I shrugged again. ‘It was foolish,’ I said.
Richard smiled. ‘Yes, it was,’ he said. ‘Now go and see the Pope.’
I didn’t go alone. I took Fiore. When there’s a great deal on the line, Fiore is the man.
We followed the blond boy through the streets. We walked around the palazzo and entered into the working yard, where food and wine was delivered. That day, though, no delivery wagon could enter, because a dozen girls were hanging linen. We went into the stables, and then through the laundry: tubs of water, dozens of women washing, and hundreds of shirts and albs and other vestments in white linen, some embroidered, some with cutwork – a fortune in men’s clothing. The smell of strong soap was everywhere.
My little blond angel took me up two flights of inner stairs, and then we were above the kitchens. The smell of food – rich, savoury food – replaced the smell of soap. Someone was having roast pork; a fat capon, well-laced with herbs, was visible as we passed the long tables of the kitchen. The Papal meal was about to be laid.
My little cherub led me up another flight of steps and we passed a working room – just some tables and benches, and two clerks copying. Then we entered a small studiolo, panelled in intarsia to hide a set of book cupboards and scroll cupboards, each panel covered in patterns – inlaid squares, triangles, and circles predominated, a riot of shapes that was almost uncomfortable to the eye.
And there was the Pope – or rather, there was Messire Guillaume de Grimoard. He was dressed in a wine-coloured gown that would not have been out of place on a Venetian aristocrat or a Florentine merchant: good wool, English wool, with gilt-silver buttons, about a hundred of them. He had hose on under the gown, and his buttons went to the floor.
I thought he was asleep. His eyes were closed, and I stood silent for a moment
His eyes opened.
‘I am not asleep,’ he said. ‘I am only resting my eyes.’
‘Certainly, Holy Father,’ I said.
‘We need you to perform a task for us, Messire Guglielmo,’ he said. ‘We had not been aware, until now, that we share this name.’
‘Yes, Holy Father,’ I said.
‘You know Giovanni Acudo?’ the Pope said.
‘Yes, Holy Father,’ I said.
‘And you know Ambrogio di Visconti, too, we have little doubt?’
‘Yes, Holy Father,’ I said.
‘Do you know Gòmez Albornoz?’ he asked.
‘No, Holy Father,’ I said, bludgeoning my tired head for an idea of where this was going.
The Pope folded his hands in his lap. ‘Messire Guillaume, we need someone to tell us why there is no news from the south.’ He shrugged. ‘Are you aware that all Italy is close to war?’ he said.
‘Yes, Holy Father,’ I said.
‘That Milan is under interdict? And that they persist in sending soldiers against us?’ he asked.
‘Yes, Holy Father.’ If you are waiting to hear me make some smart remark to the Pope, I have to decline. Sometimes the point of obedience is to obey.
‘Our servant, Cardinal Albornoz, lies dying, but his nephew, Messire Gòmez, is in the field, facing your Hawkwood and this Visconti bastard.’ He glanced at me. ‘We need you to go and find out what is happening, and tell us. We need you to go quickly. We don’t have Juan di Heredia. You see? I remember you quite well, Messire Guillaume. You rode to the Holy Roman Emperor and then to Venice for us, looking for Peter of Cyprus. And as you have yourself said, you have fought everywhere. Soldiers respect you. This is not a mission for a priest.’
‘I will do my best, Holy Father,’ I said. I wanted to protest that I was in service to the count, but he was imperious in a way that few men I have known could be; he really was ‘the Pope’, and in his own eyes, he was the incarnate power of the Church of Jesus Christ, above all earthly authorities.
I was taken out the same way I went in, and I went straight back to the count.
He was eating. He gestured and a chair was brought, and I was given a cut of good beef and some chicken – perhaps the same sort of chicken the Pope was having. The spices smelled the same.
‘The Pope wishes to send me on a mission to the south,’ I said. ‘If you permit me to go, I will be gone ten days – perhaps more.’
The count frowned. But then he nodded. ‘Where are you going?’
‘Naples,’ I said.
I never got anywhere near Naples.
