They were just opening the gates, a fine triple arch to the north. I presented our travel documents to the officer on the gate.
He flicked through them. And nodded.
The gates continued to open.
We passed through them, bags and baggage, in about the time it would take a man to say the Ave Maria. No one was disposed to linger. I saluted the gate officer, took our travel papers back, and rode through. When I emerged on the other side, I found I’d hunched my back against … well, boiling oil, which I feared all the way under the arch.
We passed Montorio, a Cavalli castle, a little outside of town, and one of the knights of that house rode up to us with his banner displayed. He knelt in the road and accepted the cross of a crusader, and we rode for Vicenza — and Venice.
Vicenza was beautiful, although not as beautiful as Verona. Padua was richer yet. The plains of northern Lombardy were, if anything, yet richer, and the hills were incredibly lush. Everything smelled wonderful — the hills smell of flowers and crushed grass even at the height of summer.
Fiore looked at the country north of Verona with a predatory eye. ‘They say the cows give butter,’ he said. ‘That’s how rich they are.’
Indeed, as we passed from town to town and city to city, I was struck nearly dumb by the riches. Every town had a cathedral and some had two. There were monasteries and castles on every hill; vineyards covered the hillsides, and there were almost as many olive trees as I had seen around Sienna and Pisa.
As far as I could tell, this country had never known war. And having just come from Avignon, the contrast with France couldn’t have been greater — the difference between a beautiful house and a burned-out shell. The peasants wore good wool, and many had Egyptian cloth shirts; women wore fine gowns, often well fitting, and with enough buttons to pass as the gentry of England. They ate good bread and drank good wine and their sausages were among the best I’ve ever had.
And the closer we got to Venice, the denser the traffic on the roads. By the time we reached Padua, we were passing trains of merchant wagons and laden pack animals carrying cloth from the northern fairs, cloth that had come over the passes from Savoy and the Swiss cantons, from Germany and Flanders and England. And we passed a pair of wagons carrying Bohemian glass and armour, sword blades from Germany, and then load after load of grain from all the country about.
Fra Peter winked at me. ‘Have you been to Venice?’ he asked.
I shook my head. ‘You know I have not,’ I answered.
He laughed. ‘You are full of surprises, William. But Venice is … remarkable. And all of this is but a tithe of the products that flow through her port. Most of it comes by sea, or up the canals.’
Well, who has not heard of Venice?
We had planned to take a more northerly route from Padua and the legate had tasks in every city, but he received letters at Padua, one from the Pope urging him to haste, and letters from the bishops of England, Normandy and Burgundy.
That night in Padua, Sister Marie came to my room. She found me reworking the scabbard of my arming sword. It was a fine sword, and I prized it, but the leather was coming off the wood core of the scabbard where Juan had stepped on it. All the donats were gathered around my straw pallet, watching me, and Miles Stapleton had a stinking pot of fish-hide glue he’d got from the leatherworker across the convent yard.
‘But the wood’s broken!’ Juan said in his Catalan French.
Sister Marie appeared at the door. I remember this as if it was yesterday. She wrinkled her nose at the smell and then pushed in with her intense curiosity about everything that characterised her.
I pulled a small, flat piece of bronze out of my shoulder scrip. It was a clipping off a larger piece, and I’d bought it for almost nothing the day before. I held it up so Juan could see it.
He grinned.
I used my eating knife, which was sharper than a razor, to shave the broken wood away. My eyes met Sister Marie’s, and she smiled, so I went on.
I took the brush from the warm glue and spread the stinking stuff on the wood, and pushed the broken edges together. ‘It looks repaired, like this,’ I said. ‘But it’s like a man with a broken bone. If you don’t splint it, it won’t knit. So I take the metal plate …’
Suiting action to word, I laid one small bronze strip on the back of the scabbard, and the second on the front, as if I was splinting a bone, indeed. Then I pulled the leather of the scabbard cover back into place. ‘The leather makes a tight seal. You have to sew it up while the glue is still warm and wet.’ I used a curved needle — a rare commodity, purchased back in Bologna for half a florin — and in twenty stitches, I had the whole scabbard fixed.
I used a little more glue on the mouth of the scabbard’s chape, and slid it back on to the point of the scabbard; then I put two holding stitches through the leather. I turned the scabbard around. The plates showed a little under the thin-stretched red leather, but altogether, it was a decent job.
Sister Marie shook her head. ‘The glue inside will dry and fill the scabbard,’ she said.
I grinned; it’s so nice to actually know something, when you are a young man. ‘Miles?’ I said, and Stapleton produced a second smelly tin, this one full of tallow. I took my arming sword and coated the blade a fingernail thick in tallow, and then slid it home.
‘Good for the scabbard’s wood; good for the sword. And now the glue has nothing to hold.’ I smiled at Sister Marie, and she grinned.
‘You are a useful young man,’ she allowed. ‘Can you fix a book cover?’
I shrugged. ‘I imagine I can, ma soeur. I made all the fittings for a Bible once.’
‘Hmmf,’ she said, or something like it. ‘Well, that was a good trick, that with the tallow. If I break my scabbard, I’ll come and find you.’ She turned to go, and paused. ‘My old memory is playing me games,’ she said. ‘I came with a curious letter. Addressed to “Guillaume D’Or, Miles Dei”.’ Her eyes met mine.
I shrugged. And reached for it.
‘The bishop of Nantes included it,’ she went on, her eyes fixed on mine. She was withholding it.
I sighed. ‘Truly, Sister, I have no idea.’
She placed it in my hand. ‘The legate’s couriers are not for your private letters,’ she said. She raised one eyebrow, as if to suggest that she knew a thing or two, which I did not doubt for an instant.
She slipped out of the room.
Juan shook his head. ‘She thinks all men are fools,’ he said. ‘She is too forward.’
Miles frowned. ‘I like her,’ he said.
I was starting to open the parchment, which was folded eight times and sealed with a heavy archbishop’s seal in purple wax, when Ser Nerio pushed in the door.
‘Christ, what are you doing? Roasting heretics?’ Nerio wrinkled his nose and put a perfumed glove to his face.
‘I suppose you would know the smell,’ Fiore shot back.
Nerio ignored Fiore. ‘What is this? Some foul English food?’
I raised my eyes, still struggling with the parchment. ‘I fixed my scabbard,’ I said.
Nerio laughed. He saw it leaning, point up, in the corner and went to pick it up.
‘With stinking glue? Maria Star of Heaven, messire! Pay a leatherworker to fix your scabbards! I have to sleep here!’ He waved his perfumed glove in front of his face.
I got the parchment open.
Juan said something about it being useful to know how to look after your own gear.
It was from Emile. Well, it seems obvious like this, but it wasn’t obvious to me.
My heart paused — then it beat again, very fast.
Love and war — so different. But not, perhaps, so different.
Dear William,