But we were very close, and the nearest man threw a heavy blow from inexperience or the confusion of darkness – or both. His blow was out of distance, and so heavy that his point struck the cobbles in front of me and sparks flew.
I had slowed too much for the length of my stride to reach his blade – stepping on your opponent’s blade is a wonderful disarm, and the sole of your boot is the best armour you have when you have no armour. But I got close and cut down into his blade and then rotated the sword on its own axis to unlock the edges and flick a small cut straight at him along the centre-line, and he lost control of his sword and gave a sort of scream. I assume I’d cut his left hand, or severed a finger or two. I kept going forward, put my sword arm around his throat, and threw him to the ground.
Fiore liked to tell us, Just walk through him, and I did.
Impetus carried me past them. I whirled in time to catch a strike to the crown of my head. It was too dark for cunning. I cut at my opponent hard, then had to change gardes and make a cover, and I knew I was taking too long. This was the man in the fitted clothes; he was better than just competent.
He cut at my head again, but it was a feint, to which I was supposed to be conditioned by his first cut. He went from fendente to reverso in a magnificent hand-cross, and I was with him through both attacks and covered, but I made the mistake of returning my attack in the same line he’d made his, and he covered in turn.
All this in perhaps twenty beats of my heart.
Nerio was fighting both of the others, so that we were reversed; Nerio and I were on either side of our three opponents, who were together in a clump in the middle of the cobbled street.
I had a moment of the clarity that comes to you when you have some fortuna in a fight and I took a long gliding step to my left, my feet feeling for the irregularity of the cobblestones. I was in luck, my footing held, and I made a feint thrust from a low garde against my adversary and then, having got my blade up, cut into the meat of the thigh of one of Nerio’s opponents from behind.
And then, as fast as a man could draw breath—
My own opponent thrust at me and I cut into his blade—
Nerio killed him with a straight thrust to his temple—
I cut back out of my parry at Nerio’s second opponent. My blade ticked into his, the edges caught, and something failed – perhaps his parry was weak, or perhaps he had intended to make a feint and not a cover … I have seen all these things happen. My blade kept going even though he’d made his cover, and bit into his chest across his hands because of his weak parry. He gave a sort of squeak and fell to his knees. I kicked him as hard as I could before the fire of the combat left me, and he collapsed.
‘A l’arme!’ I roared again.
‘Kill them!’ shouted a voice in Gascon French. ‘Get it done. Now!’
And a volley of orders in French and another language.
The houses around us seemed to vomit men. It was a flood, and many had torches; the light inside open doors threw light into the narrow street.
A crossbow bolt whispered past my face, a reminder of mortality, and buried itself in the first man I’d thrown to the ground. I would like to say it killed him instantly but the result was the opposite; it struck his groin and he screamed. There were other sounds, and all of it became the utter confusion of a fight.
I think I’m the one who decided to fight all these new men. A door opened, a man was silhouetted against the light, and I stabbed him. In retrospect, I might have killed an innocent townsman.
But I didn’t.
‘A l’arme!’ I called again. I had no idea where the queen might be, or the marshal, or really, even how many opponents I had.
I kept moving, and so did Nerio, and from the habit of fighting together we ended up together, moving east along the moat. The hidden crossbowmen were still loosing bolts, but we were not in their sights. The men running down the street, and there seemed no end of them, were still unaware of us.
Best of all, men in the area we fled began fighting each other.
It was dark.
I was trying not to kill. I knew at least one of our opponents was dead; the man screaming was in a bad way, and the first man leaving a house got a foot of the emperor’s sword in his abdomen before I gave the matter much thought. Enough killing to swing for it or face the headsman’s axe, and yet I was still trying not to kill.
Nerio was not nearly as fastidious. He had his blade at mid-sword with his gloved left hand, and he used it like a two-handed dagger in the dark, and he was killing. And as one of the commanding voices mastered the panic of the mob and rallied them against us, I too began to kill or maim; thrusts, because they were less likely to catch in bone and often drop your opponent faster, and because thrusts can be deceptive in the darkness. And some of my blows were near to assassinations, against men who scarce knew I was there.
