The Long Sword by Christian Cameron Read Free Book Online Page B

the papal palace for an audience with the Pope – Urban II, a French Benedictine whom I have mentioned before.
    The last time I’d had an audience with the Pope, I’d stood in a dull brown cote and clean hose and had tried to listen to what my betters discussed while I looked at the wonders of the ceiling over my head and the rich frescoes on the walls.
    Since then, I’d been to Italy and seen enough frescoes to dull the edge of my wonder. And men in their twenties are critical of everything; I was, by then, a hardened man of the world, and I looked at the frescoes with less awe and more judgement.
    A pity. The awe was more worthy. I have the knowledge to judge a lance strike, a sword thrust, or the placement of a battery of gonnes, but I’ve never painted a stroke.
    This time, I stood in the Pope’s audience chamber in harness, with the red surcoat adorned with the white cross over my armour, and a small shield with my own coat-armour in the right quadrant: a knight-volunteer of the Order. I wore gold spurs and a gold belt of plaques and a sword. I’m quite sure that I looked very fine, perhaps finer than Fra Peter, whose scarlet surcoat had seen more wear and who eschewed the earthly vanity of a gold belt. I was not as splendid as Lord Grey, and Miles Stapleton rivalled me, but that only meant that our party looked martial and, at least in my memory, puissant. Sister Marie-Therese wore black, as did the two priests of Father Pierre’s entourage, one Scottish Hospitaller priest, Father Hector, and one Italian, Father Maurice.
    And then there was Fiore, in his plain harness and red coat. But we’d brushed him and mended him and I’d put him in my second-best doublet, and his golden hair made him look like a military saint.
    Father Pierre, who was, of course, a bishop, nonetheless knelt and kissed the Pope’s ring and there was a low murmur between them. Juan, my friend, the great Juan di Heredia’s nephew, winked at me. He, too, was resplendent in gold and scarlet and harness, and as he was apparently the richest of the lot of us, he, too, glittered. In his case, he had a superb sword worth ten of mine, and a single ring with a ruby that was worth more than my warhorse and my harness.
    Altogether, we made up Father Pierre’s entourage. We were his household, and we’d been gathered for the crusade. Father Pierre was the least resplendent – despite being the Archbishop of distant Crete, he wore his Carmelite habit, and his plain dress was echoed by the Pope himself, who wore a magnificent chasuble over his plain Benedictine habit.
    As Father Pierre kissed the Pope’s ring, I saw that Fra di Heredia was also in harness, and that he held a magnificent white banner embroidered in gold. He was the Pope’s standard bearer.
    I think it was seeing the standard that made it all real. I had heard the talk. I’d been present for the negotiation. But Anne gave odds on the Passagium Generale , the crusade, being cancelled. Fra Peter was more cynical than I’d ever heard him, decrying the waste of time and money and manpower that had allowed the movement to be delayed and delayed.
    But now, it was happening. One of the papal secretaries read out a scroll, and my Latin was good enough to make out that Father Pierre had just been promoted to be Patriarch of Constantinople.
    A sigh went through the hall. It is an empty see, an appointment without a church, because, of course, the Emperor of Constantinople was a schismatic, a follower of the Greek heresy. But the appointment said everything. We were going on crusade to take Jerusalem, and I had heard rumours that we would go to Constantinople – or that the Emperor would join us. Why else appoint a Patriarch?
    And then, in his slow, elegant French, the Pope appointed Father Pierre the papal legate. Legates were the commanders of the ancient legions of mighty Rome, and it was difficult to see the slight figure of my spiritual father, shoulders bent like a peasant’s, as the