The Green Count Read online

  Fra Peter nodded and took a deep breath. ‘Then I shall come to your wedding,’ he said. ‘And defend you as best I can, although, you must know, you will win only hatred for this.’

  The word ‘wedding’ made me smile.

  ‘The lady’s estate is entirely entailed. All goes to young Edouard.’ I shrugged. ‘I will still be pinching my sequins and counting silver pennies.’

  Fra Peter nodded. ‘Well – I will hope that I have your services, perhaps at your wife’s expense, for the balance of the Crusade. If we have just a little luck – if Venice will not make peace with the Sultan, and if King Peter keeps his nerve – we will have Jerusalem and Acre too, in the spring. Deus vult.’

  We both crossed ourselves, and Fra Peter embraced me.

  ‘You have become a good knight,’ he said. ‘I would like to say I always knew, but par Dieu, I have doubted you many times.’

  In the goldsmith’s guild they used to say, no praise is as sweet as the praise of your own master. And Fra Peter was that.

  I burst into tears.

  Make of it what you will. Honi soit qui mal y pense.

  And then I went out to arrange to be married in the Holy Sepulchre.

  Well, I confess it, we were not married in the Holy Sepulchre. It only took me an hour of argument to discover that the price was ruinous, the number of priests needing to be bribed probably outnumbers the Host of Angels, and that in fact, Father Angelo, the Franciscan, who had gone from enemy to ally by some subtle process, was happy to host my wedding in the Franciscan chapel. For nothing, and performing the service himself.

  Ah, you men of blood do not want to hear the details of my wedding, but perhaps Aemilie, if she will stop her blushes, will care to hear. I was well dressed, through no fault of my own, but because Nerio insisted on dressing me from head to toe. Achille, the former tailor, with access to the silks of the Holy Land, produced for me in about fifteen hours a slightly padded silk doublet that would have been acceptable anywhere in Italy, and a pair of silk hose to match – all red and white and black, like my arms. And Emile and her ladies, and Eugenia and her ladies, contrived a marvellous kirtle in silk, with an overdress, sleeveless, in my lady’s arms, and trimmed in fur. And I’ll add, by way of reminiscence, that the fur on her gown came from my own scapegrace squire; Marc-Antonio produced a board of ermine skins as if he performed this sort of miracle every day, and was insufferable for … Well, really, he was always insufferable.

  We were wed. Fra Peter was there, and Sister Marie, and all the Armenians and the two Greek knights who had served Father Pierre Thomas, and of course there was Nerio, and Fiore, and Miles. Lord Grey attended, as did even Sir Steven Scrope, and really, the little chapel was packed, all the way out of the doors and into the Franciscan hostel, and when we were wed, several tuns of wine were rolled out, paid for by my rich wife, and trestles were laid, and every one of our men-at-arms and archers were served. In fact, Emile and I served them ourselves for the first cup of wine – a Savoyard tradition, and a noble one.

  No other part of the meal bore any resemblance to anything that had ever happened in Savoy, or in England. We had olives, and olive oil, and sheep in a saffron paste with raisins, and a dozen other dishes that were so different from the food of home. But we ate our fill and drank well, and I was pleased, even through a haze of happiness and gentle lust, to see that our company had drawn together. They’d had a sea voyage and a little adventure, and some loot; I speak no ill of mankind when I say that these things usually suffice to create a body of men, especially with a little victory.

  And then there were toasts – so many I thought we might spoil the wine trade – and my lady was smiling at me in a particular way, and I touched her hands far more often than I needed, and we laughed together, publicly. Bah, I see you want me to go on to war and fighting.

  So I rose, when I was sure that we’d all taken enough wine on board, and bowed to our Armenians. ‘My friends,’ I said, ‘These fine gentlemen of Armenia have asked for an escort to see them home along the coast – a little more than three hundred miles, and all of it through hostile territory. I’d be most pleased if a few of you would consider taking on this empris with me.’

  I probably said some other things, about my lady’s beauty and high nobility and my own unworthiness. But I’ll pass on such things, although I meant them.

