The Green Count

by Christian Cameron

  We were getting to be very good at war. We ought to have been – between the Black Prince, Hawkwood, the Order and the Turks, I’d had the best teachers, and so had my friends.

  Nor was it just me. Visconti led a successful raid as well; in fact, he brought in about four times as many head of cattle as I did, although no prisoners. He shared his beef with us, and our men ate well. As we ate that day, we watched the Bulgarians bring forty wagon-loads of wood into their camp – firewood and the sinews of new trenches.

  With the knights of the Order and Visconti’s Italians, we made a little plan.

  The next night, I feinted a raid, got the Bulgarians in their trenches, and then Visconti assaulted the same collapsed tower. Imagine: we were laying siege to Varna, and they were laying siege to us, but they didn’t have so many more men than we did that they could protect everything. We retook the tower, took a dozen good prisoners, and when the torches showed them running around their outworks and bringing men into the city, Miles took the real raid out into the darkness. He didn’t go north. He went into their camp. He took their wagons full of wood and brought them across the frozen ground to us, and the Bulgarians couldn’t do anything to stop us.

  Sadly, that was our last salute. The Savoyards didn’t relish this kind of war. They called it ‘Petit Guerre’, the little war, as if it was a thing of no value.

  So, under orders, the next night we piled up all our firewood and set fire to it.

  And then we filed silently onto our ships and slipped away, leaving our fires burning. That was the end of the siege of Varna.

  We sailed. We sailed down the coast, all the way back to Mesembria. And the town that we’d sacked became our winter quarters; I leave you to imagine how popular we were.

  But it got worse.

  In early December, the count paid all the galley captains. He had to; they were leaving for ice-free water. They were quite blunt – if he didn’t pay, they wouldn’t come back.

  Antonio di Visconti told me one night, over wine, that the twelve thousand gold perperi or byzants had taken all the gold the count had left from his massive loan on Nerio’s cousins and Nerio himself.

  Nerio just shook his head. ‘I feel like a landlord,’ he said. ‘Watching over a bad tenant and trying to decide when to evict him.’

  It was clear that his Genoese bankers felt much the same.

  As soon as we settled into winter quarters, I began writing leave chits for my men to visit Constantinople and Pera in shifts. L’Angars thought the idea was insane – and to be fair, it was Stapleton’s idea and not mine. But Hawkwood gave leave to his men-at-arms, and to archers if he trusted them. L’Angars said that the men who could easily arrange other employment would desert. Stapleton held the opposite.

  But life in Mesembria was brutal and cold. The peasants and people of the town hated us; we didn’t even have the usual thin skin of traders and obsequious turncoats to pretend we were saviours. The Greco-Bulgarian population were Orthodox and they hated Franks, and the count responded by giving them lots to hate. He increased taxation, arrested prominent citizens, and imprisoned them pending payment of their taxes.

  I was preparing, at the time, to take my first rota to Constantinople for leave while also trying to get my archers interested in putting on a Passion Play for Christmas. Miles was writing out the names for the first rota and the second in his fine hand; Nerio was casting their accounts so that we could arrange for them to be paid by the prince’s Genoese banker Niccolò di Quarto on arrival in Pera. I was taking steps to see that they didn’t leave Pera, or cross the Hellespont to Constantinople. I agreed with Nerio that money would hold them – and daily inspections, and a little support from the authorities in Pera.

  Fiore was helping Stapleton copy. He had a good hand.

  ‘I miss the little sister,’ he said, and I agreed. I missed Sister Marie; I missed my wife. I had sent her a letter, giving the dates of my projected visit to Pera, but I had no way of knowing whether she’d received it.

  ‘Our employer had better pay,’ Nerio said. ‘I’d desert if I wasn’t paid. It’s too cold out there to do anything but huddle and curse.’

  All of our people were in barracks built into the walls of the town. We’d knocked down a section of inner wall and replaced it with wood and brick to install six big fireplaces and chimneys. Sheer luck had got the mortar dry – luck, and a little judicious use of fire.

