In fact, apparently I missed the whole of Father Pierre Thomas’s formal introduction. I did note that he was a bishop, not a mere priest, as well as being the papal legate to the east. His precedence in the papal palace was very high. I had had no idea. Bishops, in my experience, wore crowns and mitres and garments of gold and had magnificent rings on their fat fingers.
At any rate, the papal nuncio answered the Bishop’s greeting. Father Pierre Thomas — I always think of him that way — knelt and kissed the Pope’s slipper and then his ring. The Pope then rose and embraced Father Pierre Thomas.
I must form loyalties very quickly as, in my head, I was already his man. I was — transported is not too strong a word — to find that the man I served was embraced by the Pope.
The audience took most of the day. Urban had been elected after Father Pierre Thomas left for the east, and Pierre had raced from distant Candia back all the way to Paris to try and enlist King John of France for the crusade — and to try to get the Pope’s approval to use the Great Company as a tool against the infidel.
I didn’t know that at the time.
At any rate, I stood behind Fra Peter and flexed my knees. Wool is all very well, but May in Provence is like high summer in London, and there was sweat running down my back. I tried to catch Juan’s eyes — we were of an age, and he was the only man in the party who watched the pretty girls sway their hips and who licked his lips when the wine was served — but he was not interested in a whispered conversation in the papal palace.
My attention kept going to the frescos.
At some point, I looked up and saw the ceiling.
I heard several of the Pope’s attendants laugh. I continued to watch the ceiling. There were stars in gold leaf on a deep blue — I’d seen work this good in London — but also the devil and his legions, who looked strangely like men I knew, and God and his angels, who appeared to me to be led by the Count of Savoy and Richard Musard.
I may have laughed.
Christ sat enthroned between the hosts, and he judged men and women. Some were taken to hell under Satan’s feet, and others went in raptures towards heaven. Not all of the figures were clear, and some were not very well painted, but I remember particularly a woman — something in her expression reminded me of Emile, and she was poised. Christ’s pointing finger showed that eternal joy was her lot, but her face conveyed the doubt she’d had, the sins she’d feared.
Juan drove his finger into my ribs with the force you only use on friends. My head snapped down and I reached to snatch his hand, but he was too fast.
‘Hssss!’ he said, or words to that effect.
I looked around.
Father Pierre Thomas’s heavy gaze rested on mine.
Later, near the end of our interview, we were moved forward, and one by one we bowed and kissed the hem of the Pope’s robe. Juan was enraptured. Fra Peter was detached. I was willing enough.
The Pope touched his crozier to my back as I prostrated myself. ‘Ah,’ he said. ‘Young man, I take it you love paintings.’
My tongue seemed stuck to the roof of my mouth.
Father Pierre Thomas leaned forward. ‘A soldier, your Holiness.’
‘Your bodyguard?’ the Pope asked. The weight of his crozier on my shoulder was like the weight of a lead pipe.
Father Pierre Thomas laughed. I wager not many men laugh in papal audiences. ‘I have no bodyguard,’ he said. ‘I am one poor sinner, and my death will merely martyr one more Christian.’
The Pope’s crozier was removed, and he leaned forward. He, too, had eyes like Father Pierre Thomas. Gentle, and yet I reckon he’d run his abbey with a rod of iron. As I raised my head, he took my chin in his hand. ‘What kind of soldier?’ he asked.
‘I was a routier,’ I croaked. It was more than a statement; it was like confession — all my sins in one word.
He nodded. ‘I thought as much. What did you see in my paintings, young man?’
A woman who reminded me of Emile.
I remained silent.
‘Redemption, let us hope,’ the Pope said. His attention went to another man, and I was free.
It was in Avignon that I first trained with Fra Peter.
I had watched him train many years ago, in the courtyard of Clerkenwell, while I sat with my sister. I knew now that he’d merely been accustoming himself to a new war horse.
The Knights of Saint John had a preceptory — a house, almost a palace — in Avignon, and another to the south, overlooking the sea near Marseille. The preceptory was filled to overflowing, not with knights, but with princes of the church and great secular noblemen. However, the preceptory was also the command post for the papal army, which had at that time just been placed under the command of another Hospitaller knight, Sir Juan di Heredia, a name of great renown. In fact, my friend the donat squire was his nephew. Just to show you how small the world of arms is, it was Sir Juan — or Fra Juan — who had pursued us in the days just after the attack on Pont-Saint-Esprit, when Janet came to her senses.
I met him on the first day we were in town, and he never looked at me. But a week later, when I stood stripped to my shirt and hose, lifting stones in the yard, he stopped, a dozen men at his heels, and smiled at me. His eyes roved the yard of the palace for a moment and settled on Fra Peter, who was standing at a pell, breathing hard. He’d hit the pell so many times I’d lost count.
‘Is this red-headed barbarian yours, Pierre?’ he called.
Fra Peter crossed the yard, wiping his face on his shirt. It was already hot in Provence. Ah, the sun of Provence. ‘Oh, aye, he’s mine.’
Sir Juan nodded. ‘Good size.’
Fra Peter grunted.
‘Can he fight? Sir Juan asked.
Fra Peter. ‘Of course he can fight. He won’t win, but he’ll always fight.’
I must have flushed. Sir Juan paused. ‘You think you can win a fight with a knight of the order?’ he asked me.
I bowed. ‘Absolutely not,’ I said, ‘my lord.’
Sir Juan coughed and waved. ‘Looks to me like he’s on the path to wisdom,’ he said, and led his entourage to their horses.
That day was odd for me, because, absent a few days at the Three Foxes, I had never trained, purposely, since I had swaggered my sword against a partner’s buckler in London. I had fought — quite a bit — but the notion of lifting stones for strength, or practising balance on a beam, or vaulting over a wooden horse — I’d never done any such.
It takes time to learn exercises, and most young men resist them, annoyed or embarrassed or impatient. I was instantly in love. Exercise made a certain sense to me, and I could feel every stone I lifted, and how it related to the rest of my body.
When we went to the pell, Fra Peter made us fight the pell in a different way than we practised in England and Gascony. We didn’t just swing at the pell; we fought it. Juan would circle the pell like it was a genuine opponent, circling and stabbing, circling and cutting, parrying blows so well-imagined I felt I could watch them develop.
When I had my turn, the two of them stood silently, watching me hit the pell. I had a borrowed sword, and I felt the hilt was too short, but I cut until woodchips flew, and I stabbed repeatedly at a knot in the wood until I hit it.
A young man of seventeen or eighteen crossed from the lodging house of the preceptory and came to lean against the railings of the barricade that surrounded the pell. He and Fra Peter exchanged greetings. His French had the same heavy accent I’d heard from many mercenaries: southern German.
I went and attacked the pell again. More chips flew.
The young man on the barricade laughed.
That punctured my new piety and the focus I was growing to go with it. I whirled, furious.
He shook his head. ‘Ignore me,’ he said.
‘Would you care to show me what is so funny?’ I asked through my teeth.