Condottiere: A Knight's Tale Read online

  The second time was different. She recalled his length and hardness as he mounted her and rocked her this way and that on the mound of urine-soaked straw, how she had locked her legs round his back and arched upwards in response. The sensation had been unlike any she had ever imagined as her body flooded with wave after wave of undiluted pleasure.

  Ludovico had long since been discarded in favour of Federigo di Castellante – a much older man and a close friend of the Visconti family – who had patiently instructed Donnina in the arts and techniques of intercourse, substituting subtlety for urgency and sustained pleasure for instant gratification.

  She was an intelligent young woman – certainly intelligent enough to realise that her growing obsession with the pleasures of the flesh threatened irreparable harm to her value as a political commodity when her hand was ultimately offered in marriage. That said, she was also intelligent enough to realise her secret was safe – at least for the time being. She knew Ludovico must have been sorely tempted to boast of his noble conquest, but she was certain he had not, for admission of the illicit deflowering of a Visconti would have resulted in swift and fatal retribution – preceded by slow and agonizing castration. By the same token, it was inconceivable that Federigo di Castellante would ever disclose their relationship: to do so would result in, at best, his banishment from the ducal court and, at worst, his sudden and mysterious disappearance on the orders of her father, the self-styled Duke of Milan.

  She had turned these thoughts over and over in her mind as she lay in bed on the morning of her twentieth birthday and had resolved she must in future be more circumspect. She lived in a state of constant anxiety that her relationship with Federigo would be revealed by some unforeseen circumstance or other and that she would be discredited as ‘damaged goods’.

  Donnina had come to a difficult decision: she would inform Federigo that the relationship must end. He would have no choice but to agree. One day – and she hoped that day would come soon – she would find a man to whom she could commit herself openly and without reservation.

  Donnina composed herself as a peremptory knock came at the door of her bedchamber. A maid hurried to open it.

  Bernabò Visconti, Duke of Milan, stood in the doorway, admiring his daughter. He extended his arms to welcome her into a gentle embrace, then stepped back a pace and took her hands in his. ‘You are truly a vision, cara,’ he said softly, ‘and one day you will make some fortunate husband as happy and proud as your devoted father is today.’

  He laid her hand lightly on his arm and prepared to escort her down the magnificent staircase to greet the assembled guests.

  ‘That is my own most fervent wish, dear father,’ replied Donnina Visconti, smiling her most virginal smile.

  City State of Pisa

  26 May 1360

  ‘Florentine scum!’

  Tommaso Gracchi’s fist crashed down on the oval table. He glared at the assembled anziani, the city elders. These bankers, wool merchants, cloth finishers and other prominent citizens drawn from Pisa’s merchant and professional guilds were the most powerful – and the wealthiest – men in the republican city state, but they cowered as Gracchi’s fist pounded repeatedly on the table.

  ‘Scum, I tell you, scum!’

  Gracchi was not a handsome man, least of all when he spoke in anger. Small and squat, beetle-browed, with a bulbous nose and a disconcerting cast to his left eye, he was an intimidating figure. For all that, he was held in high regard. As president of the Council of Guilds, he commanded respect if only because, although reputed to be among the richest men in Pisa, he had never sought power and had never abused it. Other Italian city states might have their signori, but Pisa was ruled by consensus, not by a despot. Besides, in both his private life and his business dealings, Gracchi was generally held to be fair. He was a dedicated family man, a patron of the arts and a generous giver to charity and to the popolo minuto.

  Gracchi went on in a more measured tone. ‘We have no need of Florence, it is Florence that has need of us. We need no Bardis and Peruzzis. We have our own bankers. We do not need their wool and cloth. We have our own. We do not need their meddling ways. Nor do we need their artists and architects. Pisa has its own.’

  There were murmurs of agreement. Encouraged, he continued. ‘But we do need to defend ourselves and our way of life against the incursions of these stranieri, these invadenti, these oltramontani, these base foreign interlopers?’ Gracchi spat the words out with all the contempt he could muster.

  There was a ripple of applause. The council needed no reminding of the dangers that threatened from fifty miles to the east. Florence was the largest city state in Tuscany and had been the most prosperous for over a century. It straddled the north–south trade routes and was a hub of economic activity and an established European banking centre. Unlike Pisa, however, it was an inland city, with no direct access to the sea. Its economic expansion, and particularly that of its burgeoning cloth industry, needed a maritime portal in order to exploit to the full the highly profitable international textile markets that had opened up in the wake of the decline of the cloth industry in Flanders.

