He shrugged. ‘The Order of St John? Of no moment here.’
I struggled with anger; hot, sick anger that seemed to come out of my throat. He meant to offend. He meant to disqualify me.
He had two men-at-arms with him, and they looked sombre.
He meant to disqualify me.
That would be a whole pile of humiliations.
Very chivalrous.
But God delivered him into my hands as surely as he saved Daniel from the lions. Because at that moment, a bowshot away, the brass-lunged herald announced the next knight serving the Emperor, and it was none other than my recent enemy, Duke Rudolph von Hapsburg, last seen lying unconscious under one of his knights, a victim of my spear, about half a bowshot from the gates of Florence.
I pointed at the knight, who was in dazzling bronze-edged panoply with a scarlet surcoat that matched his beard and his caparison, wearing a link-belt of gold and looking the chivalric hero of every romance. ‘Duke Rudolph was present when I was knighted,’ I said. Unconscious at the time, of course.
The judge looked at me. He didn’t collapse, or vanish in a puff of ill-smelling smoke, but my victory was total, and he could only cover it with a display of ill breeding. ‘These battlefield knightings,’ he said. ‘Anyone can claim them.’
I bowed my head briefly. ‘I’m sure it makes your work very difficult,’ I said, emphasising work as if to imply that he was some sort of tradesman. I smiled at him. ‘I’ll try not to let it happen again.’
His eyes narrowed. ‘You make light of serious matters, sir.’
I shrugged. ‘Will you be fighting, sir?’ I asked.
He shook his head. ‘I am a judge.’
‘Very convenient, I’m sure,’ I drawled in my best Gascon French. ‘But should monsieur at any time feel the urge to don his harness, I would be at monsieur’s pleasure.’
Nerio, at my left side, choked on his laughter, and then threw back his head and brayed like an ass.
The judge turned a dark purple.
On my right, Fiore caught my reins. ‘Ahem,’ he said.
Fiore was not the best man at social complexities, but he was, in this case, right – I was not doing my duty by the Order in provoking some French functionary of the King of Poland. So I turned my head and managed to say nothing.
The Frenchman turned on Fiore. ‘And you, monsieur? Were you also knighted on the battlefield? Perhaps by the Emperor himself ?’
Fiore beamed with satisfaction. ‘I was knighted this very morning, before all these worthy gentlemen, by the King of Jerusalem!’ he said with such evident goodwill that it was hard for our Frenchman to be rude. But someone had set him his mission, and he was determined, like any petty court functionary.
‘Knighted this morning?’ he said, his voice rich with insinuation.
The King of Jerusalem and Cyprus, who, through all of this, had been moving among his team, discussing the contest, rode up behind the King of Poland’s man so silently that we all missed him. He leaned over and tapped the Frenchman’s back with his tournament sword. ‘I knighted him this morning, yes. I’m sorry – is there a rule against it?’
The Frenchman sniffed – very like a princess of France I knew – a sniff of contempt. ‘There is no rule, he said, implying the opposite.
‘Excellent!’ the king said. ‘Then if you are done investigating our noblesse, perhaps you could let us have a chat, eh, monsieur?’ The king’s French was perfect – it was, after all, the native tongue of the nobility of Outremer.