The Ill-Made Knight

by Christian Cameron

  It stung, the way he said it. But he paused by the door. ‘By the way, your sister is now a full sister or our order.’ He smiled, a sort of lopsided smile. ‘So perhaps saving Golds has become an empris – something our whole order is required for. Listen, William, I urge you to pay the donation. One of the things most missing in your life is a structure for your actions. Join us, and we will train you.’

  I rose. ‘You will have me?’

  He laughed. ‘Don’t imagine we’re choosy,’ he said. ‘We’re far more desperate than that.’

  The Italian accompanied me to the street of goldsmiths. ‘I suppose I could teach you a few things,’ he said. ‘How to stand. How to move. A few postures.’

  A year before, I’d have spurned him. Learn swordsmanship from a boy? But my eyes were open, and the mould of my life was broken. I had to start again. No reason not to start again as a swordsman.

  The street of goldsmiths was three times the size of the similar confluence in London, and so richly adorned that to walk down the street was to see a greater display of crozier heads, inlaid swords, episcopal rings, copes, vestments, chalices and jewels than you would see on display in any palace in Europe.

  At the south end of the street, there were twenty tables set up in a small square. There were a variety of hard men on display – some in mail, some in leather, some in coats of plates, all with large and very obvious weapons. On the tables were enough coins to ransom the King of France – well, perhaps not, but on those tables were at least 50,000 florins. You could change a Saracen coin for new minted Italian gold. You could change French debased coins for pure Flemish coins. And so on.

  ‘Messire, can you point me to the table of the Bardi?’ I asked a man who looked English. He proved to be a Dane, but his English was good and he had his mercenary walk me to the Bardi, half the street away.

  I waited for a pair of Paris merchants on their way to the fairs to change their money, then I offered a slip of parchment from my purse. In truth, I was nervous – I expected a great deal of delay, and perhaps outright refusal. I think that in my head, I tied Richard’s and Sir John Creswell’s betrayal to the whole prisoner ransom scheme – I think I expected further abuse.

  I was stunned when my local Bardi representative – Doffo, a senior man, more used to being an ambassador of Florence than a table banker – leaned across the table, took the slip of parchment from his nephew, read it, tapped his teeth with a gold pencil and looked at me.

  ‘You are William Gold, the English knight?’ he asked. He sounded respectful.

  I probably simpered. ‘Yes, messire, I am he.’

  He tugged his beard. ‘I heard you were dead,’ he said. He raised an eyebrow. What he meant was, prove you are who you say.

  ‘I had some troubles, it is true,’ I said, ‘but I was . . . rescued by Fra Peter Mortimer. Of the Hospitallers.’

  ‘Eh?’ he asked. ‘Will Fra Peter vouch for you, young man?’

  My Friulian leaned across the counter. ‘I will vouch for him, Messire Bardi. You know me.’

  Of course. There could only be so many Italians in Avignon.

  The pencil tapped again. ‘I will, of course, guarantee your money, messire. My memory is that you are an old customer, although we have never met. But – I apologize for the inconvenience – your share has been claimed.’

  I had expected as much, but his gracious manner had given me hope. ‘Ah,’ I said.

  He shook his head. ‘No, no. Fear not. You are palpably alive – even your red hair testifies for you.’ He looked up at me. ‘May I offer an interest-free loan until we work this out? How much do you need?

  ‘A thousand florins,’ I said. ‘Make that one thousand and one hundred.’

  ‘By Saint Jerome,’ he said. ‘Are you buying a bank?’

  ‘I am becoming a donat of the Order of Saint John,’ I said proudly.

  He brightened. ‘Ah!’ he said. ‘This small fortune goes to the church?’

  I nodded.

  He offered his hand. ‘Done. A mere matter of notation then.’

  Let me explain, if you do not know the banks and the church.

  The better Italian banks took in specie – gold and silver – by collecting the papal tithes and other religious taxes and monies of account. They farmed these moneys: took them in and made a small profit.

  Actually, an enormous profit, over time.

