But I’m out of order, because first we had to be checked for plague and fever, and we docked at the Lazzaretto. That was sad, mostly because there we heard that a great many of the Green Count’s knights and men-at-arms and servants were recovering, or dying, from a malignant fever. One of them was Guy Albin, the count’s English physician, and Peter, his nephew, went ashore to tend him, thus condemning himself to forty days’ quarantine on the island. The officer of the city, who knew Zeno well and gave us a clean bill of health, said that the count had only passed with a dozen followers and was still in the city, and that he had paid for chirurgeons and physicians to come and attend his people.
All this mattered a great deal to me because I had come to fulfil my feudal duty to the Green Count. I had promised his herald that I would meet him in Venice, and I knew I’d have to pass through the city anyway; it was the gateway to Europe. And Emile had, of course, promised to meet me. I rather hoped Hawkwood might have taken work with Venice, too.
I was no great lord like the Green Count, but I knew what it was like to be missing trusted people. My two Greek boys, Stefanos and Demetrios, were good at laying out clothes and bustling with self-importance, but boiling water was sometimes too hard for them and they had only the vaguest notions of horse care. Gregorios, the shepherd boy, had chosen to remain with Nerio.
I already missed John the Kipchak. He knew more about horses than anyone I’d ever known, and my two Greek boys were no substitute for him, even though they were far better servants than John had ever been. I hadn’t even got a decent goodbye from him, as he had been watching a Turkish raiding party with some of Nerio’s Greek cavalry south of Hermione when we sailed.
To my surprise, Sir Giannis and his stradiotes had come with me, while Sir Giorgios stayed with Nerio. Giannis, it proved, had orders from the Emperor, and was to contact Philippe de Mézzières in Venice and then to find the Pope. He took with him our two Jews, who had, at last, chosen to travel to Venice. I embraced them, and by then I’d even managed to like the obsequious Isaac. His brother the rabbi was above my likes and dislikes; less outwardly warm than Father Pierre Thomas, he was still very much of the same thoughtful, holy stamp.
Where was I? Oh, horses. We left our horses on the Lido, because Venice is a huge city without a stable or a blade of grass. I exaggerate, of course, because there are orchards and fields on a few islands, but for the most part, Venice is a terrible place for horses. I was not new there, however, and neither was Marc-Antonio. He made the arrangements with a pair of farmers for our fodder, and then we took our lances down the coast to Chioggia, where the Corner family found us lodgings for a song, at least by Venetian standards. Sir Giannis went straight to Venice to find de Mézzières. I asked him to take a letter to my lord, the Green Count, whom I still thought of then as a touchy aristocrat who needed careful handling.
Chioggia is a noble town, or was then. I have many happy memories of it and, of course, Marc-Antonio was a ‘natural’ son of the merchant Corner, and he received a hero’s welcome. I had a fine room with a chimney and a fireplace all to myself, although I feared that one of the Corner daughters had been exiled to the attic under the roof tiles to make space for me; certainly, all the icons on the walls were of women saints, and the walls were a beautiful pale blue with silver-gilt accents, very feminine. But the bed was comfortable, two feather mattresses, and as my hip and shoulder knitted and healed, I found myself often tired and fond of sleep.
But what I remember best is having to function in a sort of numbness, because there was so much to be done before I could fall into that bed. My lances had to be found good billets, and I had to oversee Gospel Mark and Rob Stone conducting a distribution of about a quarter of the pay the archers had coming. Then I tottered away towards sleep, and even then I was not done. Fiore was human enough to want to go home to Udine, and we had to discuss a hundred small matters – and it was only after I’d had an enormous dinner with the Corners that I was finally allowed to fall into that marvellous bed.
