The Green Count

by Christian Cameron

  It is more complicated than that, though. Look – most of the men at this table have led companies. What is the most essential prerequisite of leadership? I ask you. And I leave aside money, Master Chaucer, although I agree that money makes a leader better and easier in every way.

  I want to say that it is the ability to praise. Praise is the gold that glues men together. Oh, discipline is all very well, but sullen discipline won’t get a pack of curs to bite the enemy, nor to stand up to better men and die, if that’s what is required.

  But love will. Be a man never so humble, never so squalid, never so ill-used, praise and love will make him fight better than shouts and blows. The praise must be accurate; the love must be genuine. There must be punishment for transgression, with justice; and the punished man must know that having been punished, he is once again a member of the company.

  Really, it’s not different from how you raise a child. Sir Jesus would have made a fine captain; look at how he managed his useless pack of disciples, and not a good man amongst them, unless maybe it was Saint Peter or his own brother James. But he led them well, and in the end, they changed the world after he was dead – the very best thing you can say about a captain.

  You think I’m far from my mark, eh, lass? But Fiore had no praise in him. Or not much. He wanted to be perfect, in himself; thus he only saw flaws in folk, including his own self. Men in our little company worshipped him for his skills that could keep them alive, but they feared him, and none of them wanted to follow him across an alley, much less into battle.

  Nerio and I had a complex little negotiation in those hours, too. He had his own needs in Romania, which is what we called all that was left of the old Eastern Empire. But he agreed that the taking of the emperor outweighed his immediate needs. Still, we signed a contract; I had the captaincy of twenty lances, dated from the first week after the rescue of the emperor or my release by the Prince of Lesvos.

  You may think that odd, between men who owed each other their lives ten times, but good walls make good neighbours, and like Sir Richard telling me straight that he was the prince’s captain and I was not, I didn’t want Nerio fretting. At the same time, I now had two contracts, one after another; my little company’s future was assured. Twenty lances meant twenty knights, twenty squires in harness, twenty archers and twenty pages. As of that morning, I had the archers, was only a few short on the pages, but I lacked the knights or squires.

  So while Emile and Marc-Antonio packed me a pair of bags and a wicker basket of armour, I approached our two Greek knights, Syr Giannis and Syr Giorgios. As they had converted, they were in a difficult place; to be honest, I think that they had expected to be taken on by the knights at Rhodes, but the Grand Master was not fond of Greeks. Any road, they agreed to serve with their stradiotes at least until the emperor was rescued.

  And so, I had a sort of compagnia. I was too new to being a captain to realise that it was always like this – makeshift, with men coming and going. Let me tell you, gentles, that you no sooner bring any body of men to perfection than you fight someone, your best archer is killed, another is wounded and turns to drink, your best lance finds a lass and chases her to France, and you have to start again. That, too, is the life of arms.

  Bah. Leave it there.

  In a few hours, I had two signed contracts, both for sizeable amounts of money, and I arranged that Miles would collect our advance from the Prince and pay it out in wages. I borrowed money against my own part of the contract and handed Nerio half.

  He still couldn’t get money.

  I had never, in all our time together, loaned him a copper. He took my little bag of gold and silver as if it was full of dung, and he shook his head, his demeanour downcast.

  ‘I will repay this!’ he swore.

  ‘Why bother?’ I asked. ‘It’s less than a tenth of what I owe you.’

  That shut him up.

  And there I was kissing Emile, shaking hands gravely with Edouard, kissing Isabelle, and bouncing Magdalena on my knee.

  Emile took me aside. ‘I won’t ask you to be safe,’ she said. ‘Or brave. You won’t be the first, you will be the second, will ye, nill ye.’ She smiled. ‘But I will ask you to do your very best to win peace with my lord, the Count of Savoy. If he values you, my love, our lives become … possible.’

  The Count of Savoy. The Green Count. Robert of Geneva’s cousin.

  I kissed her again. ‘I will win his love,’ I said.

  ‘For me,’ she said with a kiss. ‘When you want to hate him, think of me. Or we’ll be exiles all our lives. And we cannot always be going to Jerusalem.’

