The Long Sword (51 page)

I had finally understood that he meant Father Pierre. ‘The legate?’ I said. ‘Without him, there would be no crusade. Don’t be a fool, d’Albret. Whatever his birth, he’s no peasant.’

D’Albret laughed his older brother’s nasty laugh. ‘Once a serf, always a serf. They flinch when you snap your fingers.’

I could imagine what Father Pierre would say if I fought a duel for his good name. So I took a deep breath, looked elsewhere, and finally rose. ‘We will have to agree to disagree,’ I said. ‘I see him as a great man, a living saint.’

D’Albret spat. ‘Well, the problem will be solved for us soon enough, or that’s what I hear. The Serf – that’s what we call him – has given offence to certain parties, eh?’

‘Who do you mean? And how will the problem be solved?’ I asked. I had been about to slap money on the table and walk away, but I knew a threat to my lord when I heard it.

D’Albret looked both smug and superior. ‘I just know the Serf will be gone soon. And then we will have a good war, and booty. That’s what everyone says.’ He shook his head. ‘When you killed that French bastard who stole your sword in the spring? I told everyone I knew you. I was proud to know you, eh? What happened? Priests take your stones? I heard d’Herblay beat the crap out of you. He says you are a coward.’

Before I knew it, my hand was on my hilt.

He laughed. ‘So you are still alive,’ he said.

‘You serve d’Herblay,’ I said. It was obvious. He wore the blue and white arms.

‘He’s not so bad. Better than the Bourc. The money’s good.’ He shrugged. ‘He’ll kill you, William. When the legate’s gone you had best hide.’

It was a busy day. D’Albret wasn’t gone a heartbeat before Nicolas Sabraham occupied his stool. From his look at d’Albret’s departing arrogance, I immediately understood his interest.

‘He claims there’s a threat to the legate,’ I said.

Sabraham laughed. He didn’t laugh often, and his contempt was obvious. ‘The French have ten plots going to kill the legate,’ he said. ‘All talk. They are the most hopeless conspirators, and the most pompous.’

‘D’Herblay is here,’ I said.

Sabraham knew that. ‘What I came to tell you,’ he said. ‘You show promise in this role, Sir William.’

‘Why do they hate him so much?’ I asked.

Sabraham sighed. ‘His birth. Their fears. They were raised to hate peasants, now a peasant will be Pope.’

‘I find I am not as close to young d’Albret as I once was,’ I said. ‘But I might be able to learn more – perhaps to turn him. He was a good man once.’

Sabraham put out a hand to stop me. ‘No. I know all I need to know about the Gascons and the French. Although, if we take Jerusalem with those men, it will, I promise you, be entirely due to the will of God.’

I winced. ‘They are good men-at-arms,’ I said.

Sabraham shrugged. ‘They are thugs in armour. I’d prefer to use the Mamluks to exterminate
them
. In fact, I sometimes suspect that was the Holy Father’s intention all along. No, I am not here for your Gascons. I’m here for your Turk. May I meet him? Fra William says he is quite the marvel.’

I summoned John – more arrow repair in the yard – and bought him a cup of wine. He never made any fuss about wine, and I find that many easterners will drink it. But that is beside the point.

Sabraham spoke to him in Turkish. In minutes, they were speaking quickly, a veritable barrage of words, guttural and liquid.

Sabraham dismissed my servant back to his ‘work’ and leaned back. ‘What a treasure,’ he said. ‘A fine man. You are very lucky. His people take death-debt very seriously. And he thinks you are a priest of Christ. His theology is a little weak, but you won’t suffer for it. I must go … I hear he’s a famous archer?’

‘He is, too,’ I admitted.

Sabraham nodded. ‘Soon, Sir William, we’ll get to see what this crusade is made of. An archer who speaks good Kipchak may be the best asset we have.’

A few days later, early in September, I believe, Miles stood the vigil before knighthood. We had a fine ceremony, and after vigil in the knights’ chapel of the Order, we heard Mass. Vigil in armour is a complex form of penance; the armour both supports and fatigues you, and as you tire, the plates of your knees begin to press harder into your kneecaps, and if I’d had a little less wine, I’d make a moral of that. But I won’t. Emile came. We touched hands at the holy-water font – I dipped my hand for water, and she put her hand in atop mine, taking her water from the backs of my fingers.

