And he brought that home. ‘There was an attempt on your wife and her son,’ he said. He smiled, a malevolent smile, the smile of a plotter who has out-thought his rivals. ‘The assassins underestimated me.’ He waved out the window. From his solar, you could just see the two dead men hanging from the gate.
I needed a protector.
I knelt and put my hands between his, and swore my oath.
He didn’t smile. ‘I wish I could have all four of you,’ he said. ‘But it is sufficient for now that you will help me rescue the emperor, my brother-in-law. We will speak again.’ He picked up a small bell and rang it. ‘There is one other small thing. Perhaps not so small. I’d like you to take my oldest son with you – Francesco.’
I nodded. It was not unexpected.
‘He is a knight?’ I asked.
‘Not yet,’ the Prince said. ‘I think perhaps we will see if he deserves that honour during the campaign. See what you make of him. Try and keep him alive.’
I tried not to choke on that.
‘I will find you a good holding here,’ he said. ‘One house here, in Methymna, and another in Mytiline, and a country town for income. But only after we find the emperor.’
A page came for me. But as I made to leave the room, the prince held up his hand.
He turned to the page. ‘Go fetch me some wine,’ he said with a smile. As soon as the boy was gone, he raised an eyebrow to me. ‘I want to say more of my son,’ he said.
I nodded.
He hesitated. I have seen this other times; truly powerful men are at a loss when dealing with the rare moments wherein they are powerless.
He opened and closed his mouth. Then he rose and looked out of his beautiful window. The sun was bright, and the jewel colours stained him – his face a lapis blue, and his hands scarlet, as if there was blood on them.
‘I loved his mother,’ he said. ‘It is very difficult being a bastard.’
I didn’t really need to be told that.
He was going to add something, and then he shrugged. ‘Treat him like any other man-at-arms,’ he said. ‘But keep him alive.’
He waved me away.
I should have said something about the dangers of the life or arms, but the prince was a veteran of a hundred fights and had, according to repute, been a notorious pirate.
I bowed myself out of the solar.
‘The count is making advances?’ I asked carefully, when I was alone with Emile.
She raised an eyebrow. ‘You could say that,’ she said. ‘He never ceases. I have sent back all his gifts, and Sister Marie is with me all the time and sleeps with me at night.’ She frowned, and Sister Marie emerged from the bed hangings.
I hugged her fiercely. Somehow she had become one of ‘us’. With Nerio and Fiore and Miles and Emile – my inner friends. And she and I shared Father Pierre Thomas in a way that the others didn’t.
‘I think it is his nature,’ Sister Marie said, ‘to possess.’
My wife threw her hands in the air. ‘It is also my fault,’ she said. ‘I was not always …’
It is odd, is it not, how we say different things to different people? Or rather, in some cases, the same things to different people, but not, perhaps, to two of them at once?
I knew that Emile, who often berated herself for her wantonness as a young woman, meant to say ‘chaste’. She intended to say that she was not always chaste. She would say that to me – because we were honest with each other about our many flaws. And she would say it to Sister Marie, I guessed, because the nun had become her confessor and protector and friend.
But not to both of us together.
‘He’s an arse,’ I said. ‘A popinjay and a courtier. It is not your fault.’
‘You cannot fight him,’ Emile said.
‘I won’t,’ I said.
‘Fiore challenged his esquire, and the count demanded that the challenge be withdrawn.’ Sister Marie smiled. ‘No one wants to fight Fiore.’
And when we were alone in bed, and we had had our joy of one another, my wife rolled atop me and buried her head in my chest. ‘He wants me to be the woman I was,’ she said bitterly. ‘He won’t let me be the woman I am.’
I thought of my life with Richard. ‘I know that feeling,’ I assured her. ‘I swore fealty to the prince,’ I said, changing the subject.
Emile sat up, suddenly, her hair all about her. The summer night was beautiful, and the windows were open. I could see her by starlight. She kissed my hand. ‘Brilliant,’ she said. ‘I hoped you would.’
‘You are very beautiful,’ I told her.
