I stood abashed.
‘The crusade may or may not happen at the will of God, and not because we are so very mighty, nor so very clever.’ His eyes had a glint of self-mockery. ‘Despite which, we shall do all in our poor power to help the cause. Will you take my messages to the King of Cyprus, William?’
I remember how much I didn’t want to go. Emile was coming, and I wanted to be with her – and with Father Pierre – although, like any young man, I didn’t consider what it might be like to divide my time between the two of them. And I was aware that she had said that d’Herblay was coming.
But Father Pierre was more than just my commander. So I knelt and put my hands between his. ‘Whenever you command,’ I said.
His smile didn’t waiver. ‘That’s my William,’ he said to the room. ‘I need you to leave now – today.’
Christ on the cross!
I suppose he’d been ready, because he’d made four of us bring our horses all the way to the city, when the guides had begged us to leave them. I had a hasty conference with Fra Peter about Juan’s coming knighting, about the command of the donats, about my failings as a leader and, oh yes, the threat of our being intercepted.
‘I have a fear heavy on me, William, that Bishop Robert and his faction will stop at nothing to end the crusade. Or rather, to subvert it to their own will.’ He looked at me. ‘Nothing.’
I nodded. Any faction that employed the Bourc Camus was blacker than pine pitch in my eyes, and I needed no warning, or so I thought.
In the end, I got Fiore and my new servant, Marc-Antonio, and Ser Nerio and his squire, Davide. I was handed a purse full of money and I got to repack the harness I’d just laboriously moved into a storeroom and placed on an armour rack, while I tried to teach Marc-Antonio the most basic elements of armour care.
An old man approached me as I handed my bags and leather trunk down into the boat that was to carry us to the mainland. He came down the water steps of the loggia and Fra Peter waved to tell me he was one of our own.
The old man bowed. ‘Sir Knight,’ he said, ‘are you William Gold of England?’
Despite feeling especially surly – hard done by, unwashed and unshaved in the face of elegance and civilization – despite all that, I returned his bow and tried to comport myself as a gentleman of the order.
‘I have that honour, my lord,’ I said with a flourish.
‘Ah, messire, I am no lord, but merely Francesco Petrarca,’ he said with immense dignity.
Even I knew who Petrarch was: the greatest man of letters in Italy or the world, discoverer of Cicero’s letters, poet, diplomat – hah, Master Chaucer, I see your surprise. By God, I know a few scribblers beside you! It is not all war and horses, messires!’
‘A name that is a title in itself,’ I answered.
The old man lit up like a church at Easter. None of us are immune to flattery, are we? And the older we are, the nicer it is when some young pup offers us some, eh? At any rate, the great man gave me a packet of letters to carry, for the Doge and on his own account. Those letters were bound to half the cities of Europe, but there was a packet for the Emperor and another packet for the King of Cyprus, and yet another for his chancellor, Philippe de Mézièrres, of whom more anon.
Darkness found me on the shore north of Mestre, with the magnificent city behind me. I’d been in Venice for almost six hours.
I hadn’t even had time to look for a sword.
Fra Peter had laid out my route for me. I had every passport that a knight could need, and the first thing I did on reaching Padua – again – was to purchase three excellent horses. Then we rode the way Fra Peter had crossed France two years before: fast and light, with no baggage but our armour and weapons and a fat letter of credit. We climbed into the Swiss passes and blessed the weather, but at the top of the great pass, where a monastery’s lights burn like the hope of heaven a thousand feet above the road, it was cold even at high summer.