Someone came into the room with a plate of Turkish sweetmeats, and the hound raised its shaggy head and woofed, approvingly. ‘Now, you are a friend of Louis Capet, I think?’ said Frederick, passing me a tray of small almond cakes dusted with powdered Arab sugar. I demurred.
‘I am a commoner, Your Majesty, whose fortune it has been to help a good and pious ruler bring some very holy things into his kingdom, to enrich it. Louis is, I believe, a friend to every good man, but I wouldn’t presume to claim that friendship for myself.’
‘Well, that was nicely put, but really, you are not without influence, are you? The Sainte Chapelle – one has not seen it, alas, but it is by all accounts one of the wonders of our age – could not have been built without your efforts. It is a reliquary, and you provided the relics.’
‘Your Majesty flatters me, but really, I was simply fulfilling my vocation. Translating relics was my humble labour. But now that I own a bank …’
‘You handle Louis’s finances. I know, dear man, I know. But tell me: is Louis going on crusade? He is taking his time about it, though perhaps I should not scold him for that.’ Frederick smiled ruefully, as if to admit that it had taken him eighteen years to fulfil his crusading vow, and Louis was hurtling onwards by comparison.
‘He is, yes. I believe the army is already gathering at Marseille,’ I said.
‘So he is going to fight the Turk, not me,’ said Frederick lightly. ‘That is a relief.’
‘Your Majesty, King Louis has always been very forthright with the pope – or so I hear – that it is wrong and unjust for the ruler of the Church to meddle in temporal matters,’ I assured him, and immediately saw that I had given myself away. But Frederick pretended not to notice.
‘And we thank him for it,’ he sighed. ‘My good man, I have taken up far too much of your time. You are on your way home. But, Messer Petroc, if you should have a change of heart and take the vow of a crusader – there’s a chance for grace and glory, and an army of God about to sail, after all – it would not go unnoticed if you kept my cousin Louis’s gaze away from me. Or perhaps you, as someone with great knowledge of the wants and needs – one might almost say lusts – of Mother Church, might even be able to turn his mind to the notion of a more deserving arse upon Saint Peter’s throne? Pope Innocent makes alliances but not friends, and one day soon the balance of friend to enemy is going to tip, and not to his advantage. Meanwhile he is a wily man and not to be denied, and I fear he sees the great army that Louis has raised and would like it ravening through Christian lands, not infidel ones.’ He rose to his feet, a little stiff in the knees, and the wolfhound unfolded itself and rose too. I stood and bowed, deeply. My audience was clearly at an end, and I felt that, hawk-like, the emperor’s mind had turned to something else and I was almost forgotten, far, far below. But as I was turning to leave, his eyes focused upon me again.
‘Might I give you some advice?’ he asked. I nodded, disappointed, steeling myself for the request that was surely coming: lower interest rates for Imperial loans, or no interest at all …
‘Marry your lady.’
‘I beg your pardon, Majesty?’ I stammered.
‘Get married. It will do you no harm.’
‘But—’
‘But why do I give you this advice? Tell me: has Pope Innocent been sniffing around your affairs? Unwanted attentions, strange requests? One hears that a Jew was murdered in Florence. Your functionary …’
‘My partner. My friend.’
‘Quite so.’ He raised a long and elegant finger to his face. The nail scratched once, twice, at the skin between his eyes. ‘Are you a heretic, Messer Petroc?’
I almost jumped where I stood, so great was the nervous shock that thrummed through my limbs. But nothing showed, not one blink, no twitch to alert the wolfhound, who was watching me as intently as his master. Instead I forced my backbone to straighten, stiff as a pikestaff, and raised my chin a fraction – not defiant, of course not, but just a touch of injured piety.
‘I am a Christian man, Your Majesty,’ I uttered, my voice as stiff as my spine.
‘A good Christian?’ Something glittered in the depths of his eyes, but then it was gone. Perhaps I had imagined it. ‘Nay, I know, I know,’ said the emperor, chuckling good-humouredly. ‘Of course you are. So am I, but yet the pope calls me heretic, devil, Mussulman, conjurer … It is his way, his wise and holy way. Good Lord, he has called a crusade against me, so I must be a heretic. You understand me, of course. Remove yourself from suspicion. Heretics do not get married in church, so one hears.’ He cocked an eyebrow, as if daring me ask, From whom does one hear it? ‘So find a bishop – nay, an archbishop – to marry you. Make a lot of noise about it. That, my good man, is how I should advise you.’