  Pisa was to be that portal.

  But Florence was in economic disarray, its population decimated by the Black Death and its municipal coffers drained virtually to the point of bankruptcy by King Edward of England’s repudiation of his massive debts to leading Florentine bankers – debts incurred to underwrite his costly war against France. To recoup those losses and reassert its pre-eminence as a centre of European commerce and finance, Florence needed to expand. It had already tried more than once to annex by force the neighbouring city state of Lucca, but had failed at each attempt.

  Pisa would be next.

  Florence’s military resources far outstripped Pisa’s; every man in the room knew as much.

  Giacomo Albertosi, Pisa’s senior magistrate, raised a hand to claim the floor. ‘The Florentines’ intentions are plain for all to see. At issue before us is what steps we must take to frustrate those intentions. That Florence’s ambitions are distasteful and contrary to the best interests of Pisa, I willingly concede. But I ask you: are we not ill placed to defend ourselves? Can no accommodation – no financial accommodation – be proposed?’

  Gracchi responded without hesitation. ‘I fear there can be no such accommodation. To buy them off buys us time, but how much time? A year? A decade, perhaps? No, my friends, there can be no accommodation with such vermin. We must stand our ground. We must ready ourselves.’

  ‘War!’ exclaimed Massimo Mastrodonato, an octogenarian whose family had prospered over three generations as bankers and moneylenders. ‘War? Have you no thought of anything but war? Tell me, what has war ever accomplished? Death, destruction, butchery, civil unrest, ruin – that is what war is all about. And that is not what has made Pisa prosper. Are you all too young to remember Meloria? Because I, for one, am not.’

  The council fell silent. Meloria was rarely invoked in Pisan circles. The sixth of August 1284, had been the blackest in the city’s history, the day on which a Pisan fleet had been destroyed almost to the last vessel in a sea battle fought off Meloria Rock, scarcely a mile beyond the Arno estuary. Some eight thousand of Pisa’s most prominent citizens had been hauled away in ignominy and in chains into Genoese captivity. As a result, Pisa had been deprived of access to its valuable holdings on the islands of Corsica and Sardinia and effectively relegated to the status of a minor city state.

  ‘You talk of Meloria as if it were yesterday,’ ventured Gracchi.

  ‘I talk of Meloria because my own grandfather died that day, as did thousands like him. I talk of Meloria because this city of ours has prospered not because of Meloria but despite it. Look around, I beg you. What do you see? You see our Duomo, you see our Campo Santo, you see the Campanile, you see our fine casatorri, our beautiful churches. That is what we have and that is what we stand to lose. War destroys and tears down. War despoils, peace restores. War diminishes, peace bui
lds. What we have accomplished here comes not from war but from peace and prosperity. This fair city of ours is the work of men of greatness who despised war: Taddeo Gaddi, Giottino, Cimabue—’

  Gracchi cut the old man off in full flow. ‘The talk is not of war but of self-defence.’

  ‘We do not have the means to defend ourselves,’ put in Gennaro Altobardi, the youngest man in the room.

  ‘That is true,’ replied Gracchi. ‘But we have the means to acquire the means.’

  The councillors looked blankly at one another, then back at Gracchi.

  He was calmer now, composing himself to put forward the proposal he had been mulling over for several days. ‘We must purchase our defence,’ he said.

  Several men spoke at once. Gracchi raised his hands to restore order. He gestured to Giacomo Albertosi who, as a magistrate, was held to be a model of impartiality.

  ‘It is regrettable that we have insufficient means to defend ourselves,’ said Albertosi, ‘and it is true we have much to defend and much to lose. It surely follows that we must pay others to ensure our defence.’ He paused. ‘We must engage the services of a condottiere.’

  ‘That is your proposal?’ This from Gracchi.

  ‘That is my proposal,’ replied Albertosi. ‘It is a step I advocate with great reluctance and subject to the most stringent conditions. We must be most prudent in our choice, and we must be mindful of the consequences.’

  There were immediate objections. Gracchi waited patiently. Sooner or later, he knew, one of the councillors would unwittingly present him with the opening he needed.

