Fiore wiped an arm across his face and frowned at me. ‘It is like facing a rival fencing master,’ he said.
As Sister Marie disappeared up the steps behind the stables, Fra Peter collected the swords. ‘She is a rival fencing master, Messire dei Liberi. She teaches monks and nuns; indeed, she has a special licence from the Pope to do so anywhere she goes.’
I flushed. ‘I see,’ I said. ‘I tried to protect her from some carters this morning.’ I thought back over various other comments I’d made. ‘She’s old enough to be my mother,’ I added. And then, ‘If she has a licence, we were in no danger-’
Fra Peter stood up straight and put a hand to the small of his back. ‘And I’m old enough to be your father. What difference does that make?’ He nodded to me. ‘Surely you have learned from your Janet that it is one thing to have official approval and another thing to be the woman in the armour? Eh?’
That afternoon, Fra Peter introduced Fra Ricardo Caracciolo, who had been the papal commander of the city and was now accompanying Father Pierre. He was a tall, grey-haired Italian, with heavy eyebrows and a lively laugh. We exchanged bows, and I liked him immediately.
‘By the Blessed Saint John,’ he said in accented English. ‘It is good to see my Order can still bring the best young knights.’
Who doesn’t like praise?
But his next words chilled me. ‘My squire has just come from Milan,’ he said. ‘Do you know the Count d’Herblay?’
‘Why?’ I asked.
Fra Ricardo shrugged. ‘My young Giovanni only mentioned it because we know you follow the good Fra Peter.’ He shrugged. ‘The man is looking for you. Or so my Giovanni says.’
That night, we dined with Ser Niccolo. He had a rented house — really, very like a palace. We did not eat peacock, nor was any of the food gilded. Instead, we ate a number of dishes I had eaten before, but served hot, and not on gold or silver, but on plain pottery dishes. The wine flowed freely, and was served in beautiful cups of brightly coloured glass, green and blue and yellow.
I can’t remember everything we had, but I remember a fine dish with noodles and duck and truffles, and a game pie. And roast beef served the way the Italians serve it. Several times, Ser Niccolo would rise from his place at the head table and walk among us — there were forty men or more, and as many women, so that for me it seemed a feast in a royal court. He served wine to some, and brought a sauce to another, as if he were a page or squire.
I sat by Ser Nerio, and after the master had offered me wine — delicious red wine — I turned to Ser Nerio. ‘His wife is very beautiful,’ I said.
Ser Nerio laughed. ‘That’s not his wife,’ he said. ‘That’s Donna Giuglia Friussi, his mistress and the mother of two of his children.’
Mistress or wife, she was the hostess of the evening, and she summoned minstrels, applauded a poet, and led the ladies in a fast-paced estampida that seemed more like a fight than a dance.
After a second dance, she came to our table and we all rose and she seated herself with two of her ladies. She was warm from dancing, and she had a scent I had never before experienced, something from the Levant. ‘You are the famous Ser Guillaumo the Cook!’ she said. ‘Ah, every girl in Florence pines for you, messire. Do not, I pray you, break too many Florentine hearts.’
‘Madonna,’ I replied, ‘I promise that, should I ever see a sign of a Florentine lady casting an amorous glance at me, I’d do whatever I could to make sure that her heart remained unbroken.’
She laughed, not a simper or a giggle. ‘Your Italian is good, and so are your manners,’ she said. ‘I don’t think you were ever really a cook.’
I liked this kind of game, always have. I sat back and played with my wine cup. ‘Perhaps if we were to slip into the kitchen, I could prove myself,’ I said.
The two ladies-in-waiting both giggled.
Donna Giulia leaned forward, and I could smell her scent again, more like musk than flowers, and yet at the very edge of perception. Her presence was … palpable. I have known a few women like her, where up close, the impact of beauty and personality can rob you of breath. She put a warm hand on my arm. ‘You play this game very well for an Englishman. What would you make me, in the kitchen?’
I sighed. Italian ladies can play this way for hours and mean nothing, or mean everything, where an English girl would be reduced to giggles — or a blow with her hand. I thought of Sister Marie, Donna Giuglia’s direct opposite.
I leaned forward. ‘I should make you …’ I said softly.
She smiled.
‘… dessert,’ I finished. ‘Perhaps a nice apple tart.’
Now the whole table laughed; some at me, and some with me. Ser Nerio, beside me, gave me a look that told me I’d found the right path. We had skirted the marshy ground, for flirting with your host’s mistress is a dangerous game at the best of times.
She threw back her head and laughed, not a ladylike simper, but almost a roar.
Ser Niccolo appeared at my shoulder. He poured his lady wine and she told him of the whole exchange, word for word.
He raised his eyebrows. ‘But of course you must go make her an apple tart. I insist only that I have some too.’ He grinned. ‘Think of it as a feat of arms. Or a task of love.’
‘He loves apples,’ Donna Friussi said.
Juan glared at me, and Miles looked offended on my behalf, but given Ser Niccolo’s origins, I didn’t think he meant a slur. At any rate, I rose and took my beautiful glass of wine to the kitchen, following a page.
The cook was a big man with a pair of enormous knives in a case in his belt, and he frowned and then shrugged. ‘Whatever my lord and lady require,’ he said, ‘it is my task to provide. You wish to make an apple tart? So be it.’
I found that the darker of Donna Giulia’s ladies was at my shoulder. ‘This may take an hour or two,’ I said.
She shrugged and sipped her wine.
By the time I’d made my dough and was rolling it out, I had a little crowd. Ser Nerio was there, and Ser Niccolo, and Donna Giuglia. I had flour on my best doublet, and I was having a fine time. In fact, I was the centre of attention, and I like that well enough. And the cook had decided to humour me — better than that, he was actively supporting me, so that when I was at the point of forgetting salt in my crust, he slapped a salt horn on to the table beside my hand.
A pair of boys chopped apples for me. I discovered that the palazzo boasted a majolica jar of cinnamon, a fabulous spice from the east — you know it? Ah, everyone does, now. I ground it myself, and held my fingers out to the dark lady-in-waiting and she breathed in most fetchingly.
More and more of the guests found their way into the kitchens, and Ser Niccolo served a pitcher of wine to the cook’s staff. He had rented the house, and none of the staff knew what to make of him: cook’s apprentices do not usually mix with the guests. But Donna Giuglia brought musicians into the kitchen, and there was dancing, and a lady began to sing. And then, as I assembled my little pies, Donna Giulia took a tambour and raised it, and everyone fell silent, and she whispered to one of the lute players. Accompanied by only a single lute, she danced and sang to her own song.
She was magnificent. Let me add that she was so good that the fifty guests and twenty kitchen staff crammed into the corners of a great kitchen gave her both silence and room — and that she had an open strip of tiled floor no wider than a horse’s stall and not much longer, and she held us all spellbound.
I finished my pies. I put Master Arnaud’s mark on them — I don’t know what imp moved me to do that. Perhaps just the memory of every other apple tart I’d ever made. The cook swept them away into the great oven by the fireplace, itself big enough to roast an ox.
Donna Giuglia finished, her honey-coloured hair swaying, and every man and woman whistled, shouted, clapped their hands or laughed aloud, and she stood and swayed a moment, eyes closed.