Christian Cameron - The Long Sword

‘He killed Jacques,’ the nearest man said, as if I’d done him a favour.

The other man spat.

Both of them flipped their cudgels from hand to hand.

They didn’t even ask me for money.

I settled my weight, and as the nearer of the two tossed his cudgel again, I struck.

He missed his grab at the cudgel, and he was stabbed. I used the blade in his body as a lever to move his weight into his friend’s path — if such men have friends — and I left the dagger there and passed with my right foot, and the screaming man collapsed over his partner’s blade in his chest, and the last of them cut at me and missed.

We were at an impasse.

He swung at me, half-hearted swipes from out of distance. And then he began backing away, and I followed him.

He was no fool. A soon as I followed him, he stepped in and swung.

I was ready and in time, and I stepped off line and avoided the blow, turning him.

He cut again, angry and afraid.

I moved with the blow, followed it, and caught his wrist; he pulled back sharply, and I rammed his elbow over his own head and threw him to the ground.

My own dagger, which I hadn’t drawn, flowed into my hand.

I was standing on his wrist, as the Order taught, and as I had lowered my weight my knee may have already cracked a rib or two.

But I’d just had an interview with Father Pierre, I had other things on my mind, and I’d just killed two men.

I put my knife at his throat. ‘Saint John commands you to change your life,’ I said. I rose, sheathed my dagger while watching him, and walked away down the alley. The second man was already dead — my stab to the heart had indeed gone straight in.

I prayed.

I didn’t see the third man get up. But I was aware, painfully aware, that I had killed two men. Letting the third live was a poor consolation to the other two. And yet …

My hands shook.

My hands were still shaking when I reached the tavern. It is odd that always I react in fear after a fight is over. Sometimes, especially if there is a crowd, I’m terrified before a fight. Luckily, the fear never gets into my head while I’m fighting. But by the time I made it back to the table with the priests, I could barely walk, and my breathing was shallow.

I took a sip of wine and had to go outside and throw up my dinner.

Glorious. All glorious. Isn’t it?

I expected Juan or Fiore to come find me, crouched in abject misery by the stables, but it was Anne who came with a cup of soft cider and a hot, wet cloth.

‘I’m sorry, my sweet,’ I said.

She smiled. In fact, I think I scared her. ‘What happened?’

‘Men attacked me.’ I drank the cider and it stayed down.

‘Did they abuse you? Take your purse?’ She put a hand to my head in the way of mothers the world over.

‘No,’ I said. ‘I killed them.’

She didn’t know what to say to that, so she said nothing, being wise. After a while, Juan leaned out the door of the inn and then came out and saw me, saw Anne, and bowed. ‘Ah, Sir William, the priests must be abed, and crave your letters.’

When I passed him, he had the good grace to say ‘Sorry, Brother!’ Juan was never a prude about women. And he knew Anne from before.

But I bowed to Anne and mumbled something, used her cloth to wipe my face, and went inside, where I managed to say something civil to the two Scotsmen, one from Hexham, and one from the Western Isles, a place called Mull, which seemed such a commonplace name that it made me laugh. But, according to him, there’s a great monastery there, and a nunnery, out on the very edge of the Great Western Ocean. Truly, God is great.

As it proved, they were passing so close to John Hughes’ home that they engaged him as a guard and thus got him on their French passport, solving all of his travel problems. The Scots are far more popular in France than the English.

I hugged him. ‘Go well,’ I said, and I gave him twenty gold florins.

‘Christ, I can buy a new farm for that,’ he said. ‘Milady gave me the same,’ he admitted.

I shrugged. ‘You’ve kept us both alive. I’ll think of you, sitting by your fireside in whatever godforsaken hamlet in which you settle. Go be a farmer and forget your wicked ways.’

Hughes grinned then and we hugged, and hugged.

‘To think I almost killed you in an inn yard,’ he said.

‘No, I almost killed you!’ I answered, and we both laughed.

‘Make me a promise?’ he asked.

I nodded.

‘If you see Richard Musard, kick him in the crotch for what he did to Milady, and then help him up. For me. I miss him.’

John Hughes shrugged as if he couldn’t help himself. ‘Good fortune out east, Sir Knight. Come to Kentmere and tell my children tales of the wars.’

‘All right, John. I will,’ I said. ‘Go in God’s grace and stay safe across France.’

I awoke the next morning and had no idea where I was, but my companion smelled like lavender and spices. I looked down at her when she rolled towards me, and she was Anne, and I was in her garret room in the inn, which meant her three friends were shivering out in the narrow hall or under the eaves.

She leaned over; we were on a pallet of linen filled with new straw, and it smelled healthy and wholesome, as Anne did. She drank water from a pitcher and gave it to me: it had mint leaves in it and I remember that trick still. Her breasts were heavy, white against her brown arms, and the mere sight of them aroused me, despite my painful awareness that I had just broken my oath. In fact, my cheek hurt.

I’ve known many a witty titbit exchanged between lovers at this point, the first sally of the morning so to speak; I’ve heard recriminations and I’ve heard love babble.

She lay back, unworried by her nudity. ‘A girl does prefer a soldier to a priest,’ she said. She rubbed a hand over the muscle in my belly. ‘Do you know that Cardinal Talleyrand is dead?’

Cardinal Talleyrand had been appointed the Cardinal Legate of the crusade. He was leading it, and he was paying for a great deal of it. He intended to be Pope, after all.

Women are different from men in this way, I think. She was already flushed — I won’t go into details — but she intended to start our day as we’d ended the last, and yet she could talk church politics with me.

I could see nothing but her lips, her nipples, the sharp line of her side where it met her hip.

At some point another girl pounded on the wooden partition. ‘Stop your lechery and let us dress or we’ll all be beaten!’ she said.

Anne responded by pushing her hips up into mine and making a little emphatic noise.

‘Marie had a customer, a papal courier,’ she said. ‘From the coronation at Rheims,’ she went on, her voice raising a little, speaking in the rhythm of our lovemaking.

I’m sure we talked of other things. But I can’t remember them.

See now, I’ve made Monsieur Froissart blush.

Almost the first person I met outside the inn while I was still tying my points of my hose to my doublet, was Father Pierre Thomas, with Miles Stapleton.

Miles waved. ‘Did you spend the night in the inn?’ he asked. Another boy might have said it with malice, but Miles was an innocent, and he looked at me without guile.

Father Pierre winced.

‘I did,’ I said simply, having learned a variety of lessons from my time at the Hospital. ‘Father, do you know that Cardinal Talleyrand is dead?’

I hated Talleyrand — well, I disliked him, but he was in some ways the power behind Father Pierre. Pierre Thomas came from Talleyrand’s home of Perigord, and had, it was said, been a peasant on his estates. And of course, he was the papal legate for the crusade. And the next Pope, or so we all guessed.