‘What an idiot,’ he said. ‘Still, this man needs to be silenced.’
The bailli agreed. We shared wine, he offered us some shipping advice, and we negotiated some bills and sold him some saffron.
As we emerged, rich in gold if not spirit, Nerio shook his head.
‘I need to be in credit in the west. I need Florence and Venice to see me as a hero and a defender of the faith. That’s how I will raise funds.’ He frowned. ‘This glove is ruined.’
‘Funds for what?’ I asked.
He smiled. ‘I plan to conquer all the Morea and Achaea,’ he said. ‘I intend to be Prince of Achaea. It was my father’s dream.’
I whistled. I’d heard some of this, but never heard it all. ‘You’ll need soldiers,’ I said. ‘And isn’t someone else the Prince of Achaea?’
He smiled. ‘I can only afford you for sixty days,’ he said. ‘I need to go a bite at a time. Will you come back and serve me when I am ready? With a hundred lances?’
‘Of course,’ I said, taking his hand. ‘Cup of wine?’ I asked.
‘No, I have a little detail to attend to,’ he said with his easy smile. He shrugged. ‘Listen: you need to know some things, and I know them already from the Genoese factor, who has just come from his home. The Prince of Achaea is the Green Count’s cousin, Filippo. I know very little about the man, except that he and the count are at odds. It is a typical story: his mother died, and his father remarried, and now the Prince of Achaea is in danger of losing his inheritance in the Alps to a young, attractive woman and her darling five-year-old son.’
I played with my beard. ‘What’s that to me?’ I asked.
He looked smug. ‘Nothing, perhaps. But Filippo is trying to make war against his father, and that’s news. The Green Count is going to return to find companies of mercenaries camped close to his castles, and young Filippo preparing war.’
I shrugged.
‘Filippo, Prince of Achaea, is allied with, among others, the Bishop of Geneva, in attempting to break the count’s hold on the vassalage of Savoy.’ Nerio had that look – the look we all hated – when he knew something and we’d have to swim upstream through his vast sense of superiority to learn it.
‘Ah, I mention Robert of Geneva and you are interested,’ Nerio joked. ‘But Emile’s lands lie right there – indeed, I believe you hold a little knight’s fee of your own up there by Chambéry, eh?’
‘So this Filippo is allied with Robert of Geneva, and they are hiring soldiers?’ I asked, to show I was still following.
Nerio smiled; the cat was about to pounce. ‘Archbishop Robert sent Filippo his best captain,’ he said. ‘The Bourc Camus.’
I stopped dead in the street.
‘Now I have your attention, yes?’ he asked. ‘Emile is riding home into the middle of a war, and the Bourc Camus is commanding the other side’s brigands.’
‘Christ,’ I blasphemed.
Nerio nodded. ‘I need you at Corinth. We have to move fast anyway. And then I’ll let you go. The count will need to know this too, I suspect.’
‘Is there more?’ I asked.
‘A few details. My Genoese source knows a great deal about Filippo; I may get him to sell me the rest. But the Green Count is not yet at Venice. You cannot ride off and save Emile yet.’
I remember shrugging. ‘Emile is not a maiden in need of rescuing,’ I said. ‘She has good knights and good advisors.’
‘Good,’ Nerio said. ‘I was going to tell you that, because I need you here. Now I must go.’
‘A brothel?’ I asked.
He grinned. ‘Very close, my brother.’ He called for Giannis.
I later learned that he visited the city’s metropolitan, a cleric only slightly less powerful than the Patriarch of Constantinople. He took Giannis. I assumed he was going to a brothel and I didn’t go. I can’t remember what I did; I think I was arranging for fodder for two hundred horses. But Giannis told me afterwards that Nerio gave the patriarch one thousand Venetian ducats in gold. And a note from the Venetian bailli, and another from the city’s military governor.
The patriarch graciously ordered that the ten nuns be taken into the noblest convent in the city; the two women who were pregnant were sent to have their children in the houses of two families who volunteered, and were then ‘allowed’ to return to the nunnery.
The next morning, I found Nerio kneeling on the hard stone of the Venetian bailli’s chapel. He was not much for church at the best of times; Christmas and Easter and some casual blasphemy was more his style.
