The Long Sword(167)

            Or so I see it.

            Regardless, that Sabbath eve in Piraeus and Athens, we had won a victory that gave them heart-heretics and schismatics together, so to speak.

            The next day we gathered cargoes on the waterfront. I had a hard head; I had drunk too late, I think, and I was in a foul mood. I was worried for Marc-Antonio, whose wound was festering, and inclined to find my Turk, who I expected to die despite the treatment of the brothers of the Hospital. In short, my view of the world was as black as it can be for a man four days out of battle. My own wounds hurt, my head hurt, and life seemed … empty.

            Usually I filled this feeling with a woman. There, ‘tis said. Taken like a drug. But chastity, and chivalric love – a terrible pair to yoke together – left me alone with my thoughts instead of abed with a soft friend. Alone, a man in dark mood can see many things … differently … and I walked the docks, tormenting myself with Emile’s words, her lack of love for me, her inclination (as I saw it in my darkness) for the king.

            A man can use any tool to justify himself to sin and I was busy using my blackness to work myself to hate Emile so that I might find myself a pretty Greek. But Miles saved me from this, with a sort of deadly cheerfulness that made me vent my spleen on him. He gave me the sele of the day and enquired after my wound.

            ‘It pains me,’ I said. ‘I can scarcely walk.’

            He dared to smile. ‘And yet you go up and down these piers as if searching for our Saviour,’ he said with gentle derision.

            ‘I have much on which to think!’ I said.

            He laughed. ‘I am younger than you,’ he said, ‘but it seems to me a man can think while sitting down, if his foot is cut.’

            ‘Are you wandering about explaining to men the errors of their ways, or do you have some errand?’ I asked. I may have been even more direct. Perhaps I said, ‘What business is it of yours?’

            Miles smiled. ‘In truth, the senior knight of our order was asking for you this morning, and Milord Contarini is sitting under his awning just there, awaiting your good pleasure.’

            I was being mocked; knights await the good pleasure of lords, and not the other way about.

            I realised that I had been pacing up and down in full view of the command structure of the fleet and no man likes to look a fool.

            ‘And how long have you known that I was wanted?’ I asked. In my mood, I saw him laughing at my pain and watching me pace the docks.

            Miles bowed, refusing to be drawn to temper. ‘About as long as it took me to walk from the poop to this spot,’ he said.

            Something in his restraint finally cracked my bad composure. ‘Miles, my apologies,’ I began.

            He shook his head. ‘None needed.’ Really, he was too good to be believed. He didn’t seem to need a wench or a confessor and he had fought quite brilliantly.

            I sighed, and hobbled to the gangway of the great galley. What inconsistency of the mind allowed me to walk back and forth, cursing Emile’s imagined faithlessness, without so much as a twinge from my foot-but the moment I returned to my duty, it hurt with every step?

            Bah! I see both of you gentlemen are familiar with this sort of thing.

            At any rate, as I limped, I watched the deck crew using the foremast’s yard as a crane to lift a bale of hides inboard. Something turned over in my head. Hides wouldn’t go outbound to Rhodes – Rhodes might have a leatherworker or two, but hides were a homebound cargo for Venice. I had been listening to Nerio and to Lord Contarini when they spoke about merchanting.

            I looked down the main deck to the stern, where the command deck rose a few steps above the main deck. Lord Contarini was sitting, just as Miles had said, in a low chair. The leather battle curtains were brailed up for the breeze. He was watching the loading of the great galleys shallow hold. He saw me and his demeanour changed.