I tried to add it up in my head: Milan was the enemy of the Pope, and Savoy was related to Milan and an ally of the Pope, and Robert of Geneva, our erstwhile assailant, was part of the Savoyard clan, trying to take control of the crusade, and all the mercenaries that the Pope was enlisting …
If the prelates thought that they could control the routiers this way, they needed to spend a winter with John Hawkwood. I had the notion that the Savoyards were plotting without understanding the consequences of their actions. As the great often do, the Savoyards had forgotten that lesser men might have better heads for plotting.
One of the ways that Italy had changed me was the way in which I saw the divides. Listen — when you are a London apprentice, the divides are simple enough: the Goldsmiths before all the other trades; Trades and Mysteries before the nobles; London before any other town; England and England’s King above all other kings and countries.
Simple.
As an Englishman, I had tended to see every conflict measured by the English side; so, for example, in the war between the Pope and Milan, the Pope represented the ‘French’ side and Milan the ‘English’ side, although as time went by it was clear to me that these simple views of Italian politics wouldn’t stand up to scrutiny, and in the end, Milan married his daughter to the King of France. But Hawkwood assured us, his English soldiers, that when we fought for Pisa against Florence (an ally of the Pope) we were still fighting on the ‘English’ side. And that mattered.
It mattered, but a year in Italy had revealed a few things to me. One was that Milan was richer than all of England. I had yet to visit Venice or Genoa, but knew each city was richer than the whole of England including London and Florence was larger than Paris and hadn’t endured ten years of near-constant starvation and war.
That meant that to see Italian conflicts through English eyes was like the plough dragging the ox. Edward III of England might plot all he wanted, but his schemes and those of Charles V of France were mere back alleys in the labyrinthine city of European diplomacy. I didn’t come to this in one year, but I was beginning to suspect that there was more to Amadeus’s quarrels with the Pope, or with Milan, than his relations with England and France.
So the divides were both true and false, and a mercenary, or a crusader, needed to be able to look at every plot from several angles. It was possible for a good man, a true man, to find himself on both sides of any question, because of divided loyalties or interest. As one example, Amadeus of Savoy, the Green Count, and his Savoyards hated the English and were at least in their hearts loyal to the French King, but the Green Count was a sovereign prince; he owed no fealty to anyone, king or Emperor, except for a few estates. He served the Pope, but he had designs of his own in Italy. He wanted a crusade — and he wanted to control it himself. He was not the sort of man who would abide another’s commands. And his cousin Robert of Geneva, formerly Bishop of Cambrai, was a Savoyard first and foremost.
And my lady Emile was the wife of one of the Savoyard nobles.
At any rate, the Green Count was not at Turin, and neither was the Comte d’Herblay or his wife, nor Richard Musard. We stayed three days; Father Pierre had a long discussion on crusade funding with the Green Count’s chamberlain, and we rode east and south, over the passes to Italy. There was still snow on the mountaintops, but the valleys were already in summer, with fields of flowers stretching away like the very embodiment of paradise.
And then we rode down out of the mountains into the plain of Lombardy, and I was back in Italy. By Saint Maurice, gentlemen, I hope I won’t seem a worse Englishman to you if I say that I love Italy. It is warm and the wine is good.
We were bound for Bologna. To make the crusade possible, the Pope had curtailed his war with Milan, and his only concrete benefit from two solid years of war was that he had gained the city of Bologna. But let me put that in perspective. Bologna’s taxes were roughly the same as those of the City of London. Eh bien?
Italy is rich.
Father Pierre had taken the city as papal legate while I’d been fighting for Pisa, and had proved himself both a fine governor and a Christian man in his dealings. Now he was going back to perform a good deed for the Bolognese, and to rally his own support for the crusade.
We were housed in the university. Bologna was not the most famous house of learning in Italy, but it had a mighty reputation for its doctors of medicine. The main palazzo was a magnificent building of brick and marble, and had frescoes better than anything in Avignon. I shared a room with Juan and with Fiore, and the three of us filled it to bursting with clothes and harness and horse tack.
The day we arrived, the three of us spent the entire afternoon going over all the tack — every mule saddle, every bridle. We were, in effect, the squires of the whole party.
In the evening, we laid out the knight’s tack and several items that needed serious repairs, and Miles Stapleton came and joined us in the cloistered courtyard. Some of the men in gowns were scandalised, but most smiled to see us so industrious.
Half the bridles needed some repair, and Fra Peter’s saddle was leaking stuffing and the tree was wearing through the leather so that it had to be troubling his mount. I went and fetched him, and he shook his head.
‘I need a new saddle,’ he confessed. ‘I should have seen to this in Avignon. I hadn’t expected to leave in such a hurry.’
I showed him the saddle for Sister Marie’s mule, which was in worse shape than his. ‘She must ride a great deal,’ I said.
Fra Peter smiled. ‘She does indeed. Mon dieu — that’s bad. The tree is broken.’
Indeed, you could flex the saddle in your hands.
Fra Peter made a face. ‘In Avignon, I could have us new saddles in a few hours.’ He was frustrated, a face he never showed us.
‘Can’t we buy saddles?’ I asked. ‘It seems a mighty city!’
Indeed, Bologna was two-thirds the size of London and had shops and stalls and a great market and many leatherworkers.
Fra Peter smiled; not a bitter smile, but not a happy one, either. I noted that there was something of Anne’s derision in Fra Peter’s smile. ‘I’m vowed to poverty, William,’ he said. ‘So is Sister Marie.’
Throughout the conversation, he was sitting comfortably on the stone between two columns of the cloister, while I continued to sew away at Father Hector’s bridle.
‘I’m not,’ said a man from behind Fra Peter. ‘Vowed to poverty. Ser Peter Mortimer, how fare you?’
The man addressing my knight was one of the handsomest men I ever saw, despite being more than half a century old, as I later discovered. He was also one of the most richly dressed men I’d ever seen, as out of place in the cloister of Bologna as a nun in a Cheapside chophouse. He wore a green silk pourpoint, stuffed and quilted, with a band of gold at each wrist and a collared shirt that emerged from the collar of his pourpoint like a white flower, a fashion I’d never seen before. He also wore a sword, which was unheard of in Bologna; a longsword, the kind that Fiore favoured, gilded steel on the cross guard and a jewel in the pommel, which was a wheel of gold. His hose were gold and green, and he wore a profusion of gold rings and a gold collar that matched the gold plaques on his belt.
He and Fra Peter embraced like old comrades. In fact, I discovered that this prince and Fra Peter were old comrades.
‘Let me buy you some saddles,’ he said. ‘Peter, it is the least I can do.’
Fra Peter shook his head. ‘Nicolas, I could not.’