Condottiere: A Knight's Tale

by Edward John Crockett

  Boninsegna cowered behind the parapet, waiting until the last arrow had fallen to earth. He looked around and saw that the councillors were alone: the guards had long since deserted their posts, and the piazza below was empty. Florence had gone to ground. Cautiously, he inched his head above the parapet. The horsemen were still there.

  ‘I offer these terms,’ he shouted. ‘I shall despatch riders to Pisa to order our armies to break off the siege and return to Florence. With immediate effect.’

  There was a pause as the two lead horsemen conferred.

  ‘It shall be so,’ said Altobardi. ‘The captain-general and his Company will remain in position until such time as your forces return from Pisa and until we are satisfied the siege has been lifted. We seek no confrontation with you, but neither do we fear one. We shall depart from Florence by the northern route to Pisa. Your armies shall return to the south.’ He paused. ‘Are these terms agreed?’ he demanded.

  ‘The terms are agreed,’ said Boninsegna.

  The riders turned and rode back towards the main force.

  Altobardi looked over at Hawkwood and saw that he was pleased.

  ‘In truth, Gennaro, this has been as bloodless a battle as I have ever witnessed,’ said Hawkwood.

  ‘Yet victory is yours, Sir John.’

  Hawkwood nodded in acknowledgment, but his mind was troubled. He had welded his company into a compact and well-disciplined force, but it had not yet been exposed to the heat of battle. Sooner or later, the men would crave real action. They were soldiers and would lose their edge if not tested in combat.

  ‘Pray God, Gennaro, that all our victories are not as hollow.’

  Hawkwood stood the Company down and gave orders to set pickets. All they could do now was wait.

  *

  Karl Eugen von Strachwitz heard the commotion in the corridor outside but was at a loss to account for it. He hurried over to the window, and thrust his head tight against the wrought-iron bars. In the inner courtyard far below, people were running aimlessly to and fro. His first thought was that the palazzo was on fire, but he saw nothing to confirm it – no water pails, no flames, no plumes of smoke.

  But, whatever was going on, he knew he must make it work to his advantage.

  He was confined to two well-appointed rooms on the fourth floor of the palazzo. Not only were the windows barred, but the doors were secured on the outside by massive bolts which clunked back into place each time his guards left the room. He had been treated well – wined and dined unstintingly – but, despite these courtesies, he remained very much a prisoner. He could only guess at Boninsegna’s intentions, but he suspected his future in Florence might be short-lived.

  It was high time to escape.

  Karl Eugen had not been idle. The bars were solid enough, but he had contrived to prise away some of the mortar securing the central bar of the window in his bedchamber. He had also wrenched free of the stucco wall one of the sturdy cast-iron lamp-brackets, pushing it ostensibly back into place so that the guards would notice nothing.

  He hurried into his bedchamber and pulled the bracket free. He wedged it against the central window bar and, using it as a lever, strained against the bar. He felt a slight movement – no more than an inch or so – but the bar remained in its socket. He removed the bracket and repositioned it higher up, threading it past the bar and bracing it against the stone window frame. Placing his right foot on the window sill, he heaved with all the strength he could muster. The bar still held but he felt it bend ever so slightly. He heaved again, and it bent a little more. Then again and again until it jolted free.

  The lower part of the bar was jutting free. He leapt to his feet and worked it feverishly to and fro, hearing a gratifying crunch as the mortar flaked. Suddenly, the bar came away in his hands, for all the world like a rotten tooth wrenched from an abscessed gum.

  He thrust his head and shoulders through the opening. He judged the drop to the courtyard to be all of forty feet – too far to jump, too far to risk breaking an ankle or a leg. He glanced right and left. The palazzo’s interior walls were smooth and unornamented and, as he had feared, offered no convenient hand- or footholds. No matter: he had made allowance for this.

  The windows in his rooms were flanked by long velvet curtains elegantly draped into position and secured by thick silk cords. Four windows: eight cords, each some six or seven feet long. He quickly detached all eight and knotted them together, creating a rope some thirty feet long at best. Too short to reach the ground, certainly, but possibly long enough.

