Ser Niccolo went and threw his arms around her and kissed her — a lover’s kiss. I had seldom seen outside of army camps a woman kissed in such a way in public, but I gathered that there were few rules that applied to Ser Niccolo.
After the dance, it was difficult for any of us to reach the level that Donna Giuglia had set us, and we chatted. I began to tidy up the mess I’d made, and the cook and his apprentices began to look at me reproachfully, but in truth, it gave me something to do, and I didn’t want to stand idle and silent among strangers.
Ser Niccolo came and put an arm around my shoulder. ‘Now I believe that you were truly a cook,’ he said.
‘While I confess, my lord, that I have trouble believing that you were ever a stingy banker,’ I said.
He laughed. ‘Perhaps I became a knight because I was such a very bad banker.’
My little pies emerged from the oven, no thanks to me, and carefully watched, no doubt, by the professional. But they were golden brown, and the scent alone — I’d used more eastern spices in six small pies than one of Prince Edward’s cooks would see in a month of Sundays — the scent alone suggested that the gates of heaven might be close.
I put one small pie on a wooden trencher and presented it on my knees to Donna Giuglia.
She laughed. ‘I think I have been bested,’ she said.
Ser Niccolo took a bite, and he looked at me over his pie with pure, unadulterated approval.
I cut the pies as small as I could, and almost everyone had a bite.
At the door, Ser Niccolo took my hand. ‘I love a man who is not afraid,’ he said.
I assumed he was serious, so I shook my head. ‘My gracious lord, I’m afraid all the time.’
‘You were not afraid to make the pies. In public.’ He was serious.
‘I was afraid that they might not come out. It has been a few years.’ I smiled.
He didn’t return the smile. ‘But this is exactly what I meant. Wait, please. I want you to meet my son Nerio.’
I had seen Nerio all evening, and never known him to be the great man’s son. But of course, when I saw them together, it was obvious. Nerio was my own age, as handsome as his father, and at this late stage he had another spectacularly beautiful woman at his elbow, this one thinner and more otherworldly than Donna Giuglia, but neither more nor less magnificent. I knelt to her and to him, and he pulled me sharply to my feet.
‘By God, messire, you are a famous knight and a competent pastry cook, and I am neither!’ He laughed. ‘When there is steel singing in the air, I find a lady’s lap and hide my head there like a unicorn.’
It has amused me all my life, the different ways men boast.
I had a fine night. After I saluted Nerio, I slipped around the palazzo and in by the tradesman’s alley, and found the cook. ‘Here’s three florins to share,’ I said. ‘I know how much work you went to for me.’
He took the florins without hesitation and gave me a little bow. ‘You were truly a cook?’ he asked.
I looked past him at the circle of apprentices. ‘Never,’ I said. ‘I was a cook’s boy, and Master Arnaud would never have trusted me to cook a pie on my own.’
That made them all laugh, even the master. And as if he’d been drawn by the laughter, I saw Ser Niccolo appear on the servant’s stairs.
‘Sneaking into my house?’ he asked.
‘Offering my compliments, because these men made me look better than I am,’ I said.
He nodded. ‘If you always remember to thank the men that help you step up …’ He shrugged. ‘Where do you bank, Ser William?’
‘With the Bardi,’ I admitted. My Genoese bankers.
He nodded and cocked his head to one side. ‘They will fail — if not this year than the next. Your prince has served them but ill again and again.’
I was sitting on the same table where I’d prepared the pies. It seemed incongruous to me: Ser Niccolo was wearing the most magnificent grande assiette pourpoint I’d ever seen in crimson silk covered in gold embroidery, and he was leaning against the fireplace.
Well, I wasn’t his squire, thanks be to God.
‘Move your money to my family’s bank,’ Ser Niccolo said.
I grinned. ‘My lord, I’d move only my debt. I’m owed some ransoms, but another knight collected …’
Ser Niccolo smiled and made a very Florentine gesture with his hands, a sort of denial of the very statement he was about to make. ‘I know all this,’ he admitted. He smiled at me. ‘Give me your account, and I will find your money.’
I suppose I frowned. ‘Why?’ I asked.
Ser Niccolo tilted his head to one side like a very intelligent dog. ‘You are a friend of Acuto Hawkwood. A good friend for me to have. A good knight. And you serve Father Pierre. Any one of these things might have made me notice you, but you now have all three things.’ He leaned towards me. ‘You can, I think, read and write.’
I shrugged. ‘Yes. Latin or English.’
He nodded. ‘Write me a letter giving me your account, and I will see to it you receive the money due you on your ransoms.’ He slapped me on the shoulder. ‘Really, I ask nothing more.’
As I walked through the dark streets with his linkboys lighting my way, I searched for the strings that would make this dangerous, but all I could see was that it would be a fine thing to be friends with the Florentine. He was the Queen of Naples’s chancellor, a great knight, and a powerful lord.
And I had had a wonderful time.
If I’ve given another impression, I’m a poor storyteller. And back at the university, I had to tell all the tales of the evening to Fra Peter, who had stayed with Father Pierre. He laughed at my failure to recognise that Nerio was Ser Niccolo’s son.
‘By his wife, who stays in Florence,’ he said.
Father Pierre came in behind us, carrying a pitcher of wine. He poured me wine with his own hands — he always did. He was the worst great church officer imaginable. He helped servants carry furniture and he liked to lay out his own vessels for serving Mass, even in Famagusta when he was with the king — but I get ahead of myself.
‘Ser Niccolo wears his sins as well as he wears his jewels,’ Father Pierre said. ‘He would be more beautiful without them, but he never allows them to weigh on him.’ He shrugged to me. ‘I have known him ten years and more. The power he wields has corrupted him, but not so very much.’
‘I liked his lady,’ I confessed. ‘His mistress.’ I flushed.
Father Pierre laughed. ‘Why should you not? God made her as much as he made you or me and she is a very good lady, despite her sins.’ He shrugged. ‘I am a bad priest. But as a celibate, what do I know of the world? Nothing. It is not for me to judge, but God.’ He turned to Fra Peter. ‘But Niccolo will accompany us to Venice, at least for a few days. I have word of King Peter. He left Rheims; not for Venice, as he promised, but for the court of the Holy Roman Emperor.’
Fra Peter went white.
Father Pierre sighed. ‘I agree with your unspoken words. There are three thousand men-at-arms at Venice, and it is the most expensive city in the world. Every day he delays is a day he is not making war on the infidel. And those men will drift away to wars in Italy. Will they not, William?’
I blew air out of my lips. ‘Unless Walter Leslie has a great many more ducats than he showed at Pisa, he can’t keep them together for long.’
Fra Peter looked at the crucifix on the wall for a long time. ‘What is King Peter thinking of?’ he asked.
Pierre steepled his fingers in front of him. ‘I am thinking that he was not informed that he was the commander of the crusade before he left Rheims.’ He looked at me. ‘But he is a strange man; a wonderful man, and a great knight. But very much a man.’ Father Pierre looked over his hands at the table in front of him and finally shook his head. ‘I don’t think we can do anything. Any day, the Pope’s appointment will reach him, and he will realise how essential is his presence. We must get to Venice now, and see to the men who are to be my flock.’