The Long Sword(80)

            ‘And the painted devil smiled. He smiled, and tossed the axe in the air.’ Master Carl shrugged. ‘So perhaps I was in the Kingdom of Prester John, and they were all Christian men. The next day they fed me and took me to another beach and left me.’

            ‘Gospel truth,’ said the tall journeyman. ‘I plucked him off that beach in fear of my life and mortal soul, but we never saw a one of them again.’ He looked shamefaced. ‘We were off course – we thought we’d make a profit by taking a few as slaves.’

            Master Carl shrugged. ‘I’d wager they’d make terrible slaves,’ he said.

            I spoke more with them; they were all shipmen as well as traders, and they had adventures that would fill a good-sized book.

            All I gathered from their stories was that the world was very broad indeed, and more full of adventure than a hundred tales of King Arthur.



            We rode back west via Prague. Prague was, and probably still is, one of the most beautiful places in the west, with magnificent palaces and churches. Even the burghers’ houses are as fine as those of Venice. But we stayed only one night, and then we were away west.

            At Nuremberg, King Peter sent me to Avignon with his dispatches. I was loathe to leave him by then. Despite his mercurial moods, he was a natural leader and a fine lord, generous with praise and with money, even when he had very little himself.

            I’ll add that we cleared the road of bandits for the next several years, or so I’ve been told. King Peter would ask at every inn, and twice we left the road to hunt the robbers as if they were stags. One cold afternoon in the Tyrol, we caught a band that proved to be more like human scarecrows than like the demons of Satan we’d been led to expect. We surprised them, despite the late hour in the day, scattered them off their smoking fires and began to kill them.

            There were only about a dozen of them. We were as many knights and then as many again –all the squires were mounted and armed by then. They had no chance, and a boy of perhaps twelve years old threw down his notched falchion and knelt at my feet.

            I cut off his head.

            I can still see it today. He was trying to surrender, and I had just fought another, older man, his father, perhaps. I saw his posture of surrender, but I didn’t change my mind. My new sword severed his head as easily as a lady cuts pork at dinner with her eating knife.

            He fell forward over his own lap. His head made an odd sound as it struck the sword he’d dropped. And it didn’t roll anywhere.

            I saw his eyes move.

            I pray for his soul, even to this day. I had not meant to kill him. It was a wrong act, a murder, the sort of thing I used to do, when I was a routier.

            When I was, in fact, like his father and his brothers. A brigand, if a better armed one. They didn’t even try to rob us. They simply died.

            I’m sorry if I cannot make a better story of that empris. It was, and is a lesson I have had to face many times. The line between knight and brigand is the width of the edge of the sword.



            I left the king at Nuremberg. I took only Marc-Antonio, who was, after two months in the saddle, a decent blade and a good companion. He could cook a little, although I did most of it; he could make a camp and tend to horses; and if he tended to speak a little too loudly to his social superiors? Why, so did I. He couldn’t sew to save his soul, and I did all the sharpening, but he was already a tolerable squire, and he was interested in learning more … most of the time. But I noted that almost anything could distract him: a pretty face, an interesting song, a new poem, a handsome horse. I would ride along, piously enjoining him to something that seemed important to me that day – by our sweet Saviour, what a hypocrite I have been, and no doubt will be again – and I would look back and see on him that look that meant he was a thousand miles away. He was also a glutton. He ate constantly, and while I was following the Queen of Love’s instructions and refraining from lechery, he made up for my chastity with a noisy relish that I came to resent. He was so soft-faced and angelic that girls trusted him – that’s the only explanation I can offer.