The Green Count Read online

  His face closed, and all the smug importance fled.

  Fra Peter rose. ‘I do not think I wish to have Sir Steven at my side on the road to Jerusalem,’ he said.

  I nodded. ‘Lord Grey wishes it greatly,’ I said.

  Fra Peter pushed back his chair, angry and a little surprised to have been so insulted. I put a hand on his arm, and he shook it off, and then looked at me. For once our roles were reversed. He managed a smile, turned, and left the inn.

  I had Nerio across the table and he had, of course, heard the whole exchange. Miles Stapleton was too far to have heard a word. Fiore was already on his feet beside me.

  I had had ten deep breaths to steady myself. I tapped Fiore, got his attention, and made him sit. I poured wine with a steady hand. Then I let my eyes come up, and fix on Scrope. I leaned over, so he could not mistake my words.

  ‘Scrope, you are very young. The next time you decide to make an arse of yourself, don’t involve a lady, eh? Or trouble a great knight with your blather.’ I’m proud to say my smile was gentle, and it did not waver, although my heart was pounding and ready to fight. ‘If you want to fight, you have only to say so,’ I added, as if it was an afterthought.

  Silence fell while I spoke. Most of the men at my end of the table heard me reprimand him like a wayward squire.

  He shot to his feet. ‘You ill-born bastard! I’ll—’

  I stood too. ‘You’ll challenge me?’ I asked. My inference was plain.

  ‘You’re a killer,’ Scrope said. ‘You murdered d’Herblay. We all know what you are, Gold. I’ll not give you an excuse to murder me.’

  Now the table was utterly silent.

  Nerio laughed. ‘Let me understand,’ he said. ‘English is not my first language. You say that you can insult Ser William all you like, and then refuse to fight him, because he has killed men and you have not? Or is it because you are a great coward?’ Nerio smiled. ‘In Italy, we would call this cowardice.’ He shrugged. ‘England may have different ways.’

  Scrope looked at me. He was afraid. He was young, and he had trapped himself into an impossible position. He had no friends at that table or in the inn – that is, even the Gascon was appalled by the last exchange.

  I was still standing. ‘I cannot challenge you,’ I said, looking down the table at where the other knight of the Order was sitting. He nodded. He approved of my actions, and I was beginning to see merit in the Order’s strictures. I liked controlling my anger. But I allowed myself a bit of a sneer. ‘So you are safe, unless you choose to challenge me. And I will not call you a coward. You are young. You have insulted a lady and a great knight. I recommend you apologise.’

  He stood there, his nostrils white with anger and fear, and I thought, damn, I have been you, my lad. But he couldn’t do it. He couldn’t apologise. Or even come up with a witticism. He turned, spat, and all but ran from the inn.

  The next day saw us training our mercenaries and trying to jolly our crusaders to participate – always a thankless job. The weather was increasingly bad; there was a hard wind blowing off Africa to the south, with sand in it, and the waves off the port looked murderous. We had cold rain intermittently; enough that I have a memory of standing at a pell, my gambeson soaked all the way through under my maille and my harness, and the leather of my brigantine so wet that I feared the leather would stretch and distort and the iron would rust under it.

  But the rain and the cold were unifying elements, and Fra Peter used them to hammer our little army into a cohesive thing in just a week or so. I won’t say we were a band of brothers, but two days of hacking at pells and practising a few fairly simple manoeuvres on horse and foot; dismounting and passing our reins to pages, or advancing in a tight, ordered line by having every man in the file grab the knight’s lance, as we did in Italy; these manoeuvres, executed in pouring rain, helped us grumble together. I noticed that Lord Grey was distant with me, but I was too busy and too tired to take much note.

  Our third or fourth day in Famagusta I was summoned by Father Pierre Thomas. In truth, I had given him little thought, or rather, when I thought of him, it was mostly to congratulate myself on my mildness in the matter of young Scrope. I looked forward to seeing the legate; I thought perhaps that he might praise me.

