I went out the main gate of the inn with one of the matron’s caps tied to a roasting spit. Fiore was at my shoulder, looking humble, and Sister Marie followed us, demure and harmless.
We were mocked, and yet, in the process of telling us that we were sons of whores and mere children and various forms of sexual deviants, our tormentors emerged from their cover. I knew the man across the street immediately, and so did Fiore — the whoreson Fiore had dropped in the muck.
I leaned out. ‘Send someone to talk!’ I roared.
Whoreson laughed. ‘Come out and surrender.’
I shook my head. ‘I have priests and nuns here. Tell us what you want.’
Whoreson swaggered towards me, master of the situation, and slapped his gauntleted hand against his cuisse. ‘What I want is that catamite right there!’ He stepped to the right to get a better view of Fiore, ignoring Sister Marie.
She tripped him, Fiore slammed a fist into his head, and we had him. But I wanted more, and I took a long stride into the confused rabble, kicked a man in the knee, got a hand under his aventail and dragged him back.
Fiore put Whoreson on the ground with a knife-tip at his temple.
Now the little square in front of the inn gate was as silent as a tomb. I pushed my prisoner through the gate and Nerio slammed him into the gatepost and then dropped him.
‘Go away,’ I shouted. ‘Or come at us, and see what happens.’
Naturally, I said nothing of all this to Father Pierre, but there was no hiding the two men bound to chairs in the common room.
He raised an eyebrow. ‘Let them go. I have what I came for. I would like to leave as soon as possible.’
I pushed them out the gate with good humour. They had heard nothing of our planning, and we were free to go. Sabraham and I had made a plan — not an elaborate plan, but one that would have appealed to every routier I knew — in the kitchen.
Back with the legate, I said, ‘No dinner at the guildhall? No solemn Mass to mark the occasion?’
Father Pierre looked away. He was shattered; I could see his eyes full of tears. I had missed the signs, and I was frightened. You have to understand, he was a pillar, a tower. I don’t think I had ever seen him so used up, and so unhappy.
‘I have paid a high price for the crusade,’ he said. ‘These men …’ His eyes met mine. He was struggling against saying what he felt. Father Pierre’s lapses of hot-blooded humanity were both a relief to us — and a terror. But he knelt down on the inn floor and prayed for guidance, and then he rose. ‘Let us leave this place,’ he said.
I found Nicolas Sabraham looking at me from the kitchen door.
We smiled at each other.
Our smug self-assurance lasted as long as it took to draw a breath, and then we heard the unmistakable sound of breaking glass.
Marc-Antonio ran for the stairs, but he was too late.
The innkeeper had escaped.
I was the third man into his room, and I instantly realised two things — that his room was over the kitchen, and that someone had unlocked his shutter. There was no other way he could have got out the window.
He’d jumped on to the stable roof and then was gone.
‘I think he knows what we plan,’ I said to Sabraham.
He frowned. ‘If we’re quick-’
‘True as the cross,’ I said.
It took long minutes to get the horses saddled. Sabraham and his men went out the back of the tavern. We’d lost our hostages and our plan was betrayed — someone had let the innkeeper go. Who?
Before the legate’s horse was out in the yard, I could see men in harness moving in the alleys.
But I had two cards to play, as well. No, to be fair, Sabraham had the cards.
In Genoa, every free man has a crossbow. It is their favourite weapon; silent, mechanical, good at sea or on land. Every free man from Monaco to Liguria has one, and my greatest fear was a storm of bolts. It was evening in winter, already full dark. That had to cut the odds a little.
And the podesta’s men were overawed. They gave us space, and they were not well-organised. I’m going to guess that their Milanese master didn’t trust his lieutenants, so, as he could not appear himself, they were rudderless.
The quarter hour struck in the neighbourhood church. We had ten mules with all the legate’s goods, mostly desks and a portable altar and other necessaries.
We kept the gate closed.
Father Pierre looked at me. His face was pale and he was deeply unhappy.
‘I must ask you what you have been driven to do,’ he said.
As if in answer, the first part of Sabraham’s plan came to fruition. Down on the docks, a warehouse burst into flame.
Bah. Arson has an ugly name, but war without fire is like sausage without mustard, eh?
The same free citizens who own all the crossbows are the same men who fight the fires — and own the cloth. They left us, if they’d ever been watching us, and ran to fight the fire on their waterfront.
We opened the gate to the inn and started through the streets.
The podesta’s men didn’t fight the fires. They were still out there, and the innkeeper had spoiled our surprise for them. We’d planned to start a nice little riot between the local Guelfs and Ghibbelines, but the podesta got there first, or so a panting Sabraham reported to me as we cut north.
It was Verona all over again, except that I had my doubts that we’d be allowed out the gate.
Two streets north of the cathedral, we had our first fight. A mounted fight in the dark is no joy at all — the noise of the steel-shod hooves on the cobbles is so loud that you cannot hear commands, or screams, and the sparks from the horseshoes and the swords give the whole thing a hellish feeling. We were hampered by a long tale of mules and non-combatants. Our opponents were not hampered by the least notion of honour, as they demonstrated by killing Father Hector at the first encounter — a priest, and he unarmed.
The second attack occurred a few streets from the northern gate. Of course, by then, my legate and most of his people were gone. Fiore took them to the left suddenly, so that the legate would not know that we’d divided our efforts in the darkness. I was willing to lose a few priests and deacons, to be sure.
I had a few second’s warning as my opponent’s horse caught a lantern’s light and I felt the vibration as he charged.
I killed his horse.
It’s not done in polite circles, and I’m sure it is the last thing the bastard expected from a knight of the order, but I was down to the training that lets a man survive the hell of France. I put the Emperor’s sword through the horse’s head and down he went. The rider behind him tangled with the first man’s dying mount, and I was backing. I gave them a moment, and then I attacked. I think I killed them both — I certainly left some marks. This in an alley so narrow I couldn’t turn Jacques. But a good horse is the best weapon; I backed all the way to the mouth of the alley even as crossbow bolts began to rattle against the stone walls.
The whole time I had been fighting, Ser Nerio had taken the rest of our feint, our pretend convoy, north to the wall. I saw motion in the right direction — my visor was down, and when your visor is down at night, you almost might as well close your eyes.
But I’d bought time.
I had bought time, but when I turned Jacques, I’d lost my bearings. One scout, even with someone as professional as Sabraham, is not enough to ensure real knowledge. I got the visor open — my new helmet had a wonderful visor.
Nothing. Except that my foes in the alley were coming, and a crossbow bolt — thanks to God, some of its force spent against the alley wall — slammed into my shoulder and ripped the pauldron away.
There were armoured men on horse coming from behind me.
Time to go I said to myself. I picked a direction and put Jacques at it.
It must have been the wrong direction. Or rather, not the direction that Nerio and Marc-Antonio and the Italian Carmelite had taken, but I was too desperate to care over much. I rode as fast as the alleys and streets would allow. Once I burst through a crowd of footmen — for all I know they were innocents just out of vespers, but I was through them and into the mouth of another street.