  Afterwards, l’Angars and Pierre Lapot both asked to be taken to Cilicia. So did all the archers, when I assured them there would be pay. I spent an hour that I confess I’d rather have spent attending to other matters, sitting at a table like a recruiter in the Low Countries, offering wages and signing men on. Some were no surprise; the two Greek knights were keen to go home, and they knew far more about the terrain than I did. And between them and Capitano Bembo, we sketched out an itinerary that would get us back to Rhodes and then to Constantinople. By then the evening was well advanced; there was some music, and I danced with Emile, and then, with a long parade of raucous men-at-arms behind me, I carried her out into the street and to my lodgings for one night. The Orthodox bishop had, for reasons never explained to me, surrendered his whole house.

  I carried Emile up the narrow stairs – the house might be called a palace, but it was three storeys on a very narrow house front. And Emile was no small woman; she was perhaps three fingers shorter than I am myself. I got her to the bed and threw her on it.

  ‘I borrowed this veil,’ she said. ‘Let’s have a care getting it off.’

  It was the most remarkable piece of silk, and I was not so far gone in lust or wine to refuse, so we fiddled for some very pleasant time with the veil and various other things, and my lady love smiled at me.

  ‘William,’ she said, ‘I never dreamed that my wedding would be the start of the chivalric empris. I feel like the heroine in a romance.’

  ‘My love,’ I said, ‘You are the heroine in a romance.’

  She laughed. I was trying to unlace her, and she was not ready to be unlaced. Well, I’m not quite a fool, and I left off.

  ‘I want to go on with this pilgrimage forever,’ she said. She pulled the bed hangings closed. ‘I want to be a bandit queen, and you a bandit king. I don’t ever want to go back to court, to Geneva, to wagging tongues. Oh, sweet Christ, William. What have we done?’

  I kissed her hands, and held her. ‘We’ve done the right thing. The thing that should have been true always.’

  She shook her head. I had seen her moods change like this for some years, but on our wedding night, I was not prepared.

  ‘You say that, but William, by the Risen Christ, they will hound us, now that we are wed.’ Still, her arms were tight around me. ‘I know of the assassin, William. Who has paid this insect?’

  I kissed her face a few dozen times. And then I told her about the Hungarian, László.

  ‘He intends to kill us,’ I said. ‘What I mean is, my love, that world is there, and it would be there even if you ordered me to go away. They want you for your chattels. You would, in time, have to give yourself to some man of their choosing, if only to protect your children.’

  ‘How very grim,’ she said. ‘And true.’

  We had a beeswax candle burning, and I had expected to make love to her by its light, seeing her body, for once. Instead, its light revealed to me all the emotions in her face. ‘Do you know how tiring it all is, my William? To be a body and an estate, and never a person?’

  I rested on an elbow. ‘I probably do not,’ I said. ‘I come to you with no fortune, and no great birth, my love, but I do have this – my sword, and three friends. I very much doubt, and I beg you pardon my boast, that you could do better for a man to protect you and your children from your enemies. Save perhaps Nerio.’

  She was trying to be angry. I could see it. I could even guess what she’d bridle at – that she needed protection.

  ‘I?’ She began to laugh, her old laugh. ‘
Marry Nerio?’ she sat up. ‘My sweet,’ she said, ‘I could not bear the endless competition.’ She sat up. ‘Yes,’ she said after a moment. ‘You are likely the best protector I could find, and I know you will protect the children. So why do I feel this … this …’

  ‘Hesitation?’ I asked. It was hurting me, because it was hesitation.

  ‘Yes,’ she said.

  I laughed. ‘I have no idea. But I love you, and we are wed, and unless you want to discuss the fodder costs for the horses we’re riding to Cilicia, I feel that I could unlace your gown.’

  I say all this because some people want all wedding nights to be simple. Nothing is ever simple – not war, not dalliance, and especially not marriage.

  She hopped off the bed and out of the hangings.

  I heard a sigh, and wondered what I had said, and then she was back, naked.

  I had several days to learn more about my wife’s clothes, and her body, and how to take care of them – how to lace and unlace, and when to make love and when not to make love. I owe the Orthodox bishop greatly for that time. I wonder if he knew the uses to which his bed was put, but I suppose he did – he had a wife, who was in the Sinai on a pilgrimage of her own.

