We all laughed. It was true. King John the Brave of France had lost to us, the English, every single time he’d faced us.
Fra Peter shrugged. ‘The Holy Father has other concerns than ours, messires. At any rate, King John took the cross and then nothing happened. But now he has died. Father Pierre told me to gather my knights because the word in Avignon is that the Holy Father will re-declare the Passagium Generale. He has appointed Talleyrand as papal legate to lead the faithful, and he will offer the command to King Peter of Cyprus.’
Talleyrand, no friend of mine, was reputed to be the richest man in the world. And perhaps the most venal priest ever born.
Then he told us how he had spent the winter with Father Pierre, holding the city of Bologna to its allegiance for the Pope. In truth, I’d heard nothing of it, even though it had all happened two hundred leagues from me.
‘You needed good men-at-arms,’ I said.
‘I fear the day that Father Pierre needs an escort,’ Fra Peter said. ‘He rides in among his enemies – at Bologna, he rode boldly in among men sent to take him, unarmed, holding aloft a cross. I thought we were dead or taken, but God supported his saint, and the mercenaries were moved to their knees.’
We murmured appreciatively. We all knew him: the force of his genuine conviction was like one of Fiore’s smashing sword blows.
‘And he made peace between the Pope and the Duke of Milan, where the King of France had failed. To some of us, it was a miracle come from God – one day, the Duke was threatening to hang us all, and the next day, he signed the peace. And the Pope held Bologna, despite all threats. Friends, I will not hide from you that the Pope had already sent letters to command a renewed campaign against Milan and a cancellation of the crusade.’ He looked around at us. ‘Even now, there is a powerful party at the papal court that attempts to cancel the crusade or to have it declared against Milan.’
Fiore recoiled. ‘Infamous!’ he said. ‘A crusade against a Christian duke?’
Fra Peter nodded agreement. ‘It would, to you and me, make a mockery of everything we hold dear about Christian knighthood and the crusade. But there are men in Avignon who hold the papal authority is the higher good – the true cause.’
Well, we were Pierre Thomas’s men, and Fra Peter Mortimer’s. We all shook our heads, or spat, or frowned. Even John Hughes. And he spoke for many men when he swore.
‘By our Lady,’ he said. ‘The priests and the popes will be the ruin of the church. A crusade against Milan? It’s like declaring a crusade against England.’
Fra Peter met Hughes’s eye. ‘It could come to that, if the papacy continues on this path.’ He shrugged. ‘Our Father Pierre has worked without pause for two years to make the Passigium Generale a reality. He made peace between the Pope and the Duke, and he’s helped settle the Cretan Revolt. Now we’re gathering knights and in two months, the army will meet us in Venice.’ He looked from one to another. ‘It’s real, lads. We’re off on crusade.’
Ah, Monsieur Froissart, since you treasure tales of deeds of arms, let me say that through that entire passage to Avignon, Messire dei Liberi and Juan Hernedez and I exchanged many blows, indeed, some evenings, if we had made enough miles, Fra Peter would join us. My new delight was fighting with the heavy spear, and Fiore loved it too, and where he might be blind to the glances of a pretty farm girl and deaf to the offers of a merchant looking for a guard, he was as avid for arms as a young priest in a university is for his theology. And he approached his study in much the same way, so that on that trip he began to sketch out a theory of – well, it is hard to describe. A theory of fighting, a theory of how to train.
North of the Alps, few men know of Master Fiore. But south of the Alps, we think him the best sword that ever was. And that summer, he was just coming into his own, growing in confidence in his own methods, and experimenting in how to teach them. He made us do the oddest things: we wrestled on horseback, of which you’ll hear more, and we jousted, and we fenced with spear and sword and we wrestled and fought with sticks and fought with daggers.