I think that perhaps they would have found Father Pierre easier to deal with had he been one of them, had he travelled with pomp, and a hundred men-at-arms. Instead, he wore an old brown cloak over his robes and had an escort of ten. In Brescia, we had an incident that was only averted by Nerio’s connections. In Milan, we owed our protection to Nicolas Sabraham, who appeared at dinner in the Episcopal residence and ordered me to change our lodgings, which I did, despite the cursing of all of our pages and squires. We carried every trunk halfway across the city, and moved the animals.
Sabraham was not mistaken. That night there was an attack on our former beds. A dozen men, masked and hooded and carrying crossbows, killed two Episcopal men-at-arms and stormed our rooms – and found them empty.
That was my introduction to Milan. We hadn’t been invited to the palace, yet. If Vicenza and Verona had tyrants, the Visconti of Milan were the greatest tyrants of all. We’d made war on Bernabo Visconti just two years before, and we were aware – at least, Sabraham and I were aware – that he was allied to the King of France, he was the most powerful man in northern Italy, and he was the inveterate foe of the Pope.
I see you smile; yes, because there were not just two sides in Italy, or anywhere else. The Pope was the ally of the King of France, and so were the Visconti. But the Visconti and the Pope were enemies, and this fracture went deep – the Green Count of Savoy was friend to both the Pope and the Visconti – and the King of France. A remarkable balancing act. States like Florence tried to balance the Pope and the Visconti and cared nothing for the King of France.
Our legate had an audience with the tyrant at the palace. I went with him, and stood at his shoulder while Bernabo, Lord of Milan, openly fondled a magnificent courtesan and promised thirty knights for the crusade. He meant to insult Father Pierre, but failed. On the way out of the palace, one of the more sinister buildings I’ve ever known, and perhaps I’ll describe it more fully in due time, the legate smiled his rare impish smile at me.
‘I am not here as a man, but as the legate of crusade,’ he said with a twinkle in his eye. ‘Thirty knights? I may be sorry for his sin, but I needn’t bridle at it.’
Milan was full of men-at-arms, almost an armed camp, and I suspected, as did Sabraham, that our attackers had been Bernabo’s men. I wondered if he would send us the very men he’d asked to assassinate the legate, but Sabraham laughed.
‘You don’t understand Italy as well as you think, my young apprentice,’ he said.
I rather liked that he called me his apprentice. ‘Why?’ I asked.
Sabraham laughed his thin-lipped, grim laugh. ‘It would humiliate the Visconti if the legate had been killed in Milan, in the centre of Visconti power.’ He looked at me and winked. ‘Visconti has just discovered that his arrangements are penetrated and one of his men has sold himself to France. He’s in a rage – against the French.’
I watched the houses like a hawk – and then it hit me. ‘You!’
Sabraham smiled. ‘Never,’ he said.
I didn’t breathe until we were in the countryside, riding west.
Sabraham joined us with a pair of soldiers and it is difficult to describe them. They were not, strictly speaking, archers, although in England I think they might have been. They were both very professional, their kit clean and neat and well-cared for, weapons well-oiled. They rode good horses and had no badges. We called them George and Maurice. They accepted these names with a good nature.
I had been around. I was getting an idea what Sabraham did, and I was delighted to have him with us. At an inn west of Milan, with half my friends on watch and all the precautions I could manage, I told Sabraham of my fears – Robert of Geneva, the Bourc, d’Herblay, the papacy, and the legate.
He nodded and agreed. Finally he rubbed his beard. ‘You have done well to puzzle this for yourself,’ he said – warm praise from a master. But his next words chilled me.