Sword of Justice

by Christian Cameron

A crossbow bolt shattered into a thousand splinters right next to the count’s head. It had struck a little pylon that in turn held a wall sconce, and the whole sconce tumbled into the street.

  The count whirled, his sodden cloak flying.

  There was a small bridge less than ten paces away, and on the bridge stood two men, soaking wet. By their postures, I assumed they were not men of violence.

  ‘Roger, see to the count!’ I shouted, and pushed the Count of Savoy towards the low bridge with what could only be described as a shove.

  Roger understood. He had his dagger in his hand, and he pulled at his master’s cloak and kept him moving.

  I ran back, to where I could see steel in the darkness behind us.

  If they had a second archer, I was a dead man.

  I splashed through the alley and, this time, three swords rose to meet me. Behind the two swordsmen was another group. One, I thought, had his foot in a stirrup, trying to span his crossbow.

  I slowed, reached my distance, and threw a hard cut, straight from the shoulder, at the first man with a sword. He was soaked as badly as I; his hood slowed him, and my cut went right over his garde and into his head.

  The other man was the bravo in the silk scarf. He had a coat of maille, and he was fast. I still had the last four fingers of my sword caught in a dying man’s skull, and I couldn’t really see in the rain and dark, and I raised my hilt.

  I got the other man’s cut on my cross guard without losing a finger, and went forward with my cover, collapsing the bravo’s arms against his chest, slamming him into the alley wall and bouncing his head off the stone. Then I kneed him in the groin ruthlessly, and turned away, wrenching my point out of the skull of the first man, who was already on the ground, his blood fairly pouring out into the water, a terrible sight.

  Richard Musard went past me like a bolt of lightning, and his dagger took the next swordsman in the hand, a pretty blow, and then I couldn’t watch more. I had my blade up, got my left hand on it in at the half sword, and I went forward into the press of brigands like a boatman poling in a heavy current – point, pommel, point, pommel. I probably pinked or bruised five of them, but they were already running, and the crossbow was left in the torrent of water at our feet. Richard took it, along with the dead man’s arming sword.

  Black Scarf was gone. He was a tough bastard and no mistake.

  We ran back towards the little bridge.

  The two men on the bridge proved to be Armenian monks, soaked to the skin and lost, and there ensured a moment of comedy, as we, the hunted foreigners, paused to give them directions, because we were all Christian men and we couldn’t see them so miserable. And then we were across, and I relaxed, although the rain fell with renewed ferocity, so that we bent into it as we walked, and the wind rose. I looked back, ready to hold the bridge if I had to.

  ‘Where are we going?’ the count asked me.

  ‘The Hospital,’ I said.

  He nodded. ‘Good,’ he said, and we made another turn to the right. I thanked God I had spent months in Venice before the crusade. I knew this route like I knew my own hands, and even in a high wind, with rain rattling off the glazed windows like arrows on good armour, I could find my way. The street had become a sewer, and water rushed past our feet, ankle-deep, with a current that could unbalance an unwary man, but we stumbled along to the Fondamenta dei Furlani and crossed the little bridge to the Hospital. If we were followed, our followers were as wet as we and far behind. When the porter opened the door, I have seldom been so relieved.

  The knights made much of the count. The only knights of the Order actually present in Venice at the time were older men, who had seen many years of service; still, the count had just commanded one of the most successful crusades in many years, and he was much admired. They brought him a dry robe and shoes, and did as much for the others.

  I took the porter aside. ‘I had hoped that there would be companions here waiting for me,’ I said. I explained having sent my squire to Chioggia.

  The porter shook his head. ‘Even the fishing boats stayed put today,’ he said. ‘This is terrible weather for August, but it cools the city.’

  I asked him to keep an eye out for malcontents. He dismissed my fears as unworthy of his great city, and told me that there were no assassins in Venice.

  ‘We were attacked,’ I said. ‘A killer shot at the count with a crossbow.’

  The porter looked as if I was telling him that incarnate devils had danced in San Marco’s square.

  ‘I give you my word,’ I said.

  He just looked blank.

