‘June!’ Emile said. ‘I will be a pauper!’
De Mezzieres bowed in his seat. ‘My esteemed lady, the king is already a pauper. This crusade has cost him three years of the complete revenue of his kingdom.’
The equerry sat back, his attitude anything but servile. ‘I didn’t want the job in the first place,’ he said.
I’d guessed, somewhere in the muddle of telling them of de Charny, that the equerry was King Peter incognito. He didn’t have the posture of a squire, and he was too old. But I might have known him — and I didn’t.
Emile had known all along. What did her wink mean?
But King Peter stood and began to walk among the rose bushes. ‘I wanted the Pope to confirm me in my kingdom so that I would not have to deal with Hugh and his claims for the rest of my life.’ He looked at me. ‘And now look — I will be allowed to ruin my kingdom and I’ll involve my subjects in a war they cannot win with the Sultan and his ally Genoa.’
When the king stands, you stand. We were all up again. He looked back. ‘Please sit. I am not really here. Please do not listen, either. I am full of poison today.’
De Mezzieres raised a hand and stepped towards the king. ‘Sire,’ he began.
The king frowned. ‘I know that you desire this thing,’ he said. ‘If I were allowed, I would board the first ship that could float, take my household, and sail for Cyprus, where on arrival I would kiss the ground and would never leave again. Let the Pope and Venice and Genoa have their own wars without me.’
He looked at me. ‘I liked what you said,’ he admitted. ‘I too would die that death.’
‘You are willing enough to fight the Turks, your Grace!’ de Mezzieres said, with an intensity that sounded to me like the remnants of an old argument, often rehashed.
‘The Turks!’ the king said. ‘Not Egypt! Not the Sultan!’
Emile looked confused. ‘Are they different?’
You must remember that most of us in England and in France called the Saracens ‘Turks’ and ‘Hagarenes’ and made little distinction among them.
The king smiled at her. ‘Sweet Emile,’ he said, ‘the Egyptians have the richest port in our ocean, and trade. The Turks are pirates and scoundrels and slavers — the very Genoese of the Moslem world.’
‘Are not all the paynim equally our enemy?’ Emile asked. She glanced at me. I was very glad, just then, to receive her glance. The king’s attitude toward her told me that, at the very least, I had a rival. His visit here, incognito — what was I to think? There are men who can share a woman and other men are happy to share a woman with a king. And perhaps you might say I shared her with her husband, but par dieu, gentles, she hated him as much as I. She did not hate King Peter.
De Mezzieres began to speak, and the king spoke over him. ‘No!’ he said. ‘Only the fools west of Italy think so.’ He frowned. Then he shook his head. ‘I am not myself today. Sir William, are you enjoying Messire Petrarch?’
I bowed. ‘With all my heart, sire,’ I said. ‘But not half as much as I enjoy the company of this lady.’
Just for a moment, I was eye to eye with the King of Cyprus.
So. And so.
I saw him, and I saw her — in one glance.
What I saw filled me with joy.
He frowned, then managed a smile. ‘How fortunate, that you may see her every day!’ he said, with forced chivalry. ‘And how fortunate for us all that her husband keeps his distance. What a fool he must be,’ the king said.
She looked away.
Thanks to the intercession of the Blessed Virgin, it was then that the bells rang for Mass.
The knowledge that the King of Jerusalem was my rival for Emile put something into me that had been beaten out. And perhaps to the power of adulterous love might be added some excitement for the crusade. I had been sure, until de Mezzieres came, that the ships would sail without me. Easter saw me just able to go to Mass and return to my room without fainting, to swagger blunt swords with Fiore for a few minutes.
But after de Mezzieres’ visit — and the king’s, of course — I began to gain ground.
Fra Andrea must have granted some permission or other, too, because suddenly all my friends were there. Miles Stapleton came and taught me to play chess — which is to say that I had played chess, but Miles taught me to play well. And he taught Emile as well. No man I ever met did aught but enjoy her company, and she was full of life that spring.
Ser Nerio came so often that I suspected him of a liaison with a novice or a nun; nor was I alone in my suspicions.
Juan came with Fiore. In fact, they all came together after a few scouting missions. They would sit in the nun’s parlour, and they would join Emile’s men-at-arms behind the convent where the novices and the servants hung the laundry, and we would fence. As I grew stronger, I would wrestle, box, try a spear or a staff.
I remember one golden day, late April, I think, perhaps the fourth Sunday after Easter. I hit Fiore with a spear thrust after a cavazione — a feint. He laughed, although he’d have a bruise. He thrust back at me, and I made my cover — and he pushed it aside and ran the pole-end into my gut.
As I picked myself up, I whined.
‘I suppose I’ll never be the knight I was,’ I said. I was cursedly weak.
Fiore grinned. ‘You will be my thesis,’ he said.
Perhaps it was that night, or the next. The Abbess of St Katherine had delivered an ultimatum and an offer, and we took dinner together with the handful of monks who had their own dormitory.
The Abbess had offered my friends free passage into her kingdom, in exchange for nothing but their words of honour that they would not outrage, seduce, charm, or even flirt with her charges.
Ser Nerio drank off a glass of a local wine and raised an eyebrow. ‘I would be giving up a great deal,’ he said.
Miles Stapleton raised his eyes and sighed. ‘We are soldiers of Christ, not seducers.’
Nerio ruffled Stapleton’s hair, which the younger man hated. ‘No one seduces a novice,’ he said. ‘You lie back and let them seduce you.’
Juan blushed. ‘I would very much like to — to help Guillermo to make his recovery.’
Nerio sighed theatrically. ‘Well, I will prove that I’m the best knight among us by making my knee bend to the Tigress. Although I suspect I’m the only one making any real sacrifice.’ He leaned over. ‘You don’t suppose she just needs a good fuck herself?’
Fra Andrea laughed aloud. ‘You are brave,’ he said. ‘Listen, young pup. Go suggest it to her. I will stand here and take wagers on how long you live.’
Nerio’s sense of his own place in the world did not accept much derision. ‘I’m sure I can outlast the old witch.’
Fra Andrea shrugged. ‘I’ve never seen anyone slain by raw scorn, but I imagine that it desiccates the corpse.’ The other monks were laughing. Nerio frowned.
Nerio did not like to be told ‘no’.
I think it was that same evening that Juan was complimenting me on how well I was recovering. I shrugged off the praise: I did not want their pity and Fiore laughed.
‘I am making you anew,’ he said.
‘How so?’ I asked. ‘Teaching me not to flinch?’
‘Teaching you everything. Listen, every swordsman is a blob, a sticky mass of all his own flaws and all the bad teaching of his masters and the injuries he has and all the errors of thought and decision and control. Even I am riddled with these flaws.’
‘Even you?’ Nerio quipped. ‘I can’t imagine that you have any flaws.’
‘Yes, I admit it is difficult to imagine,’ Fiore said without so much as a smile. ‘Yet I have them. Nerio leans forward when he is excited, Juan stamps his foot like a small boy, Miles bears the marks of a noble upbringing, and has a tell which guarantees that he will never, ever hit me until he rids himself of that foul error. I could name others, gentlemen. Dozens. In the end, we are a bundle of flaws.’