I was twenty-five years old, and Alexandria was my sixth great battle. In the fighting, each was different, as one lover is from another. In the aftermath, there is a sameness that defies description – foul, cruel, evil.
The king never regained control of the host of mercenaries we’d brought from Italy and I will not lie: what follows is dark and there’s little chivalry in it.
The routiers ranged along the walls. To them were added most of the marines and many of the sailors. The captains brought their ships off the shoals and sands of the Old Harbour and rowed or sailed around Pharos Castle into the Pharos Harbour and the Venetians attempted an escalade on the Pharos castle before sun set. The governor’s lieutenant resisted manfully, and threw them back with losses.
I was sitting on an upturned boat at the end of the sea wall while a Venetian surgeon probed my shoulder with a knife fouled from cutting ten other wounded men. Then he sewed the flap of separated skin back down. I promise you that it hurt!
Marc-Antonio had three arrows in him. Carlo Zeno pushed the surgeon aside and cut them out with his own hands. Of our army of five thousand, only a thousand had been engaged, but that thousand had enough wounds for ten. Yet we had very few dead. Our harnesses were so good that most men lived at least to see the dawn, and many are still with us.
It was growing dark when Nerio found Chretien d’Albret. Nerio’s squire Davide fetched me, and we rode across the sand. John the Turk had found Gawain and restored him, and had landed our little Arab horses, who shied at blood but nonetheless were firm footed and well-rested; Gawain had ten cuts, one so broad that his red muscles showed like a gap in a curtain. John gave him opium and then sewed him up like the doctors were doing to men.
Much later, perhaps a year or more, when I was telling the Count of Savoy about the fight – his nephew was there, but the Green Count was not, of course – John was fletching arrows by the fire, and I saw him grunt and shake his head while I told this story.
Later that night, I went to him. By then we were old friends and I asked him why he had sneered at my story. He laughed mirthlessly, in his Tartar way. ‘All battle the same,’ he said. ‘Young men sing. Old man grunt.’
I thought he was posturing. ‘John, you were a hero – you saved us. I saw you save Marc-Antonio. You earned glory—’
His Tartar eyes burned with sudden anger. John is seldom angry, but he stepped forward at me although I am a head and more taller. And I suspect I stepped back.
‘I save friend!’ he spat. He reached his left hand behind him and wiped his arse elaborately and then brought the hand up to my face. ‘Worth more than glory, is my shit,’ he said.
I tell you gentles this, because not everyone agrees on what we saw and did at Alexandria.
We rode to Chretien d’Albret.
He was dying. Listen, in paintings, saints die with serene faces, whether on the rack, or full of arrows, or like Christ on the cross. But men do not go that way, and most especially when they have been burned across most of their upper body with naptha.
The fire had done something to d’Albret. He thought he was going to hell. In fact, he thought he was already in hell, burning alive.
Well.
The poor bastard.
Flesh came away whenever he moved, charred strips like bad meat. And he screamed and screamed until you’d think he’d have had no voice left. His eyes were gone.
Christ, I can’t tell this …
He raved.
To most men on the beach, his raving sounded like the last words of a man in torment. But I knew what he was saying. He was saying that d’Herblay had paid him to kill me.