The Green Count Read online

  He fell to his knees on the cobbles.

  Nerio laughed.

  The Hungarian had a dagger in his hand for a moment, but Fiore took it and Stapleton, of all people, put his own at the man’s neck. We were in armour, and he was not.

  ‘If I see you again, I’ll kill you,’ I said. I hope I sounded careless.

  His eyes held pure hate.

  I’m quite proud that I smiled. ‘Unless you’d like to join us on the road to Jerusalem?’ I asked. ‘We can expiate our sins together.’

  A few people were paying attention. Not many. I could see three men whose attention was focused on us, and I noted them. They were close by Emile, but Jason was watching them. John pressed close behind me; I didn’t know, but he had my sword drawn, hilt out, for me to take.

  I swept the square. The three men Jason was watching were all tall, with Slavic faces I’d seen out on the Steppes – one blonde, two dark, and the dark men both thin and pie-faced, as we say in London.

  There was another on the church steps, I thought. That is, his clothes were out of place, and his attention was on us. He had an odd, Italian hat.

  All this in one coupe d’oeil.

  Nerio spoke quite clearly. ‘If you harm my friend,’ he said, ‘or any of my friends, really, I’ll arrange to have you pulled to death by horses.’ He put a gloved finger on the Hungarian’s forehead. ‘And you know I can.’ He nodded, as if they were just meeting. ‘Just walk away, eh?’

  Nerio straightened up. I thought for a moment what a bad enemy he’d make. He cared very little for what we might call conventional morality. He had almost unlimited wealth, an extensive network of business contacts, and superb fighting skills. He might have been the Devil incarnate, but he was ferociously loyal to his friends, and we were his friends.

  But the Hungarian was no weeping virgin. He got to his feet as we stepped away. I would still have been puking, from the blow I’d given him; he was already standing straight.

  ‘I will kill you all,’ he said, very clearly. ‘The woman first. I will humiliate you all.’

  Nerio shrugged. ‘You know how it will end, then,’ he said.

  My hands were shaking. I was thinking of putting him down on the spot.

  I should have.

  And that night, when John and I were currying horses, he turned to me.

  ‘Christian men make enemies, they not kill them?’ he asked.

  I wrestled with that a bit. ‘Sometimes,’ I said.

  ‘Stupid,’ John said. ‘Hungarian hard, bad man. Next time, no words. Sword.’ He shrugged. ‘Man Jesus not know about this bad men, this mann khul. But Mongol know.’

  The next morning, after a night of almost no sleep and constant worry, we loaded our ships off the beach in front of the town, and small boats rowed us out to them. Absolutely nothing happened; my good warhorse was loaded smoothly, and my two riding horses; I saw Emile onto a separate vessel, with Nerio and Fiore and all her knights. We’d agreed that it could not be me close to her, protecting her, because of the gossip.

  But indeed, Nerio derided the Hungarian. ‘He no more killed the legate than Satan did,’ Nerio said. ‘He’s a cock of the walk, but he has nothing between his legs but a noodle. If I had another day or two I’d pay some bravos to beat him to death.’

  Nerio said this with a casual brutality that made my head turn.

  ‘Nerio!’ I said cautiously.

  He smiled. ‘You really are too good to live,’ Nerio said. ‘This isn’t a chivalric contest. Weren’t you a routier? This is a hired killer. We deal with him the way we deal with a thug. We pay people to kill him. Nerio smiled.

  Nerio wasn’t a bad man, by his own standards. But, while I watched Emile’s house all night, Nerio was with his courtesan, whom he threatened to bring to Jerusalem. Just for example.

  But never mind Nerio.

  We boarded our ships, and before the sun was a hand’s breadth over the rim of the sea, we lowered our sails on a fine stiff breeze and we were already moving at what, under oars, would have been a good cruising speed before we passed the harbour mole and turned very slightly for the open sea.

  Miles and I were leaning over the stern rail. I was watching our sister ship, another great galley of Venice, a pilgrim galley, for Emile, and sure enough, as I watched she came to the rail. I had given her a note via Nerio, and now she found me and waved.

  And blew a kiss.

  By God, my heart soared.

