I wanted Albornoz, but it was not to be. He charged after the Turks, and then he rode clear. I saw him. He was two hundred paces distant, and the gap was widening. I would have had to wheel my whole line to go after him – virtually impossible, and to no purpose.
Remember, I had my visor up. So I could see.
I could see all the way to the bastide.
I could see the Imperial banner, which was huge. It was on the face of the bastide. The Imperial knights and their heavy handgonners were storming the fort. In fact, even as I watched, the banner went forward.
And I could see the Emperor.
I pointed him out to Fiore, and he laughed and threw his sword in the air and caught it.
‘Of course!’ he said.
It was … impossible. But then if we could take the Emperor, in battle, we would be the richest and most famous knights in the world.
I led my men across the back of the Papal army. They were broken. The Veronese and the White Company were, for the most part, merely following them, making sure they kept running. One of the wedges of Veronese knights crashed into the fleeing Papal infantry, killing hundreds of men. Off to my left, another wedge of Italian knights slammed into the Emperor’s reserve of Bavarians.
The Imperial army was not breaking up. But they also couldn’t tell what was happening at our end of the line – dust, and the Turks, gave the impression of a bigger force than was actually pursuing Albornoz.
Cangrande della Scala was sword to sword with the best knights in Germany. He could not break them, and they could not break the Veronese. It was, and I think will remain, one of the most famous fights of the century. I rode past it.
I had a hundred men, and I kept going. I was riding down the back of the enemy army, a chivalric thief in the night, so to speak, and then …
Maybe two hundred paces away, Emperor Charles IV pointed with his sword, and his household began to retire. His household knights were among the best in the world, trained like his tournament team – probably the equivalent of Petrarca’s beloved Praetorians. They wheeled by squadrons, something that I had never seen done at that time.
There was smoke everywhere. Thousands of gonnes had fired. Hawkwood says it was the thickest powder smoke he’d ever seen, and the Germans had set fire to the bastide’s wall of stakes.
By then I was a hundred paces away. I was also close enough to see the fighting on the bastide, where the Imperial handgonners had some sort of explosive bombs that they threw over the palisade; a secret weapon that was making chaos out of Bernabò’s impregnable fortress, and adding to the smoke and flame.
But I was a hundred paces from the Emperor. Thanks to the rout, the Turks, the swirl of dust and the powder smoke, we were unseen. Just one hundred paces.
On a battlefield, that’s an inch.
One of the Imperial knights glanced our way, and in one glance, Lucius van Landau knew my harness and my arms and my shield.
So close.
The third squadron of Imperial knights wheeled back, but they didn’t retire. They wheeled until they aligned with our front.
Well. As soon as I saw them wheel I knew our game was up.
So damned close.
And, as Fortuna, or Tyche, or God, would have it, the Imperial knights on the walls of the fortress saw us, and ordered the handgonners to retire. The men on the slopes of the grassy walls turned and ran. Their pages held their horses, and suddenly we were in a maelstrom of enemies.
I only saw one of the Landau brothers who I’d known from ’64. I ended up opposite a man in black armour, with a white rose on his shield. My war lance shivered under my arm, broken all the way to the butt, and his lance broke cleanly in the middle, but our horses crashed in, breast to breast, and we raced to draw our swords. We tied. Our swords crossed rising – something I have never known before – and crossed with both points down, but before I could think of anything, I was past. His blow, faster than my cover, hammered into my armet, and it left a dent, but not in my head. I tried to turn, but in that time Marc-Antonio had plucked the black knight from his saddle as if he was in the tilt yard against a straw-filled dummy, and he carried on, passing me.
I cut in behind him, Gabriel dancing clear of a falling horse, and then I had three, or perhaps four, fleeting engagements – a crossed sword, a pommel strike, a man I think I dismounted with a sweep of my arm – and then I was behind Fiore, and it was like the tournament at Krakow. He knocked a man sprawling with a blow to the man’s helmet, and I scooped a foot and tossed the man over his saddle and got the reins.