Where I was bound was the Kingdom of Naples. The kingdom ran far into the north: almost as far as Urbino, where, if you recall, my sometime friend and debtor, Antonio Visconti – last seen at the Lazzaretto, borrowing money and horses from me – had headed to meet his half-brother Ambrogio. I knew all that; I had already had my suspicions that Hawkwood was serving with the Visconti. I had never heard of the Spanish captain, Albornoz, but he didn’t sound like much. The best intelligence I could get in Viterbo was that Albornoz had marched east, over the mountains and into the Kingdom of Naples, about the time we were passing through Verona, and nothing had been heard since.
I had lots of time to consider what Hawkwood might have been trying to tell me as I rode east myself, with a pair of riding horses and Marc-Antonio. We stayed in convents and abbeys, with a letter from the Pope, and I wore my harness night and day. We changed horses almost every hour, stopping only to drink a cup of wine and pray at the odd roadside shrine.
At Perugia I heard that Albornoz had lifted the siege of Urbino and the Visconti had pressed deeper into the kingdom, passing south of Ancona. I turned south myself and rode to Foligno in near-constant rain. Within a day, I was looking out over the Adriatic. My pretty new steel harness was getting rustier by the day, and I imperilled my immortal soul by cursing the supreme pontiff almost hourly.
On my fourth day out of Viterbo, I was riding south and east, headed for the coast in a steady rain, when a pair of men on tired horses appeared out of the haze of water in front of me. No one had any colours to show on a rainy day; I was swathed in a cloak, and so was Marc-Antonio. The two men came on, flogging their horses unmercifully, and something told me they were trouble.
I had a lance. I checked my sword and flipped my visor down, the enormous advantage of spending all day in harness being that you are very, very difficult to surprise. And let me add that this was my new helmet, the one that had spent half a year in my baggage – you know you are rich when you can forget a new helmet. This was one of the new-style armets, with hinged cheekpieces and a greatly improved visor, a wonderful piece of armour.
Hah. That’s not the story, of course.
The two men halted perhaps three horse lengths away.
‘Will Gold,’ called one, through the rain.
‘You have the advantage of me,’ I called back.
‘I was Andrew Belmont’s squire,’ he said. ‘John Renfrew.’
I nodded, although I didn’t remember him.
We were closing, though I still did not trust him, for all he was English.
‘You’re a little late for the fighting,’ he said. ‘Nice horse.’
I nodded.
‘Want to sell her?’ Renfrew asked.
‘No,’ I said.
‘Well, that’s fine,’ he said, and he reached for his sword. ‘I felt I had to ask. You and your friend can just dismount, and we’ll be on our way. These horses will be fine in a day.’
I shook my head. ‘I’m afraid not.’
‘See, Will, it’s life or death to me and this friend o’ mine,’ Renfrew said. ‘We got beat bad. Hawkwood’s run off, Visconti is taken, and fucking Albornoz is hanging any routier he catches. So, if you don’t mind …’
‘Just keep riding,’ I said. ‘I’ll slow up the pursuit. Go.’
Renfrew flashed a tired smile. ‘Well,’ he said.
Then he struck. He drew his arming sword from the scabbard and thrust, all in
one motion. It should have been deadly, except that he lowered his shoulder to get his sword clear of his belt, and that one motion gave the whole thing away, and I dropped my lance into his draw. He and his tired horse were on my shield side, very close. The shaft of my lance hit his horse’s head and then his rising sword arm, and I was already going for my sword. Marc-Antonio was three paces behind me and he already had his sword out.
Renfrew cut at me. I was out of distance. He leaned too far, counting on his horse to move under him, but that nag was done, and he leaned out …
I caught his sword, then the cuff of his gauntlet, and I pulled and dumped him on the road.
Marc-Antonio, on a good horse, with a lance, was a match for any routier ever born, and Renfrew’s companion was also dropped like a sack of meat.
Renfrew rose to his knees in the muddy, sandy road. ‘Fuck you,’ he said ruefully.
‘I’d start walking west,’ I said.
‘I don’t suppose we could beg for your horses,’ Renfrew said.
‘Nope,’ I said.
We turned and rode east, at a trot, and we left them there.
