The Long Sword (46 page)

Or so I see it.

Regardless, that Sabbath eve in Piraeus and Athens, we had won a victory that gave them heart-heretics and schismatics together, so to speak.

The next day we gathered cargoes on the waterfront. I had a hard head; I had drunk too late, I think, and I was in a foul mood. I was worried for Marc-Antonio, whose wound was festering, and inclined to find my Turk, who I expected to die despite the treatment of the brothers of the Hospital. In short, my view of the world was as black as it can be for a man four days out of battle. My own wounds hurt, my head hurt, and life seemed … empty.

Usually I filled this feeling with a woman. There, ‘tis said. Taken like a drug. But chastity, and chivalric love – a terrible pair to yoke together – left me alone with my thoughts instead of abed with a soft friend. Alone, a man in dark mood can see many things … differently … and I walked the docks, tormenting myself with Emile’s words, her lack of love for me, her inclination (as I saw it in my darkness) for the king.

A man can use any tool to justify himself to sin and I was busy using my blackness to work myself to hate Emile so that I might find myself a pretty Greek. But Miles saved me from this, with a sort of deadly cheerfulness that made me vent my spleen on him. He gave me the sele of the day and enquired after my wound.

‘It pains me,’ I said. ‘I can scarcely walk.’

He dared to smile. ‘And yet you go up and down these piers as if searching for our Saviour,’ he said with gentle derision.

‘I have much on which to think!’ I said.

He laughed. ‘I am younger than you,’ he said, ‘but it seems to me a man can think while sitting down, if his foot is cut.’

‘Are you wandering about explaining to men the errors of their ways, or do you have some errand?’ I asked. I may have been even more direct. Perhaps I said, ‘What business is it of yours?’

Miles smiled. ‘In truth, the senior knight of our order was asking for you this morning, and Milord Contarini is sitting under his awning just there, awaiting your good pleasure.’

I was being mocked; knights await the good pleasure of lords, and not the other way about.

I realised that I had been pacing up and down in full view of the command structure of the fleet and no man likes to look a fool.

‘And how long have you known that I was wanted?’ I asked. In my mood, I saw him laughing at my pain and watching me pace the docks.

Miles bowed, refusing to be drawn to temper. ‘About as long as it took me to walk from the poop to this spot,’ he said.

Something in his restraint finally cracked my bad composure. ‘Miles, my apologies,’ I began.

He shook his head. ‘None needed.’ Really, he was too good to be believed. He didn’t seem to need a wench
or
a confessor and he had fought quite brilliantly.

I sighed, and hobbled to the gangway of the great galley. What inconsistency of the mind allowed me to walk back and forth, cursing Emile’s imagined faithlessness, without so much as a twinge from my foot-but the moment I returned to my duty, it hurt with every step?

Bah! I see both of you gentlemen are familiar with this sort of thing.

At any rate, as I limped, I watched the deck crew using the foremast’s yard as a crane to lift a bale of hides inboard. Something turned over in my head. Hides wouldn’t go outbound to Rhodes – Rhodes might have a leatherworker or two, but hides were a homebound cargo for Venice. I
had
been listening to Nerio and to Lord Contarini when they spoke about merchanting.

I looked down the main deck to the stern, where the command deck rose a few steps above the main deck. Lord Contarini was sitting, just as Miles had said, in a low chair. The leather battle curtains were brailed up for the breeze. He was watching the loading of the great galleys shallow hold. He saw me and his demeanour changed.

I am no fool. I had the evidence, and I assembled it. He was loading us for Venice, not Rhodes.

Let me tell you, I prefer a fight to a debate. But I had promised the legate.

I had perhaps thirty slow steps in which to marshal my arguments and make a case. And the first choice was whether to allow myself to be mastered by anger, or to be all sweet reason. The anger was right there, boiling together with the injustice of Emile’s behaviour, the perfidy of the king, d’Herblay’s cowardice, my fear of Cambrai’s long arm, my own fatigue and black mood. Anger was easy.

