Christian Cameron: The Long Sword

He didn’t threaten to send me back to Italy, where I would be rich, famous, and where pretty girls were available to me at any time. He didn’t ask me to do any more peasant work; any more, that is, than we all did to get through the day.

In fact, he embraced me. ‘It is hard,’ he said. ‘Please stay with us.’

I think I struggled against his embrace for a moment. Indeed, just then, I hated him more than the Bourc Camus. There is nothing worse than knowing that you have done wrong, and been seen to do it. Nothing.

Well, I still have the scar. Eh?

We were twenty days to Avignon, and mostly it was a wasted trip. But my cheek healed, to my relief and I saw my sin and my disfigurement together, and I swore a great oath to never fornicate again — an oath which I confess I’ve broken more than once or twice. When my cheek knitted we were high in the Savoyard passes, and I stopped at a roadside chapel and left a gold florin and a small silver cross.

We jousted. The weather was good, and I was a better lance than I had been, and Fiore was experimenting with lances and swords on horseback. He spent days trying to use his low guard with a lance against my lance, and I dropped him on one Savoyard field a dozen times before he snorted and agreed that his technique did not apply on horseback.

We arrived at Avignon and it, too, was like a home. The four of us had lived there almost a year, after all, and we got good rooms in the Hospital this time because most of the garrison had been dismissed. My room had a lovely glass window, a fine desk, a bed and a magnificent applewood and ivory crucifix of our lord in his passion that I admired so much that I took to using it as a focus for meditation. Fiore was excited by breathing that summer — breathing exercises, of course — and he taught us how to breathe in his own peculiar way as a sidelight to prayer, and the three of us practised it a great deal, because there was little else for us to do.

Father Pierre Thomas was there, too. He was in apartments at the palace, as if he was a great prelate, and indeed, I discovered that my spiritual father was now a powerful bishop with a magnificent amethyst on his thumb. When I met him, I kissed it, and he laughed.

‘You know,’ he said softly, ‘I’ve lost it twice?’

‘It is blessed by God!’ I said.

He looked away. ‘I could feed twenty poor women for a year on this ring,’ he said. ‘That is its value.’ His eyes met mine.

I have heard of men with burning eyes — fanatics. Pierre Thomas was not one such. His eyes were brown and large and held nothing but love — all the time. But that summer he was deep in the matters of the Court of Avignon — the papal curia. The death of King John had thrown yet another blow at his crusade project, and again he had to repair the rent fabric of the church, cajole men to do their duties … Indeed, it was at times difficult to watch. He was so absolutely humble that he would accept what we, his knights, saw as insults; would accept them with bent head and a smile.

At any rate, after my audience with him, he introduced me to his squire, Miles Stapleton. Miles was also a donat of the Order, younger than me, and far better born. And deeply pious, like Juan more than me. He was my size, with broad shoulders, blue eyes, and light-brown hair, another of Father Pierre’s Englishmen, as they called us.

He had a smile as solid as his shoulders. ‘Father Pierre has spoken of you,’ he said, as if that was the highest praise a man could receive. Well, I suspect I shared that view, at least while I was in his presence.

Miles joined our little group — Fiore, Juan, and Miles and I. I was the worldly one, and a belted knight. Juan and Miles were better born, far richer, and far, far more religious. Fiore — well, he was what he was: tall, odd, and difficult to have around.

Unless you happened to be fighting.

We’d been a week or two in Avignon and nothing seemed to be happening. The rumour was that the crusade was cancelled because the King of France was dead. Peter of Cyprus — it was the summer of Peters, as far as I was concerned — was supposed to be in Avignon, but he’d stayed in Rheims to see the new king of France crowned and to persuade him to take the cross.

We were sitting in my favourite inn in Avignon, drinking wine.

‘That coward won’t take the cross. He’ll make some excuse and send King Peter packing,’ I said. Of course, at twenty-four, you know virtually everything there is to know.

‘King Charles is a coward?’ Juan was looking at a girl … come to think of it, that girl looked familiar, and when she caught my eye, her face burst into a smile the way a sunflower faces the sun.

Truly, it is nice to be remembered. Her name was Anne, and she brought us wine, touched the back of my neck lightly with the back of her hand, and went off to avoid the attentions of other patrons.

Her touch caused me to lose the chain of my thoughts for a moment, and then I shrugged. I was watching Anne. ‘I saw him run at Poitiers. In truth, if he had stood his ground, I think his father would have finished us.’

And I thought of the terrified man we’d seen at the Louvre in fifty-eight. Remember, Geoffrey?

Aye.

But the others wouldn’t have it, that a king could be a coward.

We were having this conversation, and it led to another about Poitiers, and two young Scottish priests joined us. I remember all this because I wasn’t too drunk, and since they were bound for Scotland, I thought of Kenneth’s letters, and I rose, bowed, and ran to the Hospital.

And this whole incident only stays in my head because three men tried to rob me. I probably looked unarmed, and because I was running I looked like easy prey.

I had gone to the Hospital and bounded up the steps, barging into Fra Peter in his robes. He grinned.

‘I’ve found some Scottish priests,’ I said, as if that excused everything.

He went off to hear Mass, and I went to my little cell. I collected the letters and jogged out the gate, down the same alley …

I saw the movement out of the corner of my right eye.

The smaller one had a heavy dagger in his right fist, point down, the way most men use a dagger, and he thrust at my head as he leaped. But he’d played this game before — he was a leering bastard with scars, and I saw all that by the flicker of the torches on the Hospital gate.

As I ducked and pivoted to face him, I raised my left hand to ward the blow, and he flowed around it, changing his blow to the other side, a backhand, descending blow at my right temple.

And four weeks practice on the road paid off in one heartbeat.

Unbidden, my right hand rose and covered his right wrist as my left hand passed close to my face, warding me from his point, and in fact he struck his point into the palm of my right hand because I was slow and it was dark, but I was already flowing on, ignoring the pain. My right hand gripped his, and my left rose, the point slipped out of my flesh, and I grabbed the blade and pushed at it, my fingers clumsy with blood and pain, but the grapple on his right wrist and the turning motion did its work and he let go the dagger as I spun him out and to my left, passing my left foot behind his, breaking his arm at the elbow and then throwing him to the ground, a foot on his arm, and his own dagger into his throat.

But there were three of them.

The other two had hung back, and I didn’t go to the ground with the small man, but killed him with my back straight and my head up, so I saw the next pair come.

They had cudgels.

Cudgels are not to be spat on, friends. A stout oak branch can break a sword or turn a spear, and a strong man can break your arm right through your harness or break your head. Two big men with cudgels are long odds.