I slept for ten hours, rose to eat, wrote a letter to Emile and another to John Hawkwood, and slept again. My third day in Chioggia was Sunday, and that was the first day I felt like a man. I rose early, ate good warm bread in the kitchen, flirted somewhat automatically with the cook who was twice my age but had a noble twinkle in her eye, and dressed in my faded and unpressed best to accompany the Corners to Mass. We went to the church of San Domenico, a very fine church, and the Mass was magnificent and the priest’s Latin excellent. Afterwards, people pressed around and I found that Donna Corner had, as usual, been name-dropping. But it gave Marc-Antonio time to play the great man, which he enjoyed as much as anyone.
We were standing in the square, a beautiful one, paved in brick and stone, talking about the Turks. That is, Marc-Antonio was discoursing on the Turks. I was selling Matteo Corner a third of my remaining saffron. This gave me a healthy roll of gold and silver.
I noted the herald immediately. He was finely dressed; truly, he looked more like a famous knight than I did myself, as his good clothes were not a year old nor had they travelled five thousand miles. He had fine manners, and I knew him from somewhere, and while I searched his face it came to me: he was one of the Green Count’s pages.
I inclined my head, and he came forward, murmuring apologies in stiff, francophone Italian as he passed through a crowd of rich merchants to reach me.
‘My lord,’ he said. It is funny, but almost no one had addressed me as ‘my lord’ before then, except Jean-François, that is, but he only did it to mock me. Anyway, I almost looked around to see who he meant.
‘May I be of service?’ I asked.
He bowed. It was a deep bow, the kind of bow you make to a superior.
The depth of his bow silenced the crowd. Men took their wives by the elbow and backed away. They were merchants. They didn’t meddle in the affairs of the fighting class.
‘My good lord, the Count of Savoy, requests that you join him in Venice,’ he said softly.
Such a request was a politely framed command.
‘I have other obligations,’ I began, and then realised that this was my new life, as a ‘gentleman’ who had feudal obligations. So instead of continuing, I bowed deeply; in fact, as we both knew, I was bowing to the absent Green Count. ‘But please tell my lord I will respond instantly to his summons. I will be with him tomorrow, or possibly the day after.’
The page smiled. ‘I will tell him, my lord,’ he said, ‘and he will be delighted to see you.’ He leaned closer. ‘It is an urgent matter, my lord.’
My first thought was that I couldn’t go. I had an obligation to Sir John Hawkwood, virtually a condotta, or contract. But my second thought was that, realistically, my horses needed a week to recover from the sea travel and the heat, and until they were ready, I couldn’t go anywhere; that beyond that, I really needed l’Angars and my pages, and they were another week away. All of this crossed with the unworthy, but real, thought that I needed a new harness, new clothes, and that I had money in my purse and Venice was the greatest place to buy … anything in Christendom. In fact, I was as eager to spend money as the newest archer.
Fiore wanted to go home to Udine. My archers had seen too much action. They needed a rest, and Chioggia was perfect: waterfront taverns with good wine and tough fishermen. They’d drink, they’d carouse, but they wouldn’t make too much trouble; the podestà had soldiers, the fisher folk were solid enough. Altogether, I realised that I had time in hand, two or three weeks, even.
I explained all of this to Matteo Corner as we walked back to his tall house, and he slapped his head and admitted that Emile and ‘Messire Iasson’ had stayed a night with him three weeks before and he had a letter for me. So while Marc-Antonio and my two pages packed my valise, and Matteo engaged a fishing smack to run me up to Venice, I read Emile’s letter. Once I read it, most of my fears for her fell away; she’d arrived ahead of Count Amadeus
, but not by much, and before she was ready to travel on, he’d arrived and she’d heard his news, and also heard, from him, that Prince Filippo had engaged the Bourc Camus as a captain. You’ll remember from my stories on previous nights that Camus is the very spawn of Satan, a man-at-arms committed to atrocity and the rule of the sword. He and I had crossed each other too many times. What was worse was that he had some history with Robert of Geneva, who was my former master’s – that is Pierre Thomas’s – sworn enemy, and he also had some reason to hate my Emile. So it comforted me greatly to know that she was aware that he was about, in Savoy or near enough. I could fear for her without having to change my own plans; she had an escort of fine knights, as you have heard, and more loyal retainers on her estates. She did not need me riding to her rescue. Which was a relief. I’d spent days trying not to worry.
