The Long Sword(170)
‘The admiral spoke of you commanding the volunteers when in fact such a thing is impossible – no volunteer can command anything.’ He looked at me down his long patrician nose.
I might have shrugged, two hours before, and earned his ire. But I did not. ‘Fra Daniele, might I move you to address Lord Contarini?’ I asked.
He sat back. ‘Lord Contarini is a merchant adventurer of Venice and is in no way under my authority. You are. I find you insubordinate.’
He seemed very satisfied with his little sphere of power. I have known such men all my life, and the church attracts its fair share. Yet this man had fought his ship with spirit – even with skill – during the battle.
‘Fra Daniele …’ I considered my words. I was a knight. I was his equal in every way, except within the insular world of the order. Yet the order had given me much, not least my life.
His eyes narrowed. ‘You may address me as “my lord”,’ he said.
I met his eye. ‘No, sir. You are not my lord. The papal legate is my lord. I am here on his express authority – I have his orders to command the other volunteers for the greater glory of Christ, and to return them, and the Venetians, to their duty at Rhodes.’ It was a mistake. His face hardened as I spoke. But I enjoyed it.
He shook his head. He was honestly baffled. ‘You may not speak to me that way, sir. I am the Lord Preceptor of Cyprus, a Cross of Grace, a veteran knight of your Order. I am your lord in every way. If you will not submit …’
I was finally learning how to do something other than fight.
I bowed. ‘My lord, I spoke in haste.’
We regarded each other across his stern cabin table. I let my eyes inform him that my surrender was pro forma.
‘Well—’ he began.
‘My lord, the Venetians are proposing to desert the crusade and sail for home. I believe that you have it in your power to convince Lord Contarini to stay true to his vows.’ I put a hand on the table.
‘You speak well, for a mercenary,’ he said.
‘My lord, I was a routier, a brigand. I was saved from that life – and from death itself – by the legate. I owe him everything, and I will do anything in my power to see his orders obeyed and his wishes complied with.’ I held his eyes.
He looked away. ‘What a strange, insistent fellow you are, to be sure,’ he said with irritation. ‘Very well, I’ll go chivvy Lord Contarini. But these Venetians are not gentlemen – mere merchants.’
The next morning, we rowed down the harbour in a dead calm so flat that the smell of dead fish seemed to cling to the rigging, and the ocean was like a badly polished mirror stretching away to the island of Salamis across the strait. But we weathered the cape, rowing like sweating heroes, and altered course to port and not to starboard. At noon we were seeing the great temple to Poseidon at Sounion , which Nerio pointed out and described in great detail. As great detail, in fact, as the charms of his Athenian mistress, whose lush breasts and insatiable appetite for him he was describing with the kind of relish that—
I beg your pardon. But my new found evenness of temper was not, in fact, accompanied by a whole change of temperament. Listening to Nerio did not incline me to chastity. Nothing did.
At any rate, the admiral was reserved but courteous. He was in his chair on the command deck until the sails went up after we passed Sounion , and then he went below. The next day, and the next, he remained aloof, and I was sorry to lose his regard.
We ran north and east on an empty sea in light airs. Word of our victory had sent every ship into the nearest safe port. The captains of the Ionian felt about our fleet exactly as the peasants of Thessaly had felt about our landing – they feared us as much as they feared the Turks. We didn’t site a fishing boat until we were on the Aeolian shore, or at least what Nerio assured me was Aeolia. I was receiving a second-hand classical education, combined with an endless volley of erotica, from every conversation.