The Long Sword

by Christian Cameron

  I looked down the main deck to the stern, where the command deck rose a few steps above the main deck. Lord Contarini was sitting, just as Miles had said, in a low chair. The leather battle curtains were brailed up for the breeze. He was watching the loading of the great galleys shallow hold. He saw me and his demeanour changed.

  I am no fool. I had the evidence, and I assembled it. He was loading us for Venice, not Rhodes.

  Let me tell you, I prefer a fight to a debate. But I had promised the legate.

  I had perhaps thirty slow steps in which to marshal my arguments and make a case. And the first choice was whether to allow myself to be mastered by anger, or to be all sweet reason. The anger was right there, boiling together with the injustice of Emile’s behaviour, the perfidy of the king, d’Herblay’s cowardice, my fear of Cambrai’s long arm, my own fatigue and black mood. Anger was easy.

  There are moments in life that are as definite as battle. As stark. There are moments when you see things as if they were outlined in scarlet, when truth is illuminated, when a man’s character changes because he understands something heretofore hidden, for good or ill. We remember with pleasure those moments that are achievements of some goal: the wife, the treasure, the golden spurs, the Emperor’s sword. But in our secret mind we know that some of the red letters that mark our days were not achievements but discoveries. I have known a good woman ruined by another woman’s perfidy, ruined to dissipation by a relentless cynicism. I have seen one man turned faithless by another man’s bad faith, accidentally discovered.

  In one brilliant flash as I stepped aboard and crossed myself to the crucifix at the stern, I saw that anger would serve no purpose whatever in this debate. And that, further, my anger was a bent, nicked sword in any debate. I can’t tell you by what train I arrived at this conclusion, but I saw it. This was one conversation in which I must not be governed by my black mood.

  Like a man approaching a fight in the lists, I examined my opponent and tried to find an attack that would carry his conviction. That he had given his word? That our victory needed to be known on Rhodes?

  Like many young men entering unequal combats, I had not prepared my attack when I entered his distance. But at least I knew the manner of my own defence, and had my first feint, as it were, prepared.

  I bowed, touching my knee to the deck. ‘My lord summoned me?’ I said.

  Lord Contarini inclined his head. I knew he liked me. ‘I need to talk to you on a serious matter,’ he said, a little too portentously.

  In a fight, you can read an opponent in a hundred little things. A man may lean back slightly when you present your blade at his eyes – that little flinch reveals everything. Lord Contarini’s voice and his first words told me that he was not happy in his own mind with the choice he had made. And that was an opening.

  ‘I see we are loading for Venice,’ I said bluntly. I neither smiled nor frowned – my voice was steady.

  He broke his eyes away from mine. ‘Yes,’ he said. ‘It is necessary.’

  I neither nodded nor frowned. ‘It is my duty, my lord, to tell you that your action will force the cancellation of the crusade.’

  His head snapped around. Had it been a fight, I had just landed a blow.

  I admired him, and one of his most admirable qualities was that his age rendered him immune from the petty ambitions that ruled the rest of us. But I had him. Having won a great victory, he was chained to the good opinion of the world.

  He glared at me. ‘Venice must be informed immediately if this victory is to be followed up. And perhaps this sea fight is as great a victory as the crusade was ever expected to win.’

  ‘The crusade is intended to take Jerusalem,’ I said.

  ‘With six thousand men?’ asked the admiral. ‘Spare me your pious crap, Sir Knight.’

  I bowed and clamped down on my temper. ‘My lord, I gave my solemn word to the legate that I would return to him at Rhodes – and I believe you did the same.’

  ‘My duty to Venice outweighs my word to the Patriarch, however worthy that gentleman.’ He said it, and yet I could see that it rankled.

  ‘Can we not send a galley or two, or even an overland messenger?’ I asked. But my mind was running on, and I thought I had it. I was too young to fully appreciate the impact of a great victory won in old age, but I understood that Lord Contarini wanted to live to enjoy his fame. It was something in his face when I said the word messenger. He wanted to be his own messenger, to enjoy the worship of the crowd, the Te Deum at Saint Mark’s.

