So naturally, I was kneeling in the spring mud robbing a corpse when I saw d’Herblay.
Well — the Bourc thought he’d killed me, and now d’Herblay had the same experience.
He recovered well. ‘Satan had given you more lives than a cat,’ he said. He had a dozen of his blue and white men-at-arms with him, and I knew one of them immediately. He was a Gascon and I knew him from my days as a routier, but his name wouldn’t come.
I had the belt undone. The dead man had tied it in a lose knot rather than take the time to buckle it. I rose to my feet.
‘You would know Satan better than I,’ I said. I had the sword in my hand again. And Father Pierre was a long way away.
I’m only human.
The man-at-arms was one of the de Badefols. That’s how I knew him. He took his master’s shoulder.
At my back, I had six of the best swords in the world. And our weapons were all drawn.
D’Herblay’s men closed around him.
‘Now who will be the first to reach Hell, Monsieur le Comte?’ I asked. I began to walk towards them, and all my friends and our squires walked forward with the nonchalance of bloody-minded young men.
The count’s Savoyards and Gascons were not wilting flowers. They were knights. They drew — half a dozen of them — while the others pulled at their master.
He turned and allowed himself to be led away, even as the camp’s marshal appeared.
‘Sheath!’ he roared. ‘Sheath or I’ll fine the lot of you.’
That’s how you control routiers. With fines and money.
Nerio ripped his purse off the hooks on his belt and tossed it at the marshal’s feet.
‘That will cover our fines,’ he said.
It was a fine flourish, but none of us needed to kill Savoyards or Gascons. I wanted d’Herblay, and he was already a bowshot away.
‘Your master has a fine notion of courage,’ I taunted.
Nerio — really, he would have made anyone a bad enemy, leaned past me. ‘Is he a difficult man to follow?’ he called. ‘He moves so fast.’
But the marshal’s men were in half-armour, and had poleaxes. They took up positions between us.
‘Aren’t you the legate’s officer?’ the marshal said to me, incredulous.
I sighed. I had a cooling corpse at my feet and a dead man’s sword in my hand. I bowed. ‘I’m sure this is all a misunderstanding,’ I said.
Nerio laughed. ‘You could be a banker,’ he said.
Sabraham told me later that I should have caught Gap-tooth and held him, put him to the question and handed him to the Venetian authorities. I suppose that might have helped me in my struggle with d’Herblay, with the Bourc, with the Bishop of Geneva.
Sabraham asked me many questions about the Hungarian, too.
Perhaps. But that day, our one blow duel helped me a great deal. And God have mercy on his unshriven soul.
I began to consider what action I might take against d’Herblay. Or rather, I began to consider how exactly I would reach him to kill him.
June. We went to Mestre and practiced unloading the galleys on the beach over the sterns and we practiced fighting from the galleys, and a young Provencal knight fell into the sea and drowned, a warning to us all. If d’Herblay was there, I never saw him.
I went to Mass with my brethren, and I confessed to Father Pierre, who was obviously delighted that I had so little to confess. I was perhaps less delighted; I might pretend that a chaste love for Emile was enough for me, but as my body returned to health, it expressed itself more forcefully than I might have liked. And there is some terrible urge on me, I admit, that after killing the brigand who had my sword, I would have lain with any woman available. It is always thus with me. But a barge from Mestre to a convent is not full of tools of Satan. And an evening chess game with the abbess was surprisingly free of temptation, as well.
At any rate, it can’t have been three days before I was on my knees in the legate’s office at the Doge’s palace, confessing my desire to kill d’Herblay.
After confession, I had a private interview with the legate. It may seem antic that I could go from my knees to a comfortable stool with my confessor, but he was the best priest I ever knew, and even the act of contrition was a shared thing, almost pleasant, despite the shame. At any rate, I sat with him while he wrote out orders, mostly to do with money and the accumulation of supplies for the summer. I learned from him that we still did not have a particular target for the crusade.
‘How do we make a war whose intention is the triumph of the Prince of Peace?’ he asked.
I confess that I had no answer to that.
When the business of my interview — the ordering of the volunteers — was done, the legate took off his spectacles. These were round, horn rimmed devices of ground glass that allowed him to read documents more quickly and gave him a look of slightly comic, owl-eyed wisdom. He polished them on the sleeve of his robe.
‘And what of you, William?’ he asked.
I suppose I said something about being healed and eager for duty. What one says to a superior in such situations.
He nodded. His eyes were elsewhere, on, I think, the crucifix at my back that dominated the room he used as his office. But then his eyes focused on me. ‘You are giving thought to revenge,’ he said.
Remember that I had just confessed; remember, too, that revenge is not one of the sacraments of the church. Nevertheless, I did not lie to Father Pierre if I could help it. ‘I will, in time, avenge myself on the Count d’Herblay,’ I admitted.
‘I might tell you that wrath is a sin, and that the future is in God’s hands.’ Father Pierre smiled without cynicism. ‘But I will instead tell you that by my order, the count has been taken at Mestre and is to be tried in an ecclesiastical court for a blatant assault on a crusader.’ He held up a hand. ‘It occurred to me that no matter what I might say, your first act on reaching full recovery would be to ride to Mestre and find d’Herblay. And that you will kill him, in time. I need you, Sir Knight. The church needs you, and further, has first call on your time and life. You have been valiant in changing your actions, in penance and in contrition. Despite which, you owe the Order for your salvation — not just in heaven, but from a noose and a shameful death.’ He raised an eye brow. ‘I hope I’m making myself clear.’
He leaned forward. ‘I’m sure that every soul is of value to God. But my son, I hold him worth less than a fig seed compared to you, and I beg you to treat him with the same indifference. Let him go. Such men punish themselves.’
From that moment I subordinated any consideration of revenge. He was right; he usually was. Beyond religion, piety, faith, I owed Father Pierre and Fra Peter a debt of honour. I was not going to desert them to kill d’Herblay.
I nodded. I think I said something foolish about changing my mind.
The legate laughed. ‘Listen, Sir William. The crusade’s various enemies have made a number of attempts to kill me while you were dallying in bed. And agents of various powers have spent a small fortune luring away the bands of cut-throats that form the bulk of our crusaders.’ He shrugged. ‘Now I must woo them back. And remain alive to do it. May I trust that you will be at my back, William?’
I bowed my deepest bow. By Christ, I loved that man, even when he reminded me of my sin. Or perhaps because of it.
Mind you, after Father Pierre was done with me, I went to Fra Peter — out of the frying pan and into the fire. Fra Peter sat me down and filled me with dread about the legate. From him I learned the truth: that there had been two serious attempts on Father Pierre’s life over the winter. One had come from a hired assassin in the street who had been cut down by one of the Order’s brother-knights, Fra Robert de Juillac. The other had been a poison so strong that it killed a page named Clemento Balbi, a young noble of Venice who was waiting on the high table at a dinner given by the Ten for the Genoese ambassadors. As far as Fra Peter could make out, the boy, like pages the world over, drank a few sips from Father Pierre’s cup and died in agony.