had known better …
Bah. After we took Maitos, we sent word to the Emperor, and even Prince Francesco rejoiced in private, because the little campaign had done much to secure the heartland of the old Byzantine Empire.
The count was going home; he had a fever among his knights and archers – not as deadly as plague, but bad enough for all love. By the grace of God, we did not have it. Indeed, the last night, when the count commanded me to attend him, Prince Francesco and his son were against my going, but I insisted. I went across to his ship and was warmly received. Guy Albin, as I have mentioned, the count’s English physician, was attending him, and explaining that he thought that the fever was from bad drinking water.
Richard was just serving the count his meat, so I went to the ship’s rail with Master Albin, and we shared the blessing of the day in English, and told each other a tale or two. It was a pleasure to talk to a man who had been born in Kent and knew the same London I knew as a boy. Sir Richard Percy was English, like enough, but the north country from which the Percys hail is as different from London as France is; northerners are a different race, near enough. And his English could be very hard for me to untangle, whereas Albin’s was good, simple London English. He liked a good story and he listened well; he also liked a dirty story, and I must tell you his tale of the miller and his pretty wife. But he was not a coarse man, and he liked to talk about God, and we often discussed the Gospels.
‘Are you still shopping for a physician for your company?’ he asked, after we’d discussed the healing of the man born blind.
‘I am,’ I admitted. ‘I wish I could hire you away from the count.’
Albin shook his head. ‘But my assistant is my nephew, Peter.’
‘You were going to send him for my wife,’ I said, perhaps a little sharply.
Guy shrugged. ‘Sir William, crossing the sea in winter …’
I clapped his back. ‘Never mind me,’ I said. ‘She was well attended, and by women, which she preferred.’ I glanced at the count. ‘Your nephew is available?’
‘He wants to stay in Outremer,’ Guy said. ‘I admit that there is much to be learned here. There are texts available in every Greek monastery that are either forgotten at home or never known – Aristotle, Galen, Plato, Hippocrates …’ He shrugged. ‘But he’s a decent leech, for man or horse. He has studied at Oxford, although he does not have a master’s rank.’
‘A master’s rank?’ I asked, because physicians aren’t educated at Oxford. Padua has such things, and Bologna. Oxford is for priests.
‘He started to be a theologian,’ Albin said.
I had a hard time picturing a theologian in a company of lances. On the other hand, a trained doctor was a precious thing. ‘Of course I’ll take him,’ I said.
‘I’ll have him pack,’ Albin said with a bow.
Shortly after, I was attending the count.
‘You won’t sail with us, Messire Guillaume?’ he asked.
‘My lord, I have agreed to help my friend Nerio reclaim his patrimony in Achaea,’ I said.
‘But you will come to Venice in the autumn?’ he asked. ‘And your lady wife is already there?’
‘Yes, my lord,’ I said.
The count nodded. ‘This ended better than I had imagined,’ he said. ‘Do you think, Sieur Guillaume, that we have achieved something to build the confidence of the Greeks in us?’ He rubbed his beard. ‘I have leaned hard on my cousin, the Emperor, to convert. Now I wonder.’ He shook his head. ‘None of this is as I imagined.’
I took an offered stool and sipped a cup of wine. ‘My lord, the Greeks I know best served Pierre Thomas and now the west well,’ I admitted. ‘But they say your expedition has put heart into the city and the Emperor.’
Amadeus smiled, then. ‘We began badly, Guillaume. Come to me in Venice, or wherever I am in Italy. There is
always a place for you at my table.’
I rose and bowed. I didn’t tell him that I had a prior pledge with the notorious routier and enemy of the Savoyards, John Hawkwood. But I was coming to like him better.
And it was a wrench to say farewell to Richard.
We sailed from Maitos in June. I think that I have mentioned how fast war uses up material, but when we sailed from Maitos, the Gatelussi galleys were scarcely seaworthy, with leaky hulls, sails worn thin, and enough broken oars that only about two thirds of the rowers could pull at a time. We’d lost one of the big ship’s boats in the surf near Gallipoli, stove in on a rock, and all of us were tired. Our horses were in poor condition, and armour needed work; most of the archers and crossbowmen were out of shafts, or near enough. Five sieges in a month and we were out of everything except victory.
The prince took us to one of his holdings, the island of Lemnos, one of the richest of all the Aegean islands. He had a palace there, with an armoury and a shipyard, and in two days of near feverish work, our galleys were refitted and our horses fattened and our armour polished.
When all the work was well along, Prince Francesco brought me aboard his own galley, with his son and Nerio and Fiore and a handful of others, including Albin’s young nephew, and Giannis Calophernes, and we ran out for what I thought was a pleasure cruise. It was a beautiful day, and I knew from Marc-Antonio that they had loaded food; no one had much armour, and the only weapons we had were our swords. We sailed for two hours, as the coast of Asia grew before us, and we landed in Asia just south of the opening of the Dardanelles.
Soon after we landed, a cluster of Greeks came down to the beach. One of the prince’s men hailed them, and they brought us a dozen sturdy ponies, which we rode up the beach and over towards the headland.
After a ride of no more than a few minutes, we came to a low precinct wall, the sort you see all over Greece; this one was distinct, and built with some red-grey local stone. Prince Francesco strode into the precinct and stopped by the remnants of an altar. I’m no scholar, but by then I had seen enough sway-backed Greek altars to know one when I saw one.
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