  ‘The people here are on the verge of open rebellion,’ Miles said.

  Nerio threw down his stylus. ‘This count – he hates routiers? And yet he seizes citizens and holds them to ransom? He is a routier.’

  I agreed, but I kept my views to myself. Richard Musard had been wounded twice, and had a terrible cold, and was no longer attending the count’s councils, to which I was, by and large, not invited. Mesembria and Sozopolis were being administered by marginally competent French and Savoyard nobles, who treated the population with all the consideration that they showed to their own people at home.

  A great many of the count’s mercenaries were English or Scots, and there was a distinct national friction developing. I chose to ignore it, and even l’Angars admitted that the prospect of leave made our veterans far more docile and cautious than the openly mutinous archers in the other contingents.

  Rob Stone came to me a day before I was due to sail to Pera.

  ‘A word, Cap’n?’ he asked.

  Captain. I rather liked being captain.

  ‘I could ha’ my pick o’ the lads in this camp,’ he said. ‘Every blessed day, two or three sidle up, like, and ask …’ He shrugged. ‘No one’s been paid.’

  ‘Including us,’ I said.

  Rob nodded. ‘Lads trust you to get us paid,’ he said. ‘And we’re all paid to September, eh? There’s bastards I won’t name, in this camp, not been paid since they boarded ship at Venice.’

  ‘I’ll talk to Nerio,’ I said. Nerio held our next contract, and he was increasingly restless.

  That evening, he asked me if I thought John the Kipchak would return.

  I shrugged. ‘I confess I’m … not well pleased he’s been gone so long,’ I admitted.

  Nerio sat back. We had a fireplace of our own, and six braziers paid for by Nerio. It was still cold. ‘I trust him,’ he said. ‘And I think we need him for the work in Achaea.’ He shrugged. ‘But at some point, I’ll admit there’s no reason for me to be here. My patrimony is slipping away on me, out there. And the count is like all bad creditors – he doesn’t want to see my face.’

  ‘You want to go to Achaea in winter?’ I asked. ‘Who’d attack you in winter?’

  ‘Lawyers,’ he said.

  That had a ring of truth to it.

  And increasingly, as the count separated himself from us, it was clear there would be no spring campaign, or if there was, it would be conducted without us. I noted that the count had, quietly, not included any funds for our transport in his spring treasury.

  I knew that eventually I would have to take action.

  But I was too damned cold and tired to confront him. He disliked me; the feeling was mutual, and I wanted to be done with him. But Emile had said that he was important to her. And I understood that.

  And sometimes when you leave a problem, instead of festering, it solves itself.

  We sailed to Pera on the heavy galley the prince had left for us. I noted with interest that our captain seemed unafraid of ice; his orders were to obey me, and he did. He was quite content to ferry soldiers from Mesembria to Pera.

  We were met on the dock by a pair of notaries and the Genoese banker in person. He had two booths right on the dockside, and men stepped forward, were paid in hard coin, and then led off by garrison soldiers to lodgings pre-prepared and pre-paid out of their wages – inns and taverns. It was like a Christmas miracle. Adding to the miracle was a pair of tables covered in heavy goat-hair c
loaks in a sort of dusty gold colour. L’Angars had suggested them, and I had asked the banker to see what he could find.

  ‘Shepherds and outlaws use these,’ the banker said, with a smile.

  The cloaks were superb – warm and heavy and soft, and full of whatever pungent oil goats give off that resists water. And the men loved them.

  But even more like a miracle was Emile, now visibly pregnant, and her three children; Sister Marie and Sister Catherine the governess, and a whole stack of letters and scrolls for me – a trio of missives from the prince, a letter from the turcopolier of the Order, and a letter from Sir John Acudo, or Hawkwood, and even a letter from Hafiz-i Abun in good Italian, and a short scrap of parchment from Parmenio.