  It was an uncomfortable wisdom, because I fully comprehended his desire. I, too, want to live to tell my stories. There is little value to fame after you are dead, whatever the ancients may say.

  He shook his head. ‘I need …’ he began. He paused.

  ‘My lord, if you support the crusade to the end, your fame will be greater, I said quietly. ‘If you return now, some will smear your victory with terms like desertion.’

  He stood suddenly, overturning his seat. ‘You dare?’ he spat.

  This is a form of confrontation I dislike. I dislike enduring the anger of a man I admire. But I had given my word, and my sudden wisdom flowered in a hundred ways as I saw – better – how to command myself and other men.

  I bowed. ‘I must dare,’ I said. ‘My lord, I am only doing my duty to my lord the legate. And, my lord, to you.’

  ‘Betake yourself out of my sight,’ he said. ‘It is too late. We have a cargo engaged, as do most of the ships in the fleet.’

  I bowed again. ‘A set of cargoes that can be unloaded in as many hours as they were loaded – and warehoused until we return.’

  ‘Now you will advise me on merchanting, Sir William?’ he asked.

  I bowed and left him, but I was shaking inwardly. And yet I thought the balance had shifted. I had caused him some doubt.

  I limped down the gangway and turned my halting steps for the Hospitaller galleys. I did not dread the summons of the senior knight – or perhaps I didn’t dread it enough. I had come under the orders of different knights at Avignon, but I had little notion of my own subordinate position.

  Fra Daniele del Caretto soon enlightened me.

  ‘I am surprised that you did not repair aboard immediately,’ he said, ‘To pay your respects to your senior officer. I have waited in surprise for some days, and now I find you wanting utterly in either respect or humility. And where is your surcoat? Are you too proud of your earthly riches to wear the Order’s cross? The cross of Christ?’

  This from a man whose own surcoat was so thickly embroidered in gold and silk thread as to constitute another layer of armour. He wore his over a short gown of linen and silk. His hose were silk – he wore a small fortune on his back.

  He continued, ‘I was utterly against the inclusion of your kind in our great empris. I expect that you were shocked to find that there was nothing to loot aboard the Turkish vessels.’

  Righteous indignation is a useful tool, to be sure. But sometimes, if one is lucky, a conversational adversary makes a claim so ludicrous that it allows you to smile. Remember, too, that I had just had my road to Damascus about temper; not, as you’ll hear, that my conversion was perfect or durable. But in that hour I was a different man.

  He leaned forward. ‘Speak, man. Have you nothing to say for yourself ?’

  I looked at him straight and again, neither smiled nor frowned. ‘Lord Contarini intends to sail for Venice and leave the crusade in the lurch,’ I said. ‘I was just with him.’ I bowed my head. ‘I am very sorry if I have seemed wanting in respect, Fra Daniele.’

  ‘The admiral spoke of you commanding the volunteers when in fact such a thing is impossible – no volunteer can command anything.’ He looked at me down his long patrician nose.

  I might have shrugged, two hours before, and earned his ire. But I did not. ‘Fra Daniele, might I move you to address Lord Cont
arini?’ I asked.

  He sat back. ‘Lord Contarini is a merchant adventurer of Venice and is in no way under my authority. You are. I find you insubordinate.’

  He seemed very satisfied with his little sphere of power. I have known such men all my life, and the church attracts its fair share. Yet this man had fought his ship with spirit – even with skill – during the battle.

  ‘Fra Daniele …’ I considered my words. I was a knight. I was his equal in every way, except within the insular world of the order. Yet the order had given me much, not least my life.

  His eyes narrowed. ‘You may address me as “my lord”,’ he said.

  I met his eye. ‘No, sir. You are not my lord. The papal legate is my lord. I am here on his express authority – I have his orders to command the other volunteers for the greater glory of Christ, and to return them, and the Venetians, to their duty at Rhodes.’ It was a mistake. His face hardened as I spoke. But I enjoyed it.

  He shook his head. He was honestly baffled. ‘You may not speak to me that way, sir. I am the Lord Preceptor of Cyprus, a Cross of Grace, a veteran knight of your Order. I am your lord in every way. If you will not submit …’

  I was finally learning how to do something other than fight.