  He sacrificed another couple of feet by securing one end round the bar he had dislodged. Then he climbed out on the window ledge and pulled the bar tight, horizontally, against the remaining bars. Cautiously, he looked down: the courtyard was now empty. He lowered himself into space, leaning out from the wall and planting his feet against it. Foot by foot, he ‘walked’ down the wall, using the rope’s thick knots as hand- and footholds. Within seconds, he had reached the end of the rope. Karl Eugen did not hesitate. He dropped the final eight or ten feet to the ground, cushioning his fall by bending his legs and rolling on impact.

  He stood up and looked around. One of the doors leading off the courtyard must lead to the street outside. But which one? A servant appeared, seemingly from nowhere, clutching a silver soup tureen. He pulled up short on seeing Karl Eugen, then flung open a door and dashed though it. Karl Eugen wasted no time on speculating why the servant should be running off with household silverware, but assumed the servant was making for the street. He followed. They traversed an empty chamber, then ran down a long wood-panelled corridor which led to the main entrance to the palazzo.

  The great double doors were ajar. Karl Eugen ran through them out binto the street beyond. There, he paused for a second or two to get his bearings. He slowed to a brisk walk, heading towards Oltrarno.

  He had no notion as yet of what was happening. All he knew was that he was free again. He must now decide how best to exercise that freedom.

  Pisa

  14 June 1361

  The pale pink of dawn tinged the uppermost levels of the Torre Pendente and crept slowly over the flamboyant sandstone and majolica façade of the Duomo. Watching on the walls, Tommaso Gracchi and the men under his command shielded their eyes as the sun eased over the horizon, casting into ever sharper relief the unique contours of a city where Corinthian capital and elegant arabesque proudly attested to the twin influences of classical antiquity and Islam.

  Gracchi was inordinately proud of his city and a zealous guardian of its history. He stood on the east wall, looking out towards the massed Florentine army silhouetted against the morning sun. He knew Pisa was doomed. This small city state whose powerful navies had once dominated the entire western Mediterranean and the coasts of North Africa would soon be no more.

  The Florentines had been at the gates of the city for two full days. They had proposed a pourparler under a flag of truce and had called on Pisa to surrender. Gracchi and the Council of Guilds had defiantly rejected the call: Pisa would defend itself to the last, they replied, conscious that the outcome was inevitable.

  Gracchi had ordered some of Pisa’s most prized possessions removed from the city and concealed in the crypt of San Piero a Grado, a church built three centuries earlier on a spot east of Pisa where St Peter was believed to have first set foot on Italian soil. Simone Martini’s Madonna and Child polyptych had also been concealed there, as had a Virgin and Child carved in ivory by Giovanni Pisano for the high altar of the Duomo; and a bronze statue of the mythical hippogriff – half-horse, half-gryphon – sculpted by Islamic artists over four centuries previously. The statue had been captured by Pisan armies at the time of the Saracen wars and was arguably the most potent single symbol of the city’s glorious past. Gracchi hoped these and other treasures would somehow escape the Florentines’ clutches and be saved for posterity.

  There was a stirring on the hill to the east. Gracchi and his men exchanged nervous looks. As they
watched, squinting against the sun, the Florentines formed ranks and unfurled their battle standards. The besieging army cranked into motion.

  The Pisans watched and waited.

  Gracchi took a square of soot-darkened glass from his doublet and held it to his eyes. It was too early to be certain, but the Florentines appeared to be moving to the south. That was unexpected, since Gracchi and his military advisers had anticipated a frontal assault on the east wall. An attack from the south made little tactical sense: the Florentines would be constrained by the River Arno on their left flank and would have to attack uphill.

  Puzzled, Gracchi passed the glass to a young captain of the city guard, whose eyesight might be sharper: ‘They move to the south, do they not?’

  The young man peered through the glass.

  ‘Well?’ said Gracchi. ‘Do they? Move south?’

  The captain did not reply, but continued to observe. Gracchi was about to wrest the glass back when he saw the captain’s hand begin to tremble. Not in fear, but in excitement.

