I tried to arrange opportunities to be with her. The one I remember was a ride in the countryside, hawking. The children came, but the duenna I had arranged, the wife of one of the Order’s standing officers, was unable to ride, being sick, and that forced Emile to remain with the nuns. We did manage to smile at each other a great deal in the gate house. And I had a lovely day riding along dusty lanes with the nurse and the three children, as well as Marc-Antonio and Miles, both of who proved far better hawkers than I.
Edouard was five or six, and I had found him a pony – really, an island horse. He rode beautifully. In fact, he rode better than I did, and he was polite, attentive, and very excited to be out in the country with a real knight.
‘You don’t have your big sword,’ he said accusingly.
‘No,’ I admitted.
‘What if the Saracens attack us?’ he asked.
I pointed over the great blue horizon. ‘The sea protects us. Before the Saracens could come here they would have to assemble a fleet.’
‘You would kill them all anyway,’ he said. ‘Maman says so.’
There is something disagreeable in the flattery of a child, second-hand. ‘Eduard, being a knight is not all killing,’ I said.
‘Is it not?’ he asked with the terrible disinterest of the young child. ‘When I grow up, I will kill anyone I don’t like.’
I had not spent enough time with children to know how to handle this.
Miles, on the other hand, had a variety of brothers. ‘Even the ones who surrender?’ he asked. He smiled as he said it.
Eduard looked pained. Here I had been at the point of imagining him a violent recreant. When I knew children better, I learned that they merely experiment with ideas, and look to adults for encouragement. Some children are encouraged even when adults do not mean them to be.
Miles cut across that. ‘Think about the word “gentil”,’ he said.
The boy pointed at me. ‘But Sieur Guillaume is a great knight, and he kills everyone! This is what Maman said.’
‘Look!’ cried Marc-Antonio. He’d found us a target for our birds, and he halloo’ed at the flock of birds. His intervention couldn’t have been more timely.
I resolved to spare someone as soon as possible.
The time passed pleasantly. I suspect it was made better for the five of us that we arrived on the wings of a famous victory, and that we had, apparently, been seen to be important in it. I say this with some amusement. It was a hot fight, and a desperate one, one of the harshest I had seen until that moment, and I had no way to judge the importance of my own role, or my friends’. I had been in fights where I knew I had turned the tide – the bridge at Meux comes to mind – but at the sea fight off Euboea, I fought, and that’s all I know.
After the dinner for Lord Grey, I knew most of the English knights and squires, whether they were donats, brothers, or crusaders. Through Nerio, I quickly came to know the Italians in the Order; Fra Ferlino di Airasca was a Savoyard. He was the Order’s admiral, as senior as Fra William Midleton, and as easy to know. He had the beautiful manners of the Savoyard court, and his family were friends of Emile’s father’s family. He was a fine swordsman, and he and Fiore made an immediate and close acquaintance. Fra Palamedo di Giovanni was commanding one of the Order’s galleys, and Nerio visited him frequently.
Each day on Rhodes, after matins, we’d eat a light meal – hard bread and cider, perhaps a little cheese, some sausage, whatever was left in the kitchens – and then we’d debouch into the yard and train. We’d stand at the pell with Fiore yelling at us, and we’d engage each other. The Order believed in the English game of sword and buckler, with sharps, and we’d swagger our good swords, first left- and then right-handed. And then spend hours taking out the nicks. I was careful of the Emperor’s longsword, and used my spare.