And then Fiore burst out the back of the mêlée. I was right behind him, and there was Lapot, waving our banner, and Stefanos, of all people, who had threaded the whole fight, and to whom I gave the German knight’s horse.
I could see the Imperial banner, but it was further away, and a second squadron of lifeguards waited. They were watching us.
I turned and plunged back through the knights we’d charged. There was no other choice – the Emperor was too far away, too well-guarded.
A trumpet was blowing behind me, and the German knights began to fall back on their trumpeter, rallying back to the first squadron.
Stefanos blew his horn – perhaps in emulation, or mockery. But our people came together, and we had not done too badly – a dozen empty saddles. We closed.
Gabriel was tired. I could tell.
I looked back. Cangrande della Scala was still locked up against the Bavarians. But the Imperial banner was retiring. The lifeguards, if that’s who we fought, were going with the banner.
We turned our jaded horses, and trotted heavily towards the flank of the Bavarians. The shieldless flank. But we were just too slow, and before our weary horses could trot across the dusty ground, the Veronese broke out the back of the mêlée. In seconds, the Bavarians were gone, flowing away like water from a broken bowl. We swept in, but we only caught a few. I took a single prisoner, a young knight who, braver, or more foolish, thought he’d go sword to sword with an Englishman. He seemed to know all my tricks, and I could neither put my pommel into his teeth, nor get it behind his neck for a throw; likewise, I baffled his thrusts and cuts. We went round and round, our tired horses flagging, Gabriel’s proud tail drooping. The lad was good.
No one interrupted us. I didn’t know it, but we were probably the last men fighting.
At last, perhaps because I was bigger and had worn him down, he attempted to make two cuts in one time. It’s a common error – I’ve done it myself. He cut fendente, and then he tried to cut reverso in the next tempo. But he was tired and, by then, slow. I covered the first over my head, and had all the time in the world to countercut, a heavy blow, right onto his sword hand. I didn’t penetrate his iron gauntlet, but I broke all his fingers, and his sword fell away.
‘Je se rendre,’ he said.
I led him back to camp to the cheers of the Veronese. They had prisoners of their own, and Cangrande, who was as chivalrous as a tyrant could be, had had the fight he wanted, with good German knights. Indeed, everyone in our camp was in high spirits; we’d faced the Imperial army and driven them off. Our casualties were absurdly light and, indeed, so were the Imperial casualties. The Papal army took all the losses, and even there, fewer than a thousand men fell – nine hundred of them, I’d guess, to English and Turkish arrows. It was an archers’ battle. In the centre, the Imperial rush at the bastide had met with the volleys of the Milanese handgonners, and the stench of sulphur covered the battlefield, but few enough of the imperials had fallen.
What I didn’t know until I was back at my pavilion, sending an exhausted Stefanos to find bedding for my prisoner, was that the Imperial army had, in fact, breached the walls of the bastide. They had broken a body of Milanese guildsmen standing in front of the palisade, and then, using swords and axes, they had cut their way into the fort. Only a dozen got in, but it was close. Hawkwo
od said later that it sounded as if, had we not cracked the Papal troops, the Emperor might, in fact, have taken the bastide.
Well. He didn’t. It wasn’t really a battle – not the ‘good, fat war’ that Antonio had predicted. It was bloody and hellish for a few minutes, but it was the first meeting of the two great antagonists, and neither was willing to risk the throw. The Milanese still hadn’t committed their resources, and the Emperor wasn’t sure what he was willing to risk.
Still, it was the ‘great war’ that everyone had predicted. The Pope, the Emperor, Florence, England, and even France were committed. Milan had won the first skirmish, and while the Emperor had not suffered, the Pope had certainly lost.
The war was hot. Or so we all thought.
And so, that night, in Bernabò’s great pavilion, a dozen of us sat around, looking at the little clay pots that the German handgonners had thrown. Several of them were taken intact, because the fuses burned down and didn’t ignite the black powder inside. I had seen similar devilish devices in Outremer. The Mamluks and Greeks both had them full of Greek fire, but I had never seen them explode, and Andy Belmont led us all outside and set one off.
