In my own defence, I’ll say that while there was some good wine and good cheer and staring at beautiful mountains on that trip, I’ll also say that Bernard and Jean-François and I rode and scouted as if we were in hourly danger of our lives. I didn’t know if d’Herblay was ahead of us or behind, or what other agents Robert of Geneva might have deployed against us.
Any road, on the causeway into Chioggia I felt we were safe. And I wanted to triumph with the doll.
I reined in and waved for Marc-Antonio, who was preening like a peacock. And why not? He was about to ride into his home town as the squire of a knight. Wearing a sword, even if it was in a plain brown scabbard. Bernard, Jean-François’s silent friend, was not just a fine blade, he could work leather, and together the four of us had tinkered up a fair scabbard for my squire’s longsword. He wore silver spurs and hip-high boots and he was long, lean, and a little dangerous looking – and he knew it. Women were already watching him with the appetite that belies many of the things men say about women.
At any rate, as he became more like a squire, so it was more of a pleasure to be served by him. He clattered up the causeway in a show of devotion and reined in by my side.
‘Can you get us lodgings with the Corners?’ I asked. ‘Go and ask once we pass the gate.’
He bowed in the saddle. I was doing him a favour: now he could go to his home as my messenger, puffed in self-importance, his status on his hip.
The gate guards welcomed us like long-lost friends – an odd reaction, but due, I found, to the esteem in which Father Pierre was held in Venice, where they well-nigh worshipped him for his part in making peace between France and Milan and the Pope. At any rate, I covered my surprise. Gate guards can be officious, obsequious, venal or rude, but I’ve seldom known them to be friendly, and it put me on my guard. Marc-Antonio clattered away after exchanging a lewd jest with one of the guards, and we were in the wide streets and canals of Chioggia.
Emile rode with her head going back and forth.
‘These houses are as elegant as those in Paris,’ she said as we came to the grand central square. ‘They must have a fine run of noblemen for such a small town.’
I nodded. ‘Countess, these are all merchants. The town owns all the land; it is a commune. They rent the land on the condition that the merchants built rich houses.’ I shrugged as if disclaiming my own knowledge. ‘My squire is Chioggian, so I know a fair amount about the town.’
‘By Saint Mary Magdalene, this town is a delight,’ she said. We ambled along the main street with a canal on our left running on the far side of the church and the great town hall and the fine tower that could be seen all the way across the marshes. But we were on terra firma; the square was paved, and the houses around it très riches, with three-storey stone façades and arched entryways.
Marc-Antonio emerged from the Corner facade with the padrone at his back. Messire Corner bowed extravagantly on his own front loggia. ‘The famous knight Sir Guillaume le Coq!’ He grinned. ‘Or perhaps you are too great to be a cook, eh?’
I shook my head. ‘Master Corner, I am at your service. This is the Countess d’Herblay. This is her captain, Jean-François de Barre, and these gentlemen are all her men-at-arms.’ I bowed from the saddle. ‘May we impose for a night?’
‘A night? You may come for Christmas if you want. My wife will be in heaven – a countess? I’ll have to buy her new everything.’ He smiled. ‘Countess, I am entirely at your service, and my house is yours. What brings you to my humble town in the swamps?’
Emile dazzled him with her most gracious full-face smile; her eyes all but gave light, they sparkled so much. She spoke French – she had very little Italian, although like most Savoyards, she understood it well enough. ‘My lord, I appreciate this welcome,’ she said.