  And Miles laughed. ‘We are going to Jerusalem!’ he said.

  Jerusalem

  February – May 1366

  Crusaders and pilgrims have landed in the squalid port of Jaffa since the Moslem Conquest and mayhap before that. When Outremer was a proper kingdom and pilgrims could travel in peace, they often went from Venice to Acre; Acre was a fine port, or so the Knights of Saint John report.

  But despite the town’s appearance, we cheered onboard our galleys when the Holy Land came in sight, not so very long after we quit Famagusta. We were still well off the port when a small sailing boat, well handled, closed us from the north; I had been aboard that boat many days before the landings at Alexandria, and I knew her well enough when she was hull up, and I was unsurprised when Nicolas Sabraham, and his apostles George and Maurice, came up the sides of our Venetian merchant and joined our party.

  ‘No doubt Sabraham has already been to the Holy Sepulchre and back a dozen times,’ Fra Peter said.

  But Sabraham shook his head when he came aboard. ‘I had another errand for the king,’ he said. ‘But I mean to go to the Holy City with you. And I thought you’d appreciate knowing that Jaffa is empty. The garrison is withdrawn.’

  Ser Peter nodded. ‘That was the news in Famagusta,’ he said. ‘It should make this simple. We are fortunate.’

  Sabraham shook his head. ‘Or very difficult,’ he said.

  Despite his long face, we cheered again when the capitano, a Venetian gentleman, a cousin of Zeno’s named Gentile Bembo, made the difficult harbour entrance look easy. I could see over the side how badly silted the entrance was, and the great Venetian galley seemed to pass within a hand’s breadth of the banks on either hand. Indeed, the third transport touched; we saw her mast vibrate, but no damage was done.

  Veterans have told me that the Mamluks destroyed Jaffa and razed the walls so no Christian army could ever use it again. The great stone quay was a ruin like most of the town, and unloading was difficult even for five hundred Christians. No real army could even fit inside the tiny port, which was more like a notch in the coast than a bay.

  It is no light matter to unload ships on a beach. Pilgrims are not soldiers, and while I had our two hundred men-at-arms formed on the beach in an hour, the knights and brother sergeants were still trying to land the pilgrims and their baggage.

  Sabraham and I, with a dozen men-at-arms, went into Jaffa. It was not deserted, although the Islamic population was afraid of us, and most doors were shut. Sabraham convinced a rabbi to tell another man to open a stable, and we paid cash for horses that had probably been the spares of the former garrison. Of course, they’d gone off by ship. But it netted us sixty decent mounts, and the various caravan sheds, used to serving pilgrims, furnished donkeys and mules and another thirty horses.

  We paid for what we took. That was the Order’s way, and they had a small hospital at Jaffa. In fact, Maurice rode away, fetched coin from the hospital, and returned, which added a certain dream-like quality to the whole thing.

  Or nightmare quality. In late afternoon, a Mamluk official, an Egyptian with red-blond hair and a great belly, arrived with a Franciscan priest. The Egyptian was obviously enraged by our arms, but it was the Franciscan who surprised us.

  He was Italian, and he spoke to Fra Peter in Italian. His name was Father Angelo, and he was tall, built more like a soldier than a priest, with a heavy dark beard and thick eyebrow
s. He rode a mule.

  I was involved in the tedious business of mounting the men-at-arms. Our two Greek knights had just taken a dozen of the best horses, beautiful Arab mares with the nostrils slit so that they could run longer and breathe better, for their stradiotes. Because Fra Peter understood the value of scouts, I let this happen, but in so doing lost the confidence of the Gascons, who were demanding better horses and using foul language. My mood was not of the best. Fra Peter had just ridden up and was, I could tell, trying to decide if I needed his support when the Franciscan accosted him.

  ‘Are you the leader of this horrible injustice?’ he roared.

  His Italian was fluent, but slow, and many of the English and French men-at-arms could follow him. His angry tone was obvious.

  ‘I am the leader of this caravan,’ Fra Peter said.

