I am not sure whether I loved her or not, merely that she was great fun, and seeing her raised my heart every time.
From her I learned what Emile might have taught me of courtly love — about how love can make you a better knight.
We usually made camp within an hour’s ride of the Frangioni castle, and many of us would then wait to see how many hours passed before we saw the tell-tale dust rising as, dressed in silk, she galloped her horse across the fields, her brothers trailing behind.
Twice that autumn we marched on Florence. Florence went so far as to recruit Rudolph von Hapsburg — another famous knight, this one with a name I’d heard, from one of the most powerful families in Swabia. He promised to catch us and — a nasty piece of work — crucify us.
Well. I find Englishmen love to be threatened by fools.
We marched and he marched, and the dust rose. I spent long days in the saddle, siting ambushes that were never sprung, looking for his supply convoys and watching his main force from scrubby trees at the edge of the largest wheat fields in Europe. I had one small feat of arms that fall — I met a German knight at a ford and unhorsed him. I let him go — he was a penniless adventurer — but my name gained a little lustre, and I made him go back to Florence and tell every lady he met that he was the slave of Pamfilo di Frangioni.
When Sir John heard of it, he summoned me to his tent.
‘William, what are you playing at?’ he asked.
I thought I was the wit of the world. ‘Courtly love,’ I said.
‘By St George, young man, our business is war. Tup a ewe if you need to, but make war, sir. Good day.’ He turned and went back to his letters.
I ignored him. To John Hawkwood, of course, war was a business.
In November the weather turned — even Tuscany gets cold rain, and that was the coldest winter anyone could remember. We headed south, but before we’d gone two days march, some of Sterz’s German barbutes turned us from our usual campsites and we were sent west around the city and far from the Frangioni’s.
It was the Plague.
Plague went through us like lettuce through a goose, and we lost men — not many, as most Englishmen were salted, by then — but a great many girls and some of the German men-at-arms. Juan’s pretty lass died, and he never got it. To his immense credit, the Spaniard stayed by her side, moved her to his own tent and breathed her air until she passed. Then he paid for Masses for her soul.
We lost about 300 lances to the Plague.
I thought of my sister, and for the first time in a year, I sat down in an inn and wrote her a long letter, six pages on vellum that cost, each page, as much as the best woman you could buy in our camp.
I rode into Pisa with a safe conduct from Sir John, and purchased another manuscript, this one a selection of Latin recipes from Constantinople. I wrapped the letter and the book in Egyptian fustian and some fine silk, and sent it with a Florentine merchant bound for England. Despite being at war, we traded with Florence pretty freely.
The process of writing and sending my letter caused me to search my trunks — I had two — for wax. By now, even our French boys were men-at-arms, and Perkin commanded a lance, but I still asked him to find things for me. When I explained my problem, he struck himself in the face — a little over-dramatic, but he meant it.
‘By the virgin, William!’ he said. ‘I have your. . your things. From the factor.’ He shook his head. ‘Your old clothes and things.’
There followed a joyful searching through a chest unopened in almost two winters. My clothes were food for moths and worms, as they had been put away filthy. I lifted them from the old trunk with a knife, they were so dirty.
They smelled like old sins, but under the old sins lay one bright virtue.
The trunk held Emile’s favour. I had long assumed it lost. I think I held it and stared at it for most of the time it took my companions to play a full game of piquet, which the Pisans were busy teaching us in order to lighten our wallets, little knowing that the companions had known it for five years. I tucked it into my doublet, walked to our local chapel and paid for a Mass for her soul.
The next day, I heard that Pamfila had died of the Plague. I was riding into Pisa to fetch new clothing, and I met her mother, dressed all in black. She was on a mule, and she rode up to me.
I knew immediately.
She took my hand and cried a little. I had almost no Italian back then, and I had to wait until Fiore came to translate.
She’d taken the Plague only two weeks earlier. She’d swelled for a day, breathed badly and died. But her mother said that before the pustules broke, a man came with a letter from a friend of hers in Florence to tell her the quaint story of having met a German knight who said he was her eternal slave because he’d been taken in a fair empris.
Fiore turned to me. ‘She says, my daughter died with your name on her lips,’ and she says, ‘Always will our family see you as one of us.’
That, too, changed me. If you don’t get why, well. .
Sir John Hawkwood was named captain of Pisa.
It was, in its way, as great a compliment as he could ever have received, and it moved him to the top of our profession. He had been Sterz’s marshal for two years.
But I think it ruined his relations with Sir Albert. I agree that we — the White Company — were a little tired of Sterz’s ways. We would sit in camp for weeks, but we had to rise at dawn every morning. We never slept in, and we never missed a day of lacing, cleaning. .
He was like that. But so was the Order of St John, so I didn’t mind as much as men like William Grice did.
Or, as it turned out, Sir John Hawkwood. But the lads had the notion that Sir John would be easier — and they also knew he was English, while our enemies kept being German. All in all, I think Sir Albert was as good a captain as I ever served under — he was brave, he was careful, he planned well and men liked him. But he didn’t have the — I can’t describe it — the sprezzatura that Hawkwood had. Sir John seemed to do things well — without effort. He had wonderful spies and he used them to stay ahead in everything. He rode well, and he could joust, and he spent the autumn learning to use a hawk and hounds so that he could hunt or falcon with Italian noblemen. He learned these things because he saw it all as part of his profession.
At any rate, Hawkwood was made captain of Pisa. Directly he took the baton — I think it was February of the year of our lord 1364 — he led us on a raid across Tuscany, into Florentine lands in mid-winter.
It had worked against Milan, and I think it had been his idea. But we tried to go too far into the highlands, and the snow was the worst in fifty years — so much snow that the horses couldn’t get grass and began to die. A dead war horse is the single most expensive corpse you’ll ever see.
We passed Carmignano undetected, but the passes were blocked with snow, and after a particularly nasty skirmish at the gates of the Mugello — nasty because everything that hurts, hurts more in bitter cold, and I got knocked off my horse by a German I never saw — Sir John admitted we were beaten and we retreated.
We had no supplies and no baggage train.
Men started to die.
A battle is a crisis, if you like, but it is one for which you plan and train, and it isn’t a surprise — one hopes. That march taxed all of us to, and beyond, our limits. And the strain didn’t come all at once; it built day by day.
I was injured — not wounded, merely badly hurt. I’d fallen well, if falling off a tall horse is ever good, on my arse. I had a bruise as big as Lombardy and a roll of muscle that seemed like an internal wound, it hurt so badly, but I could ride and I could give orders.