The Long Sword(140)

            ‘Your master has a fine notion of courage,’ I taunted.

            Nerio – really, he would have made anyone a bad enemy, leaned past me. ‘Is he a difficult man to follow?’ he called. ‘He moves so fast.’

            But the marshal’s men were in half-armour, and had poleaxes. They took up positions between us.

            ‘Aren’t you the legate’s officer?’ the marshal said to me, incredulous.

            I sighed. I had a cooling corpse at my feet and a dead man’s sword in my hand. I bowed. ‘I’m sure this is all a misunderstanding,’ I said.

            Nerio laughed. ‘You could be a banker,’ he said.



            Sabraham told me later that I should have caught Gap-tooth and held him, put him to the question and handed him to the Venetian authorities. I suppose that might have helped me in my struggle with d’Herblay, with the Bourc, with the Bishop of Geneva.

            Sabraham asked me many questions about the Hungarian, too.

            Perhaps. But that day, our one blow duel helped me a great deal. And God have mercy on his unshriven soul.

            I began to consider what action I might take against d’Herblay. Or rather, I began to consider how exactly I would reach him to kill him.



            June. We went to Mestre and practiced unloading the galleys on the beach over the sterns and we practiced fighting from the galleys, and a young Provençal knight fell into the sea and drowned, a warning to us all. If d’Herblay was there, I never saw him.

            I went to Mass with my brethren, and I confessed to Father Pierre, who was obviously delighted that I had so little to confess. I was perhaps less delighted; I might pretend that a chaste love for Emile was enough for me, but as my body returned to health, it expressed itself more forcefully than I might have liked. And there is some terrible urge on me, I admit, that after killing the brigand who had my sword, I would have lain with any woman available. It is always thus with me. But a barge from Mestre to a convent is not full of tools of Satan. And an evening chess game with the abbess was surprisingly free of temptation, as well.

            At any rate, it can’t have been three days before I was on my knees in the legate’s office at the Doge’s palace, confessing my desire to kill d’Herblay.

            After confession, I had a private interview with the legate. It may seem antic that I could go from my knees to a comfortable stool with my confessor, but he was the best priest I ever knew, and even the act of contrition was a shared thing, almost pleasant, despite the shame. At any rate, I sat with him while he wrote out orders, mostly to do with money and the accumulation of supplies for the summer. I learned from him that we still did not have a particular target for the crusade.

            ‘How do we make a war whose intention is the triumph of the Prince of Peace?’ he asked.

            I confess that I had no answer to that.

            When the business of my interview – the ordering of the volunteers – was done, the legate took off his spectacles. These were round, horn rimmed devices of ground glass that allowed him to read documents more quickly and gave him a look of slightly comic, owl-eyed wisdom. He polished them on the sleeve of his robe.

            ‘And what of you, William?’ he asked.

            I suppose I said something about being healed and eager for duty. What one says to a superior in such situations.

            He nodded. His eyes were elsewhere, on, I think, the crucifix at my back that dominated the room he used as his office. But then his eyes focused on me. ‘You are giving thought to revenge,’ he said.

            Remember that I had just confessed; remember, too, that revenge is not one of the sacraments of the church. Nevertheless, I did not lie to Father Pierre if I could help it. ‘I will, in time, avenge myself on the Count d’Herblay,’ I admitted.