  It was the end of the day, and forty of us were sitting in the straw of a well-thatched barn attached to the Cistercian monastery, drying and polishing our armour and toasting our sodden gambesons and jupons over a courtyard fire. It was not unpleasant; wine was flowing, and squires and pages and knights were working together, another sign that Fra Peter’s methods were succeeding.

  I left Marc-Antonio and John to finish the work and pulled on a dry wool cote and a sodden cloak and went across the yard and down a single street to visit the legate.

  I cannot remember what I was thinking. I can only remember my shock at discovering that he was pale and trembling in his bed, and a dozen religious men and doctors clustered close around.

  Sister Marie was there. She was the legate’s Latin secretary, a brilliant mind in a small frame. Despite small stature and eyes weak enough to need spectacles to read, she was a fine sword hand and a pleasant enough companion, if a trifle judgemental. I had never seen her swear or blaspheme, nor indulge in wine, nor make even the gentlest lewd comment. Her entire and fiercest joy was in the disputation of theology, and her second joy was in swords, and the two seemed close allies, at least in my mind.

  She caught the hem of my loose cote and kept me from entering the legate’s bedchamber.

  ‘He’s made his will,’ she said solemnly. ‘I think he’s dying, William.’

  Sister Marie and I had a great deal in common. First and foremost, we shared a love of Father Pierre Thomas. And, in a way, he had made us. Sister Marie was tolerated in a world almost entirely inhabited by men because Father Pierre Thomas had the stature to have a woman as his Latin secretary. And Father Pierre Thomas had taken me from a life of brigandage and horror to be something like a knight by that same stature.

  She told me that he’d got much worse in the day or so since I’d last seen him, and that his breathing was very bad. ‘But the worst of it is,’ she said, ‘that I think he … I think Alexandria is killing him.’

  Now I know, friends, that you are gathered to hear tales of chivalry and deeds of arms, and not to hear of the life of one old priest, no matter how saintly. But I need you to understand, because everything that happened in the next two years sprang from that moment, that Father Pierre Thomas was not a warrior. He always questioned the use of violence for any purpose, most especially as a chastisement of the infidel. Ser Peter and I had both heard him openly question the utility of crusade, and we had both seen him offer his own body in the forefront of violence, when he himself went unarmed and unarmoured.

  Father Pierre Thomas was born a serf in a peaceful part of France. He had no training for war and little experience of violence. Even I, a knight, a trained man, a veteran of three campaigns by the English in France and years as a routier – even I found Alexandria a terrible shock. Even now, my friends, when I think of that city, my mind glances around some things I saw there, like water passing rocks in a mountain stream and leaving deep and complex eddies.

  But Father Pierre Thomas had no armour in his mind. He experienced Alexandria as a Christian. He had not the armour of training, the cult of chivalry, even the love of prowess and victory.

  I think Sister Marie was right. I think that Alexandria was like a disease. He could not get it out of his heart.

  But by then, I had already spoken to young soldiers; Miles Stapleton had come to me for guidance after the sack. ‘Let me talk to Father Pierre Thomas,’ I said. I meant it. What I lacked in years and mature wisdom, I might have in experience of war.

  She looked at the crowd of religious men. ‘They will not leave him,’ she said bitterly. ‘They give him neither air nor rest. He is a l
iving saint, and each wishes to claim a little of his spirit for themselves.’

  ‘I could scatter them like Jesus and the moneychangers,’ I said. I was almost serious.

  Sister Marie gave me half a smile. ‘You would, too,’ she said.

  But we underestimated Father Pierre Thomas’s stamina and inner strength. While she told me about how little he was eating, Father Pierre Thomas was sending the learned men forth with an admonition to find other, worthier men and women to serve. I went into his chamber with Sister Marie and a copper pot of chicken broth, and he smiled when he saw me.

  But he was very low. I was shocked all over again. His skin was almost transparent.

  ‘Have you slept at all, Pater?’ I asked.

  He smiled. ‘For my sins,’ he said, ‘every time I close my eyes, I see the sack of Alexandria.’ And yet his smile was genuine.

  ‘Oh, Father,’ Sister Marie said.

