I bowed and, I suspect, protested.
‘Please give me my favour,’ she said.
I was stricken. ‘My love!’
She tapped her foot impatiently. ‘You are a fool, William. Do you imagine that I, a countess, will ride to Venice in the company of a man who openly wears a favour I gave in my misspent youth? Do you know what a reputation as a wanton I had at Jean le Bel’s court? I have two sons and a daughter to defend. I will not have them besmirched with foolishness.’ She wore a look — a smile that included anger. ‘You wore my favour at Krakow. People who know me were there.’
‘Was it all foolishness?’ I asked. ‘I love you, Madame.’ Then it struck me — what she had said. ‘Oh, sweet Christ.’
‘Were you thinking of me when you made love to your Italian girl? She figures prominently in tales of your amours,’ she snapped. ‘Pamfila di Frangioni?’ She extended her hand. ‘Nay, William, it will not wash. You are a fine knight and a bad lover, and I am no prize either. So help me get to Venice and we will be friends.’
Again, I might have complained, or set her down with a rebuke — surely she had slept with her husband often enough!
But age brings a little wisdom, and my battle sense was on me. I reached under my scarlet surcoat and unpinned the worn blue scrap and knelt. ‘I am sorry I have been unworthy,’ I said, and I meant it.
She took it and laughed. ‘You really are too good to be true, William,’ she said softly.
I was old enough not to berate her, but not old enough to do what I should have done.
She called for her servants to pack. I had a two hour nap, and when I woke and bathed, two of her men servants shaved me and dressed me in beautiful clean clothes and a pair of deerskin boots worth as much as a good riding horse.
I would like to tell you that the loss of Emile cut like a sword, but I was too tired and too sure that we were in immediate danger. And perhaps I was a cocksure young man who thought he could have his way with his woman in the end.
Bah. We’re all fools with love, are we not?
The sun was high in the sky when six men-at-arms rode out of the alley behind her little palace — for her ‘town house’ had more rooms than half London. She wore her harness and we had no pack mule. We had a wet nurse with a baby boy, mounted on a donkey and wrapped in a dozen blankets, and two young children in the panniers of a second animal, a large Spanish mule with a nun mounted on it. She was the children’s governess.
Her captain, Jean-Francois, told the gate we were bound with the children for the abbey on the heights above. It was a fair story, as we had no baggage and darkness was a mere four hours away.
The gate accepted the story at face value and we were away into the snow of late autumn in the Alps.
I longed for an ambush in which I could prove my love with my sword, but none eventuated. Men underestimate women constantly, and I’ll guess now that Robert of Geneva never believed that a mere woman would take her babies and ride through the snow. I’m sure her husband didn’t even see her as human. But she was. In truth, she would have been a great captain, had she been born a man. Did I not say that audacity is everything, in the dark? Hah! Audacity is everything all the time. And she had it.
We rode over the mountains and down the French side of the passes as far as Turin, and we were unmolested; indeed, we were virtually unnoticed. I had time to be jealous of my lady’s attention to everyone but me and I had time to get to know her children. I was the odd man out: while I was forced to live with her men-at-arms, I was not one of them. They were professional, but not like my comrades in Italy nor yet like my comrades in the order. I suppose I was an arrogant prick, but they were scarcely friendly.
And not a single bandit showed his face.
An hour’s ride north of Turin, I made my decision. I rode up to Emile in a shower of snow and bowed in the saddle. ‘My lady countess,’ I said.
She offered me a cold little smile. ‘Monsieur?’ she asked.
‘I left my squire to recuperate in an abbey above the western gates of Turin,’ I said. ‘I should go and reclaim him.’
She nodded. ‘Of course,’ she said.
Well, par dieu, I could tell she was angry, but I was sufficiently a fool to not understand why.
‘May I catch you south of Turin?’ I asked.
She shrugged. ‘I may stay in Turin some days,’ she said. Her eyes met mine, and there was the rage again. ‘But I imagine that you are none too anxious to meet Sir Richard Musard.’
That made no sense to me at all. ‘I have no fear of Sir Richard,’ I said.
‘Really?’ she asked. Her eyes touched mine again, and they were hot and full of the emotion she kept out of her voice. She had her youngest wrapped against her, and she looked down at her baby and smoothed his hair before pulling the wool wrappings carefully around the little head. ‘My understanding is that he has sworn to kill you?’
I lowered my voice. ‘Richard Musard was my best friend,’ I said hotly. ‘He betrayed me to the Bourc Camus and your husband, Madame. They sold me to the French authorities.’
‘And when you escaped, you avenged yourself on him by taking his wife,’ Emile said. ‘Yes, I know it all full well.’
She rode on.
One by one, her men-at-arms passed me on the narrow trail. I thought of a dozen responses.
Par dieu, gentles, of course that’s how Richard told the story. But I hadn’t seen it coming and had no defence.
It took me a day of riding through the mountains to realise that when Emile reached Venice, I might be able to send for Milady. And then Emile might change her mind.
Because, in the meantime, I had hours to think about just what my love had heard of me. And even to consider those things I had actually done. I can remember riding, and wincing, physically, to think of the times I’d been unfaithful. Writhing in the saddle, cold and weary and mortified.
I have always been a fool for a fair lady, and no mistake.
Marc-Antonio was eager to go, having spent too much time on his knees and too much time eating gruel and, I gathered later, too much time defending his virtue from one of the more lecherous monks. Well, close a hundred men in a small box, and see what happens. But I had had time to think of many things, and I was profuse in my thanks to him for saving me in the village fight, and he was, perhaps unsurprisingly, delighted at my praise. When we camped, I made him go through the postures of defence, and we traded a few blows — gently, as our swords were sharp and he was inexperienced. But the sword I’d taken from the blue and white was a good one and all those days in the saddle were habituating my squire to life with and on horses.
At any rate, we made good time out the gate, and with the help of a pair of shepherds, we cut south and east, bypassing Turin on the plain below us and riding through an early snowfall. I was wary: we were no longer ahead of our foes, or so I reckoned. But we made the passes unharmed, and high in Saint Bernard we caught up with Emile and her party in a monastery. She was withdrawn, and in fact I saw her only at a distance. She was avoiding me, and that was yet another blow.
For the next four days, we travelled like two separate groups, the two of us, and the nine of them.
We were well over the pass, and on our descent, dismounted to lead our horses, when I fell. I was showing off every minute, I now confess, riding too hard, scouting too far, wearing all my harness all the time, trying to earn back her good opinion in the foolish ways boys woo girls. But high above the plains of Lombardy, I tried to ride over the narrow remnants of a bridge instead of crossing lower down at the temporary ford. I was driven by no nobler motive than that Jean-Francois, her captain, had ordered his men not to try the bridge as being too dangerous.
Three steps across and my riding horse paused, lost his footing on the icy logs, scrambled, and then we were in the rushing water. Autumn is not as bad as spring in the passes, but the water rises, and trickles of meltwater from summer can be swollen by rain to raging torrents.