Then I told him most of the expedition, leaving out almost everything Admiral Contarini had said. He nodded.
‘The Venetians are the best sailors on the face of the inner sea,’ he said. ‘But they turn their God-given talents to the service of greed and not God. The Genoese beat them here.’
‘The Genoese were not present when we faced the Turks,’ I said.
Father Pierre nodded. ‘The Genoese say that by fighting the Turks, we provoke a naval reaction that may threaten the entire Crusade,’ he said. He raised a hand as I began to protest. ‘Spare me, spare me! I know. The Genoese serve only their own city.’
I leaned forward. ‘Have you chosen our … goal?’ I asked softly.
For the first time in my life, I saw Father Pierre be evasive. He was a very poor liar. ‘No,’ he said.
I knelt and confessed myself of my amorous thoughts. My confessor laughed. ‘Chastity sits heavily on you, my son,’ he said. ‘Be careful. Be … wise.’
‘Wise?’ I asked.
He shook his head. ‘I have said too much. For your penance, you may find all your friends billets in this city and then join me for dinner. Lord Grey celebrates his birthday and he is eager to see his nephew. How was Master Stapleton?’
‘He was brilliant in arms and a good man throughout.’ I waved towards the closed door. ‘He is the last man among us unknighted.’
‘You would recommend him for knighthood?’ Father Pierre asked, his hands steepled in his accustomed way.
‘Without hesitation. He will be a better knight than I am.’ I bowed.
Father Pierre shook his head. ‘I doubt that,’ he said, the best compliment he ever paid me. His praise was given sparingly, and often to third parties so this was very sweet, despite being so brief. He waved me away in dismissal. ‘I’ll speak to Lord Grey,’ he said.
As I closed the oak door — it might have been imported from England, it was that heavy — I thought that in the past few months, my beloved Father Pierre had begun to act more like a prince of the church. He was not spoiled. It was merely that his new dignity shrouded his enthusiasm and his genuine friendliness.
I missed Father Pierre. He was there when his eyes laughed at my petty sins, when he knelt with me on the floor to pray, when he embraced me. But the cautious strategos who lied about the goal of the expedition …
At any rate, I went up a floor and along a hallway so narrow that a man in full harness would have had to go sideways like a crab. I asked the servants — some English, some Greek, some Arabs — the way until I found the open door at the end of a hall that should have been straight but was not. Later I learned that the English langue was one of the richest, and was built in four stages that did not perfectly align, so that the main hall of the second floor was neither straight nor flat.
Fra William filled the room he called his ‘closet.’ It had a pigeon roost (as we call it) for scrolls, and the whole shelf was packed with them, hundreds of scrolls, and there were more around the room in baskets. In among the scrolls was a table no bigger than the sideboards on which squires cut meat and mix wine, and it, too, was covered in scrolls, and the bulk of the man was wedged between the pigeon roosts and the writing table. By his side was another tall man, this one as thin as Sir William was round.
‘Sir Robert Hales — Sir William Gold.’ He waved at us.
Sir Robert Hales rose and took my hand. ‘I have heard of you, in France and in Italy.’
I bowed. ‘Indeed, my lord, we were introduced at Clerkenwell.’ I smiled. ‘I was with Juan di Heredia’s nephew.’
Sir Robert flushed. ‘Sir William … indeed. I swear you were younger then. Or perhaps smaller.’
We all laughed. I had been a squire of no account whatsoever. Now I was a knight of moderate fame.
Sir Robert sat. ‘Of course, I know your sister, who shares your high courage.’
My turn to flush. I had scarcely thought of my sister in six months. Fra William looked up from his writing. ‘Sit, Sir William. By our lady, clear him a space. There’s nowhere for a man to sit.’
I stood against the far wall and hoped that nothing fell on me. Very gradually, I leaned against a set of shelves weighted down with scrolls and books and tall stacks of parchments being led to their dooms by their heavy seals, slipping gradually but inevitably towards the floor.
‘You had a quarrel with Fra Daniele,’ Fra William stated. He did not ask.
I said nothing.
‘Senior Knights of the Order are commanders,’ he said. He was still writing quickly. His big hand was perfectly well-trained, and his writing was as neat as a professional scribe’s hand. He was writing Latin. ‘Many of my paid soldiers are commanders in their own right, and I have to explain to them that here, on Rhodes, their authority is nothing, and only the brother-knights have the power to giver orders.’
He looked up at me. ‘In Outremer, mercenaries sold themselves to the enemy. We have become careful.’
I nodded.
Fra William pursed his lips. ‘You further informed Fra Daniele that the legate is your lord.’
I suppose I sighed. I was trying to control my temper, and not doing a perfect job.
Fra William frowned. ‘He is a great man, perhaps a saint. But you, as a volunteer in the Order, must obey your superiors. You swore an oath to obey.’
‘Any reasonable order,’ I said.
‘No,’ Fra William said. ‘There is no such stipulation. You swore to obey. Kindly keep that in mind. I have no doubt — no doubt at all — that you are a brilliant soldier. The dockside tales of your daring are worthy of Roland or Oliver or Gawain. But if you wear the red coat, you must obey.’ He raised both eyebrows in his most cherubic look, one I would come to understand better. ‘Even Fra Daniele.’
‘Yes, Sir Knight.’ I bowed carefully, given the limited space.
He smiled, and the room seemed to fill with his glow. ‘Good. As an Englishman, you fall to me, and I am proud to have you. I’m sorry I had to start with discipline. But we take it seriously. And you will see why if we come to battle. Knights — gentlemen — are used to doing just as they please, even on the battlefield.’
Fra Robert smiled. His smile was as thin as Fra Williams was beaming. He didn’t strike me as a man who had much time for humour.
I nodded. ‘I have some experience of this,’ I said.
He handed me a set of keys. ‘Perhaps the greatest advantage of being English,’ he said, ‘Is that we have the richest inn except for the Italians, but the smallest langue in numbers. So while there are men camped in the streets, I can give all of you cells, good cells with beds. Enjoy them — they may be the only beds you see for a year. The food here is excellent, though I do say so myself,’ he added, patting his belly. ‘We will pretend that your friends are English. Fra Daniele thought they were.’ He went back to writing, and I was not sure whether I was dismissed or not. After some time, he looked up. ‘You know John Hawkwood. How is the bastard?’
I shrugged. Italy had made me the master of many shrugs — shrugs for knowing too much, or nothing at all. ‘I wrote to him twice last winter and had no reply. He was badly defeated last autumn, but he rescued much of his army.’
‘There a rumour that he and the Visconti are threatening Genoa,’ Fra William said. ‘That the Pope used Hawkwood to put pressure on the Genoese to participate in the crusade.’
I shook my head. ‘It may be, but he was nowhere near Genoa when we undertook the last round of negotiations. That success belongs entirely to the legate.’
‘I knew him as a boy.’ The turcopolier frowned. ‘Our lives have taken very different paths.’ He met my eye. ‘How many men have you commanded?’ he asked suddenly.
‘I was a corporal last year against Florence, with fifty lances,’ I said.
Fra Robert smiled his thin-lipped smile again. He murmured something I did not catch.
Fra William raised an eyebrow. ‘Most of the volunteers who came out with the legate have declared a desire to serve together.’ He signed his name, took hot wax and sealed his document. ‘If circumstances align, I might like to see you command them. It would be unprecedented for a man not of the highest birth — commands of volunteers and donats usually go to princes and kings.’ He grinned sourly. ‘I don’t have one, this fight. Did the Emperor really gird you with that sword?’ he asked.