  I bowed. ‘My lord, I spoke in haste.’

  We regarded each other across his stern cabin table. I let my eyes inform him that my surrender was pro forma.

  ‘Well—’ he began.

  ‘My lord, the Venetians are proposing to desert the crusade and sail for home. I believe that you have it in your power to convince Lord Contarini to stay true to his vows.’ I put a hand on the table.

  ‘You speak well, for a mercenary,’ he said.

  ‘My lord, I was a routier, a brigand. I was saved from that life – and from death itself – by the legate. I owe him everything, and I will do anything in my power to see his orders obeyed and his wishes complied with.’ I held his eyes.

  He looked away. ‘What a strange, insistent fellow you are, to be sure,’ he said with irritation. ‘Very well, I’ll go chivvy Lord Contarini. But these Venetians are not gentlemen – mere merchants.’

  The next morning, we rowed down the harbour in a dead calm so flat that the smell of dead fish seemed to cling to the rigging, and the ocean was like a badly polished mirror stretching away to the island of Salamis across the strait. But we weathered the cape, rowing like sweating heroes, and altered course to port and not to starboard. At noon we were seeing the great temple to Poseidon at Sounion, which Nerio pointed out and described in great detail. As great detail, in fact, as the charms of his Athenian mistress, whose lush breasts and insatiable appetite for him he was describing with the kind of relish that—

  I beg your pardon. But my new found evenness of temper was not, in fact, accompanied by a whole change of temperament. Listening to Nerio did not incline me to chastity. Nothing did.

  At any rate, the admiral was reserved but courteous. He was in his chair on the command deck until the sails went up after we passed Sounion, and then he went below. The next day, and the next, he remained aloof, and I was sorry to lose his regard.

  We ran north and east on an empty sea in light airs. Word of our victory had sent every ship into the nearest safe port. The captains of the Ionian felt about our fleet exactly as the peasants of Thessaly had felt about our landing – they feared us as much as they feared the Turks. We didn’t site a fishing boat until we were on the Aeolian shore, or at least what Nerio assured me was Aeolia. I was receiving a second-hand classical education, combined with an endless volley of erotica, from every conversation.

  And what of my Turk? As I have mentioned, the Hospitaller knights had taken him aboard their galleys. We were on the beaches of Lesvos, the isle, I am assured, of a brilliant and beautiful poetess whose descendants Nerio was pursuing closely, when I had time to go visit my Turk. The Hospitallers were drawn up close to us on the long golden beach under a tall and equally golden headland. They had a number of brothers who were very good doctors, and Fra Jacob, an older German doctor, had taken him in hand. He spoke to my man for some time and then turned to me.

  ‘He’s not a Turk – did you know that? He says he is a Kipchak. Do you know the word? The Genoese sell them to the Egyptians as slave soldiers. Superb archers.’ He rolled back the sleeve on the man’s linen shirt to show me a host of tribal tattoos.

  ‘Moslem?’ I asked.

  They talked in low tones. Eventually Fra Jacob shrugged. ‘More Moslem than anything else, though I think his notions of spirits would puzzle the Caliph.’

  I told him of meeting the Kipchaks – the ambassador – at the court of the Emperor at Krakow.

  Fra Jacob raised an eyebrow, said a few words to my captive, and the man groaned and then laughed. He was not dead, and that was something, but he could not be troubled long. I sent him fruit from the town, and a chicken, and some wine – which I should have known no Moslem would drink.

  The town was crowned with a fortress so ancient that the peasants claimed it featured in The Iliad, and the hill was called ‘Watchful’ in the local tongue. The fortress at the top was commanded by an English knight who had served at Poitiers, and we had good cheer for three days while the fleet scraped their hulls and loaded water and food. I was surprised to find an Englishman on the coast of Asia – I began to think that we were everywhere.

  Sir John laughed. ‘The Gattelussi – you know them? Lord Francis is prince of this island and a good friend of the Emperor.’ He nodded, enjoying his master’s reflected glory. ‘He hires us in Italy.’