An hour later, I met with the outposts of the Papal army. I had a letter from the Pope, and after an anxious hour wherein I was accused of being a spy, or a routier, I was taken to Galeotto Malatesta, Lord of Rimini, who was commanding Albornoz the Spaniard’s advance guard.
He was a piece of work: a braggart with an endless litany of his own good offices, but he was impressed with my Papal letter. He gave me wine and complained about Albornoz, who was, he said, too young for high command and not a ‘real soldier’. His implication was obvious: that he himself should have the command. And he managed to imply that he’d done all the hard fighting.
‘You defeated Ambrogio?’ I asked.
He nodded. ‘We broke both of his flanks and rolled him up. The vaunted Acudo ran like a fox chased by hounds.’
I listened as politely as I could, and then he escorted me to Albornoz. On the way, he pointed out an olive grove. Every tree, and there were hundreds of trees, had a corpse dangling from it.
‘That is how our Spaniard makes war,’ he said.
I couldn’t tell whether his comment was admiring or admonishing.
Albornoz was a slim man in a fine, plain harness. If he was a typical Spaniard, it is no wonder that the Moors are being driven from Spain; he smiled very little, talked little, did not brag like Malatesta, and his eyes seemed to go everywhere. But he was courteous, if a little cold.
‘We have fought two battles,’ he said. ‘Every man counted. I didn’t have a man to spare as messenger. Indeed, as the Holy Father has not paid my men, I thought perhaps I’d been forgotten.’
I gave him a note from his uncle’s steward. ‘Your uncle, Cardinal Albornoz, is dying,’ I said. ‘I’m sorry.’
He read it, nodding. ‘You are English?’ he asked.
‘Yes,’ I said.
He nodded. ‘Hawkwood got away,’ he said. ‘I captured both of the Visconti mongrels.’ He met my eyes and his were hard as tempered steel. ‘I hate the English. Your people have ruined my country, burning and looting, and they do the same here.’
I suppose I was meant to be terrified. Instead I was tired and angry.
‘If you could write a report on your battle,’ I said, ‘I will take it to the Pope.’
‘My uncle is more important than the Pope,’ he snapped. ‘We will triumph here; we will clean out this nest of vipers the way we will clear Spain of her enemies, and then we will make something.’
I wondered if I was in a camp of madmen.
‘You write the report, Englishman. Only, let me show you how we make war.’
He led me out past the cook lines of his camp, where hundreds of men were dangling from trees.
It was … horrible.
‘I will kill every one of them,’ he said. ‘All the routiers.’ He looked at me. ‘Tell your friends. Tell them to go home.’
I said nothing. But there were men I knew there, hanging like rotten fruit – men in their arming clothes, a few still in leg armour or sabatons. Men who are hanged usually shit themselves; there’s no two ways about it. The smell of rotting men, and excrement, and death, was terrible. It was not the death of chivalry, but perhaps the antithesis of chivalry. Those were not good men – not saints. But most of them were not much worse than I.
‘They surrendered,’ I said.
Albornoz shrugged. ‘What of it? They are vermin,’ he said. ‘Tell the Pope.’ He smiled at me, and all his courtesy was gone. ‘Tell your friends. Go and find Giovanni Acudo and tell him. Tell him I have halters for all the English. I will make all of you take this last shit. Understand me?’
I shook my head. ‘Tell him yourself,’ I said. ‘I’m off to report your battles to the Pope. Because you couldn’t spare a messenger.’
‘This is what war is,’ he said. ‘Do not pretend otherwise. Do not pretend you are so high and mighty.’
I suppose I shrugged. ‘May I see the Viscontis?’ I asked.
I was taken to a cell in the little tower, where both Visconti brothers were kept, probably in the arming clothes in which they’d been captured. Both had been beaten. Both were more angry than afraid.
Albornoz waited, listening to every word, relishing their discomfort, their fear, their anger. While he stood above the trapdoor, a dozen of his knights came in, with Malatesta and some of his knights. They were muttering about money.
I was reasonably sure that no one in Albornoz’s feudal force had been paid for a long time.
I climbed back out of the pit. ‘Will you ransom them?’ I asked, loudly enough so that Malatesta would hear.
