Boucicault nodded at me. I swear he might have winked.
Had he kept us waiting there all that time, waiting for the priest? I won’t ever know.
But I think he did.
The Hospitaller walked his horse to me.
I swear, all he did was look into my eyes. ‘Pierre?’ he asked the priest.
‘I am only a few months into this young man’s life,’ he said. ‘I would despair, except that he is but the product of Satan’s will in our time.’
The Hospitaller tugged at his beard. His eyes never left mine. ‘Look at his cap,’ he said.
By happenstance — in an attempt to dress myself better, I suppose — I was wearing my best arming cap. The one my sister had made, with the cross of the Order of St John on the crown.
‘Tell me what you want more than anything,’ he said suddenly.
There are times when, despite inclination, all we can do is tell the truth.
‘I want to be a great knight,’ I said.
‘More than you want to live?’ he asked. ‘More than you want to save your soul?’ he asked.
Now that I had said it, I wondered at myself.
I burst into tears and said, ‘Yes.’
There I sat, a halter around my neck, on a stolen horse in rusted armour, weeping my fool heart out.
For me, that’s the end of Brignais.
Italy 1362-1364
It is our custom to rob, sack and pillage whoever resists. Our income is derived from the funds of the provinces we invade; he who values his life pays for peace and quiet from us at a steep price.
We’re almost there, messieurs.
Italy.
I didn’t get there by any direct road.
Before they took the halter from around my neck, Sir Thomas — the Hospitaller — made me swear.
He made me swear to obey the law of arms. And to obey him.
And Father Pierre Thomas made me swear to go on crusade, when and where he commanded me.
Of course I agreed. I was about to die. It is something, when they offer you everything you want, and the punishment is the reward. And then. .
And then Father Pierre Thomas took the halter from around my neck. ‘Be reborn into the life of Christ,’ he said. His gentle smile was there, as if he saw humour in his own comment.
Sir Peter — fra Peter, as I was to find was proper — shook his head about my armour. He cut it away from me. He didn’t even unbuckle the straps; he cut them.
One piece at a time fell off me to lie under the tree. A pair of mis-matched splint greaves; a right cuisse in faded blue and copper, and a vibrant crimson cuisse in leather, studded with iron and brass in alternating rows of rivet heads. I fancied that cuisse, and it fit well. He cut the straps.
A heavy coat of plates — sixty or seventy in all, raw from the hammer and covered in leather on both sides, well-riveted in brass a long time ago, with a dozen tears, rents and weapon-wounds, some lovingly closed with expert stitches; some barely holding with old thongs or badly placed threads, or bound in wire. I would guess five or six men had worn that armour. It wept rust.
It made a noise as it fell to earth — an almost-human protest.
Arm harnesses — matched, but very poor. Badly made, garish, ill-fitting.
And my poor helmet. It was the last thing I had left of a finer harness — covered in dents, but lovingly maintained by my squire. The chain aventail shone and rippled, and the turban I’d wound around it to hide the worst damage. .
Clank.
I had a chainmail haubergeon. I’d had it since Poitiers. Perkin had kept it clean and it was a uniform, well-oiled brown. Fra Peter examined it.
‘It’s one thing to symbolize rebirth,’ he said. ‘And another to be a damn fool. Get the mail off and we’ll oil it for you.’
His squire came forward. He was not English but Spanish, Juan di Ceval. I had never met a Spaniard — even in the odd glow of ‘not-death’, I was curious to meet him. He came and collected my mail. He also unlaced my aventail from my old basinet. He took them both and rolled them in hides that were themselves so oily they shone in the sun.
Sir Thomas looked me over. ‘You stink,’ he said. ‘It’s not just sin. Do you really live this way?’
I was not in the mood to make excuses, but this stung. ‘I’m a soldier,’ I said.
Sir Thomas raised an eyebrow. ‘Young man, I have fought in the East for fifteen years. I wore my armour for three weeks at a stretch, during the siege of Smyrna. I am used to living in the open and fighting in all weathers. You are dirty because you choose not to practice the discipline that would allow you to be clean.’
I said nothing, which indicates, I think, that I was not an utter fool.
They stripped me to my skin. Father Pierre Thomas walked me to the stream beyond the crossroads and watched while I bathed with Fra Peter’s soap. Fra Peter brought me his razor. I had never owned a razor as fine as his — he even had a small bronze mirror in an ivory case.
He smiled, as if reading my thoughts. ‘I have a weakness for nice things,’ he said. He shrugged. ‘I am a man, not a saint.’
I sat naked on a saddle, and he and his squire shaved my beard. It was odd, as if time was suspended. No other traffic came down the road. Birds sang. The sun came out for the first time in days. I shivered, warmed and shivered again.
Father Pierre Thomas opened his panniers and produced a pair of braes and a shirt. They were very fine, the cuffs lovingly worked.
He blushed. ‘People. . give me things.’ He shook his head in wonderment.
Sir Thomas nodded. ‘Because you are a living saint.’
Pierre glared at him. ‘Please stop saying that,’ he asked politely. ‘I am a sinful mortal like everyone else.’
Sir Thomas nodded, his head tilted to one side like a puppy’s. ‘Like everyone else, except that you cure the sick and bring happiness wherever you go.’
Father Pierre Thomas shrugged his shoulders. ‘I do not mean to show impatience,’ he said, ‘but while the saving of this young man’s immortal soul is worthy, we are due in Avignon.’
Sir Thomas nodded. I put the clean shirt and braes over my clean skin. Fra Peter handed me a pair of brown hose, my own boots and a long brown robe.
The brown robe had the eight pointed cross on the right breast.
‘I’m not worthy to wear this,’ I said.
‘None of us is,’ Fra Peter said.
Juan picked my spurs up from the road. He and Fra Peter re-strapped them in two minutes, from leather they had in a basket on a donkey. I was surprised.
I walked the stolen horse over to Father Pierre Thomas, now fully dressed. ‘Father?’ I asked quietly as he was looking out over the valley.
There was a great deal to see in that valley, if you were newly reborn. The sun shone on fifty fields choked with weeds; at the southern edge stood a stone keep, fire-blackened, the near wall cracked; closer to hand, a small ring of village huts had been burned, and their thatched roofs had fallen in, so that they appeared as black cups on the green board of the earth. And just off the road, where Father Pierre Thomas’s eyes went, was a church. Its destruction was too new to warrant the name ‘ruined’. It had been burned. A human skull lay on the lintel.
He sighed. ‘Yes, my son?’
‘Your horse,’ I said, holding out the reins.
He smiled. ‘A beautiful horse,’ he said. ‘Do you know that I am the papal legate for the east?’
I had no idea. I thought he was a village curate.
He laughed. ‘I am the least warlike of men, nor do I think that fire and sword are the weapons to convert Islam. Look what they do here.’ He shrugged. ‘But the Count of Toulouse, my father’s lord,’ he smiled again, ‘gave me this war horse. Because in his notion of the world, I would need such a beast to fight the infidel.’ He patted the horse’s nose, which, to be honest, I would have hesitated to do.