  He said a prayer. Then he said, ‘Do not weep for me. Many truths have been revealed to me since this affliction began, and I have hope that through these afflictions, I atone for my sins and I will go bright and new to my maker.’

  I sat by him and held his hand. It was cold, colder, it seemed, than the outside air. Yet his eyes were bright.

  ‘We should send for Ser Peter,’ I said.

  Sister Marie went out for a moment.

  I would never have another chance. ‘Father,’ I said.

  ‘Yes, my son?’ he answered.

  ‘Father, the sack of Alexandria was not your fault,’ I said.

  He smiled. His smile was not grim or bitter; it was merely distant and a little sad. ‘Was it not?’ he asked.

  Somehow, none of the platitudes of the warrior came to me in dealing with this man. I could not say, These things happen or You must break some eggs to make an omelette. Nor yet Sometimes good men do bad things.

  ‘We killed an entire city, like Florence,’ Father Pierre Thomas said. ‘For nothing. No gain to Christendom, no higher spiritual goal, nor even an advantage of trade. And I was the preacher of this empris.’

  I ran my fingers through my beard. ‘Father,’ I said, ‘When we were in Venice, did you not tell me that it was God’s will, not our will, whether the Crusade happened or not?’

  I felt I had handed him a good argument, and I sat back, and was appalled to find that tears were running silently down his face into his beard. ‘Oh, William,’ he said, his voice untouched by his own tears. ‘God gave us free will in the hope that we would do good, not evil.’

  Sister Marie returned. I confess that Father Pierre Thomas was making me uncomfortable. My own defences against the horrors of the sack rested on foundations about our role and Father Pierre Thomas’s sermons. To see him undone was to threaten my own peace of mind; or rather, as I knew no peace, to threaten the truce my mind had made.

  Sister Marie knelt by the bed and took his free hand, and the three of us said some prayers until Ser Peter came, and then he prayed with Father Pierre Thomas. We watched for some hours, and long after full darkness, Father Pierre Thomas called for his own confessor and changed into clean vestments.

  After he changed he was much better, and he fell asleep. Sister Marie found me a pallet in the Abbey, and disoriented me by throwing her arms around me and bursting suddenly into tears. It was, if anything, worse than Nerio’s tears. I knew Nerio concealed his emotions behind a carefully worked facade of courtliness, but Sister Marie seemed made of iron. I let her cry and thought of my sister, who was a nun in the Order of the Hospital. I wondered how many friends she had lost in treating the Plague, which had become her speciality, and indeed, both of us were salted against it in youth, when our parents died and we did not. I hadn’t thought much of my sister in months, but now, with Sister Marie’s slight weight in my arms, I thought of her.

  She straightened up, clearly embarrassed to have shown weakness. So I made myself smile at her.

  ‘You need sleep more than I,’ I said.

  She shrugged. ‘I will keep vigil over him.’

  This made me feel weak. But I could also tell she had other things on her mind. I can be perceptive, when I put my mind to it. Fie on you, Chaucer. You always think I’m a dolt.

  Bah.

  She had never entered into my cell, which was fully against the rules of her convent – no nun could enter a man’s cell. But now, in a burst, she pushed past me and closed the door softly. She leaned against it as if gathering strength.

  ‘Do you know Queen Elanor?’ she asked very quietly. ‘Can I trust you, William?’ she breathed.

  I bowed very deeply. I remember that especially. There was something about the good sister that deserved my special attention. I bowed the way I would have for the Black Prince. The bow that promises service.

  She pursed her lips. She was no beauty, but a hard-faced woman who had made her way in a man’s world. This is unfair; she had the most gracious smile, when she troubled to display it.

  In sorrow, she looked like the Queen of Heaven. Not the beauty, but the dignity.

  Or so I imagine.

  She waved her hand and said nothing.

  ‘What is it?’ I asked, or something equally useless.

  She shook her head. ‘The queen needs help,’ she said. ‘I don’t even know why I’m telling you this. She doesn’t need a sword. She needs …’ She frowned. ‘God’s help.’