  I had another idea. ‘Do you know where the Lord de Mézzières is residing?’ I asked. Philippe de Mézzières was not really a friend, but he was a famous crusader, the chancellor of the King of Cyprus and a friend of the Knights of the Hospital. Most importantly, he was the destination for my friend Sir Giannis, who had ten good Greek stradiotes at his back.

  The porter nodded. ‘Of course! Monsieur de Mézzières is not so far. But you cannot go out in this rain!’

  I went back to the count and dripped on the parquetry floor. ‘I’m off to get help,’ I said. ‘I want to strike while they are still in disarray.’

  ‘You cannot imagine that a pack of bravos will lay siege to the Hospital,’ the count said.

  I shrugged. ‘Better safe than sorry,’ I said. I had a hard time imagining myself as the voice of reason, but there you are.

  I went back into the rain as willingly as a cat might have, but in the end my fears were for nothing. I found de Mézzières’ house easily enough, not far from where I’d dined with the Greek boat builder. One of Giannis’s soldiers opened the alley door for me, and in a moment I was dripping on de Mézzières’s wooden floor and explaining our plight to him.

  He just shook his head. ‘Assassins in the streets of Venice?’ he asked.

  His servant handed me a cup of warmed wine full of honey, and it was the most delicious thing that I had ever tasted.

  ‘I need you and all your stradiotes,’ I said to Giannis.

  ‘Of course,’ he shrugged, as if this sort of thing happened every day.

  I went back into the storm, but this time with ten very hard men at my heels. The Greeks followed me at first, and then ranged into the streets on either side. Close to the Hospital we found two of the prince’s men; Giannis’s stradiotes beat them and threw them in the canal.

  And then we were in the Hospital, with the stradiotes as a garrison. The old commander was as happy as a man can be, and he sat up late with two of the older stradiotes, swapping stories of fighting in Outremer.

  I saw to the count and then staggered to bed.

  The next day dawned to a clean city and an almost cloudless sky, and Venetians told me that the very best reason to have such a storm was to wash all the dirt off the buildings and the streets. Indeed, the combination of the seasonal high tide and the high winds and rain had brought on an acqua alta, my first, with water up to your groin in the streets. Shopkeepers laid boards on old stools along the alleys; sometimes you’d see a boat handing hot rolls through a window, because some houses didn’t have a ground floor in high water.

  The water went down very quickly, however, and we went back to the count’s lodging in two boats, well guarded by armed Greeks. Afterwards, I made the time to visit de Mézzières, once I had collected the rest of my clothing.

  De Mézzières was a fund of information about Venetian politics; he accompanied us home and spent some hours talking with the count about the state of the world, I suspect. I know they called me in to ask me about conditions in Jerusalem. De Mézzières treated me with every consideration, as if we were old friends, which was odd enough, but I was present when he explained one of the small mysteries of the day before.

  The count was relating what had happened in the Doge’s audience. De Mézzières shook his head ruefully.r />
  ‘Cornaro is a busybody,’ he said. ‘He’s not a bad man, and not a bad Doge, but he seeks to please all factions, to placate. That is why he’s losing territory to the Genoese and the Pope.’

  ‘He was a compromise candidate,’ the count agreed.

  ‘Next time it will be Contarini,’ de Mézzières said. ‘And then …’ He sat back. They were both sitting, and I was standing, which neatly expressed my social status.

  ‘And then?’ the count asked.

  De Mézzières shrugged. ‘I have given my life to the idea of taking back the Holy Land,’ he said. ‘For that to happen, Genoa and Venice must be at peace, and ready to lend their fleets to war on the Infidel.’

  Count Amadeus nodded.

  ‘If Contarini is Doge, then he will make war on Genoa,’ de Mézzières said.

  ‘That would be a terrible war,’ the count allowed.

  There was a little silence, and then the count went back to relating his interview. He was just repeating the prince’s slanders against his father’s second wife when de Mézzières shook his head again.

