The Long Sword

by Christian Cameron

  I wanted d’Herblay’s neck between my hands and I said so.

  But Nerio said I was a barbarian. ‘Or do you want the rich widow?’ he asked.

  I put my hand on my dagger, but I bowed.

  ‘Bless you, your account was worth two thousand ducats when I bought it, and I’ll make five thousand off your court cases. You can borrow all you like from me. And I can punish your enemies. Isn’t it droll?’ He smiled. ‘I’ll break d’Herblay financially.’

  I shook my head. ‘He’s very rich. I don’t think five thousand ducats will break him.’

  Nerio played with a rich ruby on his finger. ‘It will cost him three times that to fight the case, and he’s enough a fool to fight.’ He shrugged. ‘Pater owns the college of cardinals, or at least, he should. He’s paid them enough. Perhaps not enough to get everything the Queen of Naples wants, but certainly enough to ruin a little French nobleman.’

  It was a little like kissing a beautiful maid and finding that she had the eyes of a serpent. Nerio was too fond of money and power.

  And Juan – Juan was more nearly the perfect knight than any. He was a perfect jouster, a cool swordsman, a deadly hand. He rode better than any of us, and he had the eye for horses that makes a great rider even better. He, too, had riches, but he had a childish temper that too often got the better of him, especially when there was wine involved. With three cups of wine inside him, he could suddenly turn to a waspish pedant given to telling the rest of us about our failings. And he hated to be compared to Miles Stapleton. Just as Nerio detested, or affected to detest, Fiore.

  And Fiore? Petty, self-aggrandising, foolhardy and miserly. He hated poverty and dreamed and schemed for worldly fame and fortune in a way that Juan and Nerio found tiresome, even infantile, the more especially as they sometimes paid his bills in secret. He resented their money and breeding, and as his fame as a master of arms spread and more men came to him for lessons, he used his money to buy clothes and cheap jewels. But – and I hate to say this of a friend, but it still makes me laugh: his taste was on a level with his talent for wooing, and just as he could ignore a comely girl to discourse on a lance blow, so he could wear a jupon of the most virulent orange with hose of a deep scarlet, simply because each individually had been expensive and fashionable.

  And second-hand. He never bought anything new. He and Nerio almost came to a fight one night when Nerio accused him of following coffins to get dead men’s clothes.

  They were not perfect, and none of us always loved the others. But taken all together-brawling, playing dice, praying, going to Mass, in the street or in the Doge’s palace or going into action by sea or land, they were my comrades. For every display of rancour or selfishness, I can name ten of selfless friendship.

  Which was all to the good, because we were to be sorely tested.

  It was a good time. I have seldom known a better. And about that time, I had a meeting with Nicolas Sabraham.

  He was a strange man: an Englishman who spoke ten languages, a well-travelled man who seemed to know everyone and yet often passed unnoticed. He often served the legate as a courier, and he was often away.

  Some men disliked him. He could be very slippery – he was often guilty of agreeing with other men merely to escape controversy or debate, which bored him. He once pulled me away from a fight and told me that I could not kill everyone I disliked. I never had better advice.

  But in June, he sat across a chessboard and a pitcher of wine from me. He was dressed for riding, in thigh-high boots and a deerskin doublet. He’d been away, all the way to Avignon, or so Fra Peter said.

  ‘So, is the Countess d’Herblay your lover?’ he asked.

  What do you say?

  He leaned forward. ‘It’s palpably obvious, to those who can read faces. Listen, my friend, I took note when d’Herblay acted against you. Even if no one else did. Eh? I had a look at some letters – best not to ask. And I had the briefest of discussions with one of the lads who had taken you. If you take my meaning.’

  I suppose I looked away. I knew I couldn’t meet his eyes.

  He grabbed my hand. ‘Listen, Sir William, you love life, and the state of your mortal soul is nothing to me. Have her every day – on the altar, for all I care. But this is crossed with the legate, and that makes it my business.’

  I was speechless, filled with anger, shame, panic, rage.

