The Long Sword(115)

            ‘I hear you are to leave this beautiful city for its rival, Genoa,’ she said. Her attempt at dissimulation couldn’t hide the darting of her eyes.

            ‘Yes, countess,’ I agreed. ‘I regret it, but I have never had a chance to address you.’ Even as I spoke, I felt as clumsy as a young knight. I wanted to tell her what I thought of her deliberate avoidance of me, of her indifference. To remind her of what she wrote in her letter, when I had been with Hawkwood. To thank her, because, having puzzled out the verses on my surcoat – gothic script can be nigh on impossible for a layman to read – I knew whose hand had embroidered them.

            Her slight frown blew all that away like the rigging is stripped from a mast in a gale in the channel. ‘I do not know how best to state my … reservations,’ she said carefully. ‘But I do not think it is merest happenstance that while I wait here for a ship to the Holy Land, my husband has gone with a French embassy to Genoa, or so I am told.’ She paused. ‘And my chamberlain believes he is coming here.’

            She would offer no more, but I treasured the warmth of her hand and the slight pressure of her fingers. We were drinking in each other’s eyes when the King of Cyprus cleared his throat. ‘Madame la comtesse,’ he said with an elegant bow, ‘as you are the fairest flower to adorn my court this season, perhaps you would come and teach us the latest songs? I gather that Maître de Machaut claims your acquaintance?’

            She looked up under her lashes and flashed her most engaging smile, and something in my heart froze.

            But I was to go to Genoa.

            Even as the worm of jealousy, the black serpent, began to gnaw at me, still I treasured the information she offered, as well. I passed it to Fra Peter and he made a face.

            ‘See to it you protect the legate,’ he said. ‘Who is this Emile d’Herblay to you? I seem to remember the name.’ He looked up from a list of warhorses and feeding costs. ‘I hear her name linked with the king’s.’

            ‘I took her husband at Brignais,’ I said. They say that no man can hide three things – love, sorrow, and sudden increase in fortune – but I’ll add a fourth: no man can hide jealousy.

            Fra Peter’s eyes cut into mine. I knew he was not buying my evasion, that he had read me. He spat as if he’d tasted bile. ‘Listen to me, lad. You be cautious with our legate’s good name, here and in Genoa. The Venetians are all smiles, but they’d like to cancel the Passagium as much as the Genoese would. Do you understand?’

            Again, I had a sort of false outraged innocence. ‘I have done nothing of which I need to feel ashamed,’ I said.

            Fra Peter raised an eyebrow. And waved me away in dismissal.



            We were both wearing our splendid surcoats, as was Fiore, now a knight of the empire, and Nerio, when we escorted the legate. As donats of knightly status, we had scarlet coats, our own arms emblazoned in the upper canton, otherwise marked by white crosses. We wore gold belts and gold spurs, and we looked superb! Red is the most martial colour.

            We took boats to Mestre and then rode across the Venetian plain to Padua, where we were well enough received, although there was still plague in spots, poor souls. From Padua we rode to Vicenza, and from Vicenza to Verona and thence via Brescia to Milan.

            I was very conscious of our danger and of our dignity. The legate cared little for outward show, which was very holy of him, to be sure, but his very lack of show made him a target where he needn’t have been one. In some ways, the outward display of the richest churchmen was a protection from thieves and brigands. It could awe the populace in a town, too.

            Our legate in his brown Carmelite robe was far from an awesome figure. Further, other churchmen resented him. He had almost absolute powers in Italy; in any town in which he stopped, he had the power to take money from crusading funds, even to dictate the manner of collection of those funds. He could use revenues brought in by pilgrimage and donation – in cathedrals, for example. These were, in fact, funds that were intended for the crusades, going back two hundred years, but the bishops of these places looked on those revenues as their own money, and their resentment was dangerous.