  Imagine collecting the tithes from the entire Christian world, less only the schismatics of the east.

  The money that they lent and brokered was that money. They didn’t actually move the money – the bags of silver collected in England largely sat in London. Can you see it? There’s a vault in a basement. It’s full of money. It is the Pope’s money, and he spends it in Italy. The Bardi use money collected in Italy to pay the Pope’s debts there. It’s all on paper. The money in England may go to pay for churches, or to reward nuns or feed the poor, but the rest – nine marks out of every ten – is used to loan out at interest. It engenders more silver as surely as girl horses and boy horses make more horses, except that the money never gets sick.

  Over time, the effect has been to move the money slowly but surely to Italy. That’s not because of the Pope, rather because of the merchants and the banks. Once in a while, you see a specie train, guarded by a small army, taking gold over the Alps. You never see it go the other way.

  Does this put you to sleep, messieurs? You are fools, then. For bankers, war is not about fighting. War is about gold.

  At any rate, what my new friend Doffo was saying was that handing me 1,100 gold florins would have been a heavy risk, but writing me a note to the Hospitallers saying that I’d paid 1,000 to them actually cost him nothing in the short run, and he had plenty of time to check my story and put the screws to—

  Ah. That thought reminded me . . .

  ‘Who collected?’ I asked.

  ‘Sir John Creswell is marked as your captain,’ he said. ‘I believe he collected.’ He shrugged. He shrugged because 1,100 florins – more gold than most peasants would earn in their whole lives and the lives of their children – was not enough to seriously concern him.

  Bankers.

  He wrote me a receipt, and his spotty nephew counted me 100 florins. I signed. He signed. He sealed.

  ‘Check back,’ he said. ‘We have means to collect from Sir Creswell.’ He snorted. ‘When I have seen to that, I will happily pay you the balance.’

  We shook hands and I walked away.

  Messieurs, you want to hear about the fighting in Italy. So I will not dwell on the summer of the year of our lord 1362, except to say that it was among the hardest, and perhaps happiest, of my life.

  England and France were at peace, and the Pope was attempting to organize a crusade against the Turks. I’ll speak plainly about the Turks later – I fought them many times over many years, as you will hear. They may be infidels, but they are fine soldiers, wonderful archers, men with a strong sense of honour, and all of them ride better than me.

  Hah!

  But at that time, the Turks had just taken two Christian cities in Europe, and it was the scandal of the world: Adrianople and Gallipoli. They were just names to me – I had no idea how well I’d come to know them later.

  But although neither King Edward of England nor King John of France had committed to a crusade, it seemed possible, even likely, that they’d both go. That sort of negotiation was the reason Father Pierre Thomas was a legate, which, by the way, is an ancient Roman military rank. Well, I enjoy knowing such things!

  So in high summer, Fra Peter, Juan and I carried letters from Father Pierre Thomas and the Pope to the King, all the way across France to Calais.

  Before we left, I trained every day with Messire dei Liberi, the Friulian lad.

  He reduced swordsmanship the way I had seen Cumbrians and Cornishmen reduce wrestling, to a set of postures called gardes. Some of the gardes I had heard or, or seen used, in London and Bordeaux. The Guard of the Woman is much the same
everywhere, although different men use it differently.

  But the Friulian had something – I think it was anatomy. He said he’d studied a year at Bologna – even in England, we know Bologna is the best medical school in the world. But he had theories of how the body moved, and how best to put strength and speed into your sword. Many were profound. A few were nonsense.

  Here is where he was different from the many charlatans I have seen teaching boys to use their weapons: when you showed him that a theory or posture was nonsense, he grinned and dropped it from his repertoire.

  Let me tell you a secret. Every master-of-arms knows this secret. I can impart it to you, but none of you will be able to learn from it. I’ll try anyway.

  You can teach a man how to use a sword, but you cannot teach him to use it. The knowing how is not the same as the use. An untrained yokel – me, for example – can defeat a superbly trained man for many reasons. The Italians roll their eyes and say fortuna. The French, more piously, say, Deus Veult!’ The English say, ‘The luck of the devil’.

