The Green Count

by Christian Cameron

  ‘In Ragusa, or some like,’ I said.

  The Venetian’s eyes narrowed. He shook his head. ‘I don’t understand,’ he said.

  Prince Francesco was toying with his dagger hilt. He looked at me and indicated the Venetian. ‘He told me the same,’ he said. ‘And I didn’t believe him. I’m sorry. But it is the Court of Constantinople, and people say such things all the time.’ He looked out at the priests in the procession. ‘Sadly, this time it appears to be true.’

  ‘I have a prisoner,’ I said.

  The prince turned to me, and there was nothing in his eyes but pirate.

  ‘Don’t be gentle,’ he said. ‘This is bad. A great deal is at stake, and I have been blind.’

  ‘Will they let us out of the palace?’ I asked.

  A number of the men-at-arms exchanged glances.

  ‘Sir Richard, would you be kind enough to recover my sword?’ I asked. ‘I prize it. But I have a friend waiting with a horse, and I suspect I can go over the wall with no one the wiser.’

  ‘Wait until they change the guard,’ he said, with some practicality.

  I went over the wall at the same corner where he’d disposed of the dog. It cost me my best silk chausses and some amour-propre, and my wounded thigh screamed at me, and blood flowed over the ruined hose, just to make sure I knew I’d wasted twenty days’ pay. and the ditch on the far side was full of mud, so, my pointy shoes were ruined.

  And I didn’t have an audience with anyone. I could have gone dressed as a servant.

  Miles was just where I’d asked him to be, two towers to the south, sitting on a bench by one of the small city parks. His back was to stone, and he could see anyone who approached, and we were away in the time it takes to say the Sanctus.

  ‘Well?’ he asked.

  When we were well clear of the walls, in the open farmland around the pretty Chora church, I stopped our horses and dismounted.

  ‘I think I understand,’ I said. ‘Christos is an officer for this Andronicus, the emperor’s son. Andronicus may have paid to have his father taken – and whether or not, he’s ready to usurp the throne now that his father is gone. We arrived into this palace revolution. So Christos must have divided loyalties. Christ, they all do – Giorgios too, probably.’ I was working it out.

  ‘And the men that attacked us?’ Miles asked.

  ‘One of them works for the Hungarian,’ I said. ‘Damn his eyes and Plague take him. And Christos knew his name when I said it.’ I looked at him. ‘Which means that Christos knows I’m on to the Hungarian. But he can’t decide what loyalty he owes to us – because he thinks of himself as English.’

  ‘We need to make sure he feels English, then,’ Miles said – a very perceptive statement, if you consider it.

  ‘I need to go down to the brothel. I assume all the archers are still there. And …’ I glanced at Miles. ‘Someone needs to go back and tell Fiore what is going on.’

  Miles shrugged. ‘I’m not good at brothels,’ he agreed with a slow smile.

  I rehearsed him once on what I knew, and I took all his cash; between us, I had more than a hundred florins in gold and silver.

  I tied the horse to a tree. It was a Varangian military horse, I was sure; the saddle was Greek and the horse was small. I didn’t need to be tracked with it.

  An hour later I was at the brothel. Ewan was there, and both Davids, and Mark and half a dozen other archers; also Hector Lachlan and both Irishmen or Scots.

  ‘I know where the man is,’ Ewan said. It proved he meant Half-Cloak, but we wasted precious time establishing that.

  I took the brothel keeper aside and gave him ten gold florins. That was the last trouble I had with him. I told him in Italian that I was taking all my people back to the Engliskvarangan and he nodded as if that made sense.

  By then, my thigh wound was leaking and my plan didn’t make me happy, but we went out into the streets, and stopped in one of the broad forums where there was a market. At my order and with my money, men bought sausages and pies and wine and cider, and a dozen big amphorae of water. I made the sellers have a bite; all of them did. I have never been in such a state of distrust as I was that day. At any rate, when we had some food and full water bottles, I led my people into the darkening streets. I kept them moving, hobbling along and fearing pursuit. But whatever I feared, it didn’t come to pass, and as we walked I heard their news.