  As it happened, it was Mastrodonato who obliged. Predictably, the old man was vehemently opposed to the notion of retaining a mercenary force, and he made his feelings plain.

  ‘I have said time and again that we must learn from history and I say so once more. We must learn even from Florence itself. Does none among you recall how Florence suffered in 1342 when the city fathers hired that odious Frenchman Gauthier de Brienne to restore civil order? Let me tell you this: they would have been better advised to invite the devil himself into their midst. Brienne and his hirelings posed a greater threat to Florence than all its enemies put together. It is unthinkable—’

  ‘You speak of Gauthier de Brienne, the self-styled Duke of Athens?’ Gracchi interrupted.

  ‘Yes, yes,’ said Mastrodonato, irritated by the interruption. ‘Of course. Who else if not Brienne and his murderous rabble?’

  ‘Then perhaps you also recall that he fell at the Battle of Poitiers in 1356?’

  Mastrodonato clearly did not. ‘I know only that Florence was well rid of him.’

  ‘And that he died at hands of an English knight, one Sir John Hawkwood?’ persisted Gracchi.

  ‘I fail to grasp your meaning, sir,’ said Mastrodonato.

  ‘My point, sir, is this. The war between France and England is at a standstill; a truce has been called and may last for years. There are many in England who would be willing to put their longbows and cavalry at the service of Pisa. Among them perhaps – I cannot be certain – this John Hawkwood.’

  Magistrate Albinosi rapped sharply on the table. All heads turned.

  ‘Are you seriously proposing to this council that an Englishman come to the defence of Pisa?’

  ‘I am seriously proposing that we discuss the possibility,’ said Gracchi. ‘Or would you rather that our saviour be French?’

  ‘God forbid,’ said Albinosi with a smile. ‘But an Englishman? In faith, the English are uncultured and unsavoury rogues.’

  ‘Granted,’ replied Gracchi. ‘But Hawkwood would be our uncultured and unsavoury rogue.’

  Exile

  What misery it cost him to depart

  Sible Hedingham

  4 August 1360

  Hawkwood sat on a stony outcrop on the shallow incline above the manor house and looked out over his estate.

  The harvest was in. The corn had been gathered, threshed and winnowed. Two granaries were full and a third three-quarters full. Hay and winter fodder for the livestock had been secured. Below, narrow strips of farmland lay fallow, waiting for the next crop to be planted. Shards of flint in the freshly turned soil glinted wet and dark in the early autumn sunlight. Rents had been collected, church tithes assessed and paid, dues calculated and settled. Two serf families who had deserted the estate to seek their fortune elsewhere had since returned. Two other families had not.

  Hawkwood professed little knowledge of farming, but it was clear to him that better ploughs and better use of them would lead to better crops. He also knew that the value of an estate was gauged in terms of the number of ploughs and teams of oxen it owned. Hawkwood had recently acquired two new mould-board ploughs and, because they were extremely heavy and unwieldy, had purchased a further team of oxen to draw them. In addition, he had converted a portion of the estate’s common land to make available to his tenants a number of additional one-acre strips of farmland. Not least, in a bid to prevent tenants from leaving the estate, he had waived a modest part of the annual rents due to him. The gesture was much appreciated.

  Hawkwood sighed. He was bored. There was little more to be done now, other than sit out the long winter evenings in the desultory company of Lady Margaret, and to exercise each day so as to hone his skills of war.

  Twice he had sent a squire to Windsor to discover King Edward’s intentions with regard to the continuance of the French war. Both times the squire had returned with unwelcome news. The hostilities were in abeyance. Exchequers were empty. Enthusiasm was at a low ebb. English forces still held Calais, Bordeaux and large tracts of Aquitaine. King Jean remained hostage in London. As yet unransomed. Edward had raised taxes again. His queen had born him yet another son. The Scots were causing havoc in Northumberland. The Black Death had decimated the population of London.

  And so on.

  Hawkwood sighed and picked up a smooth stone and weighed it in his hand. Out of the corner of his eye he had seen a flurry of movement to his left. A rabbit. He waited patiently. When it moved again he took careful aim and hurled the stone viciously at the hapless creature’s head.

  He missed.

  The rabbit scurried off down the slope, disappearing into a burrow. Seconds later, it popped its head out again and eyed him speculatively.

  John Hawkwood, veteran of Crécy and Poitiers, