Well, we had by then a dozen donats, all fully armed and armoured. I turned to Miles Stapleton.
‘Will you play my squire?’ I asked.
He nodded. ‘Your servant, my lord,’ he said.
Nerio Acciaioli caught my bridle. ‘It could be murder out there,’ he said, pointing to the gate.
It was my turn to shrug. ‘I have orders,’ I said. ‘And Fra Peter is worried. He never worries.’
Ser Nerio let go my bridle and nodded. ‘Do me the kindness of waiting on my father.’
I dismounted and bowed to Ser Niccolò, who listened while his son whispered in his ear.
‘Do it,’ he said. He smiled at me. ‘You need a servant,’ he said.
It seemed the oddest thing, at the time.
There were no women in the streets of Verona, that’s the first thing I noted. The second was that there were a great many men of fighting age, all with swords. In Bologna, I hadn’t seen a sword displayed in a week. University students who wanted to fight went outside the town.
We were watched in a heavy silence as we rode, and I suspect the sheer number and quality of the men-at-arms kept us safe – a dozen of the Order’s men-at-arms and another dozen of the Accaioulos, with their green and gold banner and the Pope’s, too.
The castle was the most modern, elegant, and imposing fortification I had ever seen. It is all red brick and white marble, with palatial facades and workaday walls; a magnificent design that is equally suited to holding the city against an invader or holding an escape route against a local insurrection. The della Scala were, after all, tyrants. Not really ill-natured tyrants, although there had been trouble.
We entered by the main gate and entered a courtyard, and my spine tingled: the walls around the courtyard were full of crossbowmen, and they were watching us, their bows spanned.
Fiore whistled softly.
Stapleton played his part perfectly, riding forward with my helmet and lance and calling for the captain of the fortress.
The man who emerged from the main tower was in full harness and had a poleaxe in his hand. I couldn’t even hear him when he spoke, because his visor was down.
I didn’t have a helmet on, and I was afraid. There were enough crossbows around us to kill us all in a matter of seconds, and I had led my friends into this. And I had led the life – I could tell how close to the edge all these men were.
I turned. ‘Dismount!’ I called. ‘Everyone show your hands to be empty. Smile!’
Behind me, Nerio said, ‘Smile?’
I looked at him and made myself smile. ‘It’s harder to kill a man in cold blood when he’s smiling,’ I said. I got an armoured leg over the cantle of my saddle and slid to the ground, then walked toward the armoured man with the poleaxe.
He backed away a step.
‘Messire, I don’t have a weapon in my hands, and I have no helmet on my head, and you have fifty crossbowman pointing at me this minute,’ I said in passable Italian. ‘I come in peace, with travel documents from the Pope, who is our spiritual father. I am sworn to the crusade, as is every man here, and if you harm us, you will be excommunicated. Please open your visor and let us talk like gentlemen.’
‘Put your papers on the ground and back away,’ he said.
‘No,’ I said. ‘I represent the Cardinal Legate of the Pope.’
We stared at each other.