I went all the way under, and my riding horse came down atop me driving my hips into the stone bed of the stream.
The shock of the cold stole my wits, and my full harness held me under for a long time, long enough that I might have screamed for breath; long enough to repent my sins, and wish that God had granted me time to commit more of them.
And then Raoul, my riding horse, shook himself and rose to his feet and his weight was gone, and the stream was narrow enough that I got my head above water by getting my elbows on a rock before the current swept me away. I went a horse-length downstream and was thrown on a sloping boulder. And there I might well have drowned except that Jean-Francois was there with a spear. He wrestled me from the grip of the icy stream. Water ran out of my harness, my helmet drained down my back, and my helmet liner was soaked through, all my arming clothes were inundated, and I was very cold.
Jean-Francois got me to the far bank, and Marc-Antonio had my horse. I was almost in another world: I had come so close to being dead, and I had the oddest view of the world.
Emile came up while I was mounting. ‘We have to get him to a fire,’ she said with her devastating practicality.
Perhaps I made some feeble protest. I felt terrible; terrible as a man who led men, and terrible in that the cold was like a vice on my feet, my head, my hands. Only the warmth of the horse between my legs steadied me, and when the wind blew I groaned.
‘Thanks,’ I managed to Jean-Francois.
He smiled, the first time I’d seen him smile. ‘Bah! ce n’est pas rien, monsieur,’ he said. ‘If you are not from these valleys, it is a simple mistake to make.’
An hour later I was all but inside the fireplace in a wealthy farmer’s house at the top of the valley, and warmth began to make it into my hands and feet, but the cold had settled deeply and I was sick.
I do not remember much of that illness, except that I woke to find my head in Emile’s lap. She looked into my eyes.
‘You are a fool,’ she said.
It was the nicest thing she’d said to me in two years.
Or perhaps I dreamed that.
When I returned to consciousness, it was to find that we were snowbound. The snow lasted two more days, and we played cards and sang and I became friends with Jean-Francois and his men, close enough to exchange a few blows with them in the stable yard. They were very good for country trained men, and Jean-Francois had a cut to the hands with a feint that caught me again and again.
Thanks to Fiore, though, I had things to show them, as well.
And Marc-Antonio got better every day. He was still fleshy, but no longer plump by any means, and his angelic face now had a harder line to it. He’d been in the saddle for three months.
Where the Alps were in winter, Lombardy might almost have been in late summer. There was plague around Padua, or so we were told by frightened refugees, and I avoided Verona as if it had the plague. We had heard south of Turin that there were avalanches due to the sudden thaw, and I had a notion that if we were pursued, we had a respite. But I was cautious.
Despite my tomfoolery with the stream, by the time we left our snug farmhouse south of Turin, Jean-Francois and his silent companion Bernard were no longer sullen companions, and when I suggested a plan of march, they were perfectly willing to accede to my wishes, with due courtesy to their mistress. We made our way south of Verona, and it was almost painful to watch Emile bloom: sun, good food and wine and freedom conspired to make her almost luminous.
By Saint George, gentlemen. I loved her full well. And every moment brought me more to love. She was a mature woman now, grown strong, I think, in motherhood and ruling good estate. And yet sometimes she was still the young woman I had known in France — playful, determined, audacious.
And there was the matter of her children. She had three: a boy, Edouard, and two girls, one just a babe in arms, Isabelle, and one a little older, named Magdalene. At first, she was scrupulous about keeping them clear of me. Or rather, the nun seemed to have them whenever I approached the countess, and when she had care of her children, I was clearly not welcome. But then, one afternoon in the countryside south of Verona, I came upon her on the lawn behind an inn, sitting on the sheep-cropped grass in a kirtle like the embodiment of beauty. She had the older girl in her arms and the boy sat watching Bernard on the close-cropped turf and Bernard was whittling — he was a preux cavalier, but he was always making something — toys, dolls, wooden knights for the boy. I could already see the shape of the cavalier’s great helm coming out of the billet of wood.
I could hear Sister Catherine calling her in her Savoyard French from a window of the inn. She shouted something about the child she had — Isabelle, as I remember — and something about blood. Emile leaped to her feet. Her eyes met mine — it’s difficult to describe her look. Questioning? And yet — they held some promise …
As if exasperated with herself, she put her babe into my arms, picked up the skirts of her kirtle and ran inside.
We arrived, a party of a dozen pilgrims, at Chioggia in late November. I showed my papal protection and my courier letter at the causeway and we were conducted like royalty along the edge of the lagoon into Venice’s principle out-town.
I remember most the sound of the gulls, the piercing cry, so different from any other bird. And the good, wholesome smell of sea and foreshore and fish. I’m a Londoner, if not born then bred up, and Chioggia and Venice have a great deal of London in them. Of course, my Venetian friends would say that perhaps poor London has a little of Venice in her …
Do you know Venice? Last year, during the great war — of which I’ll speak in time, if we’re stuck her long enough — I was in a position to view the Serenissima’s accounts when she was at her lowest ebb, fighting Genoa to the death. Par dieu, messieurs, there is more gold in Venice than in all England. The merchants of the Rialto and the Lido have more commerce than all England and all France together. The customs intake at Chioggia, one small port, must rival Portsmouth. In England, most men have no idea just how rich Italy is.
At any rate, I rode along the causeway the allows Chioggia and the long, narrow islands of Pellestrina and Malamocco to be connected to the mainland — or almost connected — to the terra firma at Clogia Minore or Sottomarina, as some say. It would all be a major part of my life, one day. But for the first time in three weeks, Emile brought her horse alongside mine.
‘You look happy,’ she said.
I was, too. I had discovered that I didn’t really need to sleep with Emile to enjoy her. That in fact, I loved her, and not that springtime, sap-rising thing that young people call love. I was also discovering the joy of riding, looking, smelling, tasting. It was a beautiful autumn, except for the poor people dying of the plague, God rest them.
‘I love the gulls, Countess,’ I said. ‘They put me in mind of my home.’
She smiled and looked away. ‘This town,’ she asked. ‘Is this such a place as I might buy a doll? My daughter has left hers over the mountains.’
I knew that. Every man in our party knew. The poor little sprite had wailed for fifteen days. She was not inconsolable; in fact, as long as she was happy, she didn’t mention the missing doll, but the moment anything disturbed her, the doll became the focus of her outrage. She was two and a half and spoke well — eerily well, in fact.
I spread my hands. ‘I will hope that we can stay with friends of my lord’s, and of the Acciaioli who I am lucky to call friends.’
She made a face-raised eyebrow and the curl of her lip. ‘The Acciaioli? Who do you call friend?’