  Ewan knew it all; he’d followed Half-Cloak to an inn in the Pisan quarter and watched the inn for hours. In fact, it was his need for relief that had brought most of our archers out to help; well, that and the use of the brothel, let’s be fair.

  Rob Stone had spotted Half-Cloak leaving his inn; the Davids had shadowed him, probably too close; he’d been almost to the brothel when he’d spotted Big David and vanished.

  Rob and Ewan were convinced he was on his way back to finish what he’d started.

  ‘Alone?’ I asked.

  ‘Would you leave your man behind?’ Rob asked me.

  ‘What are we doin’ now?’ Ewan asked.

  We were passing through the old walls. There was no gate guard where we crossed; a tower had fallen in an earthquake. The old gate was only wide enough for one man to squeeze through at a time, but Giorgios had brought us that way the day before to avoid a tax, as I have mentioned.

  Then I got us lost, in the dark, but eventually I found us the trail through the trees that led to the road; we got off the road when we heard horses coming, and that was twice. And then – very late by the bells, between eleven and twelve – I found the gate I hadn’t seen but knew had to be there: the gate to the Komnenos property. I was amused to find that the gate was high and strong, and had a path right around it – just like England. I took my archers down the lane to the banks of the river, which was just a trickle, and we gathered wood and made a little fire, as snug a camp as any band of outlaws have in Sherwood, I’ll warrant, except that ours was in the midst of the mightiest city in the world.

  Hector had carried the man I’d dropped with a blow from my pommel over his shoulder. He dropped him by the new fire, and the man cried out, so I knew that he was awake.

  Ewan saw me looking at him. ‘You think ’e knows summit?’ Ewan asked.

  I nodded.

  Ewan looked at Rob. Then they both looked at Gospel Mark, who shrugged.

  ‘Perhaps the sir would like to take a stroll?’ Mark asked.

  I grinned. ‘That was kindly meant,’ I said. ‘But I won’t take a stroll. Let’s get this done.’

  Mark smiled nastily. ‘Let it be done in the morning, then,’ he said. ‘When you question a man, a peasant about ’is ’idden silver, like, it’s better in daylight, like. You can see ’is face.’ He raised both eyebrows. ‘But if’n the watch might take turns keeping the bastard awake …’ He nodded at me. ‘Most men can’t stand bein’ awake too long.’

  I was ready to collapse; I knew what he meant. ‘Have it done,’ I said. ‘Not too rough. Just keep him awake.’

  ‘My pleasure,’ Rob said. ‘Marc-Antonio says he’s the bastard as did Red Billy.’

  I have strong ideas of justice. ‘Mayhap,’ I said. ‘But this is no assize.’

  ‘I don’t need no fuckin’ assize,’ Ewan said. ‘We’ll keep ’im awake right an’ proper.’

  I assume they did. I went to sleep with the gurgle and whisper of the stream passing me; the water was clean, out here in the fields, and made a clean sound.

  In the morning, the sun rose, and so did I. My leg was terribly stiff, and every cut burned. It was the second day after a fight. I was coming to dread these days as much as fights. I drank some wine and some water and was handed a pie, which I ate, delighted.

  ‘’E speaks Italian an’ a little Greek,’ Mark said. ‘’E tried ’em both on me in the night.’

  ‘You speak Greek?’ I asked.

 
He smiled. ‘Been out here four years,’ he said. ‘Some time you mun speak to a priest or a girl, eh?’

  Well, that was true, too.

  I took a sausage and my eating knife and sat down on an old pillar which made a fine bench. The cat rubbed against my legs and I gave him sausage.

  ‘The cat?’ I asked.

  Mark made a face. ‘I can’t lose him, and neither can ’Ector,’ he said.

  ‘Fetch the prisoner,’ I said.

  By arrangement, none of us said anything after that.

  Rob and Mark forced him to sit, and then sat behind him. Hector lounged, looking dangerous and big.

  I sat in front of him and ate sausage, cutting the pieces with a knife. Each time he started to nod off, Mark jabbed a sharpened stick into his back. I fed myself and the cat.

  We all just sat there. It took an hour for him to start talking. First, he complained, in Italian, of the pain from the jabbing stick, and then he begged to be allowed to sleep.