‘Thank you, Your Majesty.’ I bowed, feeling the strain hiding in the back of my knees.
‘I detect a certain resignation,’ said the emperor with a half-smile. ‘Have you heard this from others – your lady, perhaps?’ I laughed ruefully.
‘Perhaps … from my own conscience,’ I said lightly. ‘It shall be done, Your Majesty – if the lady will have me, that is!’
We shared a polite little chuckle over that, and then I was backing through the door, a free man. I caught a final glimpse of Frederick von Hohenstaufen, fondling the ears of his hound, the sunlight shining through his thinning hair. Then a guard was politely ushering me away, and I followed, gratefully.
I was making my way back to the inn, where I intended to take a flagon of wine to bed with me and sleep the rest of the day away, when a long shadow detached itself from the gloom of an archway. Thinking to find another of Ezzelino’s guards, I cursed and turned, arms up, already protesting. But instead, I found myself looking at Michael Scotus.
‘Hello, Petroc,’ he said.
‘Doctor Scotus.’ I folded my arms, feeling exhausted and peevish. ‘Was this your doing?’
‘Your interview with Frederick? Not at all. I told him to leave you alone, but the emperor, while fond of advisors, is not much given to heeding their advice. My guilt is in praising you, perhaps too much. Still, it wasn’t so unpleasant, was it?’
‘No. The emperor’s condemned cells are sumptuous,’ I said bitterly.
‘A misunderstanding between the emperor’s chamberlain and Ezzelino’s captain of the guard,’ said Michael, looking as stricken as his bony face would allow. ‘I was in the countryside, otherwise it would never have happened. I’m truly sorry.’
I softened, reluctantly. ‘What do you want, Michael?’ I asked.
‘You are worn out. I will not keep you,’ he said. ‘I wanted … I want to give you something. A gift, if you like. If you will have it.’
‘This life makes us brutes, my friend,’ I said. ‘It is I who am sorry. Come with me to my lodgings. We will sit and talk.’
‘Alas! No time. For you, for me. I must tell you something – words before the gift. You are not free, Petroc. It is the thing that eats at you, more hungrily than the years,’ he said. I winced at his words, and a ripple of gooseflesh ran up my body, in spite of the heat. ‘Now Innocent seeks to bind you yet further, but to use you, or to ruin you? That is for you to discover. But when I look into your eyes I see a snail inching its way along the edge of a newly sharpened sword. You are caught, by obligation to a dead man, to a living lord, to gold itself.’
‘The snail can leave the edge and find the flat blade,’ I said, queasily.
‘But slowly, slowly, for the edge is already pressed deep into the flesh, though it has not yet cut.’
‘What, in God’s name, are you telling me?’ I tried to laugh, but it sounded hollow.
The grey eyes searched my face, perhaps seeing where the years had clawed it. ‘You have grown, Petroc. You have become very strong. We can all see the past – I can read it on your skin, and in everything around us. The present …’ He held up a long finger, and blew upon it gently. ‘The present is here. But the future. Soft flesh and hard steel: the snail craw
ls and its own motion kills it, cleaving in two as it inches onward, onward. The blade is the present: we all crawl along its edge. Those whose touch is light move further and live a little longer. But life presses us down onto the edge, buffets us from side to side. We balance – that is what you are learning. I see your flesh pressing upon the cruel edge, Petroc. Soon you will be bleeding, and then—’
‘In God’s name, Michael!’ I cried. ‘What is it that you want with me?’
‘To tell you something, as a friend,’ said Michael Scotus. ‘Keep your balance. It will be hard for you. The world is out of kilter, and, my poor Petroc, you and your riches are one of the pivots upon which it teeters. It is the spirit of the age.’
‘So it comes back to spirits after all. Do you remember, in Rome, what you showed me?’
‘Something that was in your head.’
‘Something more than that. You brought me to where the hidden things of the world converge.’ Even in the light of a Paduan afternoon I shuddered at the memory: the Coliseum at night, the great bowl of stone, a fire burning at its centre, and in the flames … The emperor had chosen his necromancer well, for Michael Scotus had shown me the spirit of one I had loved, and she had spoken to me out of the flames, out of the spinning void of loss.