  During those three days, Emile and I got to know each other in a way we never had; it was a delight, and I think that we began to feel as if we really were married. For you bachelors, there is more to marriage than your wife’s pretty eyes and what lies under her shift; you can waste an entire day by making an insensitive comment in the first hour, or really, at any time. And mostly, marriage is like leading men; you must listen, or you fail.

  On the second day of our marriage, we went to Bethlehem. Everyone wanted to go, and we made a procession – it was almost as good as a Maying, although there were not enough ladies.

  I did note that Nerio had begun to pay his most ferociously well-groomed attentions to Eugenia of Cilicia. She rode in a veil, and Nerio rode with Arnaud, her brother, chatting about hawks, and hawking like the great nobles they were, but when we dined in the ruins of a Greek temple, she unpinned her veil like a church opening its doors and Nerio fed her, and Arnaud affected to be charmed.

  In fact, I knew he was not best pleased.

  And Bethlehem was a bit of a shock, by which I mean that unlike ancient, glorious, dirty and venerable Jerusalem, Bethlehem was like a Passion Play brought to life. Generations of Christian pilgrims had conditioned the locals to cater to us, and so, for example, there was a stable; in the stable a crèche full of straw, and in the straw a quite genuine human baby, tended by a very attractive and very demure young girl, playing the Virgin.

  Now, you needn’t show any shock, mes amis; we do the same ourselves when we have the prettiest of the Alderman’s daughters to play the Virgin at Clerkenwell, when the guilds and the Hospitallers put on the cycle about the Annunciation. But it was a bit of a surprise to find it all so nicely arranged in Bethlehem – and to be charged hard silver for the privilege of seeing it.

  Pierre Lapot grew quite angry. He asked hard questions; and he reacted with flat disbelief when the Orthodox priest said that yes, this was the very stable shed in which Our Saviour had been born.

  ‘Par Dieu!’ Lapot spat. ‘If he was a man of the sword I’d give him the lie on the spot.’

  Nerio was taking to the angry little Gascon; the two got along, and Nerio put a hand on the routier’s shoulder. ‘They do no harm,’ he said. ‘But certo they edge towards blasphemy.’

  There were other things to admire, or mock, in Bethlehem. We were only there a few hours, and it came to me that the inhabitants had generations of Christian pilgrims to accommodate and almost no actual artifacts of the time of Christ. Hence the acting and the stable and a rather unsavoury parade of relics – rusty nails, bits of wood, and so on.

  One young urchin tried to sell me a bit of the true Cross, and I grinned at him.

  ‘I can buy one more cheaply and as fine as that on London Bridge from your English cousins,’ I said, and Emile had to pull up her veil to cover her laughter.

  And I was glad I could amuse her.

  She for her part was delighted to amuse my friends, and again she proved to be, in every way, the woman of my dreams. She could exchange barbs with Nerio and laugh with him; she could sit reading the ‘Golden Legend’ with Miles and delight him; and with Fiore, she simply counselled him in plain language. I mention this because in Bethlehem, he was explaining to a trio of our archers how this or that thing had been reproduced, and was not at all authentic, and she smiled at him.

  ‘Really, messire,’ she said. ‘Must you tell us all how clever you are?’

  He bridled. ‘I am not trying to seem clever. I am clever. These men need to …’ He paused.

  She smiled. ‘It remains, my dear Fiore, that you appear to be showing off.’

  Nerio was clever enough not to speak his thoughts aloud, or laugh, and we all escaped alive.

  But later, in the streets of Jerusalem, a soi-disant guide attempted to point out the very stone in the road on which Our Saviour stumbled while carrying the Cross. I saw Fiore glance at Emile and then, accepting her smile as permission, he commented, in the sing-song voice he kept for total contempt, ‘Not possible.’

  The man standing in the road, a Frank in a stained jerkin, snapped his head around. ‘That’s nigh on blasphemy, that is,’ he said.

  Fiore glanced at Emile again and shrugged.

  ‘Oh, my dear Fiore,’ she said. ‘I want to know why it is not possible.’

