The Long Sword(18)

            The alley was so narrow that only one horseman could pass and that with his head brushing the overhanging houses. And d’Herblay’s posture and his seat on the horse betrayed that he did not want to enter the alley first. He and another man jostled for position at the mouth of the alley, where the old palace gates had been forty years before.

            I stood, my heart beating like a troubadour playing a fast dance. But I had my sword on my hip – Fiore’s dente di cinghiale.

            But d’Herblay reined in. He shouted something. I’m sure it was an insult, but I didn’t care. He didn’t dare face me.

            There was no further pursuit – and the Savoyard bishop was still watching us.



            As a group we were deeply shaken. Violence can impart a dangerous air of unreality to events, and the demonic – and I use that term deliberately, messires, for the nature of Camus’s outbursts shook even the gentle Father Pierre.

            Our Italian priest returned to the papal palace, escorted by Juan, to deliver a strongly worded protest that was written by Fra Peter. Father Pierre was already moving on to other things: to the revolt on Crete, which remained his see, and to his duties as papal legate. In an hour, he was a functioning prelate again.

            I found it hard to breathe. The nun, Sister Marie, had her arm set in the hospital. I remember that part, because the Hospitaller cleared a ward for her, as if having a woman in the place might spread a contagion. But he also sent for sisters of his own order from their nearby house, and they came quickly, surrounding her with kindness.

            I spent enough time with her to glean that she was not as shocked as one might expect from a Latin Secretary.

            Fra Peter gathered us all in the chapel after vespers and we prayed together. The shock of the open violence so close to what we all thought of as ‘home’ didn’t wear off immediately.

            It was almost midnight before Fra di Heredia arrived from the palace. I was not included in whatever he discussed with Fra Peter.

            But it didn’t matter, because the crusade was a reality. We were going. And with the Bourc’s threats ringing in our ears, it appeared we were leaving immediately.

            I need to remind you that, whatever his reservations about the crusade, the Pope had sent men, trusted men, all over France and Italy, summoning the routiers and the men of the Free Companies to save their souls by going on crusade. It was said that the Archpriest Arnaud de Cervole, with whom I served before Brignais, was to gather the men who would serve, and lead them over the Alps to Venice. Sir Walter Leslie and his brother Norman, who were both famous knights and sometime mercenaries, were gathering men-at-arms in Italy. If the crusade was a charade, at the very least many powerful men hoped that the Holy Land would draw the Free Companies from France and Italy the way a leech draws poison from a wound.

            The crusade was to depart from two ports, Genoa and Venice, both of which were being forced to cooperate each with the other. In fact, each of those cities hated the other far more than they hated the Turk; each city, in fact, sought only the best trade status with the very paynim we were going to fight. But let me add that of the two, Genoa was virtually allied with the Saracens of Egypt.

            Hah! Messire Froissart, I know you have met Peter of Cyprus, and I know you wish for me to get to the meat of my tale: the fighting, the chivalry. But in truth, the tale is how anyone came to fight, and not the fight itself. Let me say this much without the spoiling of my story: I am not sure that the old French Pope ever intended the crusade to march, although I think Urban wanted it, and I’m damned sure that neither Genoa nor her arch-rival Venice intended a real blow to be struck. I’m reasonably sure that none of the routiers in France and Italy ever truly intended to save their souls and become crusaders, and I can attest to the desperate reality that not a single king of Christendom, save one, intended a blow to be struck, whatever they promised.

            It was all lies and half-promises and empty titles and silk flags.