The galia sottil was not like any ship I had seen in England. We have galleys — King Edward had a dozen — but they are simpler vessels and built smaller. Even the ordinary galley had twenty ‘banks’ of oars a side. Each bank is in fact a bench, set slightly diagonal to the keel of the ship, where the rowers sit. In a Venetian galley, there are three rowers on a bench, and all of them have oars, but save in the direst emergencies, only two men row at any time, which allows a constant rotation of manpower.
English galleys also lack the apostis, which is a shelf, an outrigger that extends the width of the deck and the corresponding bulwark or fence to allow the oars to sit well out and pivot at just the right distance for the weight and length of the oar. In English galleys, without an apostis, the rower can never balance his oar, and has to use his main strength at all times just to support the weight. Fra Andrea told me that the apostis was a new invention. Fra Peter told me later that it had been well known in antiquity and was rediscovered by Petrarch, cementing the serenissima’s love of that difficult gentleman.
I say difficult, because as I improved, he came to visit me, not once but several times. Each time he would sit and read to me, which was a delight — but he would cast Emile out of the room. He was, apparently, no lover of children, or bright sunlight, or strong red wine, or Ser Fiore, with whom he had a quarrel, sotto voce, down the hall from my cell.
He read to me from an Historia he was composing, which was quite brilliant, called, I think, De Viris Illustribus. It cheered me to hear tales of heroism from the past; nor were his tales of patience rewarded lost on me. And who does not take pleasure from having one of the lights of the age wait upon you? He must have come ten times, and when he came with Philippe de Mezzieres, I discovered that it was the Cypriote chancellor who had arranged for him to come. When spring made the lagoon easier to navigate, de Mezzieres came with an equerry.
De Mezzieres sat stiffly; the sun was shining on a Venetian April, and the nuns were singing and I was allowed to sit in the garden. His equerry looked familiar — a strikingly handsome man in a plain dark jupon.
‘I have heard a great deal about you since Krakow,’ he said carefully.
Emile was sitting by me, doing embroidery. We had not so much as touched, except perhaps as she adjusted a pillow, in three months, and yet we knew each other better, I think, than we ever had. One of our jokes was that she, who had spurned embroidery utterly in her youth for the pleasures of flirtation, was now growing quite accomplished at it while other women walked the same path in the opposite direction.
At any rate, I looked at her, and met her eye as she bit a thread. She glanced at the equerry, looked back at me, and winked.
‘I confess to having taken a deep dislike to you, and having been mistaken,’ de Mezzieres said. I was still smiling at Emile’s wink, and de Mezzieres’ words wiped the smile off my face.
But I had managed five minutes with a waster that day, and had not flinched even when Fiore struck my hand. I had Emile to watch and smile with and all was right with the world. So I rose — I was much stronger by April — and bowed. ‘I suppose it was the manner of my knighting,’ I said. I could remember clearly his face when I related my battlefield dubbing.
He frowned. ‘Not at all, far from it. I was made knight on the battlefield myself, at Smyrna.’ He shrugged. ‘My father could never have afforded to have me knighted.’
He smiled, his eyes on some event far in the past. Then they focused on me.
‘You killed de Charny,’ he said. ‘He was my friend — my mentor.’ His eyes were like daggers, like the blows of my tormentors. ‘He made me a knight.’
Well.
Emile shifted, put her work aside, and stood. ‘Gentlemen …’ she said. She was a noblewomen and she’d had a lifetime of listening to men start the dance that leads to blood. She knew exactly how the opening notes sounded.
‘He was a great knight,’ I said. ‘I met him in London during the peace, when he was a prisoner.’
De Mezzieres shrugged. ‘I would have been in the Holy Land, I fear.’
‘He was kind to me when I was a shop boy. In fact, he encouraged me to — to be a knight.’ Just thinking of it made my voice tremble.
I know men who flinch from steel, and others from memories of steel. I am not one to carry the bad dreams, I have not been so cursed. But that day, in the spring sun in the rose garden, speaking of the great Sieur de Charny conjured him, and there he was, killing my knight, Sir Edward, with a single blow of his spear. Every muscle in my neck and back tensed.
‘Tell me of his end,’ de Mezzieres said.
I told it simply. ‘There were many of us, squires, mostly. The Gascons and some English knights were trying to take the king — King John of France.’ I frowned. ‘The English were all fighting to take the richest ransoms, and the French …’ I shrugged.
Emile looked away.
She was a Frenchwoman to her finger’s ends. Janet is, too — talk of Poitiers and they bridle. But to be fair, Emile lost a brother in the red-washed mud, and Janet lost two uncles.
‘Monsieur de Charny had the Oriflamme.’ Well, I told it as I’ve told you: I got him around the knees and helped bring him down.
De Mezzieres locked his eyes in mine. ‘Is that how you would want to die?’ he asked.
Now I took a breath. ‘On a stricken field, with my sovereign’s banner in my fist, feared by every foe and loved by every knight? Taking twenty men with me?’ I grinned, and for a moment, I was not a man who had been beaten to a pulp by brigands. I was Sir William Gold. ‘By God, sir, give me such a death and I will embrace it.’
De Mezzieres rose and bowed. ‘I mistook you for another kind of man entirely. The king, who is your admirer — and I — pray daily for your recovery.’ He glanced at his squire, who grinned.
Now we were all standing. ‘I would rather not have killed him,’ I said. ‘I can only say that he would not let himself be taken.’
De Mezzieres looked away. ‘No. He would not.’
Emile put a hand on his arm, her face still full of concern. ‘Please, the waiting has gone on so long. What of the crusade?’
De Mezzieres frowned.
Emile smiled at me. ‘I think we could all sit,’ she said. The squire, a bold rascal, smiled with her.
We sat again. De Mezzieres had so much dignity that he found sitting difficult. His back was so straight it never touched the back of the wooden chair that had been brought for him.
But he sighed, looked at Emile, and shook his head. ‘Genoa has done everything in their power to block this expedition,’ he said. ‘Nor has the Pope been forward, precisely, with the promised money.’
Emile nodded. ‘My chamberlain in Geneva says that the money collected in Savoy will not come here, and that the Green Count and the Savoyards will mount their own crusade.’
De Mezzieres shrugged. ‘The worldly vanity of the great lords is past anything I could ever have imagined. Sometimes I must admire the Turks and the Sultan in Egypt. Islam is not divided as we are. Nevertheless, the issue is money. Genoa has demanded enormous reparations for our supposed faults, and Venice will not loan the king money that will go directly into her rivals coffers for the war we all know is coming.’
‘What war?’ I asked.
De Mezzieres sighed. ‘The war between Venice and Genoa. Next to which, this crusade is but a sideshow.’ He nodded. ‘Few enough of the men-at-arms we raised managed to hang on through the winter and those that did ate their leathers and sold their armour. We will not sail before June, at best. We need money. We need Venice to settle their revolt on Crete. We need to have our own warships repaired, and we need Venice to complete her fleet.’ He waved a hand at the two galia sottil hulls fitting out.