‘Hasn’t Nerio taught you to tell me how brilliant and witty I am?’ she said.
‘I have my own theories,’ I said.
The next day I mustered my little company. All my newly recruited routiers from Jonc had arrived and been provided with surcoats by Miles Stapleton, and for the first time, I had twenty lances, as well as my two Greek knights and their men-at-arms, who were, to all intents, a separate company – sub-contractors, if you will. And now I had young Francesco. who called himself ‘Francesco Orsini’. He had his own armed squire, a big, dangerous-looking German or Dane named Holger. I gave him his choice of our new archers and he took Bill Vane. He bought Vane a new horse and new clothes. His lance looked splendid.
They were all looking good; there was new equipment throughout the ranks, and our horses were probably the best on the island, thanks to the various horse markets of Anatolia and some small prowess. Fiore didn’t have a squire, being too poor. I had a notion that Aldo, the oarsman, would make a good man-at-arms, and I begged him of Carlos Zeno.
‘You’ll all be Venetians at this rate,’ he said. ‘Yes, I saw he was a good man while we were out in the boat. He deserves … Yes. It is good.’
It is always a pleasure giving a man his step up in life. Zeno, Fiore and I took him for a cup of wine, Zeno leading the way and warning us about what an oarsman’s taverna was like.
It wasn’t so much squalid as densely packed, and it smelled very strongly of octopus and male sweat. There were benches, and at least eight men to a bench. Women served the wine and fish stew – tough-looking women, most with knives in their kirtle belts.
Aldo was stunned to be visited by ‘gentlemen’ and attempted to seat us so that we wouldn’t see the two whores working the far side of the room while men chanted and waited their turns. Fiore looked him over while we exchanged stilted comments, and Aldo introduced us to his silent companions. The whole taverna was falling silent. I doubt two knights had ever graced its doors.
One of the whores said, into the silence, ‘I need a break anyway,’ in Italian, and she pulled a cover over her and took a cup of wine. Men laughed, but there were some nasty looks.
Zeno glanced at me. ‘Not for the gentry,’ he said. ‘Be quick.’
I’d been a cook in an army camp. Not only was I not surprised, but I appreciated that these men didn’t appreciate my presence for reasons. I smiled genially, pulled a trio of golden florins from my purse, and put them in front of my slattern, who was old enough to know her way around and had a simple kitchen knife in her belt – big enough to behead a chicken – a little grey in her hair, and a ready smile.
‘Sister,’ I said in Greek.
She smiled.
‘This trinity is to buy wine for every man here, and every woman,’ I said.
She put her hand over the coins, and when she lifted it, they were gone. She flicked me the hint of a smile. In the purest Veneziano, she called out, ‘The cavalari buy you all wine.’
Some men nodded. One spat. But there was a cheer.
An old man in a smock was introduced to me as ‘Neptune’. I shook his hand, which was curled, as if around an oar. He had a grip like an armourer’s vice.
‘You saved this young scamp, My Lord,’ he said. ‘He is my brother’
s son. Useless for work, except at an oar.’ He smiled.
He was an interesting old man – completely unafraid to speak to us, the gentry.
Zeno nodded to him as if they were old friends. ‘He’s a damn good oar,’ he said.
‘Not much of a carpenter, though,’ Neptune said.
Zeno nodded at me. ‘When I was fitting out, I tried to get some men of the arsenal as crew. We all do it. They are the best fighters because they are citizens.’
Yeomen, I thought. Yes, we are the best fighters.
Fiore glanced at me and gave me what was, for him, a warm nod.
‘He is strong, and for a man of his class, intelligent,’ Fiore said aloud, with his usual assurance.
I winced. But I gave Zeno the nod.
‘These gentlemen have a proposal for you,’ Zeno said. ‘Know that you have my permission.’
‘I would offer to sign you into my company,’ I said. ‘As a squire-at-arms to this gentleman, the noble knight Fiore of Udine.’
Aldo the oarsman sat speechless.
Neptune grabbed him by the shoulders and shook him.
