He shrugged, an expressive, Italianate shrug. ‘I’m not sure even I could tell you what you do.’ He leaned back. ‘But I promise you it’s funny.’
‘Come in here and we will laugh together,’ I said.
I confess that I expected Fra Peter to interfere, but he did not. Juan opened the barricade, and the new boy stepped in. Juan solemnly handed each of us a wooden sword — we call them wasters in England. You can kill a man with a waster.
My adversary took up a ludicrous posture — legs apart, body rotated, sword cocked back so far that it came around his head and pointed at me. He looked like a mime or an acrobat mimicking a swordsman.
By this time in my life I had fought a lot of men. One thing I knew, and respected, was the authority with which he adopted his ludicrous pose. He snapped into it, and then he was still.
Mime or not, he was absolutely confident.
I held my sword in the centre of my body and edged towards him cautiously.
He stepped forward and his blow rolled off his shoulder as his hips uncoiled.
Juan poured water on my head. ‘Don’t worry,’ he said. ‘He does that to everyone.’
My head rang for a day, and I didn’t fight or exercise for three days. I mostly sat in my bed — an actual bed — in our inn, a fine hostel owned by the Knights of Saint John, who owned every building on the street outside their own gate, just as they did in London.
Then Fra Peter sent me on an errand to the commanderie by Marseille, which took me a week — it shouldn’t have, but the bailli there assumed I was really a donat, and sent me off on an errand to Carcassonne. From there I had a message to carry for Narbonne, and then back to Avignon. I was stiff as a board when I got off my horse in the yard of a stable in Avignon. I carried my message to Sir Juan di Heredia, and he opened my sealed satchel and read several missives. Eventually he looked up at me. ‘Get some rest,’ he said. ‘I gather you’ve had a busy week.’
Fra Peter was sitting with the German boy who had split my head in the common room of our hostel. ‘What took you so long?’ he asked, and I knew in a moment that he knew all about my trip already.
‘The bailli sent me to Carcassonne,’ I said. My eyes slid off his to look at the German.
Sir Thomas nodded. ‘The bailli was told to try you.’ He raised one eyebrow. ‘You thought we’d just trust you?’
I guess I had thought they’d just trust me.
The German smiled and rose from his bench. He bowed. ‘I wish to apologize,’ he said. ‘My blow. . was not properly controlled. I hurt you.’ He made a motion with his hand. ‘It was a compliment, if you like.’
‘A compliment?’ I asked. By Christ, the German kid was annoying.
‘You were almost too fast for my blow,’ he said. ‘So I traded speed for. . control. I should not have. I’m sorry.’ He was stiff and formal, and Fra Peter permitted himself a very slight smile.
I was aware I had passed some sort of test with Fra Peter, and the joy of it gave me the grace to bow. ‘No one has ever apologized for hurting me, that I can remember,’ I said, but I took his hand. ‘Now will you tell me what was so funny?’
He raised an eyebrow and looked at Sir Thomas, who nodded.
‘Well,’ he said, and shrugged. ‘You have never been taught how to use a sword.’
I bridled, let me tell you, messieurs. ‘I’ve been using a sword since before you were born,’ I said.
He shrugged. ‘Do you know how to read?’ he asked with the warmth of a youth.
‘Yes,’ I said. Few men like me could read and I was quite proud of it. ‘Latin, French, and even a little English.’
He nodded, his point made. ‘So you’ve been reading as long as you’ve used a sword?’
‘Longer,’ I agreed.
‘You are aware that there are other men who read with more facility than you?’ he asked, leaning forward. ‘Faster, more accurately, more. . what word is it? More holding of knowledge?’
‘Yes,’ I said.
‘And you can ride?’ he asked.
‘Yes,’ I answered.
‘Not really,’ Fra Peter said.
That was two slurs on my fighting skills.
‘Ah!’ said the German. Actually, by this time I suspected he was Italian and not German at all. Germans have a different kind of arrogance. ‘So you know how to ride, but you are not much of a rider?’
‘I have many failings,’ I snapped. ‘Where are we going with this?’
He shrugged again and looked even more Italian. ‘You have used the sword all your life, but because no one has ever taught you to use it, you have never learned to learn, and thus, you grow no better. I would go further. At some point — perhaps in a monastery — you studied the sword with the buckler.’ He stroked his stringy beard. ‘You have a developed imbrocatta and two interesting wrist cuts — inside and outside rolls of the wrist. These were taught to you. You practice them. Almost every other guard and cut you reason from first principles every time, like a small boy attempting to debate Aquinas.’
Unless a man is either very, very good or utterly lost, there come to him moments where things are revealed, and we know them immediately to be true. I have had this happen in various ways. I have heard something I knew to be true, but ignored it for years, and I have heard things that changed my life immediately. When the Italian said I had learned sword and buckler — that I had two wrist cuts and a thrust — that was true. Damn it, Thomas Courtney taught me those wrist cuts in a London square in the year ’50 or so.
But in that set of sentences, I was convinced. He’d hit me, and I hadn’t blocked his simple attack, and now that I thought of it, in a cascade of swordsmanlike considerations, his blow was very like the one Boucicault had used on me — twice. His words made sense.
‘Teach me!’ I said.
He shook his head, his face pained — really pained. ‘I am just a student,’ he said. ‘I have so much to learn. There are men in Swabia who teach this art — another man in Thuringia. One in Naples, I hear.’
Fra Peter shook his head. ‘Well, well, it is a day for me to eat crow. William, I imagined you’d take your horse and ride for Burgundy, and look, you came back to me, and now you really are my problem. And I sat here to keep you from attempting to murder our Friulian visitor, and instead, you ask him to teach you.’ He put a hand on my shoulder. ‘I’m delighted that you have shown yourself a better man than I expected.’ He rose and threw some coins on the table. ‘The House of Bardi has a table of accounting in the main exchange in the street of Goldsmiths,’ he said. ‘If you wish to take the next step, Sir Juan and I have set your donation at one thousand florins. Think of it as the ransom of your soul.’
It stung, the way he said it. But he paused by the door. ‘By the way, your sister is now a full sister or our order.’ He smiled, a sort of lopsided smile. ‘So perhaps saving Golds has become an empris — something our whole order is required for. Listen, William, I urge you to pay the donation. One of the things most missing in your life is a structure for your actions. Join us, and we will train you.’
I rose. ‘You will have me?’
He laughed. ‘Don’t imagine we’re choosy,’ he said. ‘We’re far more desperate than that.’
The Italian accompanied me to the street of goldsmiths. ‘I suppose I could teach you a few things,’ he said. ‘How to stand. How to move. A few postures.’
A year before, I’d have spurned him. Learn swordsmanship from a boy? But my eyes were open, and the mould of my life was broken. I had to start again. No reason not to start again as a swordsman.
The street of goldsmiths was three times the size of the similar confluence in London, and so richly adorned that to walk down the street was to see a greater display of crozier heads, inlaid swords, episcopal rings, copes, vestments, chalices and jewels than you would see on display in any palace in Europe.