  Fiore snapped his fingers. ‘Simple, my lady. You recall the palace of Herod?’

  Emile nodded.

  Fiore pointed in that direction. ‘How far beneath street level?’ he asked, and Emile nodded. ‘Almost ten feet,’ she said.

  He nodded as if she was a bright pupil. ‘And the floor of the Holy Sepulchre?’ he asked.

  ‘Ten feet below street level …’ Emile said dreamily. ‘I see it.’ She snapped upright. ‘Eh bien. Je comprends tout.’

  Fiore bowed in his saddle. ‘The street on which our Saviour walked must have been ten feet below this one,’ he said.

  The ‘guide’ looked stunned.

  Fiore rode on.

  The next morning, after distributing almost all the hard currency that we had as alms, the ‘Crusader Army’ marched away. I remember Jerusalem as a place of healing, as a source of both earthly and heavenly bliss that seems at odds with other memories of fear and stress, but there it is. I have seldom been so happy. And indeed, that time lives in my memory in a kind of golden glow, with my friends, my wife, and my Saviour all together.

  The trip down to Jaffa was easier than the trip up, mostly because, having shattered the Karamanid Turk bandits, we had no opposition and a certain amount of grudging respect from the peasants. We rode down to the coast in much the same festive atmosphere as we had ridden to Bethlehem, and the weather was beautiful – almost too good to be believed, so that ladies put on great straw hats and wore no veils, or let their veils trail over this shoulders.

  Nerio rode by Lady Eugenia.

  Arnaud began to show signs of real annoyance, while Eugenia began to show the signs of a convent-bred girl exposed to a young, handsome man who attended to her every need. Nerio was the perfect courtier; he was like the hero of a romance, and she had no defence.

  I was in a cleft stick of my own devising. He was my close friend. He was one of the pillars of my life; he had made every effort to see that I wed my lady. And yet, now, what he did was a danger to us all, especially if we were all going to ride together to Cilicia.

  So the night we rode into Jaffa, as Capitano Bembo’s face lit up with relief to see his great galley snugly anchored in the little harbour, I caught Nerio coming out of our stable.

  ‘I’d prize a moment of your conversation,’ I said.

  He nodded. ‘I am always at your service,’ he said
.

  I drew him into the stall with Gawain, my charger, and I began to curry him, merely to pass the time. Nerio withdrew into the far corner, rather fastidiously.

  ‘I’m wondering if you plan to grace us with your company on the road to Cilicia,’ I said.

  He gave a half-smile. ‘I suspect that I will,’ he said.

  ‘Even with the news of your …’ I paused, because the great Niccolò was reputed his father, but the world sometimes affected to believe otherwise. ‘Esteemed relative.’

  Nerio smiled at my attempt at discretion. ‘He will be buried by now. In fact, no matter how I hurried, he would be buried.’

  He had a dreamy look to him, and I wanted to keep him talking.

  ‘Where will he be buried?’ I asked.

  ‘Ah, we maintain a charterhouse in Florence, and he will be buried there. I have seen his coffin and his funerary statue – indeed, I was there when he reviewed the statue with his sculptor. He’ll wear the armour he wore when he fought in Greece.’ He played with his beard. ‘How he would have loved this empris.’

  ‘Yes,’ I agreed.

  ‘And the squabbles of all his nephews and his bastards will be over by now,’ Nerio said. I could tell by the way he said it that he knew more than he was telling.

  ‘You think perhaps …’ I paused. This was a gambit I had learned from my wife; you allow the other person to develop their thought. You don’t have to do anything.

  ‘I imagine many things,’ Nerio said, with a smile that suggested that he saw through me. He shrugged. ‘I confess that I have a little breath of a plan. Tell me, William – if I were to need a little military force, would you back me?’

  ‘In Italy?’ I said. It was an interesting moment. Riding down the escarpment south of Jerusalem, Emile had asked me what I planned to do with myself, now that I was rich.

  And with my new-found maturity, I knew that it was a real question, but also a test. In truth I was not rich; and while I had learned to take money from Nerio without a qualm, I also had the intelligence to see that touching my wife for money, constantly, was going to erode any fellow feeling between us.