  The priest raised a cross as if it was a sword. ‘You have no right. The Order of Saint John no longer exists here! You are allowed a small hospital on our sufferance. You are banned here by the authorities. Only a pilgrimage guided by the Order of Saint Francis may visit the Holy City. And by your blasphemous presence with arms, you threaten the entire future of Christian pilgrimage. Be gone!’

  I confess that I had rather expected to be greeted, at least by Christians, as a sort of conquering hero.

  The dragoman, or whatever rank he might have had, raised a document that was heavily written in a language I didn’t know. Arabic? Hebrew? He waved it, and shouted at us.

  ‘Without a charter from the sultan, you cannot come to Jaffa, you cannot land here, and you certainly may not bear arms,’ the priest proclaimed.

  Now, I tend to harp on Gascons because they are loud and excitable and I have often had to fight them. This is unfair; Gascons are the most like the English of all the people I know, except perhaps Venetians, and I have loved a good many Gascons. Just then young Etienne l’Angars, one of the most quarrelsome of the whole lot, said, sotto voce, ‘Someone put an arrow in the priest.’

  I laughed. I confess it – the same thought had occurred to me.

  ‘You sons of Belial!’ the priest shouted. I guess he spoke some French.

  Fra Peter tried to remonstrate.

  ‘Back on your ships, or I will excommunicate you all,’ the priest shouted.

  Sabraham was close by me, and gave a shrug that said ‘I told you so.’ He had not, in fact, told me so, but he had suggested that this was not going to be as easy or glorious as we all expected. ‘Pay the dragoman,’ he said. ‘Let him quiet the priest.’

  Fra Peter was, with commendable patience, attempting to show the priest our passim Generale from the pope, and the bull supporting it, which, to my surprise, he had copies of ready to hand. I suppose he had heeded Sabraham’s hints.

  For me, I took a role I did not fancy, and motioned to John. Fra Peter looked at me, saw me with John, and nodded – a compliment, in a way, that he expected me to behave with sense.

  Some of the Gascons and English thought I was about to use my sword, and they pressed in behind me.

  ‘Tell the Egyptian that we mean no harm – that we know the garrison is gone – that we will pay the tax but we will go armed.’ I was making this up, but I knew that the sultan charged a tax per head, and short of killing the infidel officer on the spot, I wasn’t sure. Were we in a state of war, or peace? Was this part of the taking of Alexandria? Or were we on pilgrimage?

  In fact, I was taking a great deal on my own head. Paying the tax rankled. We had just defeated these people. On the other hand, I was learning things about war. And one was, you only fight when you must. Buying off an enemy …

  The Egyptian was no soldier – he was clearly terrified of my angry archers and Gascons. He was surprised to be addressed in passable Arabic.

  Sabraham came up with me, on horseback. He made a long speech in Arabic; he was perfectly calm. I turned and winked at the archers. I got smiles from them. I turned to the Gascons. ‘Ready for anything?’ I said.

  I got a good growl.

  ‘Don’t draw unless I do, mes braves,’ I said. ‘This is a small man, but he can make as much trouble as a petit bourgeois in a land deal.’

  L’Angars laughed. ‘With you, Sir William!’ he said, and the others followed him.

  I turned back to the conversation. Now the Egyptian was shouting at Sabraham, spittle flying. He waved his documents again.

  ‘Gut him and stuff a pig in his arse,’ said Ewan the Scot.

  I turned and gave him my evil eye.

  He was unrepentant. ‘We can sack this town in a heartbeat, eh, mates?’ he asked.

  ‘Then where do we stay?’ I asked. ‘Or the capitano land his cargo? Eh?’

  I hadn’t convinced Ewan, I could tell, and the Gascons were all for a little violence.

  John gave a little twitch of his lips that I knew meant distaste. ‘This son of many whores says we must pay two silver soldi for every head and no weapons or armour. He says he has many troops, and we will be massacred. Ser Nicolas says, no, you have no troops, and we go anyway. We pay one soldo per two men, none for women or children, in respect to the sultan. Whoreson says hard words – Sabraham says that you and these others ache to kill your first Saracen.’

  I almost laughed aloud. The dragoman was such a pitiful specimen it really hadn’t occurred to me to kill him.

  The conversation went back and forth – bargaining with shouting. The Gascons grew bored and the dragoman grew insistent, and I sent Marc-Antonio for the capitano.