  Indeed, Sir John Partner had as many Genoese and Pisans and Bretons as he did Britons, but for all that his little garrison had an English air. There were men there I knew, at least by sight, and it was pleasant to speak English, although less so to climb to the fortress.

  The last day in Lesvos, Fra Jacob led me to the man again. ‘He’s making a good recovery,’ Fra Jacob said. ‘Which I attribute to sea air and divine intervention. There should have been the usual sepsis followed by death, but in this case, a week on, and with the original lesion closing? I have to believe he may recover.’ Fra Jacob paused. ‘He has indicated to me that if he recovers, he will convert.’

  I grinned. A soul saved is a soul saved, and it is always a benison to have a good deed rewarded.

  ‘Will you keep him?’ Fra Jacob asked.

  I shrugged. ‘I assume he knows horses. I could use a page. So yes. I won’t make him a slave – I’m not a Genoese.’ I laughed.

  Jacob spoke to the Turk – I thought of him as a Turk, and they were speaking Turkish. The man grinned and nodded at me.

  ‘He offers you two years and two days of his life as ransom,’ Fra Jacob said.

  I gripped his hand.

  Fra Jacob nodded. ‘I’ll keep him in this hammock until we reach Rhodos. We’ll baptise him if he lives, and by the time we raise the island, I’ll have taught him a little Italian.’ He nodded. ‘You are one of our volunteers?’ he asked.

  I bowed and agreed that I was.

  He smiled. ‘Enjoy Rhodes,’ he said. ‘You’ve had an encounter with Fra Daniele?’ he asked carefully.

  I nodded.

  ‘His kind is not rare,’ Fra Jacob said. ‘Listen, I am a doctor, trained in Italy. I have been a brother of this Order since my wife died in the Black Death.’ He took a cold cloth and ran it over my Turk’s face. He met my eyes. His were mild; in the low orlop of a Hospitaller galley, his eyes seemed very dark. He smiled, apparently without malice. ‘My father is a nobleman and my birth perfectly decent. But I have never been allowed to dine with the knights, nor offered accommodation, despite the Order’s vows or my own skills.’ He shrugged. ‘I am less resentful than perhaps I sound, but your reputation is as a man of blood.’

  It was my turn to shrug. ‘I serve the legate,’ I said.

  He nodded and his brow w
rinkled. ‘You may find that there are many in the Order who have little respect for your legate.’ He paused. ‘Or none. He was born a serf – a peasant.’

  I laughed. ‘I am warned. But I grew to manhood being excluded by the English court – I won’t be broken by aristocratic airs.’

  While I was speaking, he got a Greek lamp, lit with olive oil, which smelled so much better than the whale oil you find in the north. By its light I could see my man. ‘What is his name?’ I asked.

  We went back and forth, and the best I could reckon, his name was something like Kili Salmud.

  He tried to bow, lying in a hammock with his hands together. He flinched as the movement reached his stomach muscles.

  ‘Let’s get him baptised with a Christian name,’ I said.

  Fra Jacob frowned. ‘You might feel differently, were your situations reversed,’ he said.

  I think I grinned. ‘But they are not,’ I said, or something equally glib.

  South of Chios, we spread our line wide, a dragnet fishing for Turkish vessels, and we snapped a dozen of them up – fishing smacks, a lateen-rigged merchant, a three-masted tub that proved to be a pirate-taken Genoese. We ran her down ourselves in light airs, with the whole crew rowing triple banked, and Fiore and I led the boarders – Nerio was down with the flux. The crew fought to the last; the last being a man that Fiore beheaded with his false edge strategy, the showy bastard. Their resistance was pointless, as my friends and I were in full harness despite the heat, and with the two Venetian men-at-arms, all the dying was done by the crew of the round ship. In the hold we found the rotting bodies of the Italian crew, and saw why the Turks – really, as it proved, the merest Levantine pirates of no race whatsoever – had fought to the end, as the cargo was worth a pile of gold, being all silk, and the crew had been ill-used to the point of horror: tortured and humiliated before being killed like sheep with their throats opened, youngest to oldest.