Albornoz rode over to me. ‘You like your horse, Englishman?’ he asked.
‘This is what you account a warhorse, in Spain?’ I asked.
He shook his head. ‘You can withdraw. Apologise to me in front of Malatesta, and I will let you live.’
‘And miss running a course with you, fair sir?’ I said in Italian. ‘And the pleasure of riding this … animal?’ I asked. I did my best to put a good face on it, and to make the Italians laugh. I was scoring in sprezzatura, that mysterious quality by which Italian knights define manhood.
Albornoz was not.
Both of us were wearing harnesses rusted almost brown, which perhaps says something about us. I took my time looking him over, looking for weakness. He wore a much older style than I did: a heavy coat of plates over double maille. My armour was lighter and better in every respect. My horse was far worse than his; how I rued having left Gabriel behind in Viterbo. I couldn’t ride a joust on Juniper – she was too light – although I considered it.
I was fully armed, and waiting to die. Marc-Antonio had left me at first light, and I had to arm myself, with a little help from a pair of Malatesta’s pages – odd lads, but not bad.
I walked out, tried the saddle on my terrible horse, and resorted to prayer.
I prayed. I knelt by that miserable horse, and I prayed a dozen paternosters, until I was master of my shaking legs.
Then I thought of sitting in the rain in Provence, with a halter around my neck. I thought of my choices.
All in all, this was a better way to go. But those olive trees full of dead men-at-arms struck me in my heart. It was as if I couldn’t catch my breath. I still think of them.
And in that welter of thoughts, I looked up and I saw him enter the lists mounted and my spirits sank more, if that seems possible. His big gelding was well-trained, and he was going to ride rings around me, even if I survived the first pass.
I sighed and got to my feet. It’s funny how you don’t run, or save your own life, by a craven apology. Funny, when you think of the reality: had I bowed to him and craved his pardon, I doubt it would have changed my life by the width of a blade of grass, and God knows Emile wouldn’t have cared. I was thinking that as I rose from my knees. And I was wishing that my armour was polished.
And then Marc-Antonio appeared. He was on his Arab, and he was leading a big Arab stallion who looked familiar to me; in fact, it was the very horse I’d sold to Antonio Visconti.
That horse was no Gabriel. But compared to the carthorse I was given, Bohemund was the very destrier of legend.
We lined up – no fences, no barricades, and only Malatesta for a marshal. There was no salute from my adversary; for my part, I flicked my lance at him, as much to show the strength of my wrist as to ‘salute’ him.
I try not to fight angry. War is business, unless something intervenes. So it is with chivalry. A good man-at-arms cannot make war while angry, or he will do dishonourable things.
But Albornoz had made me angry. I mounted my borrowed stallion, and in two turns, I knew we could be a fair team, and then I let the reins go – not on the horse, but on my rage. I pounded Albornoz the way a squire pounds a quintain. Spaniards are often fine jousters, but again, I have to guess the bastard was intended for the Church and his uncle’s cardinal’s hat. He was small, and fast, but his speed was no help. On our first pass, he tried to slam his lance down on top of mine, but almost hit my horse with it instead. I caught it on my shield and flicked it away. My coronel caught him just a finger’s width to the inside of his bridle hand, under the shield, and he was unhorsed. My lance tip didn’t penetrate his coat of plates, but it must have hurt – broken ribs, to say the least.
On the second pass, I unhorsed him with a simple strike to his helmet. He was barely able to sit his horse, and he lay for a long time. When he eventually rose, it was to challenge me to fight him on foot.
I was still angry.
I was still angry, and that is not a good way to fight. I suspected that I was helping Malatesta undermine the authority of the Spaniard who’d just led them to victory; there is Italian generalship all over. I dismounted and drew my longsword. When he struck a sword forward garde, I laughed. I laughed so loudly that men wondered, but it was a classic, one of the things Fiore would have told him never to do.
In less time than it takes to tell it, I had my blade around his neck and I dropped him face first in the dirt. His ribs were cracked, and I was a foot taller and outweighed him by half the weight of my harness. He may have been a fine commander, but he was not up to facing me in single combat.