  I read through them in order of my interest. Hafiz-i Abun was home; his letter rambled to tell me of some legal dispute he’d resolved in Tashkent and his meeting with a warlord who had impressed him, another Mongol named Timur. The prince informed me that my pay was up to date and offered further employment when I was at liberty; the second scroll was a charter guaranteeing my rights to Methymna and the countryside behind it – four hundred farms and a town of five thousand.

  Emile smiled. ‘I live there,’ she said. ‘It is very pleasant in winter. We have an orange tree.’ She smiled. ‘Soon, my love, I must go home to Savoy. I had three times as many letters as you.’

  The Genoese captain, Parmenio, wrote to me from Genoa; a short note thanked me for my efforts, sword in hand, very courteous, too. And added to it, a small, sealed packet, which, when opened, turned out to be a bill of credit on Francesco Negrino of Pera for an enormous sum of money – almost two thousand gold florins.

  ‘I sold your saffron,’ he said in his note. ‘I believe you forgot it.’

  I showed this to my wife, who laughed aloud. ‘Friends, for you, are better than riches,’ she said. I treasure that comment and I always strive to make it true.

  I read the missive from Sir John last. He had news that was no news to me: he was to be wed; he was working for the Visconti. He understood that I was with Ser Antonio, and he asked me to watch out for the young knight. He added that I had done a fine job of adding lustre to my repute, but that I should come back to Italy now and cash it in. He offered me employment as commander of my own contingent within his great company.

  It all seemed a little fantastical, except that at the end of his missive he included the greetings of a dozen men I loved right well, and for a moment I was there, with the White Company. He had enclosed a note from Janet, too.

  Last I read the letter from de Midelton. He wrote to encourage me to support Nerio in Achaea, and then, to consider supporting what he called ‘The English Wedding’.

  I got a scroll of account from Niccolò di Quarto. I had a fine estate on Lesvos that actually paid. I had more money on account than I had ever had in my life, and my troops were being paid.

  Really, it was one of the nicest weeks of my life, that second week of December of the year of our Lord thirteen hundred and sixty-six. We ate and we drank, we walked about. At Emile’s excellent suggestion, we took every sober man from the compagnia across the water to Constantinople, where we visited eight churches, drank wine with Syr Christos, and my wife had an audience with the empress.

  Then I did. The empress asked me to explain to her in detail what the count was doing, and what had been done to rescue her husband.

  When I was done explaining, she looked away. We were in the hall of Blacharnae, and we were not alone; my wife was sitting at the foot of the dais, and there were courtiers and servants around us.

  ‘I do not really trust this count,’ she said. ‘But I do trust my brother-in-law, the Prince of Lesvos. He says you are capable of fetching my husband. Is this true?’

  ‘I’m not sure I’d discuss this here, in the open,’ I said.

  ‘I don’t mean to discuss it,’ she shot back. ‘I mean to order you to effect it.’

  I looked around. ‘Your Highness,’ I said – a new title to me, but the form of address for an empress. ‘Any attempt I make could result in his death.’

  I looked up then, and met her eyes. They were large, and deep and dark. The eyes of a person who has seen much, and survived it. ‘God will provide,’ she said. ‘I can make no other answer. If he is not restored soon, there will be no restoration.’ Very quietly, she said, ‘The pressure … to restore my son to his offices … is immense.’

  Her son, who had proposed to kill his mother and father for power.

  ‘I would reward you,’ she said, ‘as no man has ever been rewarded.’

  I won’t pretend those words didn’t quicken my blood.

  ‘Your Highness,’ I said. ‘I will try.’

  With Emile at my shoulder, I wrote Hawkwood a letter I had never anticipated writing. In it, I told him the size of my compagnia and its composition and offered him my services from the first of August, thirteen hundred and sixty-seven. Emile and I thought that was enough time to see Nerio installed in his estates, and to escort her from Venice to Savoy.

  Then, a week to the day after arriving, I mustered seventy very hung-over archers and men-at-arms aboard our galley, and sailed for Mesembria. I kissed Emile; she gave me this fine pin, which I still wear for her. I gave her a string of pearls. I sent my greetings to her knights, who claimed to be jealous of missing all the fighting.

