‘The Pope? Still in Avignon – what in the name of all the saints?’ I asked, as my misunderstanding had been genuine, and Fra Peter was breaking my arm.
‘The king, you young fool. Where is the King of Jerusalem?’ he demanded.
‘On his way here,’ I said, and shrugged. ‘I left him at Nuremberg. I rode to Avignon. He should have been here three weeks ago.’
Fra Peter shook his head and put two fingers to the bridge of his nose. ‘By Saint George and Saint Maurice and Holy Saint John, it has been a difficult two months. The soldiers—’
We both bowed to one of Father Pierre’s Italian clerics, who returned my bow with a smile, and then I saw Sister Marie and she allowed herself a broad smile.
‘Now that, my brother in Christ, is a sword,’ she said. She grinned. ‘When we have a moment, I’d like to fondle it.’ She laughed and retired to her cubicle by the legate’s office.
‘It’s very grand, after Avignon,’ I said to Fra Peter. In Avignon, Father Pierre had owned a cell like any serving brother and in it he kept his books and his desk, his prie-dieu and his sleeping pallet. I have known eight or ten men in that cell, or in the hall outside, waiting to confess, or waiting with messages or looking to consult.
The Doge was considerably more helpful than the Pope. The legate had a suite of rooms, so that Sister Marie had a closet to herself, and a brazier to fight the freezing damp; Father Pierre himself had a room with beautifully stuccoed walls, a simple pattern in red and blue that pleased the eye and gladdened the heart like the cry of gulls. He was dressed in a plain brown robe, but he had a fur hood and a magnificent enamelled set of prayer beads on his belt. He still looked very plain amidst the magnificence of Venice, and I would say that it was not that he had made his clothing more sumptuous, as much as he had risen to the challenge of being a papal legate in Venice.
He rose and embraced me.
Then, after I had kissed his episcopal ring and knelt, he waved me to a chair. Italians have the best chairs. They have a dozen types, from thrones very like our own to my favourites, the folding chairs made of dozens of frame supports that fold into each other like two sets of human ribs interlocked and unfold into a chair. The Doge had provided the legate with a complete set of camp furniture for the crusade. He had set it up in his office and I confess that the Doge of Venice’s camp furniture was better than anything I had seen in the palaces of Poland and Bohemia or England.
At any rate, I settled comfortably into my chair and told my story, leaving out nothing but venal sins.
Father Pierre motioned to Fra Peter to sit, and it was just the three of us, and Sister Marie, scribbling madly away. She wrote so fast that when she dipped her pen, she did so with her whole body, and her pen case, hung round her neck, would tap against the desk; our whole conversation was punctuated by that ‘click’ that came every seventy or eighty heartbeats.
When I spoke of leaving the king, Father Pierre winced and steepled his hands.
When I spoke of Bishop Robert, Father Pierre put his face in his hands for a moment and then exchanged a long look with Fra Peter.
Fra Peter was playing with his beard and staring out the elegant window at the lagoon.
‘And this lady you escorted south – the Pope ordered this?’ Father Pierre asked.
‘No, my lord,’ I said.
‘Fra Juan di Heredia? He ordered you?’ my legate asked. His eyes met mine.
Listen. Father Pierre was not of this world – he was then a living saint. But while he was above many worldly considerations, he was at the same time deeply knowledgeable of the world. Fiore liked to brag that in the whole of his youth he’d never got away with one trick on his mother – I suspect that Father Pierre would have made a frightening parent.