by David Gilman
The centuries-old ruined tower that offered shelter for their horses also half concealed another soldier. Like the men in the grass it was hard to tell if he was a knight or a common soldier. Each wore a mail coif to protect head and shoulders over padded jerkins with Blackstone’s armorial device – a symbol more potent than many a priest’s admonition. Pieces of armour on thigh, arm and shoulder gave each of the seasoned fighters agility. Over the years they had taken prized weapons from those they killed, but their greatest weapon was the reputation that went before them.
‘The dwarf is an omen!’ Killbere said as he stepped from the ruin’s shade. He dressed no differently from the others, despite his seniority and the fact that he was a knight of long standing, and had been Blackstone’s sworn lord when the young Englishman had first gone to war. Killbere’s beard had silken threads of white; his hair, cut close to his scalp, was peppered with grey. He was a ferocious fighter well able to rally men to hurl themselves against an enemy of greater strength. ‘Superstition goes hand in hand with the mystery of Christ and his angels.’ He grinned at the lounging men and then turned his gaze to where the saddled donkey stood tethered in the olive grove. Sitting patiently like a child, but with an old man’s face, the dwarf was dressed in a fine cloth tunic with bone buttons. A soft velvet cap sat jauntily on the misshapen head, which seemed too big for his stunted body, and a pair of fine, hand-made boots graced the feet now dangling from the rock where he sat. Dwarfs were common enough in rich households: they seemed to have a calming effect on horses, and men of wealth and status often had an entourage of these small men dressed in fine livery.
‘Dwarfs can be bad luck as well,’ said Elfred, and spat. ‘Devil’s imps.’
‘Good luck, too, though, ’specially when he serves a priest,’ countered Will Longdon. ‘And a rich one at that.’
‘You’d as soon lie in a graveyard with a whore than believe in the power of the devil,’ said Perinne.
‘Only if it were a priest’s whore for good luck!’ Longdon answered. ‘And I’d rattle her bones enough to wake the dead!’
The men laughed, but they all glanced uncertainly towards the dwarf, who seemed unconcerned at their deliberations. He had delivered his message from his master – the Florentine priest Niccolò Torellini, who served the Bardi banking family – and what these men did was of no concern to him. He waited, as would any servant, out of earshot and disinterested, for Sir Thomas Blackstone’s answer.
‘Father Torellini saved my family before Poitiers. He secured them sanctuary with the Pope at Avignon,’ Blackstone told them, glancing at John Jacob, who had accompanied Blackstone’s wife Christiana and the children on that ill-fated journey and who had slit the throat of the man who had raped her.
‘He did,’ John Jacob agreed. ‘And like Sir Thomas says, we’ve sold our sword to his master and been paid well. We’re of great value to them here.’ He hesitated. ‘Still,’ he said, looking at Blackstone, ‘it must strike you as odd that a priest from Florence is now hiding in a church in Lucca, an enemy city. And sends for you.’
‘His own master, Bardi of Florence, pays our contract. What cause is there for him to betray me now?’ asked Blackstone.
‘Unless someone’s made him a better offer for your head,’ said Killbere. ‘These are different than the lords we served in England or France,’ he added, nodding acknowledgement towards the Frenchmen among Blackstone’s command, ‘they at least swore fealty and held a sword in anger. These rich cities buy their protection from us, and others like us, and we do the killing and the dying. Money-men should never be trusted, Thomas. They serve a different god from the rest of us.’
Killbere stood in the middle of the men and levelled his gaze on the younger man. He placed a hand on his shoulder in friendship and concern. ‘You’re an outlaw, Thomas. There’s many a man who believes that killing you would please the Prince of Wales. Italians have dealings with the Kings of Europe. If it were up to me I’d have the dwarf on a spit and burn the truth out of him. We’d soon see where the truth lies. Devil or priest’s messenger, you’d soon know.’