Oh, it sounds like nothing, but I still flush to tell it.

‘When you sail,’ she said softly, ‘I must stay here. The comte is here.’

There was no time to question her. We moved apart. But Father Pierre told me that the non-military pilgrims and the women would stay at Rhodes while the crusade attacked, and when we had seized Jerusalem, we would send for them.

I wanted to see her again. Her face was before me all the time, and she was only six streets away. Finally, I summoned my courage and sent Marc-Antonio to the nuns with a note. He had a way with nuns – it was his innocent countenance.

Thanks to that note, we began to plot our meeting. Emile suggested a church – Rhodes is full of churches, and some nearly deserted, especially after compline. We sent back and forth a date, a time, a place. It was delicious to correspond every day. I would fly home from the drill field, strip my armour and look for a note. Sometimes Marc-Antonio would put it into my gauntleted hand while I was still mounted. Some days there was no note at all.

One day she sent ‘Be careful – you have more to lose than I.’

That seemed odd.

But her notes seemed to promise everything, and I became less inclined to secrecy and more to romance.

Fiore hit me in the head a great many times that week.

We chose the Monday night as the most private, the most secret. By Friday, I had fine castile soap and a little Hungary water and my clothes were cleaned and brushed. Repeatedly. Marc-Antonio was beginning to show his irritation with my new level of personal beauty.

On Saturday evening, we had two tables of piquet at the inn. The knights did not forbid gambling: with wine, it was an ‘allowed’ vice. I was playing with Fra William when the legate came in. We all rose.

He glanced at the cards with unhidden disapproval. ‘We are so close to Jerusalem that a man might reach out and touch her,’ he said. ‘The centurions diced at the foot of the cross, I suppose.’ He looked at me. ‘I need you.’

I bowed. ‘My lord.’

He took me to one of the snugs, where Marcus, his archdeacon and sometimes his secretary, served us wine.

‘Sabraham will sail tomorrow,’ he said.

That didn’t surprise me. Many of the ships had water aboard and all had their full compliments of sailors and oarsmen. We, that is, Nerio and Juan and I, thought that the expedition might load on Friday and sail on Saturday week.

‘He desires you to support him,’ the legate said.

I had no choice but to agree. I owed Sabraham my life, and I owed it to the legate as well.

‘You hesitate,’ he said.

I shrugged.

‘You may tell me anything!’ he said.

May I tell you that I have an amorous meeting in a church with the woman I love, where I hope to woo and win her, to make love among the pillars of the nave? May I tell you that, Father?

‘I’ll be ready,’ I said.

‘You go to scout beaches for the crusade,’ he said.

I confess, I was proud to have been chosen by Sabraham.

Proud … and devastated.

I sent Marc-Antonio with one last note.

My dear,

I sail in the morning. Only the orders of God’s Vicar could keep me from you. Pray for me, and know that you have all my love.

Your knight

He came back an hour later. ‘No note,’ he said. He sounded puzzled and angry and handed me a packet.

It was no packet. It was a piece of blue silk, and on it was picked out a passage of the Gospels, in pearls. It took me a long time, too long, to realise that it was a favour, meant to replace the old one.

A slow, strong smile filled my face – and my heart.

On Sunday morning, just about the time we were leaving Mass, the Cypriote fleet entered the harbour – almost eighty sail. The king’s brother was there, and all the rest of his nobles and officers who had not seen him in two years. I understood from what I heard in Venice and on Rhodes that the king feared that if he went home to Cyprus, he would never leave. As it proved, I think he knew his people well. I never saw him on Rhodes – later I learned why – but the coming of the Cypriotes doubled our army and our fleet, and made the whole
empris
seem possible. With eight thousand men-at-arms and almost two hundred ships we might actually take Jerusalem. Surely it was the largest Christian host in a hundred years.

In fact, the last two weeks we were at Rhodes the Turkish emirs of the coast hastened to send submissions and surrenders to the King of Cyprus and even to the Order. Fra Ricardo was heard to joke that the Order should gather a hundred ships every autumn because we had them scared. The naval victory in the north had paralysed the two largest Turkish emirs, and now the smaller fish were wriggling.

I went back to my friends and embraced them, one by one.

‘Leave some Turks for us,’ Fiore said.

I carried my harness down to the seaport in a state of inner confusion. I had not seen Emile. I was not taking my friends.