I kissed the letter and made my preparations to leave for Venice with the count’s page and a clear conscience. I did take a moment to send John Hawkwood a carefully worded note, explaining that I had feudal duties I could not avoid. I sent my note to his camp. He was away in the west, serving Milan, or so rumour had it. I also scribbled to Emile, a lot of nonsense, most likely, but my hand cramped and I sealed it hurriedly and gave it to Matteo because he had goods going upriver to Padua and said he’d see my letter delivered. I hugged Fiore, too. He was going with the letter, at least as far as Padua. I wanted him to come to Venice, but he was determined to go overland.
When he rode across the causeway, I was alone. I hadn’t been without my friends for years.
Venice is, without a doubt, the noblest and most beautiful city in Christendom, and indeed, in the world. The canals keep the city cleaner than London or Paris or Milan will ever be. The churches are magnificent, and every calle or canal side seems to open into another tiny square with another fine church, endowed by another family as rich, or richer, than the wealthiest merchants of London. Every house is of stone, and some, like the ‘Palazzo Donà’, are palaces that rise above the canals. Rows of palaces, in fact, so that it seems as if every sailor and Arsenali man in the city has a palace of his own. If I have not explained before, the city is incredibly rich, and is not like any other city I have ever visited, in everything from cleanliness to government. The government has nobles and commoners, like any country, but the commoners, and most especially the men who work in the Arsenale, the shipyard, have unique citizen rights greater than any London apprentice. The nobles compose the government, yet many of their offices, including the Duke, or Doge, are elected. The systems of election are complex and labyrinthine and sometimes exceptionally clumsy, but they work, and Venice has been that oddest of states, a republic, for a thousand years.
The houses and palazzi are worthy of comment, as they are unique. Venetians tell me that they are based on the houses of Constantinople, but if that is true, the changes are greater than the originals, because I never saw a palazzo as elegant or as clean in Constantinople, for all its beauty, as in Venice.
The form of the finest is as follows; they front on a canal the way a London house fronts on the street, and there is a little dock there and an entrance at water level. Often there is a colonnaded walkway that connects, like a pathway, to the palaces on either side along the waterfront; indeed, these waterfront walks, often covered and embellished, are one of the most beautiful elements of canal-side life in Venice. The canal-side loggia gives access to the house itself via the entrance hall, and behind that are often kitchens and storage, because the ground level is often filled with water at acqua alta or high water, a condition that depends on tides and winds and weather and the will of God.
Above the ground floor colonnade is the enclosed balcony (another loggia, if you like), and behind that, the piano nobile, or grand room. But the great gothic halls, stacked one atop another, are not the whole of the palaces, and behind the first set of rooms there is a courtyard, surrounded by gothic-arched colonnades on all four sides, usually with a gatehouse onto the street. This is a palazzo I’m describing; but a merchant’s house is often very similar, if without the courtyard. One feature that remains the same from Venice to Chioggia, and even in Venetian Greece, is the shape of their chimneys, like Turks’ hats, and built outside the houses for fire safety; but unlike England, where most private houses have an open hearth and the smoke must pass through a dormer in the roof, in Venice, most houses have fireplaces built into the walls, cleaner and neater in all weathers, and allowing smaller rooms to be heated. I have seen the chimneys in Constantinople and Corinth, and I will confess that in this, at least, the Venetians seem to have followed the style of the Greeks, and a fine style it is.
At any rate, Venetian places are both magnificent and comfortable; the canals keep them clean and sweet except when the water gets rough, and the fireplaces keep them warm in the mild winters.
