My first sign of his humour was at a turn in the road. We could see the magnificent castello rising above the plain, and yet our road kept turning away from it, and finally Beppo led us in a little canter across a set of wheat fields.
‘The road was taking too fucking long,’ Beppo grumbled. ‘Too much sun is bad for my skin.’
This from a man with pockmarks the size of silver pennies and burned as brown as a nut. It took me several such comments to understand the dryness of his humour, and then my tolerance for him began to sprout wings, so to speak.
At any rate, we came to Acquapendente early in the afternoon, and we hadn’t had so much as a scent of trouble from the Prince of Achaea in days. Despite that, perhaps because of Outremer, we were very much on our guard. The lord of the town, Baron Farnese, was away; his castellan was as suspicious of us as we of him, and the town itself lacked both a hostel of my Order and a hostel of the Franciscans, so we had no particular advantage.
Beppo snorted in disgust and spoke loudly to the castellan. My Italian – which was, I thought, very good – was not good enough to follow the speed of his imprecations, but Father Angelo laughed aloud, and finally the castellan came down to the gate tower to meet us. It was a small town, he said, and very cramped before market day, and he offered us some fields to the west of the town for a camp.
We didn’t have tents or pavilions, so I suggested that as my lord was the famous Green Count, he would have to find lodging for him.
Beppo said, very quietly, ‘Something is wrong.’
I considered. I didn’t know Beppo very well, nor did he seem like someone on whom any captain would rely. On the other hand, these were his people.
‘How far to Bolsena?’ I asked him.
‘Three hours,’ he said. ‘A fine town with a good lord.’
I looked up at the castellan. Distrust aside, it was very odd that he wasn’t allowing me into his town, and that the gate was shut.
‘I must consult with my lord,’ I called.
‘I will see to it that lodging is found,’ he said, but his voice carried more fear than it should have.
‘Davide Fermio is no coward,’ Beppo said aloud, as soon as we rode down to the plain. ‘He is the castellan there. He is afraid of something, and afraid to tell us what the fuck it is.’
Camus, I thought. The sun was in the sky; God was in his heaven. But Camus was here.
I hadn’t seen a cloud in our military sky, and yet I was chilled. Perhaps that’s too poetic. What I mean is, Camus was more an idea than a reality, and yet I had to act as if he was right there. Holding a hostage in Acquapendente? Out in the country with an ambush?
Should I ride to Bolsena, scouting the last six miles, and find us lodging? Or ride back to the count?
Let me seize this opportunity to bemoan the day-to-day life of the capitano. It’s not about battles. It’s about decisions. They wear you down, they tire you and erode your confidence. Listen, gentles: I am graced with a fair degree of both preux and confidence. But as afternoon shadows grew on that road, I looked south towards Bolsena and north towards Radicofani and I couldn’t decide.
‘Beppo,’ I said.
‘Boss?’ he muttered, in Tuscan.
‘Can you get back to the count? With your young lord? Alive?’
He leered. ‘Course I can,’ he said.
‘I need you to get through. You have to assume that there’s an armed band in the countryside we just crossed, watching you.’ I didn’t point. I felt watched.
He shrugged. ‘Sure, boss. No one is going to hunt me in these hills.’ He smiled like Satan come to earth. ‘Not more’n fuckin’ once, no way.’
Well. No man looking as wicked as Beppo could possibly have lived to be forty years of age without some serious skills. Perhaps it sounds mad to you, but his ill-looks recommended him to me. He had to be one tough bastard.
‘I need you to guide the count around Acquapendente,’ I said.
He pursed his lips; an awful sight. ‘Aye,’ he said. ‘Hmm. And on to Bolsena?’
‘Yes,’ I said.
‘What’s in it for me, boss?’ he asked quietly.
I thought of various answers. ‘Twenty gold florins and a good horse,’ I said.
He spit on his hand and held it out. ‘Thief’s honour, then, eh, boss?’
I spat in my hand and clasped his. ‘Go with God,’ I said.