  We had good weather and in three days we could see men huddled around fires in Mesembria. Except that I had brought tuns of Candian wine, and materials for costumes, and all the makings for Christmas puddings and cakes and some other treats.

  Instead of wild cheering, I was greeted with sullen looks. I was slow to note that the Green Count’s magnificent banner of the Virgin no longer flew over the fortress.

  Miles met me at the water’s edge. ‘The count has withdrawn to Sozopolis,’ he said. ‘He left Peter Vibod as captain here. The count’s gone. He’s left us most of the really bad men, too.’

  Miles looked pale and thin-faced and the shrew, never so far from him, was right on the surface.

  I shook my head in disgust. But then I listed off the stores I’d brought, and I restored his humour, and we got our own men to unloading them. And the men coming off the boat put heart into the rest of ours; they all knew their turns were coming, except for a few awkward sods who’d forfeited their leave.

  I’d spent a fair amount of money in Pera, mostly on clothes. I had fallen for the Tartar kaftan, and I had one in silk but lined in wolf – scarlet and grey. But I’d got several of the sheepskin-lined variety that the Tartars favoured, and I was looking forward to giving presents to my friends.

  ‘And Antonio di Visconti got himself captured,’ Miles said bitterly. ‘And there is a Turkish army moving to the south-west.’

  ‘In winter?’ I asked, appalled. ‘And what the hell was Antonio doing?’

  ‘We lost Lavorno,’ Miles said. ‘Ser Antonio tried to take it back.’

  By then Nerio and Fiore were embracing me and cursing my good fortune. ‘Coldest week of my life,’ Fiore said.

  ‘John is back,’ Nerio said, with infinitely more practicality.

  John was waiting in our little solar, his boots up on a table. But he rose and embraced me, thumping my back many times while I told him how worried I had been.

  He looked embarrassed. ‘Rode long way,’ he said.

  I have since come to understand that he had a mission of his own – his own goals. And he accomplished them, and only attempted to do my bidding on his road home. I think that this is natural – the way of men – and we often imagine ourselves to be heroes, when in another tale, we are only the smallest player on a very full stage.

  Regardless, he had found the emperor.

  ‘Emperor is at castle of Aikos, north and north,’ he said.

  ‘Aikos?’ I asked. Aikos was not on any of our itineraries. It was hundreds of
miles north, on the Black Sea. John sketched it out in charcoal on our unpolished tabletop. Listen, this is another thing Steppe people do – they draw pictures of the ground, like those maps of the Heavenly City you can see in monastaries. It is odd that this talent is shared by monks and Turks. But these pictures of the ground are very useful.

  ‘You are sure?’ Nerio asked.

  ‘Saw him,’ John said. And then, with a grin, ‘Spoke with him.’

  ‘Christ!’ Nerio said. ‘How?’

  ‘Emperor hunts with Bulgarian tsar.’ John looked insufferably smug. ‘John the Kipchak make good huntsman, yes?’

  ‘But Aikos is where Visconti is held,’ Miles said. ‘I sent a flag of truce and a trumpeter,’ he said.

  ‘Bulgarian tsar say he ready to release emperor,’ John said. He shrugged. ‘But emperor guard is Hungarian bastard László.’

  I think we all stopped whatever else we were doing – writing, talking, buckling on dry boots.

  ‘The Hungarian?’ Nerio asked.

  ‘I knew it,’ I said.

  Fiore smiled and touched his sword. ‘We heard the Hungarian was involved, did we not?’

  John smiled. ‘This time, just kill. Yes?’

  I admit I took very little urging. Listen, friends. Men like the Hungarian make threats all the time – threats about death and rape and humiliation. They do not carry them all out. It had been a year since László threatened Emile, and I doubted he even knew where she was.

  But I had come to agree with John, nonetheless.

  ‘Well, gentlemen,’ I said. ‘Shall we rescue the emperor?’