  I’d never done this myself before, but I’d watched John Hawkwood do it often enough with guides and spies.

  After a while, he started telling us what the Hungarian would do to us when he caught us.

  I took ten gold florins from my purse and tossed them on the ground at his feet. And then I took my baselard out of its sheath and placed it near the coins.

  He nodded off.

  The stick jabbed him.

  ‘You are all dead men!’ he shouted.

  We all smiled. He couldn’t see Mark or Rob, but they smiled.

  ‘The emperor will hang you all!’ the man said.

  All in all, it took about three hours – well, that and the whole night before, the pain of his wounds, and the obvious fate that awaited him.

  We still hadn’t said anything when he said, ‘Can you protect me?’

  ‘Yes,’ I said.

  It came out of him, not in one burst but in evil little snatches; I wondered if this was what priests felt like, taking confession from a bad man, because he made me feel dirty and helpless just in speaking.

  What I got from him was a mixture of bragging and confession. He didn’t know much; I knew more of his plots than he did, except in two places. But his confession was the key.

  So, of course, it was Andronicus’s plan. The caesar, as he was known, wanted to be emperor. But his plan was far too complex; he had too many plotters to ‘help’ him, and he was, himself, a weak and ineffectual man who couldn’t make up his mind. Like most people who make complicated plans.

  It is clear to me now that the only thing that saved the emperor’s life was his son’s unwillingness to order his death. And that was of a piece with his plotting. It was, in a way, the worst piece of bungling; any two of my archers could have made better plans. In fact, the only thing that kept me, or the prince, from grasping the ‘plot’ immediately was its sheer foolishness.

  But I could make out the threads. Antonio, the piece of scum sitting at my feet, had been ordered to kill me by Half-Cloak, who was called Bonhomme – with some irony, I think – a steppe nomad who had been made a slave by the Genoese and served the Hungarian. He had ordered the attack on the brothel; he had told Antonio that they would kill me and Fiore and Nerio and Stapleton, our servants, and the Green Count as well. He said they had attacked Red Bill because he thought he was me.

  And he thought Nerio was the Green Count. Or so he claimed.

  I let him ramble. It was a grandiose plan, full of death, and yet it had not accounted for very basic things, like the loyalty of the guards and the possibility that the Prince of Lesvos would come to visit.

  Antonio thought that the Hungarian was close by. But listening to him describe the plot, I had to assume that the Hungarian was somewhere else, possibly guarding the emperor.

  Still, I needed to move carefully. Antonio didn’t want to tell me how many allies he had, but he told me straight out that the ‘young emperor’ would act to protect him, and that I needed him to save me. For a man lower than a routier, a hired killer, he was very full of himself.

  Back in my days as a routier, I had ransomed any number of men whom I had captured – knights and merchants and others. I knew how to be careful; men who deal in such things need to be careful.

  So I sent Mark to find us a Greek boy to run a message. We never let him see our camp, and we sent him, not to the English quarter, but to Syr Giorgios and his house. Our message asked Syr Giorgios to meet me, but not at our little camp. Instead, we had him go to the market opposite the church of the Chora.

  This may seem tedious to you, friends, but when you trust no one, you want to watch. I was two hundred paces from the church, and I had two archers with ‘borrowed’ crossbows covering me when Syr Giorgios cantered into the courtyard and dismounted, with Syr Giannis and Fiore at his shoulders. As soon as I saw Fiore, I knew we were not betrayed; I do not want to say I distrusted my Greeks, merely that when emperors play games, friendship can be … strained.

  I gave the ‘all safe’ signal and walked forward.

  ‘We were worried,’ Fiore said. ‘By the good God, Guglielmo, even I was worried.’

  ‘I have one of the Hungarian’s men,’ I said. ‘I need to get him to the prince.’ I looked up at Syr Giannis, who was still mounted. ‘Andronicus is planning to take the throne and kill Amadeus of Savoy, too.’

  Giannis rolled his eyes. ‘Good God, why?’ he asked. ‘How rich does a fool need to be?’