‘Maybe the younger,’ said the Spaniard. ‘Ambrogio will keep a long time, I think. Or perhaps the Pope will want him as a token against his father. Indeed, perhaps both of them …’
‘Antonio isn’t worth a hundred ducats,’ I said.
‘I know,’ said the Spaniard. ‘I thought of hanging him.’ He smiled.
Malatesta frowned. Unlike Albornoz, Malatesta knew what would happen if one of Bernabò’s sons was hanged, even a bastard son.
I took a breath and attacked. ‘Did the Pope order you to start the great war? The war with Milan?’ I asked. ‘It was my understanding, directly from the Holy Father, that we are trying to avoid this war. Did the Pope order this?’
‘No, Messire English Knight of Both Sides. No, he did not. Indeed, I think perhaps he wanted …’ He shrugged. ‘My uncle wants them all hanged. The Pope is not here.’
‘I will buy Antonio from you,’ I said. ‘If you hang one of Bernabò’s sons, there is no place on Earth you will be able to hide, and the war will come.’
The Spaniard looked at me. ‘You are just another routier,’ he said.
I was tired, and angry, and sad. ‘No,’ I said, ‘I am a knight. I am a knight volunteer of the Order of Saint John. I have just returned from fighting the Infidel in the Holy Land. Who the fuck are you? I came here at the Holy Father’s orders and you are giving me a ration of shit. Give me Sir Antonio, or perhaps we will see who exactly is a knight.’ I walked straight at him and stood very close. I was a foot taller. Perhaps it was stupid. I don’t know where it came from. Perhaps I’d had a year of being mild, pious, and careful. Perhaps too many my lords.
The Spaniard glared at me, his eyes afire. ‘You think I would fight you?’
We were having this spat in front of most of the lords of the east coast – about a third of the knight service of the Kingdom of Naples. And here, too, were men I knew; not many, but a few. Malatesta himself had commanded cavalry for Siena.
And I had a name.
It might have gone either way, but Malatesta of Rimini laughed.
‘I want to see you fight, Spaniard,’ he said. ‘He’s calling you out.’
‘I have no intentio
n of fighting this Englishman,’ the Spaniard spat.
I sneered. ‘Oh, that’s too bad,’ I said, or something equally arrogant.
Malatesta made a face. ‘Well,’ he said, ‘that sort of thing may be acceptable in Spain …’
The other Italian knights laughed, gently mocking the Spaniard.
Some of the younger knights shouted, ‘Fight!’
My small Spaniard turned four shades of red. I thought he might explode.
‘I hope you aren’t afraid?’ asked Malatesta, with amused venom.
He looked at me and I saw him, by force of will, overcome his anger. ‘Very well, Englishman,’ he said. ‘We will run a course together. If I win, you are my prisoner. If you win, you may have Sir Antonio.’ He nodded. ‘Is this satisfactory?’
I didn’t nod.
I bowed. I’d become very adept at bowing, and using bows to reflect my opinions; I was almost a courtier. So I bowed, and turned away. I held myself very straight, and went back to the camp, where Marc-Antonio and I ate a meal in stony silence, drank some wine with our Italian ‘hosts’, slept a fearful night, and rose at first light.
I had made a fool’s bargain with a man who had, as far as I could see, no sense of honour. Albornoz was an oddity; I’ve known dozens of Spanish knights, and they are the most punctilious gentlemen about fairness and good manners. I assume Albornoz was raised in the Church. Only the backbiting of the cloister could explain him.
I had too much time to lie and think; to wait for dawn, with my shoulders tight and my stomach crawling. I was sure I could take him, but I had made a poor bargain, either way.
The lists were marked in stones along the edge of a ruined farmer’s field. My opponent wore his war armour and carried a sharpened lance. When I saw the carthorse he’d provided me, I knew that he intended to kill me. I had put him in a difficult position; if I was dead, I could not tell my story to the Pope.
I went and talked to the horse, a short-legged heavy cob with no redeeming virtues and a tendency to bite. He was just big enough to carry a man in armour. I wasn’t sure he’d had any training at all, and in a course run with no barricade, an untrained horse might be worse than no horse at all.
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