We cut, thrust, and ducked; broke down a gate, hopped a wall, and were hemmed into a small square, no bigger than the fountain in the centre and room to swing a sword, with tall stone houses all around us and four alleys leading away. I got my back to the fountain.
They had torches all around us.
‘Why don’t you throw down your swords,’ said a man. He had his thumbs in his sword belt and seemed very much at ease. His accent was odd. I knew it …
‘And what?’ I asked. Someone didn’t believe in truces; a sword flickered like a flame in the torchlight. Nerio slapped it up with a rising parry and then cut back down and something warm struck my cheek. A man bleated ‘Christ, my hand!’ and another fell back, leaving several feet of space between me and the next bastard.
‘And I’ll have you dragged to death over the cobbles by our horses,’ the man said. He laughed. ‘Stay back, you fools. Let the crossbows knock them down and then you can all avenge your friends. Make way there.’
He was a dozen feet from me, and in the dark, that was a mile. I still wasn’t placing that accent and I couldn’t see his face.
‘I want you to know who I am,’ he said loudly. ‘Guillaume Gold! Do you know me?’ he called out.
A man grunted. Nerio was ignoring the talking too. He’d just stabbed someone who fell to his knees.
I got low and then stepped up on the lip of the basin of the fountain and leapt across the open water. It wasn’t far, and I was on the other side of the fountain, by Nerio.
‘It’s me,’ I said as I landed, hoping not to get skewered by Nerio, and I thrust. When my man parried, I won the crossing of the swords and stepped past him, took the hilt of his sword between his hands, pounded my pommel into his face so he dropped, and cut with his sword – now in my left fist – at the man behind him, whose sword was trapped by the press at waist height. I cut him hard.
Nerio was, I know now, down at knee height, stabbing in the dark at feet. It’s unchivalrous, but so are odds of twenty to two.
‘You curs!’ shouted our talkative adversary. I didn’t know whether he meant us or his own men.
I left the borrowed long sword in a man, grappled an arm and broke it at the elbow, used my pommel and quillons as viciously as Fiore might ever have wanted, and broke out of the press like a drowning man coming up for air on a beach. I was perhaps ten paces down one of the alleys, and Nerio cursed in Italian hard by me.
Together we moved along the alley. But instead of carrying us to freedom, it led us back into the street from which we’d started, still full of men. The first man I’d dropped was still screeching, his arms and legs slamming the cobbles with a fury that seemed impossible from a dying man, and his own mates made no attempt to help him. He was perhaps forty paces to my left.
‘Moat,’ Nerio said.
It was a brilliant idea, and he suited his action to his word, and leaped for the nearest balcony, a beautiful painted wooden affair at head height and a little. As he jumped, I had time to note that there was l
ight through the shutters. I knew, in that instant, that this was the one house we should avoid, but it was too late.
He got himself up and got the shutter open one-handed – the advantages of a life lived in heavy armour. The men in the street were all coming at me, and I didn’t await their onset like a true knight; I leaped too, and got one of the cross members and swung my legs up and got pinked in the buttock for my pains. But Nerio got his hands under my armpits and raised me from the swords below me, and we went into the house, me rubbing my arse and my hand coming away wet with blood.
There was a bed, carefully made, and lights. In a house like this one, the upper floor was the main living floor; we were in the only bedchamber, where master and mistress and servants all slept, most nights, and there’d be a second room, and then probably steps down on the moat side.
I went to the door and opened it to the blaze of a well-lit room; a fire in the hearth, and two good wax candles. And the queen of Cyprus, her face as white as parchment, and the marshal with his sword drawn. I can say, although no one cares any more, that both were fully dressed, and that each had a servant in attendance.
The marshal’s sword came to my throat. I crossed it.