Then we went back to meet with Bernabò, expecting an exhortation; Hawkwood hoped to be ordered to raise five hundred lances. We feasted our prisoners, and drank deep, and Bernabò did praise Sir John. Then he dismissed us, but when the pavilion was cleared of the captains, Bernabò’s pages came and begged us – that is, Sir John, and Andy Belmont, and me – to stay.
Bernabò went out, into his double-belled private pavilion, like a silk and canvas palace. He came back with a woman whose beauty, by the light of his silver hanging lamps, was almost absurd: blonde hair, of course, and pouting lips, and eyes so bright that nightshade might have been involved. Her waist was tiny – her figure resembled that which limners often give to Mary Magdalene and seldom give the Virgin. I felt for a moment I knew her from somewhere; her face was familiar.
He had his hand on her back, and his caresses were too intimate for public company, but he was Bernabò Visconti, and such concerns meant nothing to him. It was, somehow, all the more difficult because instead of fondling his leman in front of forty men, as he had done before, there were just the three of us: Andy Belmont and John Hawkwood and me.
She made a little sound, somewhere between a sigh and a moan, as his hand went down her back. It was obvious that she wore nothing under her silken kirtle.
‘The Duke of Clarence will want all the English,’ Bernabò said, without preamble.
The girl’s eyes rolled a little. Bernabò had one of her hands, and he caressed the wrist, and a spot of colour appeared on her throat.
Hawkwood cleared his throat. ‘What are your orders for tomorrow?’ he asked.
Bernabò leaned down and whispered something to the girl, and then kissed her ear.
‘Tomorrow we ride to the wedding,’ he said. His deep voice was even rougher than usual. It seemed possible that he was going to take the woman right in front of us. I could not look at her. My embarrassment was acute; under the embarrassment was anger. He was doing this deliberately, and I couldn’t imagine why, and I could only think of Father Pierre Thomas, and Fra Peter Mortimer, and even the Green Count.
‘Wedding?’ Belmont asked. I looked at him, and he was watching the girl.
Our eyes met, and Andy winked, and somehow, I felt a little more steady. Andy’s amusement was the proper response, and I was acting like a nun meeting a fille publique.
I admit my first thought was that ‘wedding’ was some code, or an allusion. It took me ten heartbeats to remember that the Green Count, Prince Lionel, my wife, and most of the literati of Europe, were making their way to Milan for the wedding of the century.
I suppose I had imagined that war was important – special, somehow. That once the ‘good, fat war’ was launched, we would be hotly engaged in ‘important’ campaigns.
‘I want all your Englishmen,’ he said. His hand passed across one of her breasts, and the woman was less than perfectly pleased. Her body stiffened, and she turned slightly.
The spell was broken.
‘You want my whole company?’ Hawkwood asked.
‘Of course,’ Bernabò said, bored with his game. ‘The prince will only have a dozen knights with him – he will need an escort, and jousters for the tournaments, and he may need protection …’
I leaned forward. ‘Protection, my lord?’ I said.
Bernabò’s burning eyes turned on me, and his bony brow glowed with sweat. ‘Perhaps I misspoke,’ he said, with a smile. ‘You have met my nephew? Gian Galeazzo?’
Hawkwood frowned. ‘What possible threat could there be to the Duke of Clarence at his own wedding?’
Bernabò laughed. ‘Ask Antonio,’ he said. ‘But be ready to ride in the morning. Don’t worry about clothes. Galeazzo will have everything for you.’
We rode into Pavia as victors from the field of battle, leading the whole of what had, at various times, been the White Company, the Company of Saint George, and a few other names. Our armour was polished, and most men’s surcoats were still bright, and the horse tack was not bad.
We made a brave show. And we had a fine day. The sun shone down on us, and made our spears and armour glitter like the stars of Heaven, or so I heard Maestro Villani describe it.