  ‘How can the Prince of Achaea not know that the Doge is married to a second wife half his age?’ he said with real incredulity. ‘Indeed, he was a compromise candidate, as you say, and men tried to use his wife’s low birth against him, and his foolishness in choosing to marry a low-born girl.’

  The count looked at me.

  ‘I was too angry to notice,’ he said. ‘Messire Guillaume, did he seem offended to you?’

  ‘Mortally so,’ I said. ‘He stepped away from the prince and declared the audience at an end. The prince was deeply angry.’

  De Mézzières nodded. ‘Achaea may just have crushed himself,’ he said.

  I’ll confess that I had already begun to wonder if I was going to be in a position to do Nerio a favour, by helping the Prince of Achaea to end up in an early grave. It was not, perhaps, a very chivalrous thought, but some aspects of war and rulership can be deeply ugly. And anyone who employed Camus was not likely to be much of a paragon.

  At any rate, the next day, Marc-Antonio returned with Francesco Gatelussi and another half a dozen men-at-arms. Gatelussi received a very cautious welcome from our hosts, and, indeed, claimed he was the first member of his family ever to set foot in Venice. But the Hospital gave him a fine welcome, as did de Mézzières, and we heard on the same day that Prince Filippo, his men-at-arms and bravos had taken boats across to Mestre and ridden north.

  I wasn’t so sure. I went across myself a day later with Marc-Antonio and a pair of Giannis’s stradiotes, and we rode west along the shore. I asked at several inns, and it seemed to me that the prince had gone to Padua, possibly on his way to Milan and Savoy, but other possibilities suggested themselves.

  The count had several audiences; he visited many of the great families of Venice and he was, as I discovered later, on fairly intimate terms with the very same Contarini of whom de Mézzières had spoken. He went there the day I went to Mestre, and then again, on the feast day, when he took me. I discovered that the great Contarini was the same one-eyed old bastard who had won the naval action in the Aegean. And who had taught me to steer a galley – or taught me better.

  He surprised me, not just by remembering me in the portico of his great family palace, but by wrapping me in a velvet embrace.

  ‘Guglielmo le Coq,’ he said. ‘I have told the story of you leaping into the water a hundred times.’ He actually held my arm as he ushered us up his broad steps to the piano nobile, and he seemed pleased to see me, which was kind.

  It was a very pleasant evening, full of food and music. I met his wife and his family, which was extensive. Carlo Zeno, who was about to be employed in a military capacity, and Vettor Pisani, who had been our capitano in the expedition and who had led the Venetian ships at Alexandria, were there. Philippe de Mézzières was there, too, and the conversation, naturally enough, went to the taking of Alexandria. We discussed Jerusalem and de Mézzières held forth, not without persuasiveness, about how easily the chivalry of the west, if harnessed to the fleets of Venice and Genoa, could restore the Holy Land to the Cross.

  I could tell that my lord the Count of Savoy was ill-pleased. I think that he felt unrecognised; I think that he felt that his own contribution was undervalued. Certainly, de Mézzières was not an ally of the count, and had a way of flattering the Venetians. And the count had contracted a mild fever, or an ague; his nose dripped and he had a cough, and illness made him darker than usual. So he sat and sniffled, and glowered.

  I could see that this wasn’t going to benefit anyone, and with a whispered prayer for aid in diplomacy, I tried to steer the conversation. Let me just say that when a dozen truly great men are having a loud conversation about an event in which they all participated, it can be very difficult to turn the ship, so to speak.

  I had a notion, though.

  ‘Do you think that any crusade can prosper without the support of the Emperor of the Greeks?’ I asked de Mézzières, but in such a manner than anyone could answer.

  The count looked at me.

  De Mézzières sat back and frowned. ‘The Emperor at Constantinople does not have a tithe of the sea power he had when I was a boy.’

  ‘And yet …’ I said, and Contarini sprang to my aid.

  ‘The Emperor is not much of a friend of Venice,’ he said, ‘and yet, I’ll say to any man that it is our duty to support him. The walls of Constantinople are the bulwark of Christendom. It is not just a centre of trade – it is the very presence of Christian power at the edge of Asia.’