  ‘D’Herblay was supposed to take and kill the legate at Genoa, yes?’ Sabraham nodded. ‘I wondered how on earth we escaped. I begged the legate not to go. I find that we escaped because d’Herblay put all his energy into taking and killing you.’ Sabraham leaned forward. ‘D’Herblay is out of the game for a while. Off the board.’ He lifted a knight – a red knight – and took him off the board.

  ‘Camus hates you, you know this?’ he asked. He smiled a nasty smile. ‘Quite the piece of work, the Bourc. Fra di Heredia sends his regards, Sir William, and says that Camus is toothless, for the moment.’ He took another red knight off the board.

  ‘Do you know who the king is, Sir William?’ he asked.

  I nodded. ‘Robert of Geneva,’ I said.

  ‘Soon to be Archbishop of Geneva. His brother, the Count of Turenne, is coming on crusade with us.’ He picked up a red knight. ‘I want you to imagine this piece transformed to have all the powers of a queen. But appearing only to be a humble knight.’

  ‘Turenne?’ I asked.

  ‘Turenne is a fool. Possibly a coward.’ Sabraham shrugged. He put the red knight back on the board. ‘But in his retinue is d’Herblay. And a Hungarian.’ Sabraham smiled. ‘A man like me. Do you understand?’

  I thought of the Hungarian with the pearls in his hair, standing coolly over the corpse of the man who’d stolen the Emperor’s sword. ‘I think I’ve met him.’

  ‘He has been paid to kill the legate,’ Sabraham said. ‘And you, of course.’

  My friendships with men were not the only relationships being strained.

  One evening I returned to the convent and Fra Andrea let me in the wicket. He led me silently through the rose garden and then walked silently away.

  Emile was there. She was with the King of Jerusalem and he was on one knee, kissing her hand. She was looking out over the lagoon.

  She turned and saw me. She didn’t start or flinch, but merely smiled and gently tugged at her hand.

  The king would not release it. ‘How long will you make me wait?’ he asked.

  She stepped back, and he rose suddenly and collected her in his arms.

  I allowed my spurs to ring on the stone steps.

  The king turned but did not see me. ‘Begone! This is not for you, Mézzières,’ he spat over his shoulder.

  I cleared my throat. There was plenty of light left in the sky to see Emile’s relief.

  ‘Your Grace,’ I said.

  ‘You may walk on,’ he said without turning.

  ‘Your Grace, I live here,’ I said.

  ‘Your presence is not wanted,’ he said quietly. He looked at me, then. An expression crossed his face, an indignation annexed by a secret amusement.

  ‘Countess?’ I asked. Of course I was pray to rage and jealousy, but also to good sense. Was she the king’s lover? I would have to fight for him, either way. And her look …

  ‘Sir Knight,’ she said. ‘I would be most pleased … if you joined us.’

  The king backed away as if I had struck him.

  But I’ll give him this, he did not lack grace. ‘Ah … my lady countess, I had mistaken you,’ he said. ‘And truly wish you every happiness.’ He bowed to her, touching his knee to the ground.

  She turned her head away, obviously mortified.

  The king glanced at me.

  I shrugged – a very small shrug.

  He shook his head, a slow smile crossing his face. ‘I suppose,’ he allowed, ‘that I will have wine
with the abbess as a consolation.’

  He walked away and in that moment, he reminded me of Nerio. He was not defeated. And he turned his own disappointment to amusement, as Nerio did on the infrequent occasions he was balked.

  Emile slumped back against the brick wall. ‘Oh, my God,’ she said.

  I watched the king. ‘Shall I go?’ I said.

  She put a hand to her face. ‘Do as you like,’ she said.

  Then she burst into tears. They weren’t the loud tears women and children use to get their way, nor the sobs you hear with heartbreak. They were quiet tears, and they sparkled in the last light, which is the only way I knew for sure she was weeping.

  I summoned my courage. Let me tell you, I can stand the charge of cavalry better than face a woman in tears, and I knew what I had to do without apparently being able to will my limbs to move.

  Step by step I walked to her.

  If I tried and failed …

  I saw, in a levin-flash of the mind, that I had enjoyed my spring with her because it had no tension. Because I didn’t have to engage or risk her good opinion, or discover what she really thought, or what, or whom, she loved.

  One more step.

