He caught my eye. And rose with the sort of athletic fluidity that Fiore has, and Fra Peter. I strive for it: it is he mark of a great man-at-arms.
He moved like a greyhound, all long legs and stride. And he moved with purpose, crossing the great hall in ten paces, and his courtiers moved out of his way. He threw the ball-and-stick toy at one of them and the man caught it.
No one needed to tell me that this was Peter de Lusignan, King of Cyprus, King of Jerusalem. Men said he was the best lance in the West; the best knight in Christendom.
I went down on one knee.
Nerio and Liberi emulated me.
‘De Tenoury, tell these three that I am prepared to imagine that they are here on important business,’ the king said. ‘But to enter my presence dressed as peasants is to dishonour their master, whomever he might be, and me as well.’ He all but spat. ‘I’ve had enough of being humiliated today.’
Silver and white leaned over me. ‘You heard his Grace,’ he said. ‘Come back when you are properly dressed. Or come in by the servant’s entrance.’
I was well trained — the order drills etiquette as well as all the other knightly skills. So I kept my head bowed, but I growled, ‘I am a knight and a servant of the Order of St John and I am here with messages from the legate and the Pope.’
The king bit his lip and looked at an older man in blue and red standing near him. When I say older, this gentleman was perhaps forty, with grey in his blond hair and lines on his face. His blue eyes flashed over me.
‘If your Grace wishes to order these men away, of course he may,’ the man said.
‘But, de Mezzieres? My faithful pilgrim? Always, your voice has that hint of censure. Please, share with us the nature of our failings.’ The king’s voice rose and fell a little more than was necessary.
De Mezzieres bowed. ‘Your Grace, it is not my place to put any censure on your royal head. Yet …’
‘Yet?’ asked the king, and there was an obvious warning in his voice.
‘Yet I will say that I would expect the King of Cyprus, the commander of the Passagium Generale, to fall on his knees and kiss any missive the Pope sends him,’ said the older man, with his head high and his eyes boring holes in the king.
The king glared for a moment at the older Frenchman. I knew that the older man must be Philippe de Mezzieres, the king’s chancellor; I had letters for him and had heard him described. The king pursed his lips and stalked across the great hall, opened a door, and paused.
‘It may be your fondest desire that I be shackled hand and foot to your damned crusade, Monsieur de Mezzieres, but it was never mine.’ He went through, and slammed the great oak door behind him.
The silence was like that of the pause between strokes of thunder.
‘Let’s go,’ I said, very softly. My instinct was to obey the orders of the king, however childish, and not get caught up in some courtier’s drama. I had been a squire for the Prince of Wales, and I knew something of princes. Quick to anger, and often deeply regretful later of letting the mask slip. But very conscious of the rules.
I was trained for this. I knew to bide my time, hide my emotions, and remain a knight. But I was angry.
I felt … humiliated. I had come a long way, and somehow had grown used to the armour of authority that was the habit of St John. Indeed, I felt that my Order had been humiliated. I was angry, and to my shame, I took it out on poor Marc-Antonio. Out on the street, he dared to ask what had happened.
‘We were tossed on our ears,’ I spat. ‘Because our clothes are dusty and unsuitable.’ My tone and my glare carried a clear message — he and his whining were at fault.
His face fell. In fact, it didn’t just fall — it collapsed like an undermined stone tower.
It’s a small thing, for a man who has killed. You’d think I was hardened to it, but I had been with the Order for more than a year, and the collapse of his face, the twitch of his mouth — it was as if I’d kicked him.
I promise you, I didn’t think of it at the time. I was so furious that I almost missed my mounting, and when I was up I found that I’d left my arming sword with the door ward. Fuming, I had to dismount and reclaim it.
He bowed. ‘The king’s had a hard day,’ he said, in good French.
I considered a nasty reply, and thank God I bit my tongue and acted the part of a knight. I nodded, forced a smile, and bowed.
But between getting our own inn, finding our clothes and bribing a pair of maids to iron our things — we couldn’t get back before darkness fell.
Nerio finally put a hand on my arm. ‘Sir William,’ he said carefully, ‘I am going for a glass of wine and some beef. I recommend that you do the same.’ He didn’t wait for my expostulations, either, but took Fiore by the shoulder — took Fiore, for the love of the good Jesu; Fiore, who he affected to despise — and left our rooms and went to the head of the inn stairs without looking back at me. Fiore went with him willingly enough.
I suppose I had given them a difficult afternoon. In fact, I had behaved badly — disappointment and humiliation bring out the worst in most of us. I was left with Marc-Antonio. He kept his head down and kept laying out clothes and trying to boss the maids, who ignored him and went back and forth, heating their irons in a box by the fire. The box, of course, kept soot off the irons so that they were clean.
I still didn’t apologise. I sat there, my black mood further darkened by the abandonment of my friends, until the maids lit tapers and I smelled the beautiful smell of resin in the torches. The smell woke me from my mood, and I went down and ate, but my companions were scarcely civil. Twice, Fiore looked at me in a way that suggested he was considering physical violence.
I went to bed early. As a consequence, I rose with the dawn. I dressed plainly and left a message that the others should not wait for me. My anger was gone, replaced, as it often is, with a sort of guilt complicated by fear — fear that I would be humiliated again and fear that I had behaved badly with my friends and it couldn’t be fixed; a common fear for a young man, I think.
I had no experience of this particular world. I’d been a minor servant, and now, to all intents, I was a sort of ambassador. I didn’t know the rules, but I knew damned well that if I went back as the Order’s representative to King Peter, I would go alone, test the waters, and do my best to avoid public humiliation. And spare my friends. And, perhaps, apologise to them.
I was dirty, and I decided to wash. I managed to find a bathhouse. Like Bohemia and High Germany, the bathhouses of Poland are correctly notorious as dens of vice, staffed with scantily clad women whose single layer linen garments stick to their bodies in the steam in a most attractive manner.
Shall I go on? They really are splendid, and if priests don’t want men to fornicate, why did God make women so beautiful? Eh? Answer me that. By Saint George, I was in a much better mood when I emerged, clean in body if slightly soiled in soul. The woman who washed me — I can still see her, because she smiled all the time and nothing so becomes a woman as a smile — she was a good leman, luscious and lovesome and very tall. And very apt for the game.
Hmm. I digress too much. I think perhaps old men think too much of the pleasures of the body, eh? But by Saint Maurice, sirs, I had my sport, and discovered that she spoke some little Latin, and we amused each other thoroughly, chanting prayers back and forth in the steam.
‘You are a nun?’ I asked her, and she laughed.
‘Never in this life,’ she said. ‘And you are no priest.’
‘I am a knight,’ I said with all the pride of Lucifer. Ego miles.