  Having just come from my own spiritual guide’s bedside, I was feeling puissant. ‘Sometimes we are God’s tools,’ I said. Was I self-important?

  Always, I fear.

  The nun looked at me with her level stare, judging me. ‘Do you know what this serpent’s nest of gossip is saying about the queen?’ she asked.

  Well, men only talk about queens to call them shrews or whores. Men are depressingly regular in this regard. But I wasn’t likely to say so. ‘No,’ I said. ‘I have been on Rhodes. Thank God.’

  She took a deep breath. ‘I do not think she is blameless, but I think someone is … trapping her. Like some wild thing. Someone is killing the king’s love for his wife. A-purpose. Or so I believe. And so she believes.’

  I shook my head in pure fatigue. I was too tired, and, I confess it, too wrapped in Father Pierre Thomas’s illness, to care much for a queen I’d never met. But I managed to say the right thing.

  ‘How can I help?’ I asked.

  Sister Marie shook her head. ‘Honestly, William, I have no idea.’ She managed a flash of smile. ‘It is just better to tell someone. Promise you will keep this to yourself.’

  I nodded. ‘I swear,’ I said. ‘Although I may ask about the court. If I am permitted into the king’s presence. And de Mézzières?’ I asked.

  Sister Marie shrugged and looked at the floor in unaccustomed hesitation. Finally she said, ‘De Mézzières got me involved, hoping all the queen needed was a …’ She paused a long time.

  ‘A friend,’ I asked.

  Sister Marie met my eye and in the dark cell, for a moment, we were close as lovers, eye to eye. ‘I was born a peasant, like my good Father Pierre Thomas. No queen needs me as a friend. But I am known to have “good sense”. Sometimes, this is more a burden than a virtue.’

  She nodded to me, as if we had met on the street, and passed out of my cell.

  And then I fell on the monk’s pallet and slept.

  I was awakened for Matins. I rose and dressed, fumbling with my laces in the darkness, and I made my way down an unlit stair to discover that Father Pierre Thomas was dead. It was an odd moment, not as horrible as it might have been. I had had a dream in which he was dead – glorified, even. I do not claim this was a dream from God, or any such nonsense – it was a normal enough dream to have when you fear your friend and counsellor is dying.

  But I did have it.

  And there were no men about except Fra Peter and de Mézzières. Both were in sho
ck, virtually clinging to each other, and I had never seen either man so utterly incoherent.

  Sister Marie and a large group of faithful women did everything. Sister Marie took charge, calmly, betraying none of her own grief, merely helping move the body. They washed him and anointed him, and then laid his body in the Carmelite church.

  I was not needed by the women. It is interesting to me that in some crises, women exclude men as thoroughly as men exclude women in others. I would have washed his body. Indeed, I cried enough tears to have washed anyone. I would have given my life to save him.

  But the doors were shut. And then, when they had laid him out in the church, and the doors were opened, the three of us went in, and we were the only men in a church of women; perhaps two hundred women weeping, and three men. And it was strangely as if we had been called to the vigil of a knight; we knelt, and we waited, and none of us knew what we waited for.

  It was a long night, and a long morning. I remember none of it. I will not pretend. It passed in black grief, and I felt as if my life was of no worth.

  At some point, others came. I may even have been asleep, although I pray it is not so, but merely prayer and meditation and sorrow; but what I do remember is that a woman gave a great cry, and there we were. I had been somewhere else, and then I was there, in my body, with my knees feeling as if the flames of Hell were rising round me and my back afire too.

  I was there, when his body seemed to glow.

  Say what you will.

  I was there.

  He was the greatest man I ever knew. And I saw his skin take on a golden glow, so that in the darkness of a church before sunrise, I could see the faces of a thousand men and women. And they were all the people of Famagusta, not the court; there were Orthodox priests and women in black shawls, and Moslem women and men in their long clothes; there were Jews. There were monks and nuns and knights and merchants and all the people, so many that it was almost impossible to move, packed like seabirds pack together in a bad storm.