  We kissed again, and she did not cry, and neither did I. Just.

  And then we were at sea.

  The galliot was very small, as I have said. It was so light I thought perhaps a man might have lifted her; she had benches for fifty men, and the rowers were professional, local fisherman and their sons, paid in silver. The master was a Genoese, Andrea Carne, with a gold ring in his ear and a curved Turkish sword in his belt. He never had his maille shirt off his back, and as we rowed like fury along the north coast of the island and raised our sails on what he called the ‘Deep Blue’, Nerio and I came to understand that we were on a very well-run pirate ship.

  Carne was not talkative. He’d lost all four of his front teeth somewhere, and he spoke in a sibilant whisper, and his men clearly feared him. Nor was he any too happy with our present commission. When, on our second day out, a small Venetian cog passed us on the other tack, with the red lion of Saint Mark bravely at her masthead, Carne watched her with an attentiveness not unlike the lust of a sailor who has been too long at sea and sees a young woman walking by.

  His left hand played obscenely on the hilt of his scimitar. It was somewhat troubling to watch, especially as it often seemed to give away the turn of his mind; harder when he was angry, softer when he was pleased.

  Not a pretty man at all. And he didn’t like John the Kipchak; when John was by us, his hand went up and down his sword hilt like … Well, too much alike a certain action.

  Achille, Nerio’s squire, avoided him as if he had a disease. And they were both Genoese.

  But by all the Saints, he was a superb sailor. And the crew, whatever their own little ways, were professional; the ship was as clean as work could make her, and the oars were served day and night in shifts; all the metal was bright and clean, and no one shit in the bilge, pardon my language. And mayhap there are other ways to lead men – Carne scarcely spoke an order, but he was obeyed. The barest smile had to suffice for praise, and I could tell that even his Greek helmsman, a swarthy man who might have been African and had a name longer than my sword, feared Carne.

  I am not a great sailor like some I have known, although my skills were better then they had been when I’d embarked at Venice, but the navigation of our trip was beyond me. Nerio drew it on the deck with his dagger, so I remember it: we threaded the hundreds of islands in the Aegean and touched at the Venetian fortress of Negroponte, but we only took water there and stretched our legs; I ate octopus in the Venetian manner and Marc-Antonio looked homesick. Nerio had expected the Green Count to be there, and we were all disappointed, the more so as I really did not particularly want to sail any further with Maestro Carne.

  But sail we did, and then we rowed, because the wind was against us; south along the shores of Attica, and then I knew the waters well enough, having fought there the year before. Athens, but only for an hour, and we were away. By then the rowers were surly, bathed in sweat, stinking; Carne’s hand was moving constantly on his sword hilt, and I wanted to leave the ship and her pirate crew as soon as ever I could. It was so hot that it was hard to sleep on deck, and I had a hard time imagining what it was like to pull an oar for twelve hours.

  But Carne got news at Athens and we ran south past Aegina and then across the sea and around the southern tip of the Peloponnese; past t
he great rock of Monemvasia, and then we had the summer wind at our backs. The rowers groaned and lay over their oars and slept, and the heat followed us like an enemy. Somewhere, summer had overtaken us, and it was high summer at sea. The sky was clear, and the stars hung at night like a woman’s hairnet of jewels, so that I stared up at them in wonder, and almost couldn’t sleep for watching them. I had never seen so many stars, and I swear there are more stars in the Inner Sea than England ever knows.

  Two days out of Athens we fetched Modon, a port that Nerio knew well, and we landed for water. We hadn’t even closed the beach before we knew that the Green Count lay just up the coast, and that Nerio’s cousin had Marie de Bourbon, the self-styled Princess of Achaea, under siege at Jonc.

  Carne grunted.

  ‘I won’t loossse my ssship for your convenienccce, gentles,’ he spat. ‘Venessshians and Sssavoyards and a nessst of vipersss.’

  ‘We are surely the Green Count’s allies,’ I said.

  Carne glared at me.

  I’ve been glared at.

