The Long Sword(112)
I suppose we should have seen the connection, but we did not.
Nor were we fools. Fra Peter ordered me to take a few volunteers. We thought we would be gone just three weeks, back in time for Juan’s knighting. King Peter intended to keep Christmas court in Venice; there was to be a tournament and a foot combat in the square of Saint Mark’s. We had three weeks to get the legate over the rain-swept roads of northern Italy, to an inimical city, to make a treaty.
A week passed, and we still hadn’t left. These things happen; the legate was held up every day by the press of business, and now that we had the king in person, it was increasingly likely that there would, indeed, be a crusade.
There were further letters from Avignon. The letters told the legate that the Pope was still interested in the expedition, but they told me that the passes above Turin had opened again, however briefly, and that Robert of Geneva’s agents would be abroad.
I attended King Peter. The Venetians had moved him from the Doge’s palace and now housed him magnificently in a private one, and he kept court. Many of his men who hadn’t had the coin to travel Europe had come this far, and now he was surrounded by a phalanx of noble Franco-Cypriotes. Jehan de Morphou led them – he was the best dressed and the most arrogant. The admiral, Jean de Monstry, had been on the king’s team at the tournament of Krakow, and I knew him a little, and of course there was Phillipe de Mézzières. But none of them were overtly rude; Monsieur de Mézzières was distant but courteous enough, although I didn’t much like the way he watched me, and Morphou was full of praise for my exploits with the king at Krakow – praise that I found as insubstantial as a pimp’s promises of a wedding.
However, I invited all of them to Juan’s knighting. I was determined to pack his ceremony with good knights.
It was also while visiting the king’s court that I first met Nicolas Sabraham. He was older than I, grey-bearded and as plainly dressed as a monk, but he wore a heavy sword and spurs. I was briefly introduced by a French knight, Brémond de la Voulte, who was serving King Peter as a volunteer with ten men-at-arms. Brémond and I had crossed lances on several occasions, or at least, we’d been within yards of each other in fights in France, especially Brignais, and we probably bored a number of Cypriote knights to tears with our reminiscence, but we were instant comrades, and swore to each other to go to Jerusalem come what may. He knew Sabraham, who often served with the order. I had never met him. Sire Brémond walked off and left us in order to flash his Poitevan smile at a Venetian lady, and left me with Sabraham.
‘You’re English,’ he said.
His English was as good as mine, and pure Northerner, like John Hughes.
I suppose that I grinned. ‘I would never have taken you for a Londoner, sir,’ I allowed. He was dark-skinned and dark-haired under his grey.
‘Nor should you,’ he said. ‘My family is from the north.’ He smiled and tugged at his beard. ‘Or do you mean I’m dark? It serves me in good stead here.’ He shrugged. ‘Men say our forefathers were Jews in York.’
He said it with such simplicity – listen, I have not, myself, ever held with those who attaint the whole of the race of Jews with the death of Christ. Father Pierre said once in a sermon that we should never mind the Jews, that we kill Christ ourselves, every time we sin against another man, and I take that as a gospel. But Sabraham’s easy admission marked a kind of courage – or indifference – and yet instantly educated me about the man: he was surrounded by a circle of emptiness. A few men, like Sire Brémond, were not afraid of whatever taint might stick to such a man, but most of the Cypriotes left him a wide berth.
It was their loss. He was a witty man when he spoke, yet careful and dignified. In ten minutes, I had learned that he had read the Koran in Arabic and the Bible in Hebrew and Greek, that he had travelled all over the Holy Land, and that he knew Juan di Heredia.