I didn’t kill him.
But I did step on his back, pressing down harder than necessary, and force him to yield, face down in the field.
Better if I had killed him, perhaps. I certainly didn’t make friends with him, the Pope’s favoured commander.
On the return trip, they told us at Foligno that the Pope and all his entourage were headed for Rome. The newly liberated Antonio wanted to ride north as soon as we were free of Albornoz’s camp, but I was not having any of that; I intended to take him to the Pope, for reasons of my own.
Foligno was full of surprises. I heard that Hawkwood had passed through with just ten lances at his heels, and I saw Andy Belmont and covered his bill for wine and salves. He was wounded, and I sat with him awhile.
And then we rode for Rome.
I had the whole ride to listen to Antonio thank me and berate me by turns. He was curiously untouched by the deaths of three hundred companions, murdered in cold blood. Like Malatesta, I think he saw that as the fortunes of war.
‘My father will destroy this Pope, and lay waste to the Marches with fire and sword,’ he said. ‘Albornoz thinks he is the big man. Wait. He will find out why my father is called “The Beast”.’
In short, Antonio did nothing in our ride to make me feel particularly good about having rescued him.
I had too much time to think, and in thinking, I began to see how stupid they all were. Bernabò was about to go to war with the Pope because of his vanity; the Pope refused to make concessions to save the Eastern Church because of his pride; the Green Count refused the Prince of Achaea his patrimony because of his pride, while the Prince of Achaea, who was as rich and well-born as any man could ask, used his riches to make war on the count for a perceived slight and an inheritance that might, or might not, increase his worldly wealth.
I felt, in my anger, that at least I understood the Karamanids and the Mamluks and the King of Cyprus. Italian diplomacy was … something else again. And we had yet to see the bottom of the well.
It was also during that week that I began to lose patience with the Pope. Or rather, having seen Malatesta and Albornoz, I had to wonder if the Pope’s ‘goodness’ had any real translation in the field. I confess it: those routiers hanging in the trees made me sick … sick of all of it. Albornoz was the Pope’s man, and that sat in my gut like bad food.
We arrived in Rome after two days of hard riding, and we were wet, cold and miserable. To our delight – and delight is not too strong a word – we were ahead of the Holy Father, and the city was virtually empty, with every senator and noble gathering his retainers or fawning on the Pope at Sutri.
We didn’t actually enter the city, but came to the Monastery of San Paolo on its outskirts at dusk, a mile and more off the great Via Appia. After passing the dense, ancient villages of the countryside, it seemed remarkable to enter the gates of the monastery and see fields of winter wheat rolling away in the autumn sunshine. Of course, the gates were locked at first. Marc-Antonio had to climb up on his saddle and jump over the wall.
There were clouds over the city, and lightning, but a brilliant sun shone on the tall, yellow stone buildings, and we got our horses under cover and untacked in an empty stable. It was as if we were expected; the mangers were full and there was clean new straw that smelled of summe
r and sunshine.
Only when all of our horses were rolling in the straw did we meet one of the inhabitants, a pretty nun who looked at us without a shadow of shyness and demanded to know by what right we were using her stables.
‘You are late,’ she said. ‘Who opened the gates?’
‘I did,’ Marc-Antonio said.
Marc-Antonio bowed to her, and was courtly, and she was completely unimpressed. If I had known Roman women better, I would have known what to expect: she had a brilliant smile, wide, sparkling eyes, and she was not afraid of us or anyone else.
She was hard not to like.
I showed her the Pope’s pass, which, unlike Malatesta or Albornoz, she kissed with reverence.
‘He will pass down the road tomorrow, or so we are told,’ she said.
‘We only need to stay here for a night or two,’ I said. But then I thought of the count, and lodgings in Rome.
She nodded, and looked at us carefully. I might as easily have been a decent knight as a routier, really, in my rust-stained harness and my red-stained coat of arms. Marc-Antonio had a nice maille haubergeon with a standing collar and a new breastplate; he looked dapper, and his boots were good. Antonio Visconti looked pretty bad, in stained hose, with arming shoes and no armour. She took that all in.