  ‘Kindly land me wherever the Green Count actually is,’ I said. ‘I believe those are your orders.’

  Carne’s eyes narrowed. His hand was all but spasming on his sword hilt.

  We just stood there.

  ‘This is my ship,’ he said.

  I shrugged. ‘Of course,’ I said, or something simple like that.

  He grunted, and in a few minutes, we were away.

  We rowed.

  I was not well-beloved of the rowers. But Carne would not raise the sail, even in a fair wind, because he didn’t want to be seen, the pirate. Still, it was only a few miles, and while we rowed north, Nerio enthralled me with a tale of a great battle fought just to the west, on the long, low island, where the Spartans were defeated by the Athenians.

  We saw the Green Count’s fleet from well off the coast; fifteen heavy galleys with the white cross on a red field, and one great galley flying a huge green silk banner and another from the stern with Saint Maurice.

  I had brought clothes for this moment, and so had Nerio.

  ‘Lay us under his stern, or close enough that you can row us over,’ I said to Carne.

  ‘Do not presume to give me orders on my own ship,’ he snapped.

  Nonetheless, he folded the wings of his oars in fine fashion and we coasted in. I could see men standing to arms on the galleys, but they had no picket ship and I wondered at their unreadiness in these waters.

  The anchor was let go into the shallow water of the Bay of Navarino with a splash and no command given – that was the way with Carne – and the little galliot fetched up against her hawser and stopped a half a ship’s length from the command galley. A dozen sweating oarsmen paid out cable until I could leap aboard the ship, with Saint Maurice in the stern.

  My heart was beating a hundred to the minute or more. In fact, I was terrified. I own it. But it was like storming a breach – best done on the fly, and not overthought. In fact, it was fear of the Count and of Richard Musard that had kept me up the night before, not the stars. I should own that, too.

  I could be facing Musard and Turenne, and perhaps the Hungarian, too, all in one ship. And I had to go unarmed, except de Charny’s dagger.

  Nerio was as calm as a sleeping cat.

  I walked to the bow, put a hand on my dagger, and leaped.

  I was still in the air when I saw Richard Musard for the first time in three years. He was easy to spot – the only black man on the deck. But he was dressed with a quiet magnificence that he had never managed when we owned an inn; he wore a fine green doublet and black hose, a gold belt on his hips, and the collar of an Order around his neck, and he looked more like a prince than a knight.

  I wore, by careful choice, a good red velvet arming coat, recently completed by my wife’s maid Helen; my brigantine, which was very pretty, and over it, my surcoat of the Order, which, just by happenstance, looked remarkably like the arms of Savoy – scarlet, with a white cross, and my own arms in a gold border in the upper left quadrant. I left my head bare and wore red hose to match my arming cote and red fighting shoes. I was trying to find clothes that would send a message – I’m not just William Gold the routier.

  I didn’t see the Green Count – that is, Amadeus of Savoy – on the main deck, but the whole stern was shrouded in a great, green silk awning, richly worked in gold embroidery, with the arms of Savoy in red and white, and roses, daisies, and laurels, and a magnificent image of the Virgin with our Saviour in her arms, all done in silk thread, the size of a house. It was a staggering display of wealth; that awning was worth as much as everything I had ever owned.

  I saw Richard Musard turn his head, pass his eyes over me, look at Nerio as he landed behind me, and then …

  Then his eyes came back to me and fixed.

  I didn’t see Turenne or the Hungarian. But by God, gentles, in that moment I was fit to puke in terror. When you are fighting, you never have to fear much; after all, you are fighting. When you go to fight, there’s death, of course. But not humiliation and depravity.

  Musard met my eye. So I walked towards him.

  I guess that people got out of my way. The deck of a galley, even at anchor, is a busy place, but all I remember is Musard.

  I walked up to him. Bowed. ‘Richard,’ I said.

  ‘William,’ he said, ‘why have you come?’

  A natural question, but a slight emphasis on ‘you’ suggested everything.

  ‘I am here on behalf of the Prince of Lesvos,’ I said. ‘I have news of immediate import for the Count of Savoy.’