  Fiore asked where we’d all gone. I explained in general terms, and by the time I was done, Ewan appeared with Antonio the killer mounted on a pony and with a halter around his neck.

  ‘Take him to the prince,’ I said. ‘I’m going to stay where I am, just for a little while.’

  I told them how to reach me, and Fiore told me that Nerio was doing well.

  ‘Watch Syr Christos,’ I said.

  Fiore made a ‘Was I born yesterday?’ face.

  ‘Tell Miles …’ I paused. ‘Tell Miles to make Christos very English indeed.’

  ‘Whatever this means, I’ll pass it,’ Fiore said. ‘Listen – I have a new disarm!’

  Syr Giorgios rolled his eyes. ‘I tell him there is more to life than fighting.’ He looked at me. ‘The caesar is looking everywhere for you. If you are taken … it will not go well.’

  ‘I guessed that,’ I said.

  They turned their horses and rode away.

  I left the Davids to watch the church. The signal was a chalk mark on the south-west corner by the entry. But in truth, I wanted to keep the church under observation anyway; to see if Fiore was followed, for example.

  And he was.

  ‘Shit,’ I said, or words to that effect. But we’d been quick; too quick for a watcher to get help, even from nearby Blacharnae. But David the Big came for me an hour later, while I stared at the stream, and I heard that twenty cavalrymen had come and interrogated the monks.

  I was more interested in attacking than defending. I wanted Half-Cloak, and I knew, thanks to Ewan, where he was. I was still trying to puzzle out why the caesar and the Hungarian wanted to kill the Green Count. It made no sense.

  I didn’t care. At a different level, I knew that when you don’t know what’s going on, you steal the initiative and attack. Basic swordsmanship.

  The problem with attacking was that we stuck out. We were all a foot taller than most of the locals; we had small beards or no beards, and we had red and blond and light brown hair, and we didn’t speak much Greek. Now, Constantinople is one of the most polyglot cities I’ve ever seen. There are lots of blonds and lots of men without beards – Jews, Turks, Mongols, even a pair of Chinese. But …

  But fifteen of us together? And they were looking for us.

  And I didn’t know the level of co-operation between Andronicus and the Hungarian. But I could guess; I could guess that the emperor’s son would tr
y to distance himself from his assassin, and that if Half-Cloak was living in a tavern in the Pisan Quarter, he was not working hand-in-glove with the caesar. The two-mile separation told me a great deal.

  So that afternoon, I walked into one of the farming villas along the big road and found the slave quarters. I gave a man three silver soldi and took from him a dirty off-white shapeless linen garment, some really awful braes, and a pair of untanned cowhide slippers that stank like dog shit. With Mark’s help, I used a little oil to darken my red hair to a lank medium brown, and I went in the late evening towards the centre of the city and the Pisan Quarter.

  Disguise can be liberating or confining. It is odd to change your clothes; I cringed when big men stepped near me, and I pulled at my dirty wool cap constantly – a Moslem slave in a Christian city. I was invisible. I needed only to say signomi in a guttural accent, the Greek word of apology; no one expected anything of me.

  Of course, no one looked at me with admiration, either.

  Or hatred, come to think of it. I spent most of the walk thinking about humility. I prayed a little without crossing myself, and I passed the guarded gate to the Pisan quarter without any comment from the two professional soldiers on the gate. They didn’t even see me.

  I was temporarily paralysed when I found that Half-Cloak’s inn didn’t have slaves at all – that all their people were Italians. On the other hand, I was able to squat boldly across the inn yard from the front, and several passers-by gave me coins.

  I have many talents.

  I saw Half-Cloak meet with a man who was clearly a Greek aristocrat. He had a long cloak despite the summer, and it had the embroidered panel that denoted rank at court, and under it a fine silk kaftan in the Mongol style. They shared wine under the grape arbour. I don’t read lips and I couldn’t understand a word they said, but it was pretty clear anyway; Half-Cloak was worried, and so was Aristocrat.

  While they sat outside, I approached the inn from the side street – a narrow alley deep in refuse. I hate to think what touched my feet there, and I’m not fussy; but I came in the old side gate, and was right behind the inn midden and the latrines.