‘You have the Pope’s letter,’ she said carefully.
‘Tomorrow I will also have the Count of Savoy, his whole train of fifty men, as well as a dozen Greek monks,’ I said.
She put her hands on her hips. ‘A moment ago you only needed a day,’ she said.
I bowed. ‘Demoiselle, a moment ago I was only negotiating for myself, but this is a big place, and close to Rome. And Rome will be packed.’
She smiled. ‘You will pay?’
I was out of money; my purse held perhaps ten gold florins, and I wasn’t sure how to get more. I was almost sure the count was out of funds.
On the other hand, I wanted a bed and sleep. ‘Yes,’ I said.
She tossed her head. ‘Nobles,’ she said. ‘Listen, sir knight. Everyone is away. Everyone who ought to be in charge here. Father Corso may throw you out in the morning, or the abbess.’
‘I understand,’ I said, and she turned her back as if we were harmless novices. I liked her courage, and I liked her better when she took us to three decent cells, furnished only with washbasins, a wooden cross and a bed.
‘Can you feed us?’ Marc-Antonio asked in his most pitiful voice.
She rolled her eyes. ‘Do I look like a cook?’ she asked.
However, she led us to a kitchen, and served us all noodles and some sausage and a rich red wine. So the answer was that, yes, she did look like a cook. By then, we were all three besotted. She was small, but held herself very straight, and she never crossed glances with any of us, but she delivered a little mockery, a jibe or a raised eyebrow, as if to keep us in our places. She rattled the pasta plates down, and refused any attempt by any of the three of us to help her.
Sir Antonio’s eyes began to follow her everywhere she went.
Marc-Antonio glanced at the Milanese knight and then at me.
‘We are going to treat this nun with the most perfect courtesy,’ I said.
Marc-Antonio nodded, very serious, as if he’d never flirted with a nun in all his life.
Messire Antonio fingered his scraggly beard. And nodded. ‘She’s handsome,’ he said.
‘She has been splendid,’ Marc-Antonio said.
The two younger men stared at each other.
I finished my wine. ‘Sister, are there prayers?’
She flushed, wiping her hands on a linen towel. ‘I will say my prayers on my own, if you please, messire.’ She nodded. ‘I would recommend the same to you, I think.’
My companions went to their cells; I doubt that they prayed. I eventually found the chapel by wandering around. We were in a magnificent building. It had literally hundreds of cells. And it was one of four such, all built around a single courtyard with a fountain, and around the outside were ancient pine trees, so large and so old that Caesar might have leaned against one.
There were two very old monks in the chapel, and half a dozen ancient nuns, and my hostess. I didn’t have my book of hours, so I prayed my rosary while they read psalms. None of them so much as glanced at me.
I felt a little like a knight in an Arthurian romance – mayhap Giron Le Courtois or Lancelot du Lac, my favourites. That is, the ancient anchoress and the pretty nun and the beautiful chapel were all there; if there had come a sweet fragrance and then the Grail, I might not have been so very surprised. And, indeed, the fragrance was not lacking. The pines outside had a remarkable and beautiful smell, and the chapel had the literal odour of sanctity: frankincense, myrrh, and other scents besides.
At any rate, they ended their worship, and I rose. I was in the back, kneeling on the floor. The older people passed me, and I could see one of the nuns was shaken; her hands trembled, and not from age.
She was afraid. Of me.
I bit my lips in vexation. I stopped the young nun and she flinched a little as I stood.
‘We will harm no one here,’ I said.
She looked at me. ‘Good,’ she said, with her usual asperity. But I knew that she felt she was protecting them. From us.
Listen, you men. You think it brave to face your foes in armour. I agree – I know your worth. So think of a nun, armoured only in a desirable body, who shields her old people with her courage, no weapon, and nothing but her wits? We might have been routiers.
Who is brave now? Who is loyal?
The next day, I rode to the Pope. I found Fiore first, and then the count and Sir Richard, and so, instead of being a poor captain who abandoned his lord, I was enabled to be a fine captain who found his lord lodging in an impossible situation. The Pope stopped at the Farnese castle on the hill above the monastery, and ambassadors and great lords fought for a pile of straw on the stone floor, and all of my lances, archers and pages included, slept on clean sheets at the Casa des Pins, as I found the locals to call our monastery.