  There is more to battle than training, armour, conditioning and good horses.

  Because there are so many imponderables to a fight, many men who teach the way of the sword are charlatans. Or they are good swordsmen, but they add all sorts of falsity to their teaching.

  Mercenaries like me may be bad men, full of sin, but we can spot this sort of chaff in an instant. Unlike many students, we have been in fights. Many fights. We have a simple rule – if you want to teach us about our profession, you must first prove you are better – not once, but many times.

  So, it is not that I had never met a man who claimed to teach the way of the lance and sword before I met young Fiore. But I will say he was the first I ever met, and one of the few, who was utterly honest, almost ruthless, in his approach. He treated fighting as Aquinas treated religion. With logic and deep understanding of the most basic parts: the body, the sword, armour.

  I remember one afternoon finding him in an armourer’s – really, a finisher who took pieces from a smith and prepared them for sale, with straps, coverings and fancy brass.

  ‘Have you seen the new Milanese stuff?’ Fiore asked me.

  Imagine an eighteen-year-old sitting in an armourer’s shop, flexing shoulder armours. Picking up spaulders and testing the limits of their flexibility.

  Of course, I had, however briefly, owned some Milanese armour. I said, ‘Yes. I had a breast and backplate for a year.’

  ‘Ah!’ he said. ‘How did they affect your ability to cut across your body?’

  I couldn’t remember, but I had a feeling it had limited my cut.

  ‘Ah!’ he said, and smiled. ‘Let us go play in the yard.’

  In late spring, he announced that he was going to Nuremberg, in High Germany, to study with a sword master there. I was envious, but we embraced. I was leaving for England.

  He was in the same sort of anomalous position as me. He was travelling about, fighting in tournaments and carrying messages for money. He did small duties for the Knights, and they gave him permission to use their preceptories as hostels. Something to do with his father.

  ‘I need to fight,’ he said.

  I laughed. We were fighting every day, by then.

  ‘No – in battle,’ he said seriously. ‘It must be very different from duels and chivalric encounters.’

  We’d had this discussion a dozen times, so I shrugged.

  ‘Come on crusade with me,’ I said.

  He grinned. ‘Of course, I must,’ he said. ‘I have already sworn it. I will be back in a few months.’

  We embraced again, and he rode for Germany with a bag of letters for the banks. Meanwhile, I rode for England.

  That was a happy trip.

  First, I was formally made a donat in Avignon. I knelt all night at an altar, swore my devotion to the Knights, swore to obey and serve, and was given a red surcoat with a white cross, which I confess I wore every day for some months, I was so proud.

  The ceremony was well attended. I was not a knight but a squire, in the eyes of the order, so I received silver spurs and the demand that I obey all knights. I thought of Sir John Hawkwood. After the ceremony and the vigil, I was bleary-eyed with lack of sleep, and Juan took me out to eat in a fancy inn with a gilded ceiling somewhat dulled by the fire in the hearth and greatly enhanced by half a dozen very attractive young women bringing the wine.

  We had lamb.

  After we ate, Fra Peter came and sat. I was pleased, in some remote, human way, to see that he watched the prettiest girl, a dark haired woman with an elfin nose and a smile that would stop your heart, who seemed determined to lean over my table for as long as it might take me to see to her naval.

  I misdoubt but that Fra Peter was younger than fifty – perhaps younger than forty – but it pleased me to see that he watched her the way he watched a fight.

  Why do other men’s failings please us?

  Never mind. He tore his eyes away. By God she knew the effect she was having, and she minced away from us with a backward glance and a quarter of a smile – so well done, my friends, that I’m still talking of it, ain’t I?

  It’s like the perfect sword cut. You don’t forget it, once you see it done.

  He tore his eyes away and blushed. He met my eye.