  It is one of the hardest moments in the Art of Arms, to make yourself step forward into a blow. Every sinew cries out for a retreat, with its guarantee of safety – a pass back, and the opponent’s sword whistles harmlessly through the air.

  But you will seldom win a passage of arms by retreating.

  If you pass forward and make your cover, you have your adversary at abrazare, the wrestling distance. The close distance.

  I suppose it is risible to you gentleman that I saw that last step as a combat pass, but I drove forward on to my left leg with the same effort of will that I would make to face Fiore’s sword. I felt the tension in the muscles, and I raised my arms, and I put them around her shoulders, enveloping her.

  She raised her eyes. Took a breath. And her head snapped round, so that she was looking, not at me, but out over the lagoon. ‘If you hadn’t come,’ she said with bitter self-knowledge, ‘I would now be in his arms.’

  By the suffering of Christ, she was soft. Hard and soft against me.

  For some time, we only breathed.

  I was supposed to say something. As a knight, it was my duty to avenge my honour. But I was unmoved. I wasn’t without jealousy, but … she was in my arms.

  Bah! I was not unmoved. I was uninterested in her life with the king.

  ‘Do you understand me, William?’ she asked.

  I shrugged.

  I tried to kiss her, and her lips brushed mine, but then they were gone. And yet her hands crossed behind my head and she leaned back to look at me.

  ‘When I was young, I was quite the wanton,’ she said.

  ‘So you have said,’ I put in, which may have been ungallant and was certainly unnecessary. She frowned.

  ‘No, listen, if you wish to kiss me. Listen.’ She stepped back, out of my arms. ‘I would kiss any boy who put his lips on mine. Any one of them who wanted me. It was enough … merely to be wanted.’

  In a way, it was like the blows in the village square. Not because it should have hurt me, but only because it hurt her. She hated saying these things.

  ‘I had the reputation of a slut, and I was almost proud of it, or pretended so.’ She laughed, but the laugh was wild. ‘But my father was rich, and powerful, and made me a good marriage. To a man who held me in contempt, because I came as soiled goods to his bed.’ Now I had her eyes on me in the dying light, and now I could feel every blow as she stuck herself with words. ‘His contempt spurred me to greater efforts.’

  I wish I might have thought of something clever to say.

  ‘And then I met you,’ she said. She bit her lip. Slowly, she said, ‘William, I would like to say that after you … but no. I have had other lovers.’ She looked me in the eye. ‘I did not come to constancy in a single leap,’ she said with her old humour. She narrowed her eyes. ‘I find it … difficult,’ she said.

  She turned away. ‘You know what would be easy? It would be easy to be your mistress. Or the king’s! Par dieu, I’ve never climbed such heights.’ She turned. ‘Perhaps both of you at once.’

  Oh, I writhed. Women were not allowed to speak this way of love. But she was angry. I think now – but no. I will take some secrets with me.

  At any rate, she smiled. ‘But at some point I had babies. And babies make changes. Do you know?’

  ‘Know what?’ I asked.

  ‘Edouard – my son.’ She smiled. ‘He is yours. D’Herblay has no idea.’ She laughed and she leaned back against the brick wall, and I didn’t care about any of it. She was the most beautiful woman I had ever known.

  I had, in fact, counted months and seen a certain hint of freckles in Edouard.

  ‘So?’ I asked.

  In a fight, there’s a moment when you throw the blow. The blow. And long before it hits, you savour it. When your opponent’s sword reaches for it and fails to find it, you have time, long indivisible aeons of not-time to savour the blow.

  Mind you, sometimes your opponent makes his parry, and you are shocked to have such a perfect blow stolen from you.

  But my studied nonchalance was the equal of her self-anger.

  She turned. Slapped me playfully. ‘I’m pouring out my soul!’ she said.

  I looked out over the waters. ‘Just tell me when I can kiss you,’ I said. ‘I’ll listen until then.’

  She choked. I can’t say whether she sobbed or laughed. Perhaps both.

  Then she shook her head. ‘I think that I am asking you not to kiss me,’ she said. ‘I believe my choices resolve down to none, or many. I choose none.’ She looked at me under her lashes. ‘Why are you not disgusted? The king would be disgusted.’