‘He accepts, by God and Saint Mark,’ the old man said. ‘Christ and the saints, boy! You can be a gent!’
The burly oarsman on the other side of me raised his wine cup. ‘Must be hard-up for men-at-arms is all I can say,’ he said, genially.
‘Fuckin’ useless oarsman,’ said another, raising his cup.
A dozen more of his mates praised him in similar terms.
‘Really?’ he asked Fiore.
Fiore shrugged. ‘You think I would come to a place like this to play a joke?’ he asked.
Sometime in the morning, the prince and the count had a meeting. By all accounts it was perfectly amicable – the count agreed that Gallipoli must be taken immediately, and was surprised to find that there was a military camp behind the town; the prince proposed a plan of campaign, which the count accepted.
At some point, the prince apparently asked whether the count intended to ask for my knight service.
‘No,’ the count answered.
‘Excellent,’ the prince said. ‘I will have him with me, then,’ he said, with sixty knights listening. ‘My son has entered his company.’
I saw the count look at me; a considering look. And I thought that the prince was a damned good lord. His son was suddenly under my protection.
But while I reviewed my company, the great lords had made their plan. The plan was simple, like all good plans. The count would enter the Dardanelles at dawn, drive up the strait and land on the beaches below Gallipoli – landing all his ships simultaneously on the long beach.
The prince would sail up the west side of the peninsula and land on the Thrace coast, and cross the ridge in the darkness. As soon as the count’s ships were in sight, the prince would attack the military camp behind the town, and from it, the open breaches in the damaged walls.
‘Don’t be too quick,’ the prince insisted when they met, in armour, the next morning, with their armour reflecting the first magnificent rays of the sun. ‘It will be the work of an entire night to get my people over the ridge. And the landings may be delayed.’
The count smiled. ‘We will wait,’ he said. ‘Although I’m quite sure that with such knights as I have about me, I can do it without you.’
So it came to pass, as the chronicles say, that I kissed my wife and her children, donned my armour and surcoat, and led my people aboard ships that belonged neither to my liege, the King of England, nor my liege by marriage, the Count of Savoy, nor my commanderie in the Order to which I was sworn, but rather boarded a round ship and a pair of galleys belonging to the Prince of Lesvos.
I remember little of the voyage. I was not with my men, which I regretted; I had barely seen Fiore, had only exchanged somewhat formal military words with Miles, and no one knew quite what had become of Nerio. Hafiz-i Abun, whom I now counted as a comrade, was on my ship; he had no qualms about fighting Turks, or so he said, and he wanted to observe a Christian army. I will say again, that in England we imagine that the divide between Christian and Moslem is a cliff – but out in the Holy Land, there are Italians and Spaniards serving emirs; there are Italian Mamluks, as I have related. And the Mongols have no love for the Turks, as I may someday have a chance to tell you – nor the Persians, not the Arabs, any more than Englishmen love Frenchmen, or Florentines love Siennese. Eh?
I have left my road again.
The prince wanted me to be present for his councils, and I knew that was the way of my professions; indeed, I had just received a lesson in the politics of command. One must not just serve well, but be seen to do so.
The prince’s galley was curiously spartan. It lacked any amenities – no gold lamp shone in the stern cabin, and the cabin itself was only a tent of canvas; it was not silk, nor was the deck polished or overlaid with canvas. As the Gatelussi were bywords for riches, I attributed this to the prince’s former life as a Genoese pirate.
His whole armed force was about eight hundred men, exclusive of his rowers, who were almost all Greeks – fishermen and sailors. They had their own weapons, and enough of them had brigantines or coats of maille so as to lead me to believe that I was looking at another species of successful routier; gold earrings abounded, as did smiles.
‘We will land at Portefino,’ the prince said. To me, he said, ‘I raided it five years ago. Two beaches, a small harbour, and no real defences. The Turks didn’t have a garrison the last time I visited.’ His smile was ferocious. ‘As soon as we’re ashore, I’d like your light horse to get on the road and move as quickly as possible to seal off the town from the landward side. I don’t need a courier going over the ridge to the Turks. I brought my Orthodox patriarch to speak to the locals.’