There are moments in life that are as definite as battle. As stark. There are moments when you see things as if they were outlined in scarlet, when truth is illuminated, when a man’s character changes because he understands something heretofore hidden, for good or ill. We remember with pleasure those moments that are achievements of some goal: the wife, the treasure, the golden spurs, the Emperor’s sword. But in our secret mind we know that some of the red letters that mark our days were not achievements but discoveries. I have known a good woman ruined by another woman’s perfidy, ruined to dissipation by a relentless cynicism. I have seen one man turned faithless by another man’s bad faith, accidentally discovered.

In one brilliant flash as I stepped aboard and crossed myself to the crucifix at the stern, I saw that anger would serve no purpose whatever in this debate. And that, further, my anger was a bent, nicked sword in any debate. I can’t tell you by what train I arrived at this conclusion, but I saw it. This was one conversation in which I must not be governed by my black mood.

Like a man approaching a fight in the lists, I examined my opponent and tried to find an attack that would carry his conviction. That he had given his word? That our victory needed to be known on Rhodes?

Like many young men entering unequal combats, I had not prepared my attack when I entered his distance. But at least I knew the manner of my own defence, and had my first feint, as it were, prepared.

I bowed, touching my knee to the deck. ‘My lord summoned me?’ I said.

Lord Contarini inclined his head. I knew he liked me. ‘I need to talk to you on a serious matter,’ he said, a little too portentously.

In a fight, you can read an opponent in a hundred little things. A man may lean back slightly when you present your blade at his eyes – that little flinch reveals everything. Lord Contarini’s voice and his first words told me that he was not happy in his own mind with the choice he had made. And that was an opening.

‘I see we are loading for Venice,’ I said bluntly. I neither smiled nor frowned – my voice was steady.

He broke his eyes away from mine. ‘Yes,’ he said. ‘It is necessary.’

I neither nodded nor frowned. ‘It is my duty, my lord, to tell you that your action will force the cancellation of the crusade.’

His head snapped around. Had it been a fight, I had just landed a blow.

I admired him, and one of his most admirable qualities was that
his age rendered him immune from the petty ambitions that ruled the rest of us. But I had him. Having won a great victory, he was chained to the good opinion of the world.

He glared at me. ‘Venice must be informed immediately if this victory is to be followed up. And perhaps this sea fight is as great a victory as the crusade was ever expected to win.’

‘The crusade is intended to take Jerusalem,’ I said.

‘With six thousand men?’ asked the admiral. ‘Spare me your pious crap, Sir Knight.’

I bowed and clamped down on my temper. ‘My lord, I gave my solemn word to the legate that I would return to him at Rhodes – and I believe you did the same.’

‘My duty to Venice outweighs my word to the Patriarch, however worthy that gentleman.’ He said it, and yet I could see that it rankled.

‘Can we not send a galley or two, or even an overland messenger?’ I asked. But my mind was running on, and I thought I had it. I was too young to fully appreciate the impact of a great victory won in old age, but I understood that Lord Contarini wanted to live to enjoy his fame
.
It was something in his face when I said the word
messenger.
He wanted to be his own messenger, to enjoy the worship of the crowd, the
Te Deum
at Saint Mark’s.

It was an uncomfortable wisdom, because I fully comprehended his desire. I, too, want to live to tell my stories. There is little value to fame after you are dead, whatever the ancients may say.

He shook his head. ‘I need …’ he began. He paused.

‘My lord, if you support the crusade to the end, your fame will be
greater,
I said quietly. ‘If you return now, some will smear your victory with terms like desertion.’

He stood suddenly, overturning his seat. ‘You
dare
?’ he spat.

This is a form of confrontation I dislike. I dislike enduring the anger of a man I admire. But I had given my word, and my sudden wisdom flowered in a hundred ways as I saw – better – how to command myself and other men.

I bowed. ‘I must dare,’ I said. ‘My lord, I am only doing my duty to my lord the legate. And, my lord, to
you.
’

‘Betake yourself out of my sight,’ he said. ‘It is too late. We have a cargo engaged, as do most of the ships in the fleet.’

I bowed again. ‘A set of cargoes that can be unloaded in as many hours as they were loaded – and warehoused until we return.’

‘Now you will advise me on merchanting, Sir William?’ he asked.

I bowed and left him, but I was shaking inwardly. And yet I thought the balance had shifted. I had caused him some doubt.