Now I felt it again: the stone beneath my feet becoming something insubstantial, until I was standing on the cobwebby weft that fences off the dead from the living, the strands of time itself. I felt myself teetering, searching for poise, my sense of what was up and what was down fading. Doctor Scotus’s eyes were staring into mine, and with an effort I turned away and looked down. There were the worn flagstones of Padua, with their scabs of horse dung and dried spit. I took a deep breath.
‘Did you feel it?’ He smiled, tight-lipped. ‘Ah. You did. There is a long way to fall, isn’t there, if we do not keep our balance? And that is my counsel to you: this world is becoming a place of black and white. A man must be this, or else he is that. You, Patch, must be neither: use all your arts, all your artifice, to keep yourself from taking any side but your own. Be loyal to no one but yourself, and you might win through. I have managed it, though it has cost me somewhat.’ He held up a hand and smiled at it wanly, and for a moment I thought I was looking through his flesh and bones as though he were a creature formed out of mist. ‘We are not unlike one another, you and I. So I offer you my paltry advice. Somewhere between godly and godless, I should say, but lovingly meant.’
‘It isn’t in your interest to help me, Michael,’ I said, gently.
‘You are right. But that is my affair.’
‘Thank you, though, for your … for your words. I’ll be home soon. What should I do?’
‘Whatever you can, to keep the steel from the snail’s flesh. We have not spoken of this, you and I. Others will come to ask, but you can send them away. Tell them you’ve turned Guelph.’ He chuckled grimly.
‘And when the emperor has won, and Innocent is ridiculed – if that ever comes to pass – what then? I’ll be a Guelph in a Ghibbeline world.’
‘I do not think so, Petroc. Perhaps you will be nothing.’ He held up his hand again, fingers pursed like a flower bud, then opened it to reveal the emptiness within. But I thought I saw something on his palm: specks of light, thistledown-fine, vanishing up into the air. And yet … No, there was nothing there at all.
‘What was it that Michel always told you? “Pay attention.” Be careful,’ he said softly. ‘Be a shadow. Keep your feet, even if it means contorting yourself like a madman. We are all madmen, my lad.’ I reached for his conjuror’s hand and grasped it. The flesh was surprisingly, comfortingly warm, and I pulled the old man to me and embraced him.
‘Goodbye, Michael Scotus,’ I said. ‘Will I see you again?’
‘You may,’ he said softly. ‘You may.’ And then he brightened. ‘Ah, Petroc!’ he exclaimed. ‘There is something you can do. And you should, as soon as possible.’
‘And what is that?’
‘Get married,’ he said.
Chapter Seven
The courtyard of the Ca’ Kanzir smelled of hot tiles and young figs, a clean and optimistic scent under which lay the ancient, patient rot of Venice. I had come in by the canal door, a little shaky in the legs from the choppy Lagoon, across which I had just been sailed from Chioggia. The boatman had grunted my baggage up the slippery steps and dumped them in the doorway, against which he leaned, waiting for his tip. When he was gone I kicked the door closed behind me with my foot and greeted the serving man who was already busy with the bags. He looked as pleased to see me as any Venetian servant ever does, but as I had forgotten his name I reckoned that made us even. Telling him to take the bags up to my quarters, I went and leaned for a moment against the marble well-head that stood in the centre of the courtyard, the stone worn smooth and almost translucent by countless years, countless hands.
A shutter scraped and banged above me. I squinted into the midday sun.
‘Patch! Come up!’ Iselda’s face was framed against the dark window opening, her hair loose and hanging against the pale grey stones. An ancient ivy clung to the wall, a great, straining sinew of knotted wood, and I fancied, for a moment, that I would clamber up it to my love, like some eager swain from one of her songs, but instead I waved and found myself running across the flagstones. The familiar mustiness of the Ca’ Kanzir’s ground floor enveloped me. Bales of silk were stacked against the walls, and a faint tang of pepper hung in the air, a shipment only just sold on, no doubt. I launched myself up the stairs, and found myself panting when I reached the long hall that ran the width of the palace. The year before, we had had the great open windows framed in delicate stone tracery, the very height of fashion – not so much to be creatures of that fashion, but because the stone had all but rotted away – and now, against the thin columns that curved up into little pointed arches all fretted as if bitten by giants’ teeth, Iselda stood, the faint breeze from the canal stirring her black tresses. Another moment, and she was in my arms.