‘Is there a road?’ Percy asked.
The prince smiled. ‘More of a track, but it’s enough. We’ll pick up guides in the town, but I know the ground well enough, and Syr Giorgios and Syr Giannis will help. It is all a matter of timing. I will wager that the count will try to land early – the kind of glory he seeks is not to be shared.’
Partner shrugged. ‘All one to me, My Lord.’
Percy grinned. ‘Or me. He can do all the fighting, if that pleases him.’
They all three looked at me. I laughed. ‘Do I have a reputation as a fire breather?’ I asked. ‘I got enough at Alexandria to last me the rest of my life.’
Then they asked me some questions about the attack, and the sack, and about Father Pierre Thomas.
Afterwards, it was all fresh in my mind, and I lay on the deck under the stars and thought about Alexandria; about the horse dragging its innards through the streets, and the naked woman with her jaw ripped away.
Marc-Antonio shook me awake. ‘You screamed,’ he said, ‘my Lord.’
Aye. I suppose I did. I had ugly dreams.
The sun rose, and Marc-Antonio armed me.
‘Do you think we’ll ever go home?’ he asked me.
I had a powerful image, then, of my uncle’s house in Cheapside; of Nan’s father’s house. Of London Bridge, and London. My sister, about whom, to be honest, I almost never thought, in those days. It’s odd; when I was a brigand, I thought of my sister all the time. As a pious soldier of Christ, I thought of her less often. No idea what that means.
‘Yes,’ I said. I also thought of his father’s house in Chioggia, and how comfortable and happy I was there. I realised then that I had had enough of crusade. It was an odd thing to think, while arming to fight the Turks, but in truth, I rather liked the Turks, and I wasn’t so very fond of many of my fellow crusaders.
I had my orders, and I understood them; I got armed, watched two of the Gatelussi pages arm Marc-Antonio, and then we were running in with the land. The Lesbian galleys were experts; they ran right along the coast, very close in, so that they were virtually invisible to the
town until they rounded the last point, and the steep terrain of the peninsula protected them. Indeed, the terrain was terrible and beautiful by day – towering cliffs and long ridges crowned in stone, like natural castles and long walls. In a few places, there was a narrow ribbon of beach at the base of the ridge, but until we rounded the last point, there was no place to land a flock of goats, much less an army.
And then we shot clear of the point. The prince’s galley was in the lead, with his little fleet in two columns behind us, and as we opened the twin bays I could see the beaches, a small forest on the headland, and a village. On the headland, a shepherd was screaming at the top of his lungs, but the prince’s galley was too fast for him.
‘No rape, no theft,’ the prince said. He looked around at his officers. ‘If you catch a man doing either, kill him. That is my law. I need these people more loyal to me than to their Turkish lords.’
We all bent our knees.
Richard Percy was the first man ashore, and he landed twenty fully armed knights. Then the pages landed a dozen horses. By then a round ship was coming up, full of crossbowmen, and they landed behind the knights and formed in close order, and the landing was uncontested.
Both of my horses were on the third ship, with all the stradiotes and Syr Giorgios. Marc-Antonio took charge of Gawain and I mounted my brave Arab stallion, and then I found both Giorgios and Giannis collecting their men.
‘Gentlemen,’ I said.
We clasped hands, and Hafiz-i Abun came up, and vaulted onto his own Arabian, as pretty as mine and carrying less weight.
‘I have never made war with Franks,’ he said. ‘You wear a lot of armour. But this manner of covering your landing is very good.’ He pointed to a round ship with two tall castles, bristling with another company of crossbowmen; they were fifty paces offshore, and every man had his crossbow laid to the rail, ready to loose.
I thought of the sheer chaos of the Frankish landing at Alexandria.
Fiore came ashore as Giorgios rode up the beach at the head of his men. They clattered into the little town square and I saw them bespeak the village priest, a brave man who came out to greet them. Every man doffed his cap or helmet, and they saluted him before riding on, and he blessed them.
The Green Count Page 37