  ‘You have done well, William,’ he said. He reached into his brown robe and produced – de Charny’s dagger. ‘I return this to you,’ he said. ‘I suspect that you’ll want it, as we’re going to England and you look naked without a weapon.’

  Then he rose and embraced me. So did Juan.

  ‘Tomorrow,’ he said, ‘we will go to the armourer and have you fitted for a decent harness. I’ll draw some munitions stuff for the trip. And you’ll want a sword,’ he added.

  We drank. After some time – talking of arms, fighting and horses – he stood up. ‘I’ll leave you, gentles. I’m too old for this place.’ He managed a smile at Dark Hair, and she smiled back at him, damn her.

  Juan and I had a second cup of wine. And a third, and perhaps a fourth.

  We talked of everything: the world and the crusade. I stood up. ‘I’m for bed,’ I said.

  Juan agreed, and we walked home on a clear summer evening. I left him at the door of our lodging and went to the outdoor jakes.

  Then I went back to the inn.

  Before the bells in the cathedral tolled for Matins, Dark Hair and I had repaired to her tiny bed in the eaves, hard by the pallets of a dozen other girls. She held my hand while she negotiated with them in rapid Provençal, and held out her free hand.

  ‘Give me a few moutons to pay them,’ she said, and flushed. I could feel it in the half-dark. ‘Ah, monsieur, I’m no whore, but a poor girl, and these are my friends who will lose a little sleep.’

  I gave her a gold florin.

  She bit it.

  Another girl, as pretty in another way, watched this transaction and giggled. ‘For a florin, we could all stay and help,’ she said, but her friends led her away.

  As it turned out, we didn’t need any help. Her neck was warm and salty, and her mouth was deep and tasted of cloves and cinnamon.

  I saw Anne a dozen times before we left for Calais, and she welcomed me eagerly enough that I think, despite my florins, she liked me. I’ve known a hundred women like her – somewhere in the misty half-world between whoredom and ‘honest’ labour. We slipped out to walk the river and went out in a boat, and we ate fish in a riverside tavern, and we . . .

  Never mind. It wasn’t love, but it was pleasant.

  The last night, I told her I was going and she kissed me and said, ‘A girl likes a soldier ever so much better than a priest.’

  The ride across France was like a chivalric empris. We camped almost every night because there were no inns; we rode armed all the time, and I had to practice the discipline my knight spoke of so often, washing what I could every day, changing linen without taking off my rented armour. As he had said, it wasn’t that hard. I learned ever
y day – learned what many squires are taught by their knights, but no one had ever taught me.

  I learned to wash my own clothes, and to dry them on the rump of the pack horse.

  It wasn’t all learning. I taught them to cook. The three of us cooked in strict rotation, and their initial attempts were laughable for men who had lived in the field all their lives. But their cooking was of a piece with my swordsmanship – they’d never been taught better. I bought pepper, saffron and good honey and I showed them where, even in the ruin of France, one could pluck a few herbs from the foundations of a burned cottage.

  I won’t bore you with what effect Richard’s betrayal had on me, except that I was not as quick to love Juan as I might have been. And while I loved Fra Peter – and I did – I yet contrived to keep a little distance between us.

  The trip, and the dinner, however, eroded my intentions. We had no other companions and we became very close.

  I was learning so much, so fast, that I don’t remember much of the scenery. I learned that I had never learned to properly care for a horse, because I had never been a real squire. When you are out in the rough for weeks, and it rains is cold, you must work very hard so that your great brute of a war horse is not made lame for life, or dies of a fever.

  I learned how to start a fire – better, faster and from all sorts of things. Fra Peter could make fire with a stone and the pommel of his sword – it was like watching a priest perform a miracle.

  I learned to cook a few new dishes from Anne, in Avignon, and I taught them as well. The one I liked best was the Provençal dish I had eaten so often in Avignon – cassoulet.

  I learned to be a better scout, for a campsite, or an army.

  And every day, I learned to ride better. I learned to saddle and unsaddle, tack and untack, faster and more gently. To clean and maintain all my equipment and Sir Thomas’s.