Christian Cameron: The Long Sword

I went and found John Hughes, a Lakelander from Cumbria or Westmoreland. I got to know that country later, as you’ll hear, if this goes on long enough, but to me they were names, as alien as Thrace or Turkey, far off in the north of England. He was Milady’s archer, and he was a damned good hand. He was also devoted to Janet — Milady — and seldom left her.

I won’t prose on. He’d had word that his sister had died of plague and that he was needed at home, which was a village called Kentmere near Kendall where the green cloth comes from.

Milady Janet glared at me with her cat’s eyes. ‘If you leave, Hawkwood will treat me like a woman.’

I sighed. ‘Janet, ma vieux , I have sworn.’

‘Men and their oaths,’ she said. She had her arming coat on, and her squire was trying arm harnesses on her. She was not the only armed woman among the English, but she was the only one who didn’t make a secret of it. ‘You leave, and John Hughes leaves. Mark my words, I’ll end up married to some loutly lordling.’ But she smiled, and she also embraced me.

That was odd, too, because Janet and I never touched. But there are few things less like lovemaking than rubbing steel breastplates together, and the moment passed. ‘Andy Belmont-’ I began.

‘That cowardly shit,’ she hissed. In fact, they had been lovers — at least, I thought they had been lovers. But now Andy had run off to fight for Florence.

She shook her head. ‘At least you’re taking Fiore,’ she said. ‘His love oppresses me.’

Indeed, I had to watch him kneel and swear his eternal devotion to her before we rode away.

There were too many goodbyes. This was, as I learned by leaving it, my home, and I was abandoning fame and fortune to return to lower rank with the Order. On the last night, we all shared wine, and John Courtney gave me letters from a lot of the Englishmen for Avignon, and Kenneth MacDonald, who now looked as Italian as the rest of us in fine hose and a silk jupon, gave me a packet of letters from all the Scots and Irish. Olivier de la Motte had letters for the Gascons and Normans. Avignon is a great clearing house for letters — priests come and go from there to every part of Europe, even Hyperborea.

At any rate, the next morning, with a hard head and an empty heart, I rode for Avignon. Listen, it is all very well to have a letter from your long-lost lady love, but it is damned hard to leave your friends.

We stopped on the old Roman road north of Sienna, well along toward Lombardy, for the evening, at a fine farm that has since been burned eight or ten times, I’ll warrant. We sat at the farmer’s table and ate his chickens and paid handsomely for the privilege.

After supper, Fra Peter prayed, and when we had joined him and said the office of compline, and when he’d looked at the two boys and the girl of the house and found nothing worse than some scrapes and some lice, then we sat under the grape arbour outside.

‘You boys are too polite to ask me what’s happening,’ he said, leaning back against the stone wall of the house.

Fiore — that’s Fiore dei Liberi, a tall, strong man of twenty with good manners and an ascetic manner and a tendency to forget anything that didn’t involve fighting — Fiore raised both eyebrows. ‘You did say there would be no crusade for five years,’ he allowed. Fiore had the terrible habit of remembering everything you said; accurately. Unforgivable, in a friend.

Fra Peter laughed, though. ‘Did any of you meet the King of Cyprus last autumn?’ he asked.

We all shook out heads, and Fra Peter nodded. ‘He came to the Pope and to King John of France too, and King Edward of England, looking for help against the Turks and the Mamluks of Egypt.’ He took a sip of wine and smacked his lips. ‘Italy, land of wine. At any rate, he’s a good soldier and a fine man-at-arms, but the Pope thought him too young and of too little consequence to lead a crusade, so he chose King John of France.’

I snorted. So did John Hughes. Fra Peter was not much on social distinctions, and John was a senior archer.

Fra Peter raised an eyebrow at John and John shrugged innocently. ‘Which he did so well, fighting us,’ Hughes said in his Lakeland accent.

We all laughed. It was true. King John the Brave of France had lost to us, the English, every single time he’d faced us.

Fra Peter shrugged. ‘The Holy Father has other concerns than ours, messires. At any rate, King John took the cross and then nothing happened. But now he has died. Father Pierre told me to gather my knights because the word in Avignon is that the Holy Father will re-declare the Passagium Generale . He has appointed Talleyrand as papal legate to lead the faithful, and he will offer the command to King Peter of Cyprus.’

Talleyrand, no friend of mine, was reputed to be the richest man in the world. And perhaps the most venal priest ever born.

Then he told us how he had spent the winter with Father Pierre, holding the city of Bologna to its allegiance for the Pope. In truth, I’d heard nothing of it, even though it had all happened two hundred leagues from me.

‘You needed good men-at-arms,’ I said.

‘I fear the day that Father Pierre needs an escort,’ Fra Peter said. ‘He rides in among his enemies — at Bologna, he rode boldly in among men sent to take him, unarmed, holding aloft a cross. I thought we were dead or taken, but God supported his saint, and the mercenaries were moved to their knees.’

We murmured appreciatively. We all knew him: the force of his genuine conviction was like one of Fiore’s smashing sword blows.

‘And he made peace between the Pope and the Duke of Milan, where the King of France had failed. To some of us, it was a miracle come from God — one day, the Duke was threatening to hang us all, and the next day, he signed the peace. And the Pope held Bologna, despite all threats. Friends, I will not hide from you that the Pope had already sent letters to command a renewed campaign against Milan and a cancellation of the crusade.’ He looked around at us. ‘Even now, there is a powerful party at the papal court that attempts to cancel the crusade or to have it declared against Milan.’

Fiore recoiled. ‘Infamous!’ he said. ‘A crusade against a Christian duke?’

Fra Peter nodded agreement. ‘It would, to you and me, make a mockery of everything we hold dear about Christian knighthood and the crusade. But there are men in Avignon who hold the papal authority is the higher good — the true cause.’

Well, we were Pierre Thomas’s men, and Fra Peter Mortimer’s. We all shook our heads, or spat, or frowned. Even John Hughes. And he spoke for many men when he swore.

‘By our Lady,’ he said. ‘The priests and the popes will be the ruin of the church. A crusade against Milan? It’s like declaring a crusade against England.’

Fra Peter met Hughes’s eye. ‘It could come to that, if the papacy continues on this path.’ He shrugged. ‘Our Father Pierre has worked without pause for two years to make the Passigium Generale a reality. He made peace between the Pope and the Duke, and he’s helped settle the Cretan Revolt. Now we’re gathering knights and in two months, the army will meet us in Venice.’ He looked from one to another. ‘It’s real, lads. We’re off on crusade.’

Ah, Monsieur Froissart, since you treasure tales of deeds of arms, let me say that through that entire passage to Avignon, Messire dei Liberi and Juan Hernedez and I exchanged many blows, indeed, some evenings, if we had made enough miles, Fra Peter would join us. My new delight was fighting with the heavy spear, and Fiore loved it too, and where he might be blind to the glances of a pretty farm girl and deaf to the offers of a merchant looking for a guard, he was as avid for arms as a young priest in a university is for his theology. And he approached his study in much the same way, so that on that trip he began to sketch out a theory of — well, it is hard to describe. A theory of fighting, a theory of how to train.