Christian Cameron - The Long Sword

It was one of the few times I’ve ever seen the man hesitate. Then his face took on its habitual look, his eyes calmed, and he nodded. ‘No,’ he said. ‘But this is not the place to speak of it. We were walking to the river, but now I think we will go to the Hospital.’

I had seldom seen Father Pierre agitated or walking more quickly than his determined, workman’s stride. But now he did, and when he reached the Hospital, he sent for the Baillie, the local commander, Sir Juan di Heredia, and his own staff. Miles Stapleton was there, and so was Father’s Pierre’s Latin secretary, a nun called Marie. About whom you will hear more of later. But she was an exceptional woman — she would have to be, to be the Latin secretary to the best mind the Church had produced since Aquinas. Lord Grey was also there.

‘Can the crusade survive this blow?’ Father Pierre asked.

Di Heredia shrugged. ‘And be stronger for it, truly. The King of France was always a broken reed, and Perigord (that’s what they often called Talleyrand, after his title) would have used the crusade solely to further his own ambitions.’ Now, di Heredia knew what he was about when he spoke of furthering personal ambitions — he was the most ambitious man I’d ever met, with a finger in every political pie. Related to half the crowned heads of Europe, he had been raised with the King of Aragon, and he intended to make himself Grand Master.

I see you both smile. Well, he is Grand Master, is he not? Forty years and more, the order was the servant of the Pope and the Doge of Genoa, eh? However much the truth hurts, let us face it. And the Catalans and the Aragonese had had enough.

But that’s another story. Suffice it to say that I sat as a belted knight and a volunteer and watched di Heredia, who had once chased me out of Provence when he was the papal commander and I was a mere routier, a brigand. I might have hated him for that, or for his avarice and ambition, which contrasted so sharply with Father Pierre’s saintliness. But di Heredia was a fine soldier, a good knight, and it was he who had made the decision to accept me into the Order. Knowing of my past.

Enough digression. Di Heredia twirled his moustache — he was very much the Spanish grandee — and smiled, leaning one elbow on a great table that clerks used to cast accounts.

‘Now the legate will be you ,’ he said, smiling at Father Pierre.

Father Pierre made a face. ‘I have no worldly interest,’ he said. ‘No one will make me the most powerful man on the Crusade, nor, I think, am I fit for the role. I would prefer to be the legate’s chaplain, and try and keep him to humility and God’s purpose. If a crusade is ever God’s purpose.’

At this, Fra Peter and di Heredia both winced.

But di Heredia leaned forward, his dark eyes twinkling. ‘I have the interest ,’ he said. ‘My earthly king and your friend the Pope have the interest .’ He sat back. ‘Talleyrand was too powerful and too French. You are everyone’s priest. Will you accept?’

Father Pierre leaned back and thrust out his jaw. ‘With King John and Talleyrand both dead, surely the Pope will simply cancel the Passagium Generale . Or allow it to expire.’

Fra Peter glanced at me. ‘Indeed, my lords. In England last year, the Prior there told me, quite frankly, that King Edward saw the entire crusade to be a false emprise. A mummer’s play to hide the use of papal funds to pay the King of France’s ransom.’

I remembered the trip to England — a very happy time for me, as I have said. Being young and full of myself, and my sister, I’d completely missed Fra Peter’s deep disquiet. Indeed, one of the most difficult aspects of serving the Order was, and is, the divided loyalties. Fra Peter was a good Englishman. And to be told by his immediate superior, the Prior of England, that the King of England saw the crusade as a crass political manoeuvre to support the crown of France — by God, that must have hurt.

Father Pierre smiled, at me, of all people. ‘I, too, have heard this. And perhaps it was true, although I assure you, my friends in Christ, that God moves men in mysterious ways, and that a Passagium Generale declared falsely to support the King of France might, in the end, serve God’s will. Do you doubt it?’

Di Heredia nodded and twirled his moustaches again. ‘That’s what I hoped that you would say. I will suggest that the Pope appoint Peter of Cyprus to command the expedition, and you, my good and worthy priest, to be papal legate.’

Father Pierre’s mild blue eyes met di Heredia’s falcon’s glance. ‘As long as you and your king and the Pope understand that I have no higher interest than the will of Christ on earth, so be it,’ he said. ‘But I am not the man to listen to the Doge of Venice or the King of Aragon’s interests.’

Di Heredia made a sound of annoyance and twirled his moustaches again.

Father Pierre looked around, for a moment more like an eagle than a dove. ‘Why now, though? When to all, the crusade seems dead?’ His eyes rested on Fra Peter’s. ‘Again?’

Di Heredia laughed. ‘Sometimes, Excellence, you are the merest child to the politics of the rotten fruit that surrounds you. Listen. The crusade was only declared to collect the tithes to pay the King of France’s ransom and to allow the Pope to recruit mercenaries for his war with the Duke of Milan. But now the Duke of Milan’s daughter will be Queen of France, yes? Now the foolish but brave King John is dead no ransom is required. Talleyrand wanted the crusade as a tool of temporal power in Italy — now he is dead.’

‘I know all of this,’ Father Pierre said simply. ‘I am a Christian, not a fool.’

‘Then you should believe, as I do, that this is God’s will!’ di Heredia said. ‘And that God can plot more thoroughly and more subtly than the Cardinal Talleyrand or the Pope of the King of France.’

Father Pierre wrinkled his nose in distaste at di Heredia’s easy blasphemy.

Di Heredia snorted. ‘King John is dead, and he has been replaced by your candidate, the King of Cyprus. Talleyrand is dead — who better to replace him than you? Now keep Genoa from going to war with Venice, and by Saint George and Saint Maurice, the crusade is a reality. And all the mercenaries that Talleyrand raised for war in Italy will be ours for the faith.’ He smiled like the cunning fox he was: the Pope’s version of John Hawkwood. ‘We will have to restrain the French faction. They will lose much by Talleyrand’s death.’ He leaned forward. ‘The aristocrats will not want you because you cannot be bought, and you are not one of them. There will be consequences.’ He tapped his teeth. ‘The Bishop of Cambrai has lost a great deal with Talleyrand’s death.’

Fra Peter turned to look at his brother-knight. ‘Tell us?’

‘Robert, the Bishop of Cambrai, went straight to the Pope on word of the death of Talleyrand.’ He made a face. ‘I would wager a donkey against a warhorse he asked for command of the crusade, to take the soldiers for himself and his family.’

Well might you wince, monsieur. That was Avignon. That was our crusade.

No one even mentioned the Turks.

Juan was attacked. It began to seem as if we were being targeted.

Anne told me that the Bishop of Cambrai was intending to have a magnificent audience with the Pope. ‘He thinks he will command the crusade,’ she whispered to me.

‘Who the hell is he?’ I asked. I suspect I nuzzled her neck or tried to move on to other matters.

‘The Count of Geneva’s son, the Count of Savoy’s nephew …’ She shrugged, which made her nipples move against my chest, and we moved on from church politics to other matters.