The Long Sword(150)
Matteo Corner was nodding along. There were twenty of us sitting in the July heat, most of us the legate’s men. Corner put a finger on the pistachio hull for Jerusalem. ‘You have been?’ Corner asked.
‘I’ve made a dozen caravans,’ Fra Peter said. ‘It is the ultimate duty of our Order, to escort pilgrims to Jerusalem.’
Corner smiled cynically. ‘I have been as well.’ He shrugged.
His shrug was dismissive, and I was as shocked as if he’d blasphemed. ‘Surely, messire, it is a fine city?’
Fra Peter sighed. ‘Do not confuse the earthly Jerusalem with the Heavenly, young William. The earthly city is neither very large nor very holy. And it’s only trade is the pilgrim trade.’
But Fiore leaned forward. ‘And then comes Africa?’ he asked, tracing the outline of the Syrian coast in red wine on the table.
Matteo Corner nodded. ‘Yes. This triangle is the Sinai.’
I had a pleasant shock. To hear the names of places from the Bible as real landmarks!
Corner kept sketching. ‘This is the Nile delta. The delta is enormous – a hundred leagues across, with several cities and three or four navigable branches. This is Cairo, where the Sultan lives, here at the base of the delta. Here is Alexandria.’ He placed another pistachio. ‘Here is Damietta, where Saint Louis met defeat.’
Alexandria. If Jerusalem was the holiest city in the world, Alexandria was the greatest, founded by the mighty conqueror himself on the burning sands of Africa. I had grown to manhood listening to the Romance of Alexander; indeed, there were men singing verses from it in the fleet. And in Sienna, in Genoa, in Venice and in Verona we heard constantly from merchants who had sailed there of it’s fine harbour and magnificent waterfront, of the power of the Sultan, the ancient library and lighthouse, the early Christian churches now used by heretics.
Matteo Corner shook his head. ‘When I first saw Alexandria, I thought I was seeing the heavenly Jerusalem,’ he said. ‘It must be ten times the size of Venice.’
Fra Peter nodded. ‘You could fit London in it over and over,’ he said. ‘The whole of the new city is walled, and the walls have forty great gates, and every one of them as well-fortified as the gate castles of London, or better.’
Sabraham nodded. ‘Their customs take is greater than the whole income of the order,’ he said. ‘I know.’
Nerio leaned back. ‘Have you gentlemen read any of the crusading manuals?’
It turned out that most of the Knights of the Order had, although I had not. I had read Llull, though.
Fra Jean, a Provençal knight, nodded, and leaned forward eagerly. ‘Saint Louis thought the same as the author, that the Holy Land could only be conquered by way of Egypt.’
Fra Peter said nothing, but tapped his teeth with his thumb and stared at the candle on the table.
Nerio smiled his careful smile. He flicked a look at me and when he spoke his voice dripped with an entirely false adolescent innocence. ‘Is it possible we will attack Alexandria?’ he asked.
I thought Fra Peter might break his teeth, he tapped them so hard.
Fra Jean shrugged. ‘We do not have the men, even if we had God’s fortune and the best knights in the world, to take Alexandria.’
Lord Grey, who was usually the most reticent of English gentlemen, leaned forward with enthusiasm. ‘I believe, gentlemen, that with such a legate and such a king to lead us, we might accomplish something.’
Fra Ricardo Caracciolo joined us and added his weight to the argument. ‘The best crusade launched in a hundred years – and we will fall like a lightning bolt wherever we land,’ he said.