Blackstone looked again at Lucca’s towers, looming like a barrel of spears within the city’s walls, each one proclaiming its owner’s power. Rich and wealthy families built their towers on a piazza, with a house attached and another tower on another corner, securing their safety. Streets were controlled by rival gangs who made their allegiances to wealthy households, wriggling loyalties that slithered through dark alleys where enemies plunged knife and sword into unwary victims. But the Lucchese were known for buying off their enemies and allowing themselves to be protected by stronger city republics. They were shielded by a powerful allegiance with Pisa and Milan, enemies of Florence. Capture Thomas Blackstone and a vital blow would be struck against the Florentines.
Blackstone was as superstitious as the next man. There was a god to be feared, but he wore a silver talisman of a pagan Celtic goddess around his neck. The medallion of Arianrhod had been pressed into his bloodied hands years before by a mortally wounded Welsh archer during the street fighting in Caen – and she had protected him ever since.
‘The dwarf is an omen,’ warned Gaillard.
Blackstone considered the men’s trepidation. He smiled. ‘Like the Valley of Lost Souls,’ he said to them.
‘Oh, blood of Christ, Thomas,’ groaned Killbere.
The others uttered no comment but each made a small gesture of embarrassment or winced at the memory that Blackstone had evoked.
When Blackstone had brought his men across the Alps and down into Tuscany they had made camp in the scented hills on their approach to Florence. As darkness fell a flickering light appeared, soon joined by a dozen more, and then thirty and then a hundred. They appeared from bush and tree, floating towards the men. Struck with a terror of the supernatural, the men had watched in silent awe. Legend said that the valley had once been a place of great slaughter and was haunted by a thousand souls who had died without the comfort of sacrament or priest. Dispossessed, they searched for unsuspecting travellers to become their host. Blackstone had felt the chilled blade of fear cut down his spine as the flickering lights swarmed: revenants, the walking dead, unshriven ghosts desperate to take over a man’s body and to be reanimated by demons. Men drew in breath and unsheathed swords, making the sign of the cross as they prepared to defend themselves against the malevolent spirits. Blackstone and his company were in a strange land and he knew that if unknown curses and myths were to halt them at every turn they would be no use as fighting men. As his men held back Blackstone stepped into the blinking lights and let them swirl about him. Men swore and prayed in the same breath and begged him to turn back. Blackstone reached out a hand into the pulsating light. He watched one settle and then closed his fist.
A flaming torch revealed a small fly crushed in his hand. No blood or blister showed, no wound or incision, no entry into his body to take over his soul. They soon learnt that they were nothing more than fireflies and, as everyone knew, fireflies were simply the souls of unbaptized children seized by angels. The men’s embarrassment knew no bounds until drink and fighting had cleansed them of it.
If the dwarf had not been sent by sorcerer or enemy to lure him into the city of towers, then Father Niccolò Torellini needed his help.
Killbere knew the argument was lost. ‘At least let me come with you. I speak this Tuscan tongue better than most.’
‘You have as much skill with the language as Will Longdon who curses in it fluently,’ Blackstone answered. ‘I’ll go alone and the rest of you will wait in the hills for two days and then go back to the men. One way or another you will know what happens.’ He glanced towards the dwarf. ‘Hold him. If it is a trap, pay him a gold florin and let him go.’
‘What?’ said John Jacob. ‘Free the dwarf with a reward if you’re taken?’
Killbere smiled. He knew how Blackstone thought. ‘And then we follow him and kill the sons of whores who laid the trap.’
5
There were several gates into the city from which the garrison soldiers on the high walls could clearly see the approach roads across the open plain that might bring an enemy. Danger lay outside the walls. Money had bought safety for the Lucchese. A law had long since been passed that stopped any of the ambitious men in the city from building their fortress-like villas within six miles of the city. The oligarchs were allowed their tower houses within and their villas in the hills. No private army could ever be gathered close to Lucca, which blunted any ambitious merchants’ power-hungry desires.
Soon after dawn threw its light across the great plain, Blackstone waited with Killbere and Meulon in the foothills, identifying which gate might offer him the best chance of entering the city. Their breath plumed in the chilled air: there had been a frost, but it would soon melt in the warmth of the early spring sunshine.