He laughed. ‘Hey, lordling?’ he called to Clario. He turned his horse, and in a moment the two were riding back along the road. I almost went after them. They were going at a sedate pace, down the middle of the Via Roma.
Ewan grinned at me. ‘The de’il no doubt takes a long spoon to sup wi’ yon,’ he said.
He had a point. I let them go, and rode for Bolsena.
We’d gone about half a mile when we met a dog. The dog was someone’s dog – nice manners, a good collar of leather with a fine steel buckle. A courser, not high-bred but not a mongrel, and she wanted to be friends. We were wary of her at first, as she sniffed around our horses, darted between their legs as if we were all hunting together, and made the deep bow dogs make when they want to play, forelegs extended. Then she would dash off ahead, run like lightning a few dozen paces, and wait for us to catch up.
After three or four of these dashes, I dismounted and looked at her collar, and we became friends. I had a little sausage in my purse, and she licked my hand, and that was that. After that, she trotted ahead as if looking for game; once she ran off to the side aways, but she was soon back.
About two miles along, in a deep defile, she began to bark. Until then she’d been perfectly silent, but now she looked at the defile and the brush on the hillside above it and gave tongue at some length.
I don’t need to be told twice. I didn’t see anything obvious – no twinkle of metal on the hillside, no sound of horses. But I didn’t like it, and we were too few to make a fight of it, and Father Angelo was already flagging.
The dog barked and barked.
And then the dog turned and looked at me and ran off into the woods south of the road.
I sat on Juniper, tired, worried, and looking at that hillside. Camus was there; I’d swear to it.
The dog came trotting back. She had that look dogs get – amazed that people could be so stupid. She paused, trotted a few steps back the way she’d gone before, and looked back.
‘Woof,’ she mentioned.
‘She means us tae follow her, ye ken,’ Ewan said.
The dog was going south and west, away from the darkening hillside and the defile.
I looked at Father Angelo.
He shrugged. ‘God walks in many guises,’ he said. ‘And this sign is pretty clear.’
Five men trusting their lives to a dog.
And a fool of a capitano.
‘Follow the dog,’ I said. I was the last man off the road. I brought up the rear in case we were attacked, and we crossed a gully, which was bad, and then we climbed a low ridge, and tailed along an empty stream bed. The dog would trot ahead, as she had in the beginning, and come back; several times she stood waiting for us, panting, tongue lolling.
We passed down a long valley where the fields were empty, and the houses we passed were shuttered in broad daylight, with wheat standing in the sun unharvested, and that was a bad sign. There were no peasants. We were on a track, little more than a path.
The dog trotted on.
The first view of Lake Bolsena is staggering: you are high up in the hills, among green woods of beech, and you pass a field of wheat here, rye there, and oats – little chequerboards of gold and brown. And then you turn, and suddenly the sun is shining on a pure blue lake like something in the remotest parts of the Alps, except that you can smell the dinner cooking in the town almost at your feet. The lake is so big that there are fishing boats out on it and their white sails fleck
the water.
We were moving fast. We went down the ridge, the steepest on the whole of the Via Francigena. The dog barked once and sprang forward into the town, where the suburbs were unwalled. The old town had high walls and a fine castle, which was virtually impregnable and certainly out of our reach, as the gates were shut.
But there were Franciscans, and we passed our bona fides with them, and were pronounced not routiers. Then, and only then, it all came out: there was a group of banditti, or mercenaries, in the hills north of the town, preying on pilgrims; one had been robbed, killed, and crucified.
Then I knew. Until then I had feared that it was Camus, who fancied himself Satan’s child. But to crucify a pilgrim on pilgrimage …
However, the Franciscans got the gates opened to the inner town, and got me an entrée to the lord. He was affable, a handsome man past military age but still, I thought, capable of defending his own walls with vigour.
He had a beautiful woman with him. He did not introduce her, and she effaced herself, yet listened to us with interest. I watched her, too. She had a full face and a fine figure and she moved with a spirit usually found in horsewomen and huntresses. Like Emile.
