Fiore looked at me.
‘None of us is Galahad,’ I said, all too conscious that I had just returned from a day spent with Emile.
‘I am afraid, all the time!’ Juan said.
‘So am I,’ I said.
Fiore looked at me across the back of Juan’s head and raised his eyebrows. Well, I suspect that Fiore was so very much himself that he was not afraid most of the time.
We walked Juan around and fed him a little more wine, and by the time the cocks were crowing on the islands, we undressed him and put him in bed.
Nerio had one of the grocer’s daughters in his room, I discovered, and she emerged, shy but triumphant, to display her cooking skills.
Triumphant, and certain her mother would never catch her.
Nerio grinned with masculine accomplishment. Anna was, in fact, very pretty, with a round face and dark curls that were, I think, genuine and not the product of fiddling with an iron, and they had certainly survived a night’s athletic entertainment with Nerio.
She began to heat milk for us to break our fasts, and Nerio and Fiore sat with Miles at the table. Miles looked distant, as if he was pretending not to be there at all. Fiore was untroubled. He was repairing a shirt.
Nerio had eyes only for the shape of his conquest, and she was shapely, and delighted enough, or simply appalled enough, at her new role to carry off the part: she was naked under a single shift, and most of her was on display.
‘You made him drunk,’ I said, with a nod to the cot where Juan tossed and snored.
‘We promised him a festivity,’ Nerio said. ‘We are soldiers, not monks.’
I looked at Miles. ‘Well?’ I asked.
His eyes were large. ‘I – that is – my lord—’
Nerio laughed. ‘You are all such children!’ he said. ‘Life is for living. Carpe diem. If the next lance stroke goes through my visor, I want to have sported every maiden in Venice – in Italy! What use is chastity to a corpse?’ He looked at me. ‘Eh? William?’
‘When he confesses all this to Father Pierre,’ I said. It was a weak thing to say, I admit.
Nerio shook his head. ‘A fine man, but you fear him too much. Let him live a life of chastity if he will.’ He smiled at me.
‘Par dieu, brothers!’ I said. ‘In a few weeks, we’ll be going on crusade! To Jerusalem!’
Nerio licked his lips. ‘I’m quite sure there will be women there, as well,’ he said.
Later that day, or perhaps the next, but still with a disturbed and unclean spirit, I went to the Doge’s palace to meet with Fra Peter. I feared the summons was about Juan, but I was mostly incorrect.
‘Father Pierre is going to Genoa,’ he announced.
‘In the winter?’ I asked, and probably blasphemed.
‘Now that the King of Cyprus is here – and he’s been asking for you, William – Father Pierre feels free to try to move Venice on the matter of war with Cyprus. I must be here, to help the king with the men-at-arms – those who are left.’ He shook his head. ‘Do you have a few thousand ducats lying about that you could loan me, William? If I could make even the smallest of payments to our “crusaders”, I could hold this army together. We don’t have the great nobles that we expected. Indeed, the Green Count has obviously decided to spurn us and go his own way: he’s raising his vassals, but not for us.’ He gave me a withering look. ‘All we get is his useless cousin, the Count of Turenne.’ He looked at me – a look I knew meant trouble. ‘And we hear we are to be graced with the Count d’Herblay.’