  Pisani nodded. ‘Indeed, if the count here had not rescued the Emperor last autumn, we would be in an even worse state than we are in now. As it is, despite my opposition to the attack on Alexandria, the Sultan and the various beys and pashas know we have teeth.’

  There followed a barrage of questions to the count about his operations in Bulgaria and in the Dardanelles. I rose and congratulated the musicians; there was a young man singing, probably a castrato, as he had a remarkable, clear, high voice like a woman. He pointed out a young man, who was playing a small organ, and who one could see was quite blind.

  Old Contarini joined me. ‘Florentine,’ he said, indicating the organist. ‘Brilliant, like all Florentines; he’s already built two new organs here.’ He introduced me, and I saw another side of Contarini – not just an admiral, or a man of business, but a serious patron of music. I shook the blind man’s hand and thanked him for his music, and he flushed with pleasure.

  ‘Tell us about Corinth,’ shouted Pisani. He was waving at me from the table.

  ‘You are French?’ the blind man asked.

  I allowed that I was English.

  He nodded to himself, I think. ‘Ah. If you were French, I would ask if you had met Monsieur Machaut.’

  ‘But I have met him,’ I said. ‘My wife admires him enormously.’

  Now the blind man’s grip on my hand became ferocious. ‘You have met Machaut?’ he asked.

  ‘William!’ Zeno shouted.

  ‘My apologies, messire,’ I said to the blind man.

  ‘Another time,’ he said.

  I went back to the table and told the story of the storming of Corinth and then, after dinner, Pisani and Contarini took me aside, together, in the loggia of the palace.

  ‘Venice is always hiring men,’ Contarini said. ‘You are a lord and captain in your own right, but by God, sir, you have shown yourself a friend of Venice and a good soldier in the east. I could find you a contract … The Council of Ten has funds …’

  I bowed deeply. ‘I am very fond of Venice,’ I said. ‘Sadly, my lords, I have promised myself, first, to my lord of Savoy, and second, to Sir John Hawkwood. And third, or perhaps before all, to my friend Nerio.’

  Contarini nodded, a very man-of-the-world smile on his old face. ‘Ah, Nerio,’ he said. ‘Another promis
ing young man. Well-disposed to Venice, would you say?’

  I thought that Zeno was going to explode, but Contarini raised his hand. ‘Let Le Coq speak,’ he said.

  I nodded. ‘Nerio has fought under the Lion as often as I have myself,’ I said. ‘And he needs Venice to make Corinth rich. I have heard him say it.’

  Contarini nodded, obviously pleased. ‘And the current so-called “Prince of Achaea” blows with every wind,’ he said. ‘Listen, Guillaume. The war is coming. Not just any war – the great war we have all avoided since the plague fell on us. Venice will need allies.’

  ‘Nerio is your man,’ I said. I was over my head, but I had heard Nerio talking with Zeno. I had to hope he meant what he said.

  They let me go with many professions of goodwill and future service. It is always pleasant to hear praise from men you value, and I rather liked the idea of fighting for the Lion once more.

  Well, my time was yet to come.

  I tell you all this so that you will know that, by the time that I heard that l’Angars had finally landed with all our horses at Pellestrina from Corinth, by the time that I knew he had brought fever and plague and all of my people with him were held on the Lazzaretto, by the time my new armour was ready and a company banner had been embroidered, by the time all these things had come to pass, I had convinced the Count of Savoy that I was more than just a sword. A little.

  Which was just as well, as it was to be an autumn of daggers and diplomacy.

  I sent money to the Lazzaretto and went myself to the receiving house, where I sat for a while, thinking of Emile, and then spoke to Peter Albin.

  His eyes were red, and he looked terrible. And he was the healthy one, the doctor.

  ‘My uncle died,’ he said very quietly. ‘A great many of the count’s people are sick – a dozen are dead.’

  It took an act of courage to breathe the same air, I promise you. They had plague, that summer, and we all feared plague like we feared God’s punishment. More, to be honest; there are men who do not believe in God, but there are no men so foolish as not to believe in the pestilence.