‘Green Count?’ he said with a slow smile. ‘I have never heard of such. Does that make you the Red Knight?’ He laughed at his own joke, which was not so bad, as I had a red surcoat of my Order and my own red and black arms in one quarter of Christ’s shield, so I was surely as red as my lord was green.
At any rate, the Lord of Bolsena shrugged. ‘Someone will need to be paid to feed two hundred horses,’ he said. ‘But I will happily give you house room. I wonder if I could interest you and your lord in helping me rid the valley of this sudden plague of bandits?’
I suspect that I grinned. ‘I think we’d be delighted to help you,’ I said.
‘Splendid,’ the lord said. ‘In that case, I’ll find your fodder and food.’
‘I need to go back and fetch my lord,’ I said. ‘I wonder if you would spare me half a dozen of your men-at-arms.’
He frowned. ‘The Count of Savoy, you say?’ he asked. He looked at the attractive woman, who smiled and whispered in his ear.
He turned to me. ‘I will lead my men myself,’ he said, as if he’d only just thought of it.
I took the time to introduce my men, and in the course of my introductions that dog came up. She gave one low whine, and the Lord of Bolsena rubbed her head and then gave her quite a hug, and my estimation of him went up.
‘Ah, Beatrice!’ he said. ‘Where have you been, my love?’
It proved that she was one of his hounds, lost, he claimed, in pursuit of a white stag, or perhaps a unicorn. By then I was quite fond of her.
‘She saved us, my lord. Led us on a secret path …’
‘Aye,’ the Lord of Bolsena said. ‘I have never known a dog so intelligent. Or so like a woman.’ He smiled at his lady, who gave him a look of arch indifference, more like a mother than a mistress.
He began to arm. The woman helped him, as did a pair of pages. His captain came in while he was dressing: a tall middle-aged wolf with grey hair, who proved, on acquaintance, to be part of the endless della Scala clan.
I did not want to sound like a madman, but I told them that this bandit had made threats against my lord. To describe Camus seemed impossible, although I suspect I referred to him as a spawn of Satan.
The della Scala captain chewed his moustache. ‘Really, he has to be put down,’ he said. ‘Crucifixion? Grotesque. Is the man unhinged?’
I left my two boys with Father Angelo, mounted Gabriel, who was fresh from a day of being led, and we set out.
We rode back up the ridge and the light improved as we went out of the valley and up to the heights. It was early evening, and I had to hope that the count was alive and moving. He shouldn’t have been far behind us, but anything could have happened, and I feared my decisions were all bad. I should have sent Beppo and his lord ahead and gone back myself …
From the heights, I could see a pair of big eagles or vultures out over the plains.
It had started to rain by the time we went over the ridge, through the woods, and down into the patchwork of fields in the valley north of the lake. We rode fast, alternating trotting and cantering, through the long rays of the evening sun, casting enormous shadows. We crested a low ridge perhaps two Roman miles north of Bolsena and I could see something on the road, and birds of prey above it. In the fading light, it looked like a monster, and it screamed like one, too.
The lord and his captain reined in their horses and crossed themselves. It was a strange moment, with the blood-red light falling on the hilltops while the little valleys were almost totally dark. I caught the dazzle of light on distant metal two hills away, and pointed.
The thing on the road emitted a growling bark.
‘What is it?’ asked della Scala.
I gave Gabriel his head, and we went down the hill, probably too fast, but I wanted to get this over with. Marc-Antonio and Ewan were right at my back. We came down swiftly into the darkened dell, and there was our monster, bent over in the middle of the road.
It was a man.
He was impaled.
On a stake.
For the love of God, and praying for mercy, what kind of man would do such a thing to another man? A stake driven through him, emerging from his mouth. The poor thing was alive. He was a tinker or a pedlar, and he …
Blessed Virgin Mary, I have trouble telling this. His mouth was working but he couldn’t scream any more, because his lungs were slowly filling with blood. I sat there, frozen. I had never seen such a thing, and it was too horrible to comprehend, even for me, who had seen Alexandria, who had been a routier in France. His eyes … God, they are with me yet.