He glanced at me like a guilty boy who has stolen some pears.
‘You saved those women,’ I accused him.
He shrugged. ‘Sometimes I am an ass,’ he said. ‘I regret it, like most people.’
We knelt there a while.
‘I blame the Holy Sepulchre,’ he said.
We took Mass together with Fiore and l’Angars, and went down into the town. And I will say that in the next day or so, all of us were drunk, we ate a great deal, and l’Angars and Nerio hired courtesans. We were never made to be priests.
Thessaloniki is a fine town, as old as Rome or older, with a dozen magnificent churches and superb walls. It has been stormed and sacked only once, and it would indeed be a hard nut to crack. It is a handsome town: there are new churches, as if to prove that the Empire is not yet dead, and the frescoes in one were so beautiful that I stared at them for an hour. Yet beside the new work is some very old: a magnificent church from the time of Constantine, and a fine triumphal arch with the Emperor surrounded by his knights in fine archaic armour. Sir Giannis and Sir Giorgios explained a little of the history of the town while we strolled about, and then we sat in little tavernas and listened to bards and minstrels as good as anything in the west – better, possibly. I heard a man sing a song in Arabic that he said he’d had from a sailor, and Gospel Mark met an English sailor from an Aragonese ship that was running down to Crete and we filled him full of wine.
It was early July and we’d already had a month of war and another month of ‘diplomacy’ that had felt like war most of the time. I paid my men and let them loose, confident that they’d come back.
The town was as full of news from the west as it was full of Frankish sailors. There was news from Venice only a month or two old, and the most amazing news was that the Pope had returned to Italy from Avignon. He’d come in May, and his return seemed to be tangled in conflict with my friend and former employer, Sir John Hawkwood. The politics were as complex as anything we’d heard in Outremer: it appeared that the Pope, on his return to Italy, had refused to meet with any representatives from Milan or any of the Milanese allies; on the other hand, it also appeared, if the traveller’s tales could be believed, that the Milanese, or at least, their allies, including Sir John, had made at least one attempt to kidnap the Pope.
The Green Count was, by all accounts, held in the Lazzaretto in Venice because his people had plague. I heard our friend the English sailor say that he’d heard that the Pope had invited the Green Count to visit, and would ask him to command his armies, which worried me. Remember, I expected to find employment with Sir John on return to Italy, but the last thing I needed to complicate my life was to make war for Sir John against my feudal sovereign, the Count of Savoy.
And if that wasn’t enough, it was widely said that the King of England was breaking off relations with the Pope because of the Pope’s unwavering pro-French policies. I have to note that the Pope, even when we served him directly, had been notoriously biased in favour of the King of France. There were rumours of a direct alliance between England and Milan.
I listened to all the news from Italy, and wondered where Emile was. I sent young Francesco to gather news from Genoese sailors, and I sent l’Angars to gather news from French sailors, but it was Father Angelo Cavalli who seemed to know everyone and put us in the way of getting information on Corinth.<
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Nerio bought an itinerary from a Greek monk introduced by Father Angelo. Suddenly he had contacts in the Greek church, thanks to our priest and his donation to the patriarch; everyone seemed anxious to help him. So one evening, while Fiore practised against a post supporting the roof of the stable, Nerio laid out his itinerary and we drew it as a map, something that Hawkwood liked to do. Not a real map – just a set of circles …
Maps and charts are still rare; in those days, only sailors and soldiers and pilgrims were interested in them at all.
At any rate, Nerio put a stack of gold ducats on the table.
‘Corinth,’ he said.
‘Are you really Duke of Corinth?’ I asked.
Nerio smiled. ‘My cousin Antonio, the legitimate son, has chosen to represent himself as the duke,’ he said. ‘But I have his authority to install myself in the city, which is currently held by bandits.’
I leaned back. ‘Really bandits?’ I asked.
Sir Giannis looked at the stack of ducats. ‘That should be twice as high,’ he said. ‘Have you ever seen the Acrocorinth?’
‘No,’ Nerio admitted.
Giannis shook his head.
