I missed Father Pierre. He was there when his eyes laughed at my petty sins, when he knelt with me on the floor to pray, when he embraced me. But the cautious strategos who lied about the goal of the expedition …
At any rate, I went up a floor and along a hallway so narrow that a man in full harness would have had to go sideways like a crab. I asked the servants – some English, some Greek, some Arabs – the way until I found the open door at the end of a hall that should have been straight but was not. Later I learned that the English langue was one of the richest, and was built in four stages that did not perfectly align, so that the main hall of the second floor was neither straight nor flat.
Fra William filled the room he called his ‘closet.’ It had a pigeon roost (as we call it) for scrolls, and the whole shelf was packed with them, hundreds of scrolls, and there were more around the room in baskets. In among the scrolls was a table no bigger than the sideboards on which squires cut meat and mix wine, and it, too, was covered in scrolls, and the bulk of the man was wedged between the pigeon roosts and the writing table. By his side was another tall man, this one as thin as Sir William was round.
‘Sir Robert Hales – Sir William Gold.’ He waved at us.
Sir Robert Hales rose and took my hand. ‘I have heard of you, in France and in Italy.’
I bowed. ‘Indeed, my lord, we were introduced at Clerkenwell.’ I smiled. ‘I was with Juan di Heredia’s nephew.’
Sir Robert flushed. ‘Sir William … indeed. I swear you were younger then. Or perhaps smaller.’
We all laughed. I had been a squire of no account whatsoever. Now I was a knight of moderate fame.
Sir Robert sat. ‘Of course, I know your sister, who shares your high courage.’
My turn to flush. I had scarcely thought of my sister in six months. Fra William looked up from his writing. ‘Sit, Sir William. By our lady, clear him a space. There’s nowhere for a man to sit.’
I stood against the far wall and hoped that nothing fell on me. Very gradually, I leaned against a set of shelves weighted down with scrolls and books and tall stacks of parchments being led to their dooms by their heavy seals, slipping gradually but inevitably towards the floor.
‘You had a quarrel with Fra Daniele,’ Fra William stated. He did not ask.
I said nothing.
‘Senior Knights of the Order are commanders,’ he said. He was still writing quickly. His big hand was perfectly well-trained, and his writing was as neat as a professional scribe’s hand. He was writing Latin. ‘Many of my paid soldiers are commanders in their own right, and I have to explain to them that here, on Rhodes, their authority is nothing, and only the brother-knights have the power to giver orders.’
He looked up at me. ‘In Outremer, mercenaries sold themselves to the enemy. We have become careful.’
I nodded.
Fra William pursed his lips. ‘You further informed Fra Daniele that the legate is your lord.’
I suppose I sighed. I was trying to control my temper, and not doing a perfect job.
Fra William frowned. ‘He is a great man, perhaps a saint. But you, as a volunteer in the Order, must obey your superiors. You swore an oath to obey.’
‘Any reasonable order,’ I said.
‘No,’ Fra William said. ‘There is no such stipulation. You swore to obey. Kindly keep that in mind. I have no doubt – no doubt at all – that you are a brilliant soldier. The dockside tales of your daring are worthy of Roland or Oliver or Gawain. But if you wear the red coat, you must obey.’ He raised both eyebrows in his most cherubic look, one I would come to understand better. ‘Even Fra Daniele.’