I was watching Milady as she was behaving oddly. The day after Perkin died, I found her in camp, dressed in a kirtle and gown. She looked down her nose at me and I rode on.
Perkin left a hole in my lances, and in my life — I couldn’t find anything. I never had six pair of lace points that matched. I didn’t have a squire just then, so I picked up the youngest man-at-arms to join us at Prato, an English boy still young enough to have pimples, who had come all the way out from England to fight in Italy. We were becoming famous. His name was Edward, and his father, he said, was a bishop.
Edward Bishop, he called himself. And with the same draft from England came a Scot — or an Irishman — Colin Campbell.
We rode further east and linked up with Baumgarten in the hills of Montughi, where we camped. Rudolph von Hapsburg had finally stopped waiting for us on the other side of the city and had retreated to Florence proper. All our marching hadn’t got us clear of him, though. We could see his camp fires.
Beyond his fires, we could see Florence in the distance. Baumgarten and Hawkwood put their pavilions side by side, and we saw the two of them, sitting on camp stools, drinking wine.
We drank wine, too. Probably too much. We were angry — angry as soldiers are when they feel they have not been well led. Soldiers — professional soldiers — are like the men and boys who put on the passion plays at Clerkenwell. You work and work — make your costume, write and rewrite your lines, and then you put on your performance, and for a few days you are the toast of London. But then some other guild puts on their bit — they have a splendid King Herod, a fine Jesus who moves the women to tears — and your brilliant bit is forgotten. We’d had our moment at Canturino, but since then, we’d been defeated by snow and the Germans; the crowd no longer sang our praises, but those of the Germans. Our own Italians were deserting. We’d left Pisa with 2,000 lances of English and Germans, and another thousand Italian men-at-arms. Now we had just a few hundred.
I sat on a leather trunk, sewing a grommet. Grommets are the very sinews of armour — for every piece, there are a couple of grommets in your arming coat to hold the whole thing together. Sewing made me think of Perkin, who was, sans doute, the best squire I’d ever had. My new squire couldn’t sew and clearly thought the whole thing beneath him, so I sat in the firelight with my arming doublet, trying to coax the torn out holes back into shape so I could lace on my leg harnesses the next day — if we were going to fight.
Perhaps I should have punished him. What I remember is being tired all the time. Tired with fatigue and — men tell you this often, monsieur? — tired of it all. When Perkin died, it was as if the whole game had no point. Let me tell you how it is. The more times you face the fight, and the more men you kill, the harder it is to smile, to laugh, to see the glory in the day. Even to have a friend or a lover. What comes easier is to drink hard, gamble and never, ever go inside your head to see what’s there. Perhaps I should have punished my lazy, arrogant squire, but had I roused myself, I might simply have killed him, because that is where you go, when all you do and all you breathe is fighting and death.
Chivalry is the answer. Just as men have developed laws to protect us from greed — pale reflections of God’s law, perhaps, but rules nonetheless — so we have chivalry to protect us from violence. So that if we must kill, we have rules.
I remember that night, because we were all there. Not Robert, killed by peasants, and not Seamus, killed by Germans, nor Perkin. But Janet was there, slim and blue, drinking from a Venetian glass and sitting in a broad chair her squire had stolen from a church. John Hughes was there, leaning over her, making a joke, and Sam Bibbo was quietly sharpening arrows. Fiore was watching her, but he was talking about feats of arms he’d heard of, and he had Juan’s attention and William Grice’s. Courtney was trying to shave in the dark, with a dozen men ‘helping’ by making suggestions, most of which would have made a Southwark girl blush. Arnaud was trying a pair of leg harnesses, and a patient armour merchant — a Florentine, no less — was making adjustments. John Thornbury was playing cards with de la Motte and a pair of Baumgarten’s men-at-arms. Kenneth MacDonald was repairing his jupon — a great deerskin coat stuffed with sheep’s wool — and trading Irish jibes with Colin Campbell.
I watched them all, and I thought of all the others. Ned Candleman. Chris Shippen. Richard.
Christ, I missed Richard.
And drinking and thinking about Perkin made me angry.
‘Tomorrow,’ I said, and everyone stopped. I must have sounded like a madman. Wode. Milady turned and looked at me, and her eyes were wide.
‘Tomorrow, we should show the Germans what we are,’ I said.
Fiore looked at me and smiled. ‘Do you intend some feat of arms?’ he asked.
‘By God, that’s just what I intend,’ I said.
Just after dark, a boy came and fetched me to Sir John Hawkwood. He had his feet up, and he was holding a silver cup. He looked quite relaxed. Sir Hannekin was sitting by him.
‘William,’ he said and nodded.
‘Sir John?’ I asked.
‘Hannekin, this is William Gold, whom I’ve known since he was a boy. He’ll command Andrew Belmont’s lances. William, we’re going to try for the city. We won’t take it — Florence has more people than we have grains of wheat in this camp — but I intend to drive in Hapsburg’s outposts and break his barricades.’
‘I’m in,’ I said.
‘You’d best be in, young William,’ Sir John said. ‘Your battle has the best armour. You are the vanguard. I want you to go first — right at their barricades.’
I nodded. ‘Consider it done,’ I said. Or something equally brash.
Baumgarten laughed. ‘Quite the young cock,’ he said. ‘I offered my best German knights, but Sir John must have you. I’ll have my eye on you, Master William.’
I was given wine. I tried not to sound too drunk, and after a little while, and some polite noises, I went back to my people.
They all looked at me.
‘Tomorrow,’ I said, ‘I mean to avenge Seamus and Perkin. And win my spurs, or die trying.’
No one said a thing. The fire crackled and I went to my cloak.
I mean, what else was there?
I didn’t have Richard, and I didn’t have Emile, and I wasn’t ever going to be a knight. I was full of anger. And I thought, Plague take them all. I’ll just cut my way to the gates of hell.
We rose before dawn. I didn’t have a hangover, and after two leather bottles of water, a cup of wine and some hard bread and honey, I felt ready to face my armour. It was the first of May. I remembered May — the month of love. I took Emile’s favour out of my clothes and attached it to the peak of my helmet.
‘Let’s get this done, Edward,’ I said.
He sighed.
I put on a clean shirt and my arming doublet, the one I’d repaired the night before, over clean braes and my best red hose. He pointed my hose to my doublet. ‘This is servant’s work,’ he muttered.
I said nothing.
Perkin used to lay all my harness out on dry blankets. Edward didn’t know what to do — I think he’d only armed in dry castles and nice big pavilions. ‘I didn’t get much sleep last night,’ he said.
‘You attach the greave to the cuisse with the little key,’ I said. ‘Before you put it on my leg.’
‘I know that,’ he said, hurrying to do as I’d said, as if he’d known all along. He knew, at one level, but at another, he’d forget what he was doing.
He was afraid, of course.
He stopped to put my sabatons on, and he spent far too much time on just two buckles. Then he seated the left leg and closed the greave.
‘I need more light,’ he said.
I said nothing.
He took an aeon getting the buckles closed on the cuisse.