  ‘Yes – yes! They move south, and then east! They’re withdrawing!’

  The men on the wall waited, uncomprehending. The first ranks of the Florentine army gradually receded over the hill. Other ranks followed. The cavalry took up the rear, moving ponderously but incontrovertibly away from Pisa.

  Gracchi could contain himself no longer. ‘They withdraw!’ he shouted.

  Jubilant cries echoed along the battlements. Men knelt and crossed themselves. Some embraced, others wept.

  For an hour or more they held station on the battlements, but the Florentines did not return. Gracchi sent riders to confirm their inexplicable departure. The riders returned and reported no trace of the armies of Florence apart from the grass scorched by their cooking fires and the earth churned by their siege engines.

  Pisa was safe – for the time being at least.

  An exhausted Tommaso Gracchi climbed down from the wall. He was unable to explain what had occurred. It must, he concluded, have been divine intervention – a miracle.

  What other explanation could there possibly be?

  Donnina

  The freshness of her beauty strikes me dead

  Near Florence

  16 June 1361

  The English sergeant-at-arms anticipated the blow and arched his head away. Too late. Delicate fingers, dripping with ornate rings, balled into a fist which caught him full on the mouth and split his lower lip.

  He wiped away the salt taste of blood and grinned from ear to ear. ‘What have we here, then?’ he said. ‘A little wildcat?’

  His men laughed.

  ‘Lay a hand on me again at your peril, you vermin!’

  Donnina Visconti’s eyes glittered in anger as she surveyed the soldiers crowding around her and her carriage. To her right, her small retinue of outriders had been herded at pikestaff-point into a compact group. One or two of them eyed her sheepishly, aware they had failed in their duty; others looked down at the ground, ashamed and fearful.

  ‘A wildcat indeed, by God, and as pretty a one as I’ll ever hope to see,’ opined the sergeant-at-arms.

  ‘Aye,’ said another voice, ‘a proper beauty. And I warrant there’s something soft and juicy for us all beneath that splendid gown.’

  Donnina feared for her life. It had all happened so suddenly. One moment her carriage had been proceeding sedately towards Florence; the next, it was surrounded by this whooping pack of animals who had materialised seemingly out of nowhere. Her guards had been overpowered in a matter of seconds and she herself had been hauled unceremoniously from her carriage.

  The men had spoken in English. Donnina had been tutored in that language and she responded in kind.

  ‘I am the Lady Donnina Visconti of the Visconti of Milan,’ she said with as much hauteur as she could muster. ‘Who, pray, are you?’

  ‘We, my beauty, are Essex men of the White Company, come to rid this land of Florentines and all those who would do harm to Pisa.’

  ‘I am a Visconti of Milan,’ she repeated. ‘And I demand to know by what right you detain me here.’

  The sergeant-at-arms spoke again, his voice more threatening this time. ‘Right? You ask by what right? Then let me tell you straight. We detain you as a spy for Florence.’

  Donnina laughed contemptuously and her captors looked at each other in some confusion. ‘A spy? You numbskull! I am no spy, nor am I in the pay of Florence. I am a loyal subject of Milan, and these men are my guards.’

  ‘Call them guards if you will. I call them milksops – and spies and turncoats, to boot.’

  ‘Then you, sir, are a fool – and an ugly one, to boot.’

  The men laughed uncertainly, but they were impressed.

  ‘Ugly I may be, but I am no man’s fool,’ retorted the sergeant.

  ‘Then you must surely have the wit to comprehend that I, Donnina Visconti, do not treat with fellows of your base rank.’

  He hesitated. If this woman was indeed a spy, the information she carried might be valuable. Her arrogance certainly carried conviction. To his chagrin, he felt a touch intimidated by her. His men were looking at him expectantly and he took the only course that seemed open to him. He would do as soldiers the world over have always done: pass the decision to someone of higher rank.

  ‘Secure these prisoners and guard them well,’ he ordered. ‘And escort the lady to the captain-general’s pavilion.’

  ‘Escort me as you wish,’ said Donnina, ‘but I shall ride in my own carriage. A Visconti does not travel on foot.’

