At the very edge of Bohemia we were robbed in an inn, and all our purses taken. That was when Marc-Antonio’s talents began to be seen; he had our travel purse under his pillow, and thanks to his preserving it, we weren’t wrecked. Nerio was mortified to have no money of his own, and tried in every village to cash a bill on the family bank, but in Bohemia, at least in the forest, no one had ever heard of the Acciaioli and their bank, or indeed even of Florence.
But par dieu, my friends, the women of Bohemia are beautiful, tall and honey haired and deep-breasted. Nor are the men any the less handsome, and the knights we saw there were big men, skilled in arms.
We arrived in Prague in late afternoon, and as the next day was the Sabbath, we went to church in the magnificent cathedrals. We knew within an hour of entering the city that the Emperor was not there, and my heart sank within me. But our letters from Father Pierre and the Pope gained me admittance at the castle, and the chamberlain, as I think he was, told me that the Emperor and the King of Cyprus had gone east to visit the King of Poland and the King of Hungary and to hold a great tournament at Krakow, in Poland and we would find him there.
As we travelled east in Bohemia the weather grew cooler and the harvest was more advanced, but the women were not any the less beautiful and the grain was like a shower of gold on the land, the very manna God promised the Israelites. The land grew flatter and flatter until we were riding across the steppes that I had heard described by Fra Peter and by other knights who had fought against the Prussians: Jean de Grailly and the Lord of the Pyrenees, Gaston de Foix. It is one thing to hear traveller’s tales, even from a courteous knight, of how flat the land of the east can be, but it is another thing to see it for yourself.
On the plains, there were no inns and few farms, and while we saw herds in the distance more than once, we were not accosted, but neither were we hosted and feasted, and we ran low on food and had to hunt antelope. Our spear throwing was up to the challenge, and I spent a happy afternoon teaching my squire to lay a snare and take a rabbit. And to cook it.
I cannot remember if I stopped to consider that I was riding across the world on a feckless errand to find the commander of a crusade that might never happen. Or why a commander would ride away from his crusade. I suspect I thought about it, but I was young enough to enjoy the adventure that was offered to me, and that day, that month, that summer, I was offered the steppes and the antelope, the golden wheat, and the matching hair of the lovely maidens of Poland and Bohemia.
We had been a month and more on the road when the spires of Krakow came into sight on the horizon, and such is the flatness of the ground that we had a full day’s ride ahead of us yet, and we lay a night in the Monastery of Saint Nicolas, well out in the country. But the abbot put us immediately at our ease and told us that our quest was fulfilled, and that both the Emperor and the King of Cyprus were at Krakow, preparing a great tournament with all the best Knights of the Empire and Poland.
The abbot was a talkative man, with excellent Latin, our only common tongue, and he told us a great deal about what had transpired, and very little of it to the credit of the Emperor. If the abbot was to be believed, the Emperor had no interest whatsoever in a crusade, but was far too politic to say so, and was holding a tournament to allow King Peter to recruit knights — but Nerio, whose Latin was as much above mine as my swordsmanship was above Marc-Antonio’s, came away with the impression that the Emperor’s hospitality was wearing thin, and that the Cypriotes were expensive and perhaps troublesome guests for the people of Krakow. I remembered that Nan had told me when I was in London that the guilds had given a feast of four kings — the King of France, the King of England, the King of Cyprus and Jerusalem, and the King of Scotland — and how much it had cost the guilds and the alderman of the city.
When Nan told the story, I had been more interested in her, and her face, than in her tale. I had no idea, then, that I would meet Peter of Cyprus.
Any road, the last few leagues, I was as careful as I could be; I saw enemies behind every fence post and inn sign, and my hand was always on my sword and my purse, but looking back, I think we outrode our adversaries, if indeed Robert of Geneva had sent more than the one team of knights. So despite my caution, or perhaps because of it, eventually we reached the inn that bore the arms of the King of Cyprus, and several other blazons across the front.
We dismounted. It was evening, and the sun shining in long rays through the dust. In Krakow, and indeed all of Poland, the greater portion of the buildings are constructed of logs and wood, and the great inn was no different, although it smelled like any other inn from London’s Southwark to Verona; that indefinable air of hospitality and good beer and flees.
We’d crossed half the world to get there, or so it seemed, and then we stood in the street while Marc-Antonio held our horses, straightening our clothes and sorting out all the packets of letters. The Emperor was in the castle and would have to wait for another day.
We paused to wipe off the dust. Nerio’s squire, Alessandro, produced a brush and did his best. I was wearing a peasant’s cote over my red surcoat, to protect it from the dust, and I stripped it off. Fiore emulated me, and Nerio looked meaningfully at our pack horse where we had good clothes. Italian clothes.
Marc-Antonio shrugged. ‘It will take an hour!’ he whined.
Whine or not, I knew he was right. ‘Very well,’ I said, or something equally masterful.
Brushed and combed and still smelling strongly of horse, we walked up the steps, past the porch that was packed with cut firewood, and entered through the great front doors that were pinned back, wide enough for a wagon and team to ride through. A door ward looked us over and made a face.
‘What do you mean, sir?’ I asked. He pointed mutely at my sword, and I unbuckled it off my heavy plaque belt. Fiore did the same, and then Nerio.
Nerio’s sword was one of the finest riding swords I’d ever seen, all blue and gold with a heavy gold pommel that held a saint’s relic, or so it was said. The door ward’s eyes all but popped. He bowed to Nerio again, thus instantly reinforcing my desire to own the very best sword money could buy. Swords command many kinds of respect.
I tried to offer my papers, but the door ward merely bowed silently and indicated the inner door.
We went into the inn and found the King of Cyprus and all his court inside. There were twenty knights there, and as many noble squires, all dressed in the latest Italian modes, with tulip-throated pourpoints and collared shirts as if every one of them was Ser Nerio or Ser Niccolo.
Every head turned to look at us.
A handsome man in white and silver approached us from the right.
‘By what right do you enter our lodging?’ he asked.
I bowed and again offered my papers. ‘My lord, I am a courier carrying letters for the King of Cyprus,’ I said.
The man in white and silver frowned. ‘You are not dressed for court,’ he said.
By that time, my eyes had become accustomed to the light of the interior. The walls were whitewashed, the ceilings were high, even to the rafters, and two great fireplaces lit what, in England, would have been an old-fashioned great hall of logs rather than stone. The heads of deer and elk and bear studded the walls, with tapestries nearly black with age and a magnificent reliquary in silver and gold with jewels that had to have been the property of the king, because it was too rich for any tavern.
Between the fireplaces was a great chair with a beautiful fur of shining black sable hanging over it like a quilt, and sitting on the fur was a young man, not much older than me, in a cloth of gold jupon and hose of red with pearls in the shape of swans as embellishment. He was frowning, playing with a child’s toy of a stick and a ball connected by a string.