  ‘Only after he was finished,’ I said. I smiled. ‘At least, if he’s like Nerio.’

  ‘Yes,’ Emile said. She smiled slowly. ‘You understand? Truly?’

  I shrugged. ‘I have been some dark places. All I hear you say is that you, too, have been to them.’

  She shuddered. ‘And you?’

  I frowned. ‘Emile, I have killed men for money.’ I turned, getting my back to the wall. As if it was a fight. Perhaps it was. ‘You know what I have gained from Father Pierre? A sense of my own sin.’ I smiled. ‘And I’m mortally certain that if you put the bastard who took my horse in front of me tomorrow, I’d cut his throat.’

  Her mouth twitched.

  ‘So what penance shall I assign myself, when I know the next sin is just at the end of my sword?’ I asked and took a chance. I put my lips on hers, left them long enough to be sure, and then stepped back. ‘I love you. Would you prefer to wait for marriage?’

  ‘You’ll kill my husband so that you might marry me?’ she asked. She met my eye with her head half turned, and I think her amusement was genuine. ‘I don’t think we will be able to count on Father Pierre for that wedding.’

  She made me laugh. Christ as my Saviour.

  Because the answer was – yes.

  The next day, after training with the Order, I was summoned by de Mézzières. As I expected, I was left alone with the king.

  He motioned to me to rise from my deep bow. ‘Is a certain lady under your protection?’ he asked.

  I think I laughed. ‘I doubt that she needs my protection,’ I said.

  The king grinned. ‘Par dieu, monsieur, you are a man after my own heart. When this is done, come to Cyprus. I will give you lands and men, and you can one of my lords.’

  You still won’t get Emile in your bed, I thought.

  ALEXANDRIA

  1365

  We sailed in early July. My body was healed, and I left behind me my revenge on d’Herblay, my fears for the Bishop of Geneva, my new-found love of Venice, and my hatred of Genoa. I had had
this experience before, leaving London to go to France. War is always a sea voyage – if you return, everything is changed. Even you.

  We had perhaps four thousand men-at-arms, the cream and the riff-raff of all the men-at-arms in Europe that summer. We had the best of the Italian knights and many of the best French professionals; there was a rumour, right until we sailed, that du Guesclin would join us, and I wished for him. We had some very good English knights, as I have said before, and a surprising number of Scots and Irish – not that I can always tell the two apart. But the Leslies had brought men from the isles west of Scotland. They were, every one of them, as good as Kenneth MacDonald and his brother and Colin Campbell.

  Mostly, we had the scrapings of Poitou and Gascony, desperate men in armour whose outward rust belied the state of their souls, their purses, and their general discipline. Yet these same men were as tough as old saddle leather and as careless of danger and pain – vicious old mongrels who would bite any hand if paid. What the masters seemed to ignore is how they behaved when not paid.

  But just then, between Venice, Cyprus, the Pope and the Accaioulo, we had gold.

  Sabraham used some of the gold to buy informers within the brigands, so that we might work out any plots against the legate. He was thorough, and he trusted no one. Even me. Later, as you will hear, he shared some information with me, when he had no choice.

  Ah, Chaucer. You know Sabraham, eh?

  Later, in June, I heard that there had been a mysterious riot among the Gascons, and three men had died – with crossbow shafts in their heads. An odd sort of riot; Sabraham’s sort.

  We left the lagoon, and loaded the ships, and I relaxed.

  After all, we only had to fight the Saracens.

  After a day at sea, it became clear to me that our hosts, the Venetians, had very different goals than the Pope, the legate, or the king. This didn’t surprise me unduly; I was a professional soldier, and I was aware that employers were often at odds with their own soldiers over strategy – but having Nerio in the next hammock on board the Saint Niccolò gave me direct access to his Florentine perspective on the Venetians and the Genoese, the Pope and the French. He knew more of Venetian policy than Ser Matteo Corner, who commanded our magnificent galley. Every night, whether we were in one of the small ports of the Adriatic or nestled stern first on a beach cooking on the hard-packed gravel, we’d debate the possible targets of the crusade.