He didn’t look like my idea of Lancelot, even if he was playing the part.
‘Friend!’ I said.
We all knew each other well enough, despite the hour and bad lighting.
The queen put a hand to her breast. ‘Ser Guillaume,’ she said.
The marshal let me in. ‘How many out there?’ he asked. He was a soldier, and he knew the odds well enough.
‘Fifty?’ I said.
‘More like a hundred,’ Nerio said. ‘Let’s try for the moat. Your Grace,’ he said to the queen with a very courtly bow, ‘can you swim?’
The queen of Cyprus was surprisingly collected. ‘All my life,’ she said.
Nerio spoke rapidly. ‘It will be horrid – full of dead cats and worse.’ He made a face. ‘If you will strip and jump for the moat, Your Grace, and Marshal, I believe you will win clear.’
I agreed instantly. ‘No one will expect the queen of Cyprus to swim for it,’ I said.
The queen thought for a moment.
I was thinking too. ‘They don’t know which house you are in,’ I guessed.
‘We are not in the house we were supposed to be,’ the marshal said with a smile. ‘I smelled a rat. A Gascon rat.’
A stone came through the window. Nerio shook his head. ‘If they didn’t know where you were before, they can guess now,’ he said. ‘Or they’ll just follow us.’
‘If I strip to swim and am caught,’ she said clearly, ‘all will take my undress as a sign of my guilt.’
There was a roar from outside.
‘If they take you here, Your Grace,’ I said, ‘I would expect the worst, and the state of your dress will not protect you.’
She was quite a lady, the queen of Cyprus. She nodded. ‘Well,’ she said, ‘I have always admired Guinevere. I must try and do a little better than she, messires, and help save myself, I think.’ She passed me and went behind the cloth screen with her lady-in-waiting.
We were now in the back of the house, by the moat.
I poked my head out. No crossbow bolt flew. It was dark, but not full dark; moonlight and some background light from the citadel lit the walls of the moat, which, of course, smelled.
Each house had a back balcony, and some had landings closer to the canal.
There was no miraculous path to safety. I could see three balconies, and then, at the angle of the moat, there was a gap we would never have managed to cross.
‘Where do they swim to?’ I asked Nerio.
I could hear men breaking into houses to the north. That must be what we’d interrupted, up the street, when I first called the alarm. That’s why they came at us out of the houses. And despite their numbers, they were finite. They couldn’t be everywhere – they had to fear us by then, and we’d dropped at least ten of them. Fear makes your foes innumerable, but ten breaths in peace and my head was working, and I couldn’t imagine that any faction could find more than fifty thugs to carry out rough work.
Nerio was shaking his head. ‘Damn,’ he said.
As far as I could see, the canal’s walls were smooth, hard masonry. The queen could die in that cesspool, unable to climb out.
The marshal was stripped to his shirt and hose. The queen appeared in a shift, a small woman suddenly anonymous without her jewels.
Men were banging on our door down below.
‘I have a better idea,’ I said. ‘Follow me.’
I didn’t see a path to safety, but I did see a plan – a fox’s plan. The queen’s waiting woman had also stripped to her shift, and I gave her a smile and took her kirtle and gown and dropped them artfully by the back balcony, and the marshal’s doublet too. Then Nerio and I stripped two mattresses of straw off the bed and hurled them into the moat with very loud and satisfying splashes. By then the marshal was on to us. He gave me a crisp nod and followed my pointing hand. He took the queen and went from our balcony to the next, and then, without hesitation, to the next but one. The queen’s lady scooped up the queen’s gown and jewels. The queen was bold, and jumped every jump with the marshal, and her lady jumped like Atlantae herself at her heels. The marshal’s squire drew his dagger and made the first leap just as the men searching the next house burst onto the back balcony. I was last; Nerio made the jump into a mêlée, and ended it with his arrival, but the squire was badly wounded in the play and when I arrived, it was clear he’d never make the next jump.
