Jean-François and I translated together, and we both laughed.
‘Tell your lady I’m no lord, but a free citizen of Venice,’ Messire Corner said. ‘But be gentle. Aristocrats are easy to insult. Eh? Come, there’s food. I see you have taken good care of my scapegrace bastard. He looks like a man.’
‘He is a man, messire. He has served me well, and I have made him a squire. Indeed, he served as a squire in front of the Emperor.’ No harm in laying it on thick. This sort of thing can be a better reward than money. It is honour. Word fame is honour.
If Emile could be said to be luminous when she was happy, Marc-Antonio glowed.
The padrone glanced at his bastard son. He gave a long, steady nod. ‘I am delighted, Ser Guillaume, and deeply in your debt. Will you keep him?’
‘Indeed, I have undertaken to make him a knight, in time,’ I said.
I was busy dismounting, handing Emile down – the first time I’d been allowed to do such a thing in the whole of our ride, and the touch of her hand caused me to miss the padrone’s next words. But when I turned, he enfolded me in a velvet embrace. ‘You are a true friend,’ he said. He had tears in his eyes, and he led me by the hand into his house, shouting for his wife.
In England, a man, no matter how rich, does not brag to his wife of how well his bastard son by another woman has done. But Italy is different, I suppose, though no fool would call Italian women weak.
You might think that she would be angry, or spiteful – certainly she had no time for the boy when he was a servant. But now she sat Marc-Antonio at the family table and his sword was hung with pride by the chimney.
Emile favoured me with one of her smiles. Par dieu, it is good to play the great man sometimes, especially when you are young, and it is a pleasure to do a good thing, perhaps the greatest pleasure in the world for a Christian.
Emile went off with the lady of the house, whose French appeared equal to the occasion and who gave, as I can testify, every evidence of being delighted to host a countess – so much delight that I fear that every matron in Chioggia was treated to an evocation of Emile’s gentility and demeanour for many weeks to follow. But perhaps I do the lady an injustice.
I remember that evening well. We ate a simple meal (so our hostess claimed) and I had octopus in a dark-brown sauce made with its own ink, which was delicious, and curiously like a succulent beefsteak. We had it with a heavy red wine, something local. Ah, messieurs, it is not all wading in blood, the life of arms, and we sat and listened to the Corner daughters play the lute and sing, and then we all sang some Italian songs. In those days, my Italian was far from courtly, and I did not know the fashionable songs, the ones Boccaccio and Dante made popular in the upper classes. But I knew several new songs by Machaut, in French. I sang ‘Puis que la douce rousée’ and Emile laughed so hard I thought she might injure herself.
‘You are not the fair lady that Master Machaut expected,’ she said when she recovered.
Of course, I’d only met Guillaume de Machaut through Emile, and she knew all his music. With only a little importuning from the company, Emile sang, and the elder of the Corner girls picked up her tune and even the words in one repetition – a quick ear and no mistake. They sang two rounds and a motet. Then I joined them for a third.
Alors, it was a fine evening. I was with Emile – how could it be anything else? And when the wine had gone round and the girls gone to their beds, the padrone rose and toasted me. ‘You’ve made a fine young man of my wastrel son,’ he said. ‘My house is at your service. It is like a miracle from God.’
I shrugged; no man deals well with heartfelt praise. ‘He was a fine young man to start,’ I said.
Husband and wife glanced at each other and the wife’s sister looked at Marc-Antonio and snorted.