  ‘Ah!’ said Richard. Clearly not what he’d expected.

  ‘This gentleman is Ser Nerio Acciaioli,’ I said.

  Nerio inclined his head.

  Richard bowed. ‘I was informed that you were dead,’ he said with a start. ‘Is your cousin the Bishop of Patras?’

  ‘Archbishop,’ Nerio said, with his killing smile. ‘I am not dead. The Count of Turenne is a liar and a thief.’

  Richard took a half-step back from Nerio’s anger. ‘That is a dangerous accusation to make,’ he said.

  Nerio shrugged. ‘I don’t think so,’ he said, ‘as I am alive. Please take us to your master.’

  I winced at the arrogance of Nerio’s tone.

  Richard was getting his back up. How little a few years change a person; I knew the language of his body so well.

  ‘Richard,’ I said quietly, ‘we are here to help, not harm.’

  ‘When have you ever done anything but harm?’ Richard asked quietly. ‘You bring evil with you.’

  I shook my head. ‘You have been misinformed,’ I said. ‘I will be happy to explain, but our news is immediate.’

  Richard took a breath. ‘I have been misinformed?’ he asked. ‘That you stole my wife and discarded her, and now have raped and forced marriage on the Countess d’Herblay after murdering her husband?’

  Nerio snapped his fingers. ‘All lies,’ he said. ‘Could we dispense with this and see the count, please, Sir Richard?’

  ‘I never stole Janet, Richard,’ I said. I stepped forward.

  He stepped back, a hand on his sword hilt.

  ‘Richard!’ I said, as urgently as if I was calling to him to save me in a fight – and I was. ‘Richard! I never stole Janet. She left you. She is serving John Hawkwood right now. Ask any soldier in Italy – there are not so many women in harness.’

  Under his dark skin, Richard was pale – almost grey. ‘I will take you to the count,’ he said, and he was choking. ‘And God have mercy on your soul.’

  So we followed him under the awning. The deck was silent. Every man on it had stopped moving and was watching us.

  Amadeus of Savoy was of middle height. He was a very handsome man with dark hair and green eyes, and he was vain. His vanity was as palpable as his love of the colour g
reen. He was dressed from head to toe in that colour, a sort of emerald flame in silk that shone with rich under-threads, so that the green awning compounded the green of the clothes.

  He had the collar of his Order around his neck and a belt of gold plaques, all round, and each one enamelled with his arms. The enamel showed that it was all gold, and that meant the belt itself was worth as much as a small town or castle.

  He wore green silk hose, and green leather boots.

  He did not rise. ‘Who is this, Monsieur Musard?’ he asked in his Savoyard French.

  ‘My Lord, this is Sir William Gold,’ Richard said. And bless him, he added no content. He said my name as if it was a name – any worthy name.

  The Green Count’s raised eyebrow vanished to be replaced by a raptor-like attentiveness.

  ‘And Ser Nerio Acciaioli,’ Richard added.

  Now we had the count’s complete attention.

  He leaned forward, ignoring me completely. ‘Really?’ he asked.

  Nerio’s smile was as catlike as his languor. ‘As far as I know,’ he said.

  The Green Count leaned back. ‘So you won’t mind meeting your cousin the bishop this afternoon,’ he said.

  ‘Archbishop,’ said Nerio. ‘No, I will not mind seeing Angelo at all.’

  The silence was as thick as the green light under the awning. I was on one knee before the count, as custom demanded. Nerio was not.

  Nerio was behaving as if he was the count’s equal.

  The game for Achaea had begun. I knew it, Nerio knew it, and the Green Count was beginning to understand the ramifications. He had clearly been told that Nerio was dead.

  Now Nerio was on his deck.

  The silence went on and on.

  ‘My gracious Lord, I have a message from the Prince of Lesvos that bears no delay,’ I said. I reached inside my brigantine and handed over Francesco’s letter.

  Richard took it from me and handed it to the count.

  He took Richard’s baselard out of its sheath – a gesture of curious, military intimacy, and used it to open the seal.