At the pier, Sabraham looked at the wicker hamper containing my harness and smiled, his teeth bright in the torch lit dark. ‘You won’t need that,’ he said. ‘I’ll see that it gets loaded onto the correct ship with your horse and the rest of your equipment.’ He nodded at Marc-Antonio. ‘Better yet, send your squire with your war gear. All you need is a dagger.’

We sailed in one of the Order’s own ships, a galliot or light galley commanded by a Brother Sergeant. She was a fine ship, and we had beautiful weather. We were two days at sea while Sabraham explained to me just how we would choose the beaches where we would land. I had John and no one else – my friends would sail with the main fleet.

We had no warhorses, no armour, no surcoats.

‘We will swim ashore,’ Sabraham said.

In private, he asked me if I trusted John.

‘No,’ I answered.

Sabraham smiled. ‘Then you can take him. Don’t trust him – never let him be more than an arm’s length away. You
can
swim?’ he asked again.

We swam by the ship while she rowed until Sabraham was satisfied and he taught me a few words of Arabic.

Six days at sea. We sighted Cyprus. My geography is stronger now than it was then, but I could see through a brick wall in time. I watched the coast of Cyprus growing larger for two days and then slipping astern as we weathered Cape Salamis.

My navigation was non-existent then, although Sabraham, who seemed to teach rather than talk, was showing me the rudiments of open water navigation, and I had begun to stand all of Brother Robert’s watches with him. Brother Robert had been a small English merchant until his wife died on pilgrimage. He was a fine seaman and my first real teacher about the sea – I suppose that Lord Contarini should have pride of place here, but Brother Robert was patient. He taught me well enough that a day after Cyprus went under the rim of the world, I turned to Sabraham at the edge of dark.

‘Where are we going?’ I asked. It had taken me two days to ask.

He looked forward to where Brother Robert was teaching John better Italian with the aid of a book of Psalms.

Then he frowned. ‘Alexandria,’ he said.

Alexandria. Founded by the conqueror. Some men said it was the greatest city in the world and Fra Peter said it had forty gates.

I had guessed the answer, and yet my breath caught in my throat.

Alexandria.

Alexandria is said to be the largest city in the world. Now, I have been to Baghdad and Constantinople, and Barcelona and London and Paris and Prague and a few other cities. Baghdad, they say, was much larger before the Mongols sacked it. Constantinople is perhaps the largest of all these cities, but it is almost empty – fifty thousand people inside walls that have held twenty times as many. Rome is a ruin of a ruin.

But Alexandria is mighty. It stretches all along the shore of the sea on a set of sand spits and islands, much like Venice, or I think it was when first laid down. Alexandria has a great double wall like Constantinople’s, pierced with more than forty drum-shaped gated towers, and each pair of towers at a gate was like a small fortress with a garrison, able to be locked away from the city and held. The city has two great harbours, which some men call the old and the new but we called Porto Vecchio and Porto Pharos, after the ancient lighthouse. Porto Pharos was defended by two superb castles, both so new that you could smell the mortar from a mile away – the Casteleto, the little castle, was on the eastern arm of the spit that defended the great harbour, and the Pharos Castle, which has an Egyptian name I never learned, guards the western spit and overawes the city which had more than a hundred mosques as well as twenty Christian churches for the various schismatics there – Nestorians and Gnostics and Greeks. The Porto Vecchio was full of ships, including Genoese and Cypriote ships while the Pharos harbour held privileged visitors and the Sultan’s navy.

‘Egypt has a weak Sultan, very young,’ Sabraham said. ‘Al-Ashraf Sha’ban. The regent rules him. He is a Mamluk and holds the title
atabak al-’asakir
or as we say, Constable. Commander. He is called Yalbugha. Repeat the name.’

‘The Mamluks are a kind of Turk, yes?’ I asked. I probably massacred the name, as he made me repeat it and the title that accompanied it. That was part of my lessons, too. I also learned to say
‘Allahu Akbar’
or ‘God is Great’.

‘The Mamluks are Kipchaks and Circassians,’ Sabraham said, ‘taken as slaves – sometimes as war captures, but sometimes sold by their own parents. The Genoese bring them by the hundred, and the Egyptians buy them as soldiers. Sometimes they are called “Ghulami” or “slaves”.’