  The sergeant-at-arms bowed mockingly. ‘If that is your wish, Your Highness.’

  Donnina got back into her carriage. One man clambered in beside her and two others sat up top. She leant forward and rapped with her knuckles on the carriage roof. ‘Drive on!’

  The sergeant watched as the carriage, rocking gently from side to side, gradually disappeared from view. ‘Sir John will have both hands full with that one,’ he predicted.

  His men laughed. They knew Sir John Hawkwood was the match for any mere woman,

  Visconti or no Visconti.

  Florence

  16 June 1361

  At Hawkwood’s command, the White Company had held station until the fourth day following his pourparler with Boninsegna. That morning, outriders reported the armies of Florence to be at most five leagues from the south wall of the city, approaching in good order. At noon, Hawkwood ordered his men stand down and prepare to strike camp.

  ‘And what, pray, Sir John,’ said Perry, grinning, ‘is to become of our invaluable siege engines?’

  Hawkwood returned the grin. ‘We shall put a torch to them, Sir Wilfred,’ he said. ‘It would be imprudent, would it not, to let such precious engines of war fall into Florentine hands?’

  Perry laughed. The captain-general’s ruse had succeeded spectacularly. Only one of the siege engines – an assault tower – had actually been completed; the others had merely been rigged to look as if they were battle-ready. The Florentines would never know the extent to which they had been duped.

  Hawkwood was elated that this first confrontation with Florence was virtually at an end and that the company could leave the following morning for Pisa. At the same time, he was troubled by the continuing absence of Karl Eugen. He could only assume that the mercurial German had been detained by the Florentines. God forbid that any harm should come to him.

  There was nothing Hawkwood could do for the moment. He had no knowledge of Karl Eugen’s whereabouts and could not be certain whether his second-in-command was dead or languishing in a Florentine jail. He felt a twinge of guilt at his readiness to allow Strachwitz to venture alone into the snake-pit that was Florence.

  He was jolted out of his reverie by the leisurely approach of a preposterously ornate gilded carriage drawn by four splendid jet-black horses and flanked by a number of English pikemen. A burly sergeant-at-arms called the small cavalcade to a halt and came forward to salute him.

  Hawkwood acknowl
edged the salute. ‘And what have we here, Sergeant?’

  ‘I cannot say for certain, Captain-General, but it is my belief we have captured a spy in the pay of Florence.’

  ‘Then you have done well.’

  The carriage door opened, and one of the pikemen stepped forward to help the occupant alight.

  Hawkwood was astonished to see a trim ankle emerge, followed by the sweeping folds of a satin gown. He caught his breath as Donnina Visconti shrugged aside the pikeman’s arm and cautiously descended from the carriage. He took in the thick mane of chestnut hair, the gracefully curved back, the slender waist. She turned to face him. Flawless pale olive skin, high cheekbones, a firm jawline, a nose which bordered on the aquiline.

  And the eyes. Eyes which caught and held his gaze.

  He had rarely – no, never – seen a woman so beautiful.

  Or so angry.

  Donnina strode purposefully up to him. He greeted her in Italian. She answered in English.

  ‘Your accent is execrable,’ she said dismissively. ‘But that is only to be expected of one with the manners of a sporcaccione. How dare you treat a Visconti with such disrespect?’

  ‘In my country,’ replied Hawkwood, ‘swine do not have the power of speech. It is perhaps otherwise here in Italy.’

  Her right hand balled into a tiny fist and Hawkwood thought for a moment she was going to lash out at him. But then she smiled and abruptly changed tack. ‘There is doubtless much in Italy that is different from what you are accustomed to in your own land.’

  ‘Not least, my lady, that we sporcaccioni do not permit our women to meddle in the affairs of men.’

  ‘Whereas we in Italy respect our women and show them every courtesy.’

  ‘May I ask that you explain in what manner you have been treated discourteously?’ said Hawkwood.

  ‘Clearly, sir, I am held here against my will.’

  ‘But not, as yet, against mine. I am sworn to serve the interests of Pisa. And if you are indeed in the pay of Florence, you will doubtless understand you are my enemy.’