Free The Long Sword by Christian Cameron Page B

embodiment of paradise.
    And then we rode down out of the mountains into the plain of Lombardy, and I was back in Italy. By Saint Maurice, gentlemen, I hope I won’t seem a worse Englishman to you if I say that I love Italy. It is warm and the wine is good.
    We were bound for Bologna. To make the crusade possible, the Pope had curtailed his war with Milan, and his only concrete benefit from two solid years of war was that he had gained the city of Bologna. But let me put that in perspective. Bologna’s taxes were roughly the same as those of the City of London. Eh bien ?
    Italy is rich.
    Father Pierre had taken the city as papal legate while I’d been fighting for Pisa, and had proved himself both a fine governor and a Christian man in his dealings. Now he was going back to perform a good deed for the Bolognese, and to rally his own support for the crusade.
    We were housed in the university. Bologna was not the most famous house of learning in Italy, but it had a mighty reputation for its doctors of medicine. The main palazzo was a magnificent building of brick and marble, and had frescoes better than anything in Avignon. I shared a room with Juan and with Fiore, and the three of us filled it to bursting with clothes and harness and horse tack.
    The day we arrived, the three of us spent the entire afternoon going over all the tack – every mule saddle, every bridle. We were, in effect, the squires of the whole party.
    In the evening, we laid out the knight’s tack and several items that needed serious repairs, and Miles Stapleton came and joined us in the cloistered courtyard. Some of the men in gowns were scandalised, but most smiled to see us so industrious.
    Half the bridles needed some repair, and Fra Peter’s saddle was leaking stuffing and the tree was wearing through the leather so that it had to be troubling his mount. I went and fetched him, and he shook his head.
    ‘I need a new saddle,’ he confessed. ‘I should have seen to this in Avignon. I hadn’t expected to leave in such a hurry.’
    I showed him the saddle for Sister Marie’s mule, which was in worse shape than his. ‘She must ride a great deal,’ I said.
    Fra Peter smiled. ‘She does indeed. Mon dieu – that’s bad. The tree is broken.’
    Indeed, you could flex the saddle in your hands.
    Fra Peter made a face. ‘In Avignon, I could have us new saddles in a few hours.’ He was frustrated, a face he never showed us.
    ‘Can’t we buy saddles?’ I asked. ‘It seems a mighty city!’
    Indeed, Bologna was two-thirds the size of London and had shops and stalls and a great market and many leatherworkers.
    Fra Peter smiled; not a bitter smile, but not a happy one, either. I noted that there was something of Anne’s derision in Fra Peter’s smile. ‘I’m vowed to poverty, William,’ he said. ‘So is Sister Marie.’
    Throughout the conversation, he was sitting comfortably on the stone between two columns of the cloister, while I continued to sew away at Father Hector’s bridle.
    ‘I’m not,’ said a man from behind Fra Peter. ‘Vowed to poverty. Ser Peter Mortimer, how fare you?’
    The man addressing my knight was one of the handsomest men I ever saw, despite being more than half a century old, as I later discovered. He was also one of the most richly dressed men I’d ever seen, as out of place in the cloister of Bologna as a nun in a Cheapside chophouse. He wore a green silk pourpoint, stuffed and quilted, with a band of gold at each wrist and a collared shirt that emerged from the collar of his pourpoint like a white flower, a fashion I’d never seen before. He also wore a sword, which was unheard of in Bologna; a longsword, the kind that Fiore favoured, gilded steel on the cross guard and a jewel in the pommel, which was a wheel of gold. His hose were gold and green, and he wore a profusion of gold rings and a gold collar that matched the gold plaques on his belt.
    He and Fra Peter embraced like old comrades. In fact, I