The Long Sword(22)

            I went back to the fire, and he sat out in the wet.



            The Green Count was not at Turin. He was at Geneva on business, but the word was that he was serious in his crusading vows, and intended to mount a campaign. Despite that, he was still very close to the Visconti of Milan, and the Pope was still on the other side of a deep political divide.

            I tried to add it up in my head: Milan was the enemy of the Pope, and Savoy was related to Milan and an ally of the Pope, and Robert of Geneva, our erstwhile assailant, was part of the Savoyard clan, trying to take control of the crusade, and all the mercenaries that the Pope was enlisting …

            If the prelates thought that they could control the routiers this way, they needed to spend a winter with John Hawkwood. I had the notion that the Savoyards were plotting without understanding the consequences of their actions. As the great often do, the Savoyards had forgotten that lesser men might have better heads for plotting.

            One of the ways that Italy had changed me was the way in which I saw the divides. Listen – when you are a London apprentice, the divides are simple enough: the Goldsmiths before all the other trades; Trades and Mysteries before the nobles; London before any other town; England and England’s King above all other kings and countries.

            Simple.

            As an Englishman, I had tended to see every conflict measured by the English side; so, for example, in the war between the Pope and Milan, the Pope represented the ‘French’ side and Milan the ‘English’ side, although as time went by it was clear to me that these simple views of Italian politics wouldn’t stand up to scrutiny, and in the end, Milan married his daughter to the King of France. But Hawkwood assured us, his English soldiers, that when we fought for Pisa against Florence (an ally of the Pope) we were still fighting on the ‘English’ side. And that mattered.

            It mattered, but a year in Italy had revealed a few things to me. One was that Milan was richer than all of England. I had yet to visit Venice or Genoa, but knew each city was richer than the whole of England including London and Florence was larger than Paris and hadn’t endured ten years of near-constant starvation and war.

            That meant that to see Italian conflicts through English eyes was like the plough dragging the ox. Edward III of England might plot all he wanted, but his schemes and those of Charles V of France were mere back alleys in the labyrinthine city of European diplomacy. I didn’t come to this in one year, but I was beginning to suspect that there was more to Amadeus’s quarrels with the Pope, or with Milan, than his relations with England and France.

            So the divides were both true and false, and a mercenary, or a crusader, needed to be able to look at every plot from several angles. It was possible for a good man, a true man, to find himself on both sides of any question, because of divided loyalties or interest. As one example, Amadeus of Savoy, the Green Count, and his Savoyards hated the English and were at least in their hearts loyal to the French King, but the Green Count was a sovereign prince; he owed no fealty to anyone, king or Emperor, except for a few estates. He served the Pope, but he had designs of his own in Italy. He wanted a crusade – and he wanted to control it himself. He was not the sort of man who would abide another’s commands. And his cousin Robert of Geneva, formerly Bishop of Cambrai, was a Savoyard first and foremost.

            And my lady Emile was the wife of one of the Savoyard nobles.

            At any rate, the Green Count was not at Turin, and neither was the Comte d’Herblay or his wife, nor Richard Musard. We stayed three days; Father Pierre had a long discussion on crusade funding with the Green Count’s chamberlain, and we rode east and south, over the passes to Italy. There was still snow on the mountaintops, but the valleys were already in summer, with fields of flowers stretching away like the very embodiment of paradise.

            And then we rode down out of the mountains into the plain of Lombardy, and I was back in Italy. By Saint Maurice, gentlemen, I hope I won’t seem a worse Englishman to you if I say that I love Italy. It is warm and the wine is good.