One day they appeared before me, Marc-Antonio with two black eyes and a long gash on the back of his right hand, and John virtually unmarked – but whatever was settled between them, Marc-Antonio was no longer referred to as the ‘woman’.
It is odd, to me, that some men have such opinions of women. Women, to me, are brave, careful, smart, and delightful. I would cheerfully do laundry to have an hour with a woman, and I’d think nothing of sewing clothes for anyone I like. And the Blessed Virgin was a woman. I defy any gentleman anywhere to offer her insult, and I offer that cartel without restriction to any defamer of women.
But my Turk, my Kipchak, saw the roles of women and men as separate streams. If we are held here long enough, perhaps I’ll tell you how John came to change his spots. But as the weeks passed, and we trained and trained, and our horses fattened and recovered their muscle, so John became one of us. And one day we watched him shoot his bow.
First, he was given a bow by Fra William. He thanked the turcopolier profusely – and then, when the man’s back was turned, he fumed. He ridiculed the bow as too weak, badly made, with a cast. He strung it and unstrung it.
He took the quiver of arrows he’d been given and went through them one by one.
‘A bow for slaves. And arrows to match,’ he all but spat. He upended the quiver, an English arrow bag, really, and in it was a mixed bag – literally – with arrows of every colour and nine or ten different fletching styles: round vanes, elliptical vanes, and pointed vanes like our own arrows. He fetched a stool (we were in the yard) and began sorting them into piles, staring down the length, holding them to the sun, and running his thumb down the vanes.
One of our crossbowmen, the Order’s, I mean, came out with an English ale in his fist. ‘I hate to see them apes given arms,’ he said in Genoese-Italian. ‘But they’re born to bows like little centaurs.’ He watched the Turk. ‘Almost intelligent, eh? Good bow, eh?’ he said to the Turk.’
‘Bow is craps. Arrows are turd every one,’ John said. ‘Made in Genoa.’
The crossbowman flushed and went back inside.
John smiled a grim little smile, and went back to sorting arrows. In the end he chose five – of forty. Another ten he set aside, and after he’d taken the steel or iron heads off all the rest and thrown the shafts on the inn’s pile of kindling, he straightened the ten he’d chosen over a little fire. A few days later, when the garrison was shooting at the butts, John appeared with his English quiver at his belt – on the wrong side. When I tried to correct this, he laughed at me.
The garrison archers and crossbowmen were loosing at about seventy paces. We stood and watched them, about thirty paces further up-range. John strung his bow, and then, without drawing a breath, loosed an arrow over one of the Genoese.
It struck the distant target.
Every man on the line turned and the Genoese crossbowman began to yell insults.
John raised his bow and loosed the other four arrows in his fingers as fast as I can tell this, the last arrow leaping high into the sun before the first one struck.
When they hit the target a hundred paces distant, they struck one, two, three, four.
I looked at Juan. ‘Why didn’t they kill us all on the beach?’ I asked.
John laughed. ‘I am out arrow.’ He turned his back on the Genoese in contempt. ‘Get I good bow, fight better.’ He shrugged. ‘Sword, horse.’
Juan looked down range at the target and the angry archers. ‘May Saint George and all the saints preserve us,’ he said.
‘Amen,’ I agreed. ‘John, do all the Turks shoot like you?’