I limped down the gangway and turned my halting steps for the Hospitaller galleys. I did not dread the summons of the senior knight – or perhaps I didn’t dread it enough. I had come under the orders of different knights at Avignon, but I had little notion of my own subordinate position.

Fra Daniele del Caretto soon enlightened me.

‘I am surprised that you did not repair aboard immediately,’ he said, ‘To pay your respects to your senior officer. I have waited in surprise for some days, and now I find you wanting utterly in either respect or humility. And where is your surcoat? Are you too proud of your earthly riches to wear the Order’s cross? The cross of Christ?’

This from a man whose own surcoat was so thickly embroidered in gold and silk thread as to constitute another layer of armour. He wore his over a short gown of linen and silk. His hose were silk – he wore a small fortune on his back.

He continued, ‘I was utterly against the inclusion of your kind in our great
empris.
I expect that you were shocked to find that there was nothing to loot aboard the Turkish vessels.’

Righteous indignation is a useful tool, to be sure. But sometimes, if one is lucky, a conversational adversary makes a claim so ludicrous that it allows you to smile. Remember, too, that I had just had my road to Damascus about temper; not, as you’ll hear, that my conversion was perfect or durable. But in that hour I was a different man.

He leaned forward. ‘Speak, man. Have you nothing to say for yourself
?’

I looked at him straight and again, neither smiled nor frowned. ‘Lord Contarini intends to sail for Venice and leave the crusade in the lurch,’ I said. ‘I was just with him.’ I bowed my head. ‘I am very sorry if I have seemed wanting in respect, Fra Daniele.’

‘The admiral spoke of you
commanding
the volunteers when in fact such a thing is impossible – no volunteer can
command
anything.’ He looked at me down his long patrician nose.

I might have shrugged, two hours before, and earned his ire. But I did not. ‘Fra Daniele, might I move you to address Lord Contarini?’ I asked.

He sat back. ‘Lord Contarini is a merchant adventurer of Venice and is in no way under my authority. You are. I find you insubordinate.’

He seemed very satisfied with his little sphere of power. I have known such men all my life, and the church attracts its fair share. Yet this man had fought his ship with spirit – even with skill – during the battle.

‘Fra Daniele …’ I considered my words. I was a knight. I was his equal in every way, except within the insular world of the order. Yet the order had given me much, not least my life.

His eyes narrowed. ‘You may address me as “my lord”,’ he said.

I met his eye. ‘No, sir. You are not my lord. The papal legate is my lord. I am here on his express authority – I have his orders to command the other volunteers for the greater glory of Christ, and to return them, and the Venetians, to their duty at Rhodes.’ It was a mistake. His face hardened as I spoke. But I enjoyed it.

He shook his head. He was honestly baffled. ‘You may not speak to me that way, sir. I am the Lord Preceptor of Cyprus, a Cross of Grace, a veteran knight of your Order. I am your lord in every way. If you will not submit …’

I was finally learning how to do something other than fight.

I bowed. ‘My lord, I spoke in haste.’

We regarded each other across his stern cabin table. I let my eyes inform him that my surrender was
pro forma
.

‘Well—’ he began.

‘My lord, the Venetians are proposing to desert the crusade and sail for home. I believe that you have it in your power to convince Lord Contarini to stay true to his vows.’ I put a hand on the table.

‘You speak well, for a mercenary,’ he said.

‘My lord, I was a routier, a brigand. I was saved from that life – and from death itself – by the legate. I owe him everything, and I will do anything in my power to see his orders obeyed and his wishes complied with.’ I held his eyes.

He looked away. ‘What a strange, insistent fellow you are, to be sure,’ he said with irritation. ‘Very well, I’ll go chivvy Lord Contarini. But these Venetians are not gentlemen – mere merchants.’

The next morning, we rowed down the harbour in a dead calm so flat that the smell of dead fish seemed to cling to the rigging, and the ocean was like a badly polished mirror stretching away to the island of Salamis across the strait. But we weathered the cape, rowing like sweating heroes, and altered course to port and not to starboard. At noon we were seeing the great temple to Poseidon at Sounion, which Nerio pointed out and described in great detail. As great detail, in fact, as the charms of his Athenian mistress, whose lush breasts and insatiable appetite for him he was describing with the kind of relish that—