Ewan called, ‘Ware!’ and saved my life. He slapped Gabriel on the rear quarter and my horse sprang forward past the poor tinker, and the crossbow bolt meant for me whickered along the road for quite a distance, kicking up gravel. Ewan put his dagger into the poor soul, up close, his arm around the man’s head.
I was watching the hills. And praying, I own it. It was unsettling, the whole incident. A bolt hit Marc-Antonio’s horse, and then another.
But Camus hadn’t reckoned with a dozen Bolsena men-at-arms. They came down the hill behind me somewhat cautiously, but they made a great deal of noise, and someone in the ambush lost his nerve.
Let me add two things: first, for those of you who’ve never set an ambush, it is hard to wait, and then hard to endure the onset of the survivors. And, by God’s grace, we had all survived. Camus’s banditti had left it too late; they couldn’t really see in the darkness of the dale, overshadowed on both sides by tall trees and steep slopes.
But the second thing is spirit. Those bastards had sat in that dell watching the tinker they had impaled. I’ll wager they were there for an hour or two, watching him die. You have to be hard as stone to endure another man’s agony like that and not be affected – spooked, haunted, terrified. Every man jack of them knew he was going to Hell. It is one thing to follow a fiend like Camus; it’s another to watch the fruits of your own evil while waiting for a fight.
It saps the spirit. I’ve seen it. Bastards like Camus can deny God all they want. Men like to imagine they fight in a cause – and a good one. No one can watch an impaled man slide down, the inside of his bowels gradually ripping open as the man’s weight drags him down the stave. No man can watch that and think himself in the right. I’ve fought Saracens and Turks and Lithuanians, and the only men I ever knew to impale a man alive were Camus’s. I hear the Romans did it – but then, they crucified Christ, too, so God’s curse on them.
I put my spurs to Gabriel and he responded. We splashed over a little ford and a man broke from cover to my right in the open, muddy ground around an ancient oak. I saw him as movement, and I leaned and Gabriel turned along a narrow trail, sure-
footed in the darkness. I won our little race and sent his unshriven soul to Hell. Then the wood was full of horns, and I saw shapes flitting here and there against the sky – that is, there was a steep slope up, and the sky was still light, so that men running higher on the hill were backlit. Ewan shot one stupid bastard standing in the middle of the road.
Marc-Antonio rode a man down and shouted for help. I had my visor open, enjoying the protection of my new helmet, and I heard him and turned Gabriel. We made heavy work of climbing the hill.
Marc-Antonio was fighting three men. Why three brigands stood to fight a mounted gentleman still mystifies me. He had been taught by Fiore, and his horse was good, albeit wounded, so he turned, and turned. If he’d had a little space, he’d no doubt have finished them.
I had to break into their little circle. Gabriel responded beautifully, put his head down and struck one villain full on. Only then did the other two run. I got neither; I spared a moment for my squire, and discovered that he’d lost his sword.
‘In a tree,’ he said shamefacedly.
I gave him my arming sword and then had the presence of mind to dismount and secure the bandit Gabriel had beaten to the ground. He was our first prisoner.
There was still fighting by the little ford. We’d broken out of the ambush, but the back half apparently hadn’t broken. I suspected that was where Camus was.
‘Ewan!’ I roared.
‘Here!’ he called. He was dismounted, bow in hand, and he ran to me, crashing through branches in the undergrowth. One of the best things about heavy harness? Branches mean nothing to you.
‘Get mounted and go for the count,’ I said. ‘Go!’
Ewan looked … doubtful. I was asking him to ride through the remnants of the ambush.
I didn’t have time to explain. ‘Go!’ I ordered and he went like an unhappy dog.
I got a foot in my stirrup and found that I was tired, despite the spirit of combat. It took me two heaves and some of Gabriel’s patience before I was back in my high-back saddle.
I was rewarded with the reassuring sound of Ewan’s rouncey trotting on the road. It was growing darker in the dell, and there were still calls and screams and horns.
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