The Long Sword(114)
Sometimes it is hard to like the men you value most. His own son? I mentioned the coming knighting twice, and no doubt made a hash of it.
Father Pierre informed me that we would not leave for Genoa until after Epiphany, and I laid down my last borrowed ducats for clothes for Juan’s knighting, and borrowed more from Nerio. It was almost evil, the extent to which he enjoyed giving us money. I hated to be owned, but I was poor, and there is no level of self-denial in Venice that can keep a man-at-arms fed and housed. When I look back at that happy time, surrounded by my friends, living comfortably, and seeing or hearing often enough of my love, I am pained to know that in that moment, unaware of what was ahead, I was afire to leave Venice just to save a little gold, and horribly lusty, eager to end my self-enforced chastity. Every girl and every woman looked appealing to me, and Nerio’s infatuation with our grocer’s eldest daughter and her wantonness – I know no other way to describe her eager acceptance of the role of mistress – was sapping my resolution to be faithful to Emile.
Yet even while I watched Anna and Nerio bill and coo, I knew that there must be a thunderclap waiting in the wings. It is one thing to buy a Moorish girl on the docks, and another thing to deflower a merchant’s daughter of marriageable age. Or rather, it may be the same thing in the eyes of Father Pierre, or God, but in the eyes of the world …
I sent two notes to Emile and one to the sisters of the convent, and worries about the state of Juan’s soul and my own were replaced, as young men do such things, by the constant worry that Juan’s surcoat would not be done for his knighting. But the day before Christmas Eve, I received a note from Emile promising her attendance and delivery of the surcoat, and the next day I met her at Saint Mark’s in time to take silk-wrapped package from Jean-François and another from Bernard. The first proved to hold Juan’s surcoat, resplendent in new red silk, with a perfectly white cross-edged in magnificent gold thread. I ran almost all the way back to our rooms in my arming clothes, untied laces flapping like the gills on a fish.
The second package held my own surcoat, or rather, all that was left of my original surcoat. I assume they kept the lining, which had been used as a pattern. My new surcoat lacked the gold thread along the cross that distinguished Juan’s, but that was replaced with a tracery of embroidery – red on the scarlet and cream on the white, some verses of the New Testament in gold, and a magnificent embroidered rendering of my arms on my left breast, just as Juan’s had his on his left breast.
It was magnificent. But I didn’t have time to stare, and I shrugged it on over my harness and Marc-Antonio laced the sides, but from the quality of his swearing I knew that he was impressed. I sent mine down to the grocer’s to be pressed, and one of the daughters returned, breathless and delighted to have played her part.
On Christmas Eve, we all attended Mass, and Juan stood his vigil all night. We had all stood with him – Miles, Nerio, Fiore and I; as well as Sir Norman Lindsey, Jean-François, Bernard, Ser Brémond and Fra Peter and a dozen other Knights of the Order, too, so that we ushered in the dawn of our Saviour’s birth by making him knight. The King of Cyprus gave him the accolade and Fra Peter struck him the blow, and I buckled on his spurs. And then we all squired him, lacing the new surcoat tight, and it fitted him over his new breast-and-back like an outer silken skin, and he stood in the light of a hundred candles and glowed.
But of course, between the vigil and the services and the Mass, I had missed Emile, who was gone back to her island.
Ser Juan di Majorca, as we now called him, glowed all the way through the Christmas festivities. The guilds of Venice feted us, we fought for the pleasure of the ladies and the crowd, and we drank wine for free in every tavern in the city, although it made Fra Peter and the knights of the order frown. I saw Emile three times in a week.
To say she seemed distracted would not fully do justice to her state.
The third time I met her was at the Cypriote court, and when I had bowed deeply to her, she glanced around and drew me aside, making my breath stop in my chest as she seized my hand.