The Long Sword(19)

            Listen, then. Sometimes, as Father Pierre used to say, Christ works in mysterious ways.



            It is a flaw of the deeply self-interested men of the world that they assume that idealists are fools.

            Father Pierre – I will keep calling him that, as he was always ‘Pater’ to us – moved like lightning when he moved. The Pope had appointed him to a dozen offices and given him various sources of income to enable him to gather the crusade. Whatever the Pope’s real intentions, Father Pierre gathered his household and all the knights and volunteers of the Order who were in Avignon and led them to Italy. Less than two days passed after his appointment, and we were on the road with twenty men-at-arms and his whole household staff. To my shame, I barely had the courtesy to pay Anne a farewell visit.

            Listen, it is not all war, the life of arms. Eh? I owed her better than a casual goodbye in an inn yard. As events proved, I’d have done better, far better, to have slunk away without a farewell, but I betook me to the inn and called her, and told her I was away on crusade.

            She looked at me, yawning. And smiled her half-smile. ‘Eh bien,’ she said. ‘Some day you will come back here, too fine to speak to me.’ She turned her head away.

            Love … love is a powerful force, but sometimes, plain liking is the easier emotion to distinguish.

            ‘Don’t be like that,’ I said, somewhat pettishly. ‘I’m a donat of the Order. I’ll be back.’

            She smiled a false smile. ‘And your lady … will she approve of me? Like your priest and your knight approve of me?’

            I hadn’t really thought of Emile in a month. The word ‘lady’ was like a blow. And of course, Anne was only guessing, with the unerring instinct of the young woman.

            ‘I don’t even know why you came to say goodbye, monsieur,’ she said, casting her eyes down. ‘I suspect I’m little more than a whore to you.’ She looked at me with something of her usual twinkle. ‘A badly paid whore, an unpaid spy. I have work to do.’

            I hadn’t even brought her a present. I walked quickly into the street of jewellers and bought her a good cross with an emerald, and the booksellers were only just opening their stalls. It was a lovely summer day in Avignon, and sin made me think of my sister, and I spent far too much money, almost all my available gold and silver, on a fine copy of Cyurgia by the Pope’s doctor. The bookseller said it was new, the latest scholarship. He didn’t have a plain copy, so I paid for a small illustrated one, with drawings in blue ink and scrollwork in the margins and some magnificent capitals.

            Then I went back towards the inn. At some point, I began to wonder if I had been followed – I saw the same scraggly ginger beard for the third time since leaving Anne. I was cautious, and when I came to the fountain at the Place de Saints, I paused to drink water and wash my hands, and saw a boy that I had seen several times before.

            I should not have gone back to the inn, but I misunderstood the threat. I found Anne washing tables.

            ‘Anne,’ I said.

            ‘Go away! I’m working,’ she said.

            ‘I brought you a present,’ I said.

            She turned and her scorn was palpable. ‘So that I can be a whore in truth, monsieur?’

            She went back to washing the wooden table. The limp-haired innkeeper came down and leered at me, which did nothing to improve my mood.

            I didn’t like him listening from the common room, either.

            ‘Run along on your crusade,’ she said. ‘You’ll make me lose my place.’

            ‘I like you!’ I protested. ‘Please, ask the innkeeper, and I will take you to Father Pierre.’