They dumped me in the road.
And then one said ‘I’ll take the horse.’
I cannot remember when hope began. But after they bickered about the horse, and the barrack-room lawyer — there’s always one — argued that keeping the horse would see them all hanged, the first voice roared out, ‘Shut the fuck up!’ and they all fell silent.
The man must have been bigger. He had a little authority, not much, but enough. ‘Listen,’ he said. ‘Listen and keep your fucking gobs shut. This piece of shit is someone famous. I’m taking this horse, which is worth more than all the rest of you combined, and I’m walking away. I don’t want to fucking lay eyes on you leprous lads ever again, understand me?’
‘We’ll all be caught!’ Barrack-room lawyer piped up.
‘No, we won’t. That’s a tale for children. It’s fucking Italy; we can do whatever we want. I found this horse grazing by the roadside. Eh?’ I heard a rustle, and then the sound of Jacques’ heavy hooves.
‘Then I’m keeping the Goddamned sword,’ said the barrack-room lawyer. ‘Mister high and mighty can give himself the shits for all I care.’
‘Why do you get it, then?’ said another voice, a Gascon. When there’s trouble, there’s always a Gascon.
‘Perhaps because I have it in my hand, fuckwit?’ said the barrack-room lawyer.
Something wet hit the road.
Men laughed.
Barrack-room lawyers are seldom popular. I didn’t need my swollen-shut eyes to see what had happened.
‘I’ll just take this,’ said the Gascon. ‘I can get a good price for it in Lombardy, or Aquila.’ He had an odd laugh, like a dog’s bark, and his Gascon-French was strangely accented. Catalan, I might have thought, if I’d had a thought in my head.
That started it, as the removal of Jacques had not. They tore into my kit — my rosary, my surcoat, and my harness.
In a way, it was like death. Everything that made me a knight was taken: my golden plaque belt, my beautiful spurs. It took the routiers only as long as it takes a hungry horse to eat everything in a nosebag, and they’d stripped my pile. One old man only got my arming clothes.
The Gascon’s servant got Charny’s dagger.
And then it was all gone, and men were riding off into the gathering darkness like stray cats taking scraps of food.
There were dead men on the road, too. Three of them.
And one hard bastard kneeling at my side with a dagger. ‘Who’d have thought you’d outlive Sweet Willy? Eh, laddie?’
He spoke English.
‘I’m English,’ I said. I suspect it sounded like ‘Mmm gagliff.’
I felt his dagger touch my throat. ‘George and England!’ I assayed. Which may have been a mumbled ‘org n’ gagle’.
So he cut my throat, and I died.
And blessed Saint George came in all his glory and raised me to heaven.
Bless you, friends, it was not quite like that.
In fact, he knelt for a long time. Long enough for my hope to ebb and flow a dozen times. I mumbled things, and he listened or didn’t. I couldn’t see.
‘Somewhere, you must be worth a fuck of a lot of money,’ he said quietly.
I nodded.
‘In your place, I’d say the same,’ he agreed. ‘Still, that was a nice harness. And a horse to match.’
He slung me over his horse. Thanks be to God, I passed out.
Greed. There is something wonderful in God’s will, that I was saved by the greed of a dozen hard men. Mind you, in their place, I suspect I’d have done the same.
I never learned my captor’s name. And I never got to thank him, because three days later, he sprouted a crossbow bolt in the chest and fell off his horse, stone dead, without another word. I saw that, but then there passed a period of waiting, and then something spooked the rouncey over which I was thrown, and I was gone again.
When I came too, the man leaning over me was Sabraham.
Nerio Acciaioli got the legate back to Venice. He had the money and the authority, and he gave orders and was obeyed. He ran south, almost to Florence, and hired fifty English men-at-arms from the break-up of the White Company — Sir John had been badly defeated in the south. But the Englishmen got the legate home to Venice alive. Juan rode with him so that one of them was awake at all times.
Fiore and Sabraham doubled back to find me. I can’t bless them enough. I had missed the road — in fact, as best any of us can make it, I left Genoa by the wrong gate, and my finding the pack animal was a miracle of bad navigation. But the road I chose was the one that the innkeeper had thought we meant. Later I learned why. I’d ruin the story by telling you now.
Sabraham and his henchmen killed my captors, of whom there were two. I never saw the other, but that doesn’t mean anything. My left eye has never been quite right since then but my right recovered well enough. I’m told it gives me a good stare, eh?
Sabraham splinted my broken bones. He was ruthless — I’ve said that before — but he had the sense and the guts to re-break my arm and set it straight, otherwise I’d still have a ruined left arm. Christ, it makes me shake to think of it.
They wrapped my hands. Most of my fingers were broken and so swollen they were like puffballs, those giant mushrooms. They got a tinsmith to make little channels to hold my fingers and Fiore reset my nose with a break and a twist.
It was a little like being tortured again.
Every time I surfaced to consciousness, it was to realise that d’Herblay would get to Emile ahead of me. Was already there. Emile must be dead …
I find I have spoken too much of pain, and you gentlemen are appalled.
Very well.
Sabraham got me across the Lombardy plain. He didn’t do it in one go, but in little sprints and legs that I remember as days of pain and nights of cold ache. We went as pilgrims and sometimes I was a plague victim. Usually I was unconscious when we were on the road.
Bless Nicolas Sabraham. He took me all the way to Venice where Father Pierre sent me to the monks. And then I had doctors and drugs, opium, good wine, and broth. Warmth, and no movement, and a warm bed, deep and white, or so I remember it.
I really remember very little.
And one day there was the sun, and I was awake, looking out over the lagoon, and it was beautiful. And the beauty made me cry.
And crying hurt my nose, if you must know.
And Emile said, ‘Oh, William!’ or something equally lovely.
I looked at her. I considered whether I should tell her …
Bah! When I look at Emile, I do not think well. ‘Your husband … I thought you were dead,’ I managed. Probably the first words I had said in months. I croaked them.
She ran a finger down my hip. I suspect because the doctors had told her it was the only place that didn’t hurt.
‘Hush,’ she said.
Days of Emile, and I was unable to speak. She would sing, or play with her children. Her two girls came with her, and she led one of them about — he was learning to toddle. She had wet nurses for both, and they would come and go, and after a while I decided that I was on the same island as she.
Little by little, I recovered my head. It was scattered at first, and seeing Emile was somehow a blow. Perhaps I lost my wits. Perhaps in all the blows I received, something in my head was broken.
But she was there.
And at some point, I can’t remember when, she brought the King of Jerusalem. He spoke about the crusade. I can’t remember anything he said. Instead, I thought of what d’Herblay had said about Emile …
It was dark, inside my head.
Despite the darkness, I am not utterly a fool. D’Herblay had once told me that his wife had died in childbirth when she had not. He was, perhaps, too weak to torture a man physically, but he was the sort of bastard who enjoyed planting the needle inside, the torment of doubt.
She was there by my bed every day.