But Fiore leaned forward. ‘And then comes Africa?’ he asked, tracing the outline of the Syrian coast in red wine on the table.
Matteo Corner nodded. ‘Yes. This triangle is the Sinai.’
I had a pleasant shock. To hear the names of places from the Bible as real landmarks!
Corner kept sketching. ‘This is the Nile delta. The delta is enormous — a hundred leagues across, with several cities and three or four navigable branches. This is Cairo, where the Sultan lives, here at the base of the delta. Here is Alexandria.’ He placed another pistachio. ‘Here is Damietta, where Saint Louis met defeat.’
Alexandria. If Jerusalem was the holiest city in the world, Alexandria was the greatest, founded by the mighty conqueror himself on the burning sands of Africa. I had grown to manhood listening to the Romance of Alexander; indeed, there were men singing verses from it in the fleet. And in Sienna, in Genoa, in Venice and in Verona we heard constantly from merchants who had sailed there of it’s fine harbour and magnificent waterfront, of the power of the Sultan, the ancient library and lighthouse, the early Christian churches now used by heretics.
Matteo Corner shook his head. ‘When I first saw Alexandria, I thought I was seeing the heavenly Jerusalem,’ he said. ‘It must be ten times the size of Venice.’
Fra Peter nodded. ‘You could fit London in it over and over,’ he said. ‘The whole of the new city is walled, and the walls have forty great gates, and every one of them as well-fortified as the gate castles of London, or better.’
Sabraham nodded. ‘Their customs take is greater than the whole income of the order,’ he said. ‘I know.’
Nerio leaned back. ‘Have you gentlemen read any of the crusading manuals?’
It turned out that most of the Knights of the Order had, although I had not. I had read Llull, though.
Fra Jean, a Provencal knight, nodded, and leaned forward eagerly. ‘Saint Louis thought the same as the author, that the Holy Land could only be conquered by way of Egypt.’
Fra Peter said nothing, but tapped his teeth with his thumb and stared at the candle on the table.
Nerio smiled his careful smile. He flicked a look at me and when he spoke his voice dripped with an entirely false adolescent innocence. ‘Is it possible we will attack Alexandria?’ he asked.
I thought Fra Peter might break his teeth, he tapped them so hard.
Fra Jean shrugged. ‘We do not have the men, even if we had God’s fortune and the best knights in the world, to take Alexandria.’
Lord Grey, who was usually the most reticent of English gentlemen, leaned forward with enthusiasm. ‘I believe, gentlemen, that with such a legate and such a king to lead us, we might accomplish something.’
Fra Ricardo Caracciolo joined us and added his weight to the argument. ‘The best crusade launched in a hundred years — and we will fall like a lightning bolt wherever we land,’ he said.
Fra Peter glanced at me. ‘What happened when you attacked Florence last year, Sir William?’ he asked.
I was knighted. But I knew where his thoughts lay. ‘We had fewer than four thousand men-at-arms, and we assaulted the barricades,’ I said.
Every head turned.
‘We seized the barricades of one gate, and held them for a time,’ I went on. ‘But Florence is a city with fifty thousand men in her, and so great that we could not be serious about a siege; we could not surround her walls, nor seriously threaten her. Had her population sallied, we might all have been taken or killed.’ I smiled at Ser Nerio, because I knew the Florentine had been present.
He laughed. ‘Indeed, unless one was told that the English were at the gates, it was hard to know. Farmers brought their goods, the wine was cheap, and the money markets almost unaffected.’ He shrugged and smiled at me. ‘I mean no offence.’
‘None taken,’ I said.
Fra Peter nodded. ‘But this is what I meant. Six thousand men do not even offer a threat to a city of a hundred thousand or more. I suspect even Acre is out of our reach. We might do better seizing a city or two on the Asian shore to secure the Order’s islands.’
Nerio smiled cynically. ‘The king would like that,’ he said.
Fra Peter narrowed his eyes.
Nerio shrugged. ‘The King of Cyprus has made his reputation seizing small Turkish ports in Cilician Armenia and the Levant,’ he said. ‘It is good for Cyprus, good for trade.’ He sighed, blowing out his cheeks theatrically. ‘You needn’t worry — Alexandria is safe from the force of our arms. Genoa is sending a contingent, and Genoa is the Sultan’s ally. The Genoese would never allow us to attack Egypt.’
Indeed, the Genoese contingent did not meet us at Corfu, as they had promised, but sailed for the Peloponnesus and thence to the Genoese possessions on the coast of Asia. We discovered this while lying in a small port on the west coast of the Morea, my first visit to Greece.
It was fine country, with rich farms and splendid weather, if hotter than a blacksmith’s shop, yet dry and with a breeze. And Nerio took us all to see the ruins of an ancient temple close by the beach where out ships floated.
When we returned to the beach, several of the Venetian ships were like beehives for their activity. Venetian oarsmen are citizens, and they camp on shore under awnings when they can, and it takes time to unrig these awnings.
I found Fra Peter with the legate and the king. He waved me to him, and I approached them, made my bows, and received Father Pierre’s warm smile as a reward.
‘The very man,’ Fra Peter said.
Lord Contarini was one of the two Venetian admirals in charge of the ships. He was remarkably old for a knight, with one eye milk white, a long brown scar across his forehead and wispy white hair. He was sixty-five years old. He turned his good eye on me.
Father Pierre caught my hand. ‘Listen, Sir William. The Turks are at sea — indeed, they have taken a series of towns facing Negroponte. A Venetian colony.’
Contarini laughed. ‘Not a colony, or I’d have more authority there. An ally.’
Fra Peter nodded. ‘Be that as it may, the Venetians feel that they need to-’
Father Pierre shook his head gently. ‘Venice, the Emperor of the East and the Pope have a treaty for the mutual protection of Christians in the East,’ Father Pierre said. ‘I helped to negotiate this treaty, and now, I’m afraid, we need to give it some …’ he paused.
‘Teeth,’ snapped the King of Cyprus and Jerusalem. He grinned at me. ‘The Venetians would like to take their galley fleet and sweep for the Turks. They swear they will still make the rendezvous at Rhodes.’
‘What of the pilgrims? And the soldiers?’ I asked. In fact, I cared little for the mercenaries in the holds of the great Venetian round ships, packed like armoured cordwood. But I was worried about Emile, who was aboard one of the two ships that carried non-combatants, most of whom were wives of the crusaders.
King Peter nodded. ‘They should go the shortest route to Rhodes, my lords.’ He glanced at me. ‘The Venetians don’t want to pay the routiers. So they won’t take them to relieve Negroponte.’
Ah, Christendom. We had an army of excellent professional soldiers under our hatches, but Venice didn’t want to pay. Venice wanted the Pope to pay.
I bowed to Fra Peter. Very softly, I said, ‘I can’t see how this involves me, Sir Peter.’
He scratched under his chin, thought the better of it in such august company, and looked at Father Pierre. And tapped his teeth with his thumb.
The legate nodded his head to Lord Contarini.
The elderly Venetian sighed. ‘Misericordia! You gentilhommes would like the Serenissima to pay your mercenaries, and I, too, would like such an army, but I have not been given a ducat. I am commanding the largest fleet that Venice has one the seas, and if you gentlemen,’ he nodded to me, ‘would volunteer, I believe that I could run the Turks out of the Ionian. At least for long enough to cover the rendezvous of the allied fleet at Rhodes.’ He shrugged. ‘If they are left uncontested, surely it is to the disadvantage of all of us?’