‘My God, I’ve missed you so much,’ I finally said into her hair. ‘I can’t—’
‘Then don’t. Now you’re home,’ she said gently. ‘Come. Eat. Tell me stories.’
She led me to the dining hall, where Marta, the thick-limbed fisherman’s widow who was our housekeeper, chamberlain and steward and ruled the old palazzo with a sensitivity at odds with her salty tongue, was laying out platters of food and pitchers of wine, ale and buttermilk. As I took my usual place in the big oak chair with its high back and carved arms, the chair in which Captain de Montalhac had once sat, I had that odd sensation that travellers sometimes feel when returning home after a long absence: that everything familiar was rushing into me, filling me up faster than I could think. I settled back and let the place welcome me.
But although I was happy for all the sounds and smells of home, for Iselda loading my trencher and Marta clucking over my travel-stained tunic, my mind was still on the road between Padua and Chioggia. I had ridden through curtains of rain that had trailed across the countryside like vast billowing lines of wet laundry, wave upon wave of them with blue skies in between, and all the while I had pondered, head down and rain dripping from my eyebrows, what Michael Scotus had advised me. Marry. Hide within the safe conventions of Mother Church. Emperor Frederick had said it too, and Cardinal John. As a particularly heavy shower had lifted I had kicked my horse into a trot and splashed through the puddles that mottled my way, all shining now as if the road were paved with mirrors. As I trotted I asked myself two questions: why, and why not?
I had decided, even before Padua, that the cardinal’s advice had been floated before me in order that I might refuse or ignore it, thus giving the Holy See a hold over me and my business. Petrus Zennorius consorts with Jews and keeps the household of a heretic – no smoke without fire, remember … Indeed, in temporal matters the Church is as crude as it is subtle in matters theological, and for years now it had been bombarding Christendom with the vilest, wildest
slanders and insinuations about the Holy Roman Emperor himself. Lies as much as force had hurt the empire, and if such a mighty edifice could be wounded, what hope was there for a commoner like me, no matter how wealthy I had become? If the pope wanted my money, he would get it, one way or another. And if Iselda and I were to marry, would that get Innocent off our backs? Not likely. But it might buy us some time.
As my skin started to chafe from the wet folds of my clothing, a gust of wind blew a veil of raindrops into my face, blinding me for a moment and blotting out everything: the dripping landscape and the ragged clouds, and my tumbling thoughts. Into that shocked, blank space came the words of Doctor Scotus: put down roots, anchor them on love. Three people had given me the same advice, but two of them cared only about my money. But Michael Scotus, I realised, cared not one hair for gold. He was telling me how to save my soul.
‘Iselda, do you love me?’ I said, without thinking.
Without thinking? But I was thinking: about Montségur. Four years ago we had stood at the edge of the burning place where the grass still stood up from the ground, though it was black and crunched to cinders beneath our feet. The wind had risen, and ash was rising in little whorls, thin columns that swayed and danced through the lengthening shadows.
I had picked up the sack, feeling the captain’s bones slide and settle into the ash from the pyre. Just now, Iselda and I had scooped up two handfuls each, and let the almost weightless ash trickle through our fingers: two hundred lives, two hundred names, a faith burned to fine, grey dust. Now I offered my dusty hand to Iselda and she took it, so that together we stepped from the dead place into the living grass, tall and heavy with seeds: rich hay that no one had lived to harvest.
We rode back through the abandoned village, walking our horses slowly, as if we had silently agreed that clattering hooves might anger the unseen, who were everywhere, calling to us in the buzz of the flies, in the scolding of the jackdaws, in the trickle of water from the village spring. Even the smoke from their pyre had become a ghost, vast and heavy, blanketing everything in an invisible fog of desolation. As soon as we had passed the last empty hut we broke into a canter, and did not stop until we were down alongside the river, heads to the north, the pog of Montségur beginning to lose itself among the higher peaks that surrounded it.
The Fools’ Crusade Page 9