‘Avoid the south-east port, Thomas,’ Killbere said as Blackstone pulled a coarse cloth shirt over his head. ‘That’s the road that leads to Florence. They’ll have extra eyes there. Go further around the walls to the Gate of the Foreigners. There will be many wishing to enter the city. The Duomo is close by. It’s a good landmark from which to get your bearings.’
He saw where Killbere pointed. A steady stream of farmers was already using the narrow road to trundle their produce into the city. And they seemed to be moving through the high gates without being stopped. From where they stood they could see three of the approaches into Lucca. Traffic was moving slowly on the other two roads where small overladen carts of caged livestock, escorted by men and women bearing baskets of produce, were backed up as sentries at the gate impeded their advance.
‘They may have extra eyes, Gilbert, but they’re not searching too closely. It’s the other ports into the city they’re checking. If it is a trap they’re expecting me to avoid the road from Florence. I’ll go in there.’
*
Elfred and Will Longdon had relieved a peasant farmer of his heavy bundle of firewood, paying him more than its worth. Despite its weight and size Blackstone could have carried twice as much with ease, but as he got closer to the imposing towers that flanked the high gates, he bent his back and altered his stride to a shuffle.
From beneath his cowl he glanced furtively left and right. The huddle of people jostling towards the entrance to the city, and their constant chatter and shouts as they greeted each other and barracked the soldiers to let them through, all helped to conceal the stooping figure carrying the oversized load of wood. There were others with similar loads: fuel to feed the cooking fires and furnaces of the smelting guilds. Others trundled handcarts laden with caged ducks and chickens, pitted wheels rumbling over the uneven road, jostling for a place as pig herders swore and flicked their grunting charges with switches. The walls were over thirty feet high, built of cut sandstone, deep and unyielding, with blocks of limestone spaced horizontally between them that accentuated the curve of the arch. The watchtowers were higher still. A massive double archway, itself twenty feet or more in height, held the double gates and portcullis. If an army made an assault, Blackstone thought, it would take more siege engines than he had heard of in Italy to smash through. He saw crossbowmen on the walls, but their weapons were held casually, without intent. They were garrison soldiers, unused to close-quarter battle. The only weapon he carried was a knife in his waistband that would be lethal in his hands, but the confines of the city’s passageways meant that garrison troops could overpower and kill him if they were numerous enough.
At the entrance of Porta San Gervasio he reached the narrow footbridge that spanned the canal: it was only a few feet wide. He felt the worn timbers of the lowered drawbridge beneath his feet. This was the most dangerous moment. Farmers were funnelling into the archway, pressed shoulder to shoulder, close to the sentries on either side. The stone-lined stream was as ancient as some of the city’s Roman walls and men and women were plunging folds of material into the water, tanning the fabrics. Two of the women tanners began to argue, their voices pitched high in anger as one grabbed yards of fabric from another, and in the tussle a length of cloth fell into the stream. No sooner had one of the women reached for it than she slipped and the situation quickly escalated; a man pulled the second woman away and slapped her hard. The queue of farmers shuffled almost to a halt as two of the sentries strode towards them to restore order. Blackstone edged forward, taking advantage of the distraction. A woman in front of him struggled with a heavy hand basket as she was jostled. She cursed to another, but Blackstone quickly lifted the basket and muttered an offer to help. His back was so bent his face barely reached her chest; the cowl kept his scarred face from view. By the time she had muttered her thanks and begun a diatribe against the amount of time it took to get into the city these days, the line had quickly passed under the raised portcullis. The sentries looked past him, their eyes scanning the crowd, uninterested in a peasant bent double, or his woman companion who chattered like a caged bird.