‘I doubt that they are actually bandits,’ Nerio said, looking at the arc of the Greek coastlines rendered in charcoal. ‘My guess is that they are Catalan mercenaries. Hired by the Duke of Athens to take my fief. Pretending to be bandits.’
‘This sounds like Italy,’ I said.
‘It is like Italy, except that there are no rules – no Holy Roman Emperor, no Pope, no communes,’ Nerio said with relish. ‘We can do whatever we can get away with.’
I looked at the charcoal drawing. ‘Still four days away,’ I said. ‘Why Catalans?’
Giannis ran his fingers through his beard. ‘Ah,’ he said. ‘Sixty years ago, the Emperor hired the Catalans to rid him of the Franks.’
I think that I laughed and slapped my knee. It really was as good as a joke.
‘Let me guess,’ I said. ‘The Catalans drove out the Franks and took it all for themselves.’
Nerio smiled. ‘Well, Catalans at first. Later the Kingdom of Naples.’
‘And your father,’ I said. Sir Niccolò had been Grand Seneschal of the Kingdom of Naples.
‘The Catalans needed Florentine banks,’ Nerio said. ‘I have decided that the Florentines no longer need the Catalans.’
‘Hence your uncle, the bishop …’ I said. I could remember that on our way out to sack Alexandria, we had run across Nerio’s uncle.
‘Who ought to be holding Corinth for me, but is away in the Morea, chasing a new bishopric,’ Nerio said.
Giannis leaned back. ‘Let me see this,’ he said. His soft brown eyes turned on Nerio. ‘You intend to storm the Acrocorinth,’ he asked.
‘Yes,’ Nerio said.
‘You are insane,’ Giannis said.
Nerio shrugged.
‘No, really, I must insist,’ Giannis said. ‘Wait until you see it.’
Nerio shrugged. ‘Listen, Giannis!’ he said. ‘I don’t care if it is high as Heaven and guarded by the legion of Archangels and led by Saint Michael. It is mine, and once I have it, I’ll be in the saddle of the whole of Greece.’
Giannis sat back and shook his head.
I looked at him. Giannis was a quiet, careful man – in many ways, very like the former legate, Father Pierre Thomas, who he’d followed for six years, and he had the same ascetic face and thoughtful eyes.
Giannis took a long pull on his wine and didn’t meet my eye.
‘You say this is impossible?’ I asked.
He shrugged. ‘If the place was empty it would be a challenge to climb all the way to the top of the citadel in armour,’ he said. ‘I believe it is almost fifteen hundred stone steps from the first gate to the citadel.’
I looked at Nerio.
Nerio shrugged. ‘I have never seen us beaten,’ he said. ‘To me, this is a straightforward assault. We will have absolute surprise. We ride straight up to the gate dressed as monks, go in and fight our way to the citadel.’
‘They close the citadel gates and we are trapped outside, laying siege for a year,’ Giannis said.
‘We can take down one gate,’ Nerio said. ‘I have purchased a device.’
Giannis looked at me, eyes fatalistic, only the faintest flaring of his nostrils indicated his feelings. I knew that he was asking me to intervene.
I admit, it sounded insane. But by God, gentles, it sounded like a great empris – the sort of thing that would be talked of throughout Outremer and Europe.
‘How big will the Catalan garrison be?’ I asked.
Nerio nodded. ‘The patriarch here says one hundred and forty men. The bailli says the same.’
I looked around. ‘Have you offered the patriarch …?’
Nerio nodded. ‘I expect a little help in the citadel,’ he said.
Giannis leaned forward. ‘You promised him what? The restoration of the Greek church in Corinth?’
‘Something like that,’ Nerio admitted.
‘Directly against the wishes of the Pope and even Father Pierre Thomas?’ Giannis asked.
Nerio shrugged. ‘Outremer is doomed as it is,’ he said. ‘The Pope has no idea what it’s like out here. You have heard the news – the Pope isn’t preparing to back the crusade! He’s arming for war with Milan instead. And anyway, the schism between the Orthodox and the Catholic churches is a fool’s bargain.’
‘And you will heal the rift?’ Giannis asked.
‘I will ignore it,’ Nerio said.