But the sullen population didn’t cheer us. They had all been mustered at the other gate, the Turin gate, to cheer the English prince and the Count of Savoy.
As it was, our parties met in the middle of the city, under the grim walls of the old stone fortress, and our company enfolded theirs in a steel embrace. The last five leagues to Pavia I had been in a ferment of worry. No sooner did I let go of the war behind me than I returned, in my head, to worries about the count, about Camus, about Robert of Geneva.
And truth to tell, gentles, I am not usually much given to such worries. That is, I am not a man for revenge. Oh, perhaps, if some man fouls me in a mêlée, I will return the favour, especially in the heat of anger. I am no better than the next knight at turning the other cheek, and I read portions of the Gospel with some shame.
But without the hot blood, I can rarely rouse myself to anger when cold. Even with d’Herblay, who did me as much harm, I think, as any man could, I did not plot against him, and when he was under my sword, or rather, my poleaxe, I still didn’t kill him.
But the killing of young Demetrios was a terrible thing. It is difficult to describe; it makes my skin crawl even now. It is like the crucifixion of the old pilgrim on the Bolsena road – an act outside of the bounds of violence. To use poison … it is cowardly, base, and also, to my mind, far worse than a sword thrust. A sword thrust will only injure the intended target, but a cup of poison may strike at anyone, including a twelve-year-old boy. I had known Camus was capable of anything – the mad criminal attacked the Pope’s legate on the very steps of the Papal palace in Avignon, for goodness’ sake – but the crucifixion of the pilgrim told me that Camus was like the inmates at Bedlam: he had not done this terrible, blasphemous thing to frighten us. In fact, it might very well have been that we’d miss his work altogether. He did it because he enjoyed it. Likewise the attempted poisoning of the count.
So, for the first time, I considered something like murder. Revenge – pure and simple. Knowing that he would be at Milan, I began to prepare myself: to meet him, to listen to Robert of Geneva, to deal with the Prince of Achaea. I’m glad I was thinking of these things because, although I had no idea how bad the wedding would be, I was, in my head at least, a little prepared.
Pavia was almost pleasant. We enveloped the wedding party, and there was Emile, dressed in blue, on a pale gold horse that matched her hair, and she was not ashamed to embrace me in front of all the noblemen and women of her party. And I was next embraced by Richard Musard.
‘Damn, I am glad to see you, brother,’ he said, as his hor
se and mine tried to chew affectionately on each other’s bits.
‘Bad?’ I asked.
His eyes said not here.
I bowed in the saddle to the count and he smiled, a broad, natural smile.
‘Covered in laurels, eh, messer?’ he called out, and waved his hand vaguely, in the way of great noblemen everywhere.
Heralds in the Visconti arms began to call out for ‘the Companions’ – meaning ‘the English’ – to follow them to their billets.
We brought the whole of the company: almost a hundred lances, both of the Birigucci brothers, as well as Francesco Gatelussi, Antonio Visconti and a dozen other Italian men-at-arms who followed John Hawkwood. We had Picard archers and Flemish archers and Breton knights and Norman men-at-arms; we had a dozen Gascons, a smattering of Germans left over from the days when Albert Sterz commanded the company. We had four Hungarians, we’d picked up two Turks from Mehmet Ali’s company, and we had a dozen Greeks and a single Egyptian who had followed Lapot all the way from Alexandria to Pavia. And Janet – you’ll remember Janet. She entered Pavia on horseback, in her armour. A woman, and a French woman at that.
But we were, nonetheless, ‘the English’. Everyone called us English – even Salim, the Egyptian boy, was openly called English by Bernabò. And years of fighting together, men and women, of whatever actual nation, had welded us into a single body. We gave orders in French; we argued about food in Italian; we sang songs in English.
I mention this here because, despite our apparent polyglot nature, we were impenetrable, and the wedding showed us just how essential that impenetrability was. Every man and women, from captain to slattern, knew each other. It was impossible for a stranger to penetrate our ranks, or our camp, or our kitchens.
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