The Long Sword(35)

            ‘What do you think of the wine, Ser William?’ Father Pierre asked me.

            ‘Delicious,’ I admitted. ‘As good as anything Ser Niccolò had to offer.’

            Father Pierre’s eyes crinkled with his smile. ‘Denied all the other pleasures of the flesh, my brother priests and I can rarely resist a good wine,’ he admitted. He looked back over his hands to Fra Peter. ‘No, I need you at Venice. You and the other men of the Order are my ambassadors to the brigands and routiers who will be our phalanx of Angels.’

            Sometimes, I suspected that the saintly Father Pierre had some cynicism lurking under the surface, but like some shy forest animal, whenever it peeked out with his rare half-smile, it was soon gone again.



            I needed a new sword, and I spent some delightful hours prowling Bologna for the one I wanted, with Fiore and Juan and Miles, who had recovered from his sullenness to become one of us. But in three days, I knew every sword available for sale in the city, and none of them were quite what I desired.

            I’m sure you will say that a sword is a sword, a tool for killing. This is true, and I can use any of them. But listen, gentles. There are many beautiful women in the world. Yes? Consider every charm, every allure. Consider the endless attractions: ankles, shoulders, the curve of a wrist, the top of a breast, the tilt of eyes, the corners of mouths. Consider also the subtlety that is the interplay – the conversation, the soul of a lady, so that some are dull and others sparkle like a fine jewel in any company.

            So … every man has his taste, and perhaps every woman also. So many details that we cannot track them all or even remember what we like, and yet, at least with a sword, I have to no more than wrap my hand around a hilt and raise the blade from the floor and I know. Some blades demand to be swung up and over my head. Some hilts fit my hand as if they were some sort of inverse glove. And some do not. Perhaps they have warm conversations with other swordsmen, but not with me.

            The perfect sword … it is a very intimate thing.

            When I find one such, I think of it constantly. Listen, I remember once I saw a woman through the curtain of a shop; she was raising her dress over her head, trying something for a seamstress, perhaps, and all I saw was the line of her side, and that ell of her flesh stuck with me for two days, filled my waking thought, found its way into my head even while I prayed. And so it is with the right sword, so that the memory of the perfect weight across my palms will follow me out of a shop and into church.

            Well, she was not to be had in Bologna.

            But I did enjoy three days with Ser Niccolò and his knights, and I drank a great deal of wine with Nerio and was surprised to find how much he and Fiore disliked each other. I mislike it when my friends cannot make accord, and this was the most instant dislike between two friends I’d ever experienced. I suspect that Fiore resented Nerio’s familiarity – and his riches. And Nerio was not used to being thought to lack anything, but Fiore found him wanting as a man-at-arms. I have no idea why. Nerio looked quite dangerous to my eye, and I’d killed a great many more men than my Friulian friend.

            To complete the complexity of my existence, Fra Peter and Father Pierre had decided that they would arrange for Juan to be knighted in Venice. But as he was from a great Catalan family, this involved a good deal more preparation than a cook’s boy from London got on a battlefield, and they wanted it kept secret, so I was handed a list of things to purchase and things to do and letters to write, all without letting Juan know. This, of course, had the unfortunate effect of letting Juan think I was ignoring him.

            And finally, while I was writing letters, I mustered my courage and wrote to Emile. That is to say, I helped Sister Marie compose a circular letter from the legate to the bishops of the Duke of Burgundy about pilgrimage and crusade, and in it were dates for pilgrims who wanted to accompany the crusade to Jerusalem, assembly points at Venice and Genoa, and other points. When I copied the legate’s letter out – to Sister Marie’s surprise – I made sure that my name had been included among the list of routiers turned to soldiers of God, and she had included it.