The two of them looked at each other. I could tell it was important to Giannis – this small point. His lips curved down, not quite a frown.
‘If you have a traitor inside the citadel, and some magical device that will open a gate,’ I said, changing the subject, ‘I think it’s worth a try.’ I knew I was trying to convince Giannis.
Giannis picked up his sword. He looked at the hilt for a bit, and then shrugged. He caught every eye, as if making sure we were listening.
‘We will all die,’ Giannis predicted.
We rested for five days in Thessaloniki, and it was with difficulty that I gathered and mustered my lances. The Kipchaks were easy to find, and they sobered up quickly; the archers were more difficult to find, and several men had sold their kit, and their brigandines and basinets had to be ransomed from pawnbrokers. On the other hand, Gospel Mark had recruited the English sailor and two of his Aragonese friends, who, as it proved, could draw heavy bows. We also picked up a Breton squire and another Irishman, Patric Loily, who was also a competent archer. He was a pilgrim; he’d been all the way to Jerusalem, and he joined us when he asked for alms and Nerio gave him a silver mark. Hector Lachlan, who was at last recovering from all his wounds and looked like himself, and Red Bill, who was if anything bigger than the year before, welcomed the Irishman, and the sound of Gaelic was to be heard throughout our camp. Gaelic, two kinds of Spanish, Portuguese, Italian, Greek, Kipchak, English, Hungarian, Norman French … even Hebrew, since our two London Jews had followed us to Thessaloniki and now asked to accompany us to Corinth. We were, as Fiore kept telling us, now the ‘Army of Babel’.
‘We should have recruited some Turks,’ Fiore said.
‘The scum of ten societies,’ muttered Sir Giorgios.
‘I prefer to think of us as the best soldiers of ten societies,’ I said. ‘Carefully chosen and brilliantly trained.’
Fiore nodded. ‘Good point,’ he said with his characteristic modesty.
I don’t want you to think that all of our brilliant plans came to fruition. There’s a sort of lie to telling a story like this; I leave out anything that I didn’t like. So let me add, in lieu to hundreds of other details I’ve no doubt passed over or forgotten, that Nerio had planned to move us by ship from Thessaloniki to Negroponte, or even to the
coast south of Corinth for a direct strike.
At the time, Nerio said there just weren’t ships suitable to move all our horses, and I believed him. But more recently, I heard him tell the story himself, in his own hall in Thebes, and he said that when he bought the nuns their place in a convent, he spent all his ready money, which had a sound of authenticity to it.
Regardless, instead of sailing around the Chersonese, we had to march. We had about twenty lances, each made up of a knight or fully armoured man-at-arms, an armed squire, an armed archer mounted, and an unarmoured page to hold the horses. I say ‘about twenty’ lances because really we had thirty with men like Sir Giannis and Sir Giorgios and Nerio himself. In addition, we had more archers than our lances needed – almost another twenty archers; we had fourteen Kipchaks, and a dozen Greeks who were not as well armoured as a squire but not as naked as a Kipchak, either. Thanks to the campaign in the Holy Land and our good fortune and God’s providence, we had two horses per man and more – a lot of very good horseflesh, too much to transport by ship. All told, with camp servants and our priest and our ‘doctor’, we were feeding a hundred and ten mouths and almost three hundred horses.
I know this may bore you, but it was my everyday life and it is now, and while Monsieur Froissart never mentions the cost of knightly deeds, I seem to feel the pinch every day, so here it is.
A horse that eats grain eats about as much, in terms of money, as a man eats in bread and meat. This is a rough guide. It costs a man about four soldi, silver Italian coins, a month to subsist. Soldiers like to do better than just subsistence, and so do soldiers’ horses, so let’s assume double that plus for each man – fifteen soldi a month for each man and his two horses. Assume roughly twenty soldi to a Venetian ducat, depending on exchange rates; imagine wastage and mischarging, and you can guess that every man will cost a ducat a month to maintain. That’s before you pay them. We pay between sixteen and thirty florins a month to each lance, depending on the market; again, let’s just imagine that in ducats. Every lance makes roughly twenty ducats a month. They have to pay for their own armour and tack, but the compagnia is usually responsible for horseflesh.
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