But, like the very core of London, land is at a premium and so building sites are very valuable, and the buildings, even the palaces, are, for the most part, crushed together more closely than anywhere else I’ve ever been, and all built of stone. Remember that Venice is not really dry land, but a set of marshy islands, and that to build houses, the Venetians have to drive huge pilings, whole oak or alder trees, straight down into the muck – not just a few, either, but hundreds of pilings for a single house.
I say all this so that you can understand, if you’ve never been to Venice, that it is a city of close-packed stone buildings, magnificently built and decorated, but packed like Hawkwood’s armoured spearmen, and the alleys they call streets are narrower than anything in London. There are passages that go under houses, and others so narrow that two men may not pass at the same time. The street of swords, Spadaria, is so narrow that it can be difficult to raise a sword to examine it, yet some of the finest cutlers in Christendom line both sides.
The other thing I feel you must know about this magnificent city is that it is surrounded by ships; every street ends at the water, and every street end is a wharf. Sometimes it can be difficult to see the houses for the masts. Venice has galleys and round ships by the score, as well as foreign merchants permitted to trade: ships from Portugal and England and Aragon and France, although not so many of the last. Viewed from a distance, the city looks like a wooded island that has been struck by frost – a veritable forest of masts, with the steeples of the churches rising above them. And there are not just great ships and warships, but small coastal luggers, fishing smacks, and hundreds, if not thousands, of smaller craft that are like Thames wherries – they will carry a gentleman anywhere he needs to go, out to the Lagoon or just around the next bend to church. The boatmen know everything, and have special privileges, and are not to be crossed.
I had lived in Venice for months, waiting for the crusade of Alexandria to finish its preparations, but I still got lost easily.
But I love the place. Venice, with its waterfront forest of masts. Venice, with the constant smell of fish, and the sea. Venice, city of outspoken women and argumentative workers and fine crafts and magnificent display.
I’m biased, I admit it. I have fought and bled for the Lion of Venice, and to me, the place is home. But in the late summer of 1367, as the odd weather blew up the Adriatic, the place was still a little alien to me.
My fisherman landed me almost on the steps for San Marco and then poled off before angry local boatmen could bury him in insults. The men of Chioggia account themselves Venetian only in matters of state; otherwise, the Lion of Saint Mark is a distant lion, and Chioggians go their own way and fish their own end of the Lagoon and they hope the Lion isn’t looking too closely at their taxes or their seamanship.
It was Sunday evening, and no one expected us, so the herald and my two pages and I carried our baggage up the salt-stained steps ourselves, and then hailed a small boat rowed with a single oar. Again, in Venice, all traffic moves by water. Our waterman used his oar from the stern on a low, sleek boat with a rising bow; he pushed us out into the chop
of the main channel and then, with a few comments exchanged with the Green Count’s man, he understood where we were going. We went up the main channel and into a side canal to the count’s lodging, a palazzo hard by the old church of Sant’Agnese, and landed on a loggia, or water-landing, so old that I imagined it might have been built by the Romans. The whole palace looked like something from the ancients; coloured marble adorned the exterior, and there were statues in niches far up the sagging facade. A noble building, but long past its best.
Still, we were well received, and in moments I was embraced by Richard Musard, and Mayot, of all people, clasped my hand. I felt at home in a way I had never expected to feel with the Savoyards.
I know that Chaucer will nod, but while most of you imagine that great nobles like the Count of Savoy live lives of unequalled splendour, the truth can be very different. At the Ca’ Lorimer, off the Grand Canal, the entire command of the Savoyard crusade was sleeping in one building, knights and men-at-arms and squires and pages. The ground floor smelled a little like a good barn, with bundles of new hay littering the floor as sleeping pallets – so much hay that Marc-Antonio began to sneeze. On the upper floors, the grander apartments, it was clear that the building was rented. Some furniture, no tapestries – the count’s only privacy was a closed bed by a series of magnificent Gothic windows.
Sword of Justice Page 18