The fetid narrow chiassi swallowed the crowds, each alley filtering the peasants away to the different piazzas where they would set up their stalls. Blackstone straightened his back. The sky was pierced by tower after tower, a forest of neatly cut stone blocks of granite and limestone, built up with narrow clay bricks that soared skywards. Some had covered balconies at their summit; most had four- or five-storey houses attached to them. He admired the thinking behind them, for there were no outside stairs from which to gain access. A perfect defence, unless an enemy managed to hurl a torch through one of the first-floor windows.
The dwarf had scratched an outline of the ancient city in the dirt. No street bore a name, only the churches, built by the wealthy, who claimed a piazza as their own territory and would then build a private chapel across from their homes, only a few paces away, so they could walk quickly into its sanctuary without fear of assault from rival gangs that supported other families. Blackstone was quickly lost. He cursed to himself. He needed the sky and the touch of breeze on his face to find his way.
Follow your nose, the dwarf had instructed him. Beyond where the iron pots are made, he was to go past the nearest church, then there would be the stench of leather workers; the guildsman’s church would be at his right shoulder, another piazza lay to the east, with the place he sought pressed against the north wall. The figure of Christ would beckon him. That was where Father Torellini waited.
The hard-baked dirt street led to a darkened passage. He eased the rope supports from his shoulders, dropped the bundle and stepped clear. Glancing down through the funnels of shadows, he saw light penetrating onto small piazzas, some of them barely thirty feet wide. A darkened doorway led into a courtyard, from which he heard voices tumbling from the rooms above. And something else – a steady rhythmic sound that he realized could be heard throughout the alleyways and streets. He looked up at open windows that allowed what little air there was to pass through the buildings. The heat and stench of thousands of people crowded into a walled city, woodsmoke from the fires, the foulness of open drains and the acrid smell of small foundries clung like a miasma to the confined walls. The rhythms he heard fought against themselves like a confused sea of sound. He remembered Torellini had told him there were more than three thousand looms in the city, so great was its world trade in silk. No wonder the Lucchese could buy their way out of conflict. That was what he heard. Looms: the heartbeat of the city. It seemed that every floor of every house released the sound of its promise of wealth. Blackstone felt a breeze waft down an alleyway to his right. That’s where the foundry smell came from.
Instinct guided him. Where each chiasso broadened into a square, groups of armed men lounged idly. Some sat with their backs against the wall, others leaned, talked, gestured, argued or laughed. Some taunted others across the piazza, trading insults. But the violence was confined to verbal abuse. These were family gangs, holding their own territory. Blackstone avoided them all, sometimes retracing his steps, finding another passageway, leaving behind another cac
ophony of metal being beaten into pots. The city reminded him of Paris, though Lucca, as far as he could see, had no wide streets; however, guildsmen were belligerent no matter in what bramble patch of a city a man found himself. Trespass and you would feel their resentment at the end of a club or knife.
A dancing bear, chained by a ring through its nose, reared up as a crowd quickly stepped back, amazed at the size of the beast. Coins tinkled in appreciation, and acrobats turned somersaults in the air. A flurry of activity made him press his back into an alcove. A dozen armed young men full of bravado were pushing people aside as they made their way towards him. Was this the trap or a belligerent personal feud between gangs to be settled? There was no point in risking discovery, so he pushed open the door at his back. Voices and laughter echoed from walls that held sconces lighting the steps leading below. Blackstone quickly closed the door and followed the passage downwards. He turned into a basement with an arched roof and sturdy pillars that supported it. Washed-out images on the walls proved to be ancient frescoes of men and women. Fragrant oils clung to the Roman bricks so neatly laid that his stonemason’s eye recognized the work of a master builder centuries earlier. Figures moved in the half-light; a splash of water, a woman’s squeal and a man’s voice bellowing with laughter. The air was heavy and he realized why the fragrance was so strong – it was to diffuse the heavy smell of human sweat. Something touched his arm, making him turn quickly. A woman gazed up at him. She wore a fine silk drape over one shoulder, her breasts exposed. They pressed against him.
‘This place welcomes every man who can pay, but there are those present who would object to a man of low class being here. Men of more affluence usually honour us.’