While I understand now what was at stake, at the time I was twenty-one years old and the shock of near death and betrayal had worn off. I had some new ideas of knighthood — and I had better armour.
I wanted some adventure.
The idea that the crusade was delayed for as much as two years dismayed me utterly. ‘What are we supposed to do?’ I asked.
Fra Peter was looking at the table. The Prior fingered his beard and looked elsewhere. The other knights present, including di Heredia, smiled silently into their wine.
The truth was evident at that table. The knights had been building up their strength — adding brother knights, donats and mercenary men-at-arms. Those men had stood the Pope in good stead when the routiers threatened Avignon, but now, with the Pope waffling on the idea of the crusade, the order was going to cut its losses. Men-at-arms were easy to find. Even donats — volunteers — cost money.
Di Heredia looked down the table at me. ‘You gentlemen are to be released from your obligation until the crusade becomes. .’ he looked apologetic. ‘Ahem. More. . likely.’ He looked wistful. ‘And thus the Order loses the best fighting men I’ve had under me in many years.’
The Prior leaned forward down the table. ‘Of course, you are all sworn to the crusade. When Father Pierre Thomas summons you, we expect you to come!’
Juan and I murmured with the other donats and men-at-arms.
I might have revolted. I was not so tied to my new life that having the Order spit me forth might have caused me to go back to my former life. I have seen it happen to other men.
I lay in my bed the next morning — not lifting stones, not wearing my new harness — but thinking to myself, like a routier, that the church had cozened me of 1,000 ducats and was now letting me go.
When Fra Peter knocked on the door of my little cell, I sprang up. I knew his footsteps. I flung back the oak door, and he was there — plain brown gown, eight-pointed cross and a smile.
‘Master Gold,’ he said. ‘You and Juan are to stay on and help me escort Father Pierre Thomas to Savoy, and if required, beyond.’
‘To Italy!’ I said.
He raised one eyebrow. ‘Perhaps,’ he said.
In fact, it was typical of the complete chaos of the time that having just released almost 100 excellent men-at-arms that they had paid and trained for two years, the Priory of Avignon now needed to hire a dozen men-at-arms on short notice.
Fra Peter wasted a day chasing down a pair of our Germans who were, we heard, just a day’s ride away.
That afternoon, after I’d cleaned and oiled my new harness, which was in no need of care at all, I went to find Juan and we went out into the sunshine. I needed money — that’s what I remember.
Instead, I found Sam Bibbo with a pair of mounted men in patchwork harness. I remember thinking, Is that what I looked like? They were under guard by four papal officers, and they were riding very slowly.
Sam waved, spoke to the guardsmen and came up the street to me. In a moment, I was embracing John Courtney and William Grice. They were headed for Italy, but had come south from Pont-Saint-Esprit because they’d heard I was alive. At the gate — where they’d have been disarmed — they heard there was escort work at the Temple, and they gathered their city escort and came looking for me. I hadn’t seen them since the morning of Brignais, or a day before.
They were two men-at-arms among six travelling together. They’d fought in Brittany and in Burgundy, and they wanted better work.
William Grice met my eye. ‘It’s hell,’ he said. ‘Sweet Christ, Will Gold, you look like St Michael.’
‘Please do not blaspheme,’ Juan said.
Grice put a hand on his sword hilt and looked at me.
‘This isn’t hell,’ I said. ‘We don’t swear.’
Courtney laughed. ‘He is St Michael.’
That evening, after some wine and some stories, I sat down with Fra Peter. ‘I’ve found four men-at-arms interested in taking service in Italy,’ I said.
He nodded. ‘Your own men.’ he said. ‘Your other life.’
‘I. . still want to be a knight. A real knight.’ I found the words difficult to say. ‘I know these men. Hard men, but true.’
He drew a breath and let it out slowly, then turned to face me. ‘Very well. My Germans have already gone — over the mountains to join Sterz in Italy. I’ll hire your routiers.’
We left Avignon under Fra Peter’s command. We were a fine company — John Courtney and William Grice, de la Motte, Fiore, young Juan, Sam Bibbo and I. I paid careful attention to how Fra Peter led these men, who had been my men. Unlike Juan, he didn’t seem to dwell on details, like swearing. Instead, he led by example, repairing his own tack and cooking. When William Grice proved to have a nasty abcess on an old wound, Fra Peter took us to an inn and spent two days there, draining it, filling it with honey and draining it again. He was an expert physician, but then, most members of the Hospital were.
Courtney muttered about being in the company of saints for a few days, and finally desisted. He made a great show of buying a whore in the inn, but this was wasted on Fra Peter.
Then Father Pierre Thomas joined us, and there was no more blasphemy. I had scarcely seen Father Pierre Thomas since my first days in Avignon. He had drawn another escort and ridden into Burgundy, trying to raise funds for his crusade. Now he went to Savoy on the same mission. He ate with us every night, whether we stopped in inns or hostels or made camp in the woods.
As the high ground east of Avignon rose towards Italy into the true Piedmont, we found fewer houses, and those we saw, we distrusted. The companies had been here, and they had despoiled both sides of the main market road for a league or more. Farms were burned, and towns gutted.
But the companies were not alone at fault. There were huge Plague cemeteries. Churches collapsed from lack of care. The third night, we camped in deep woods on the flank of a great ridge, and the air had the cold bite that portended winter. I was the scout, and I found a spring on the hillside with a ruined chapel above it. We used a pavilion roof and blankets from our pack mules to roof what had been a Mary chapel, and we were snug and warm when the freezing rain struck. It seemed blasphemous to light a fire by an altar, but the church was stripped to the walls, and only the remnants of some brightly coloured frescos suggested the place had ever known human hands.
I had been on scouting duty, which relieved me of camp chores, so I sat down with an oily linen rag and began to clean my harness.
Fra Peter sat heavily by me. ‘Good camp,’ he said. ‘Well chosen.’
I caught Will Grice’s eye. He smiled. But he saw me polishing away at my corselet and he laid his own out on the floor, got some ash on a piece of rag and began to hit the worst spots. ‘Easier on a nice bit of stone floor, eh?’ he asked me. He glanced at Fra Peter. ‘He treats you like a squire.’
‘I am a squire,’ I said. I remember that, because it settled something.
When I had my blade oiled — a day in the rain will work through the best scabbard in Christendom — I looked at the fire and found that our living saint, the papal legate to the east, was cooking.
I shot to my feet.
He pointed a wooden spoon at me. ‘Leave me be,’ he said. ‘I was a peasant boy cooking with my mother before I was the Pope’s friend.’
He made a beautiful bean soup. I have to say, he needed no cooking lessons from me.
That night, he told us all something of his life — how he had been born to serfs, how his parish priest had sent him to be educated by the Franciscans, and how he had risen in the Order, gone to the University at Paris, and become the voice of reform in the church, although he didn’t put it that way.