I saw them all situated, and the count was attentive and genuinely thankful, a rare show for him. Then I took Fiore, because I was tired of being alone, and went to see the Pope with Messire Antonio by my side. We weren’t waiting long; as soon as the Pope heard that I was there, I was sent for.
The Holy Father was in a small room, panelled in heavy, dark wood. He had one attendant, the blond boy I had seen a week before, and he was still wearing boots and spurs.
‘Messire Guglielmo,’ he said with satisfaction. ‘A week? Less? You must be the fastest horseman in Italy.’
‘Not so very fast, Holy Father,’ I said, or something similar, and then I knelt and told him my tale. I’d had a hundred miles of Roman roads to decide what to tell; I told no lies. And I included my own distaste at the forest of dead men. I didn’t leave that out, although I didn’t mention that Albornoz and I had a passage of arms, if you want to call a drubbing by such a high name.
He sat back and steepled his fingers. ‘My son, do you know why we waited so long at Viterbo?’ he asked.
I shook my head.
He nodded. ‘Cardinal Albornoz was my strongest ally here. We sent him to restore order in the See, and he gave his life to that cause. He was in the saddle for twenty years, and although he was not a knight, he defeated most of the best captains you’ve ever heard of; he took Fra Moriale, he liberated Rome …’ The Pope glanced at me.
I was still kneeling.
‘We waited for him,’ the Pope said. ‘Our entry into Rome was his triumph, the fruit of his labours, and he is our John the Baptist.’
I nodded.
‘He died the day you left. We assumed his nephew had won. We had the numbers, and Malatesta, for all that he hates us, is a fine captain.’ He looked at Antonio. ‘This is the Visconti captain?’
‘Holy Father, this is Messire Antonio Visconti,’ I said. ‘Sir Ambrogio’s brother.’
‘And he is our prisoner?’ the Pope asked me.
‘Holy Father, he happens to be my prisoner. Also my friend.’ Actually, this was stretching matters; I wasn’t sure if I even liked Antonio. But I had an end in view and I was learning to play the game of Italy.
‘You want us to send him to his father as a peace offering?’ the Pope asked, with some humour.
‘Yes, Holy Father.’ I suppose I should not have been shocked to be seen through so readily.
He nodded. ‘We will think on it.’
He dismissed me after some praise, which I will not repeat. He did say, ‘Knowledge that Albornoz is victorious makes tomorrow all the sweeter.’
And as soon as we were clear of that room, Antonio launched into a torrent of abuse against the Pope and his intentions for Italy.
Fiore shook his head. ‘He could have had you taken or killed.’
‘He wouldn’t dare. My father would have him killed,’ Antonio said.
Fiore looked at Antonio with his mild, pale eyes. ‘I doubt it,’ he said. ‘Why do you say such things?’
‘I wonder myself,’ I said.
The next day, we all rode into Rome. The count was given a place of honour very near the Pope, and Antonio was led before His Holiness like a captive – they had included him, and he was forced to wear a little sign with his name and rank.
It was, I am told, a Roman triumph in the ancient style, mostly designed by Maestro Petrarca. Nor was I the only Englishman; there were English clerics, perhaps half a dozen. I found them by the sound of their voices, which sounded like home.
My twenty lances had spent the night at the monastery making and mending, and the monks and nuns, having returned from Viterbo, had pitched in with a will, the more so when the count produced hard coin to pay for our lodging, so we entered Rome at the count’s back with our steel mirror-bright and our clothes brushed. I wore all my best, my enamelled belt and a jewel in my hat. I led my little company, but several times I was summoned to ride by the count, resplendent in emerald silk, with the Pope’s golden rose carried before him on a silk cushion carried by two pages, with his lance and his great helm carried on their saddle-bows. He bowed, and waved, and from time to time threw handfuls of copper coins with some silver mixed in for the crowd.
Sword of Justice Page 33