  The priest continued to demand that we all re-embark.

  Master Bembo came through the crowd with his manifests under his arm, and I intercepted him before he reached the Egyptian official.

  ‘You have the silver to pay the head tax?’ I asked. Every pilgrim had paid the tax on embarkation at Famagusta. I suspected that Bembo thought it was pure profit, as we’d never pay the very Mamluks we were fighting.

  Of course I’m laughing. The world is never simple, and the Holy Land is the least simple place I’ve ever been.

  Two separate negotiations with two very different men conducted simultaneously; to get the Venetian to let go the silver he thought was profit, and to get the Egyptian to accept what we would pay. He was a fool, and a greedy fool. He had no swords to back him, and we were offering a tithe of the real tax to save his face, as they say – to allow him to feel we had not humiliated him. Neither I, nor Sabraham, nor Fra Peter thought it at all likely that he had access to soldiers; but it seemed foolish to alienate the entire Egyptian governmental bureaucracy for a few soldi, even if we were nominally at war.

  We’d burned the biggest city in the world. I’d have expected the fat bureaucrat to be a little more respectful. I’ve met his kind in England and in the papal chancery. I’m glad to say that Islam is as badly afflicted, or worse.

  This went on for so long that our new horses began to fret for food; the Gascons got bored, and l’Angars suggested that we burn some houses to make our point; long enough, in fact, that my carefully nurtured patience slipped away, and l’Angars’s suggestions began to make sense.

  John turned to me. ‘Give him gold. For his own. Right now.’ He shrugged. ‘Or kill him.’

  I reached into my purse, but I had nothing but some small silver sequins. ‘Nerio?’ I called.

  By God. He was at my shoulder. ‘Yes, my lord?’ he asked. By which he meant, Really, you summon me? You arrogant Englishman.

  ‘We need some gold,’ I said.

  Nerio held out his gloved hand to his squire without a word. Achille put two fat gold florins, minted on Cyprus, into his hand and he passed them to me. I closed them in my fist.

  Fiore looked disgusted, as did Miles.

  ‘We’re crusaders,’ Miles said. ‘Why pay anything?’

  I ignored him, because I trusted Sabraham.

  ‘Tell the son of a whore we must fini
sh this and make friends,’ I said. ‘Tell him my men are restless and want to burn the town.’ That was true. I pressed close to him and stuck out my hand. When he closed his grip on mine, I gave him the two gold coins. I saw his eyes change. I saw that here was a man for whom greed outweighed physical fear.

  He looked down into his hand. Took a coin and bit it.

  And then he gave in suddenly on all fronts – grinned, and demanded to be paid one silver soldi for each two men. Which the Venetian paid with an ill grace.

  Suddenly, as fast as a wind whispers over the sea, the capitano’s manifests were signed, and the dragoman provided Fra Peter with a pass from the sultan, and another permitting us to bear arms. His scribes wrote furiously, and then, in a cloud of ill-smelling ink, they were gone, and we were left with fewer coins and the same horses.

  The priest did not budge. Fra Peter had occupied this man for the whole of our negotiation with the dragoman, and now I looked significantly at Sabraham. He shook his head. ‘Oh, no,’ he said. ‘I’m good with the natives. Not with the church.’

  Still, he followed me across the ruin of the square to where the priest was still threatening excommunication. I saw Emile; I confess I made it my business to pass within a few feet of her, where she stood looking very pretty with her children and a fine grey penitent’s gown, in a crowd of other pilgrims. These were not fighting people; they were genuine pilgrims, and the threat of any interdict from the church worked heavily on them.

  ‘We have spent fifty years arriving at the current partnership with the government,’ the priest explained in a very condescending voice. ‘We will not thank you for ruining it.’

  ‘The Holy Father has declared a crusade and ordered all Christians—’ Fra Peter began.

  The priest raised his cross. ‘So you say! But there is no Holy Father here—’

  I stepped between them. ‘Father,’ I said, and held up the dragoman’s documents, ‘I have a licence for every man, woman, and child – I have a second that permits us to ride abroad, armed.’ I paused.