Because there are so many imponderables to a fight, many men who teach the way of the sword are charlatans. Or they are good swordsmen, but they add all sorts of falsity to their teaching.
Mercenaries like me may be bad men, full of sin, but we can spot this sort of chaff in an instant. Unlike many students, we have been in fights. Many fights. We have a simple rule — if you want to teach us about our profession, you must first prove you are better — not once, but many times.
So, it is not that I had never met a man who claimed to teach the way of the lance and sword before I met young Fiore. But I will say he was the first I ever met, and one of the few, who was utterly honest, almost ruthless, in his approach. He treated fighting as Aquinas treated religion. With logic and deep understanding of the most basic parts: the body, the sword, armour.
I remember one afternoon finding him in an armourer’s — really, a finisher who took pieces from a smith and prepared them for sale, with straps, coverings and fancy brass.
‘Have you seen the new Milanese stuff?’ Fiore asked me.
Imagine an eighteen-year-old sitting in an armourer’s shop, flexing shoulder armours. Picking up spaulders and testing the limits of their flexibility.
Of course, I had, however briefly, owned some Milanese armour. I said, ‘Yes. I had a breast and backplate for a year.’
‘Ah!’ he said. ‘How did they affect your ability to cut across your body?’
I couldn’t remember, but I had a feeling it had limited my cut.
‘Ah!’ he said, and smiled. ‘Let us go play in the yard.’
In late spring, he announced that he was going to Nuremberg, in High Germany, to study with a sword master there. I was envious, but we embraced. I was leaving for England.
He was in the same sort of anomalous position as me. He was travelling about, fighting in tournaments and carrying messages for money. He did small duties for the Knights, and they gave him permission to use their preceptories as hostels. Something to do with his father.
‘I need to fight,’ he said.
I laughed. We were fighting every day, by then.
‘No — in battle,’ he said seriously. ‘It must be very different from duels and chivalric encounters.’
We’d had this discussion a dozen times, so I shrugged.
‘Come on crusade with me,’ I said.
He grinned. ‘Of course, I must,’ he said. ‘I have already sworn it. I will be back in a few months.’
We embraced again, and he rode for Germany with a bag of letters for the banks. Meanwhile, I rode for England.
That was a happy trip.
First, I was formally made a donat in Avignon. I knelt all night at an altar, swore my devotion to the Knights, swore to obey and serve, and was given a red surcoat with a white cross, which I confess I wore every day for some months, I was so proud.
The ceremony was well attended. I was not a knight but a squire, in the eyes of the order, so I received silver spurs and the demand that I obey all knights. I thought of Sir John Hawkwood. After the ceremony and the vigil, I was bleary-eyed with lack of sleep, and Juan took me out to eat in a fancy inn with a gilded ceiling somewhat dulled by the fire in the hearth and greatly enhanced by half a dozen very attractive young women bringing the wine.
We had lamb.
After we ate, Fra Peter came and sat. I was pleased, in some remote, human way, to see that he watched the prettiest girl, a dark haired woman with an elfin nose and a smile that would stop your heart, who seemed determined to lean over my table for as long as it might take me to see to her naval.
I misdoubt but that Fra Peter was younger than fifty — perhaps younger than forty — but it pleased me to see that he watched her the way he watched a fight.
Why do other men’s failings please us?
Never mind. He tore his eyes away. By God she knew the effect she was having, and she minced away from us with a backward glance and a quarter of a smile — so well done, my friends, that I’m still talking of it, ain’t I?
It’s like the perfect sword cut. You don’t forget it, once you see it done.
He tore his eyes away and blushed. He met my eye.
‘You have done well, William,’ he said. He reached into his brown robe and produced — de Charny’s dagger. ‘I return this to you,’ he said. ‘I suspect that you’ll want it, as we’re going to England and you look naked without a weapon.’
Then he rose and embraced me. So did Juan.
‘Tomorrow,’ he said, ‘we will go to the armourer and have you fitted for a decent harness. I’ll draw some munitions stuff for the trip. And you’ll want a sword,’ he added.
We drank. After some time — talking of arms, fighting and horses — he stood up. ‘I’ll leave you, gentles. I’m too old for this place.’ He managed a smile at Dark Hair, and she smiled back at him, damn her.
Juan and I had a second cup of wine. And a third, and perhaps a fourth.
We talked of everything: the world and the crusade. I stood up. ‘I’m for bed,’ I said.
Juan agreed, and we walked home on a clear summer evening. I left him at the door of our lodging and went to the outdoor jakes.
Then I went back to the inn.
Before the bells in the cathedral tolled for Matins, Dark Hair and I had repaired to her tiny bed in the eaves, hard by the pallets of a dozen other girls. She held my hand while she negotiated with them in rapid Provencal, and held out her free hand.
‘Give me a few moutons to pay them,’ she said, and flushed. I could feel it in the half-dark. ‘Ah, monsieur, I’m no whore, but a poor girl, and these are my friends who will lose a little sleep.’
I gave her a gold florin.
She bit it.
Another girl, as pretty in another way, watched this transaction and giggled. ‘For a florin, we could all stay and help,’ she said, but her friends led her away.
As it turned out, we didn’t need any help. Her neck was warm and salty, and her mouth was deep and tasted of cloves and cinnamon.
I saw Anne a dozen times before we left for Calais, and she welcomed me eagerly enough that I think, despite my florins, she liked me. I’ve known a hundred women like her — somewhere in the misty half-world between whoredom and ‘honest’ labour. We slipped out to walk the river and went out in a boat, and we ate fish in a riverside tavern, and we. .
Never mind. It wasn’t love, but it was pleasant.
The last night, I told her I was going and she kissed me and said, ‘A girl likes a soldier ever so much better than a priest.’
The ride across France was like a chivalric empris. We camped almost every night because there were no inns; we rode armed all the time, and I had to practice the discipline my knight spoke of so often, washing what I could every day, changing linen without taking off my rented armour. As he had said, it wasn’t that hard. I learned every day — learned what many squires are taught by their knights, but no one had ever taught me.
I learned to wash my own clothes, and to dry them on the rump of the pack horse.
It wasn’t all learning. I taught them to cook. The three of us cooked in strict rotation, and their initial attempts were laughable for men who had lived in the field all their lives. But their cooking was of a piece with my swordsmanship — they’d never been taught better. I bought pepper, saffron and good honey and I showed them where, even in the ruin of France, one could pluck a few herbs from the foundations of a burned cottage.
I won’t bore you with what effect Richard’s betrayal had on me, except that I was not as quick to love Juan as I might have been. And while I loved Fra Peter — and I did — I yet contrived to keep a little distance between us.
The trip, and the dinner, however, eroded my intentions. We had no other companions and we became very close.
I was learning so much, so fast, that I don’t remember much of the scenery. I learned that I had never learned to properly care for a horse, because I had never been a real squire. When you are out in the rough for weeks, and it rains is cold, you must work very hard so that your great brute of a war horse is not made lame for life, or dies of a fever.