He was very young, and he’d just taken his death wound. He lay in an angle of the balcony. The last rush of attackers had brought torches, and one burned on the wooden floor; I snatched it up.
The squire was coughing blood, as you do, when you have two feet of steel in your lungs. I left it there; he was not going to be long.
Perhaps we should have cut his throat and thrown him into the moat. But we didn’t. And there was a sudden roar in the street outside, and a man’s voice asking what we’d found.
‘They jumped into the moat!’ I called in my ready Gascon-French.
‘Where?’ asked the man at the base of the stairs. He was below me in the dark.
‘Next house!’ I shouted. ‘They are in the next house! Go south!’
‘Let me see!’ said another man, and he pushed up the steps. I let him past me onto the landing, and Nerio put a rondel dagger under his chin and up into his brainpan. His body went into the canal.
‘There goes another!’ I shouted.
‘Get them!’ said the men below me. Some said it in Greek, too. And then I heard the sound of shouting, and the clash and click of metal, the unmistakable music of sword on sword.
I looked back at the squire. He managed a smile – which, to me, put him with the Worthies.
‘Bridge of Swords,’ he said, quite clearly.
Nerio leaned over the boy and pulled the sword out of the boy’s side, and he was dead in seconds.
I ran from the back of this house to the front – perhaps three strides, the houses were so narrow – and pushed open the balcony lattice.
From my height, I could see a dozen men in the alley and a swirl of them were fighting.
Another half a dozen men were frozen in indecision.
‘King’s men!’ I shouted from my balcony. Many heads turned.
‘Run!’ I called, and jumped for the street. I hoped to provoke them to panic, but the same darkness that was keeping us alive was keeping our adversaries from running. I thought that if they saw me fleeing the house, they’d break. Mayhap, a foolish plan.
At least I was intelligent enough, or lucky enough, to catch the sill of the balcony with my hand and drop to the street, and the drop still hurt the soles of my feet. I rolled across some horse manure and got up on one kne
e with my sword in my right hand. Again, Fiore made us practise these things – leaping, rolling, even running.
The people fighting against the thugs were Fiore and Miles Stapleton, Sister Marie and Marc-Antonio, and suddenly the odds were perfect. I knew them even in the darkness; I knew their breathing and their focus and the economy of their movements, and even as I moved my attention along the street I knew that the third figure weaving behind her sword was Sister Marie and the fourth, less elegant, my squire. I rose from my roll and stabbed Fiore’s opponent in the back, perhaps unnecessarily. Moving to the right across the street, I pulled my blade free and pommeled Sister Marie’s man in the temple. She used her left hand to turn Marc-Antonio’s opponent; Marc-Antonio went close, seized his sword, and kicked him viciously between the legs.
‘Friends!’ I called in Italian.
In my peripheral vision I saw Nerio jump from the balcony.
Now the dozen men in the alley had to face the six of us. I do not remember exactly what I did, but I remember the spirit, the feeling that every move of my body was in rhythm to my friends’. I remember Nerio making a low parry and Sister Marie kicking his opponent in the back, knocking him flat; I remember Fiore making a cover over his head against a falling blow, pommeling one opponent and then stabbing the man behind him with a smooth turn of his body on the balls of his feet.
It was beautiful, for a few beats of my heart. It was not a contest; nor did ten breaths pass before the survivors broke.
One unlucky fellow lay under Fiore’s boot. Fiore’s sword was at his throat. All his friends had fled.
If such men have friends.
Sister Marie knelt by one of the dead men and began to pray.
‘Friends!’ I said.
‘What?’ Fiore asked, panting. He glanced at the man under his foot and then killed him.
‘Where?’ Stapleton asked. His eyes almost glowed.
‘I called the watch,’ Sister Marie said, with her usual good sense. She was off her knees and moving. She made the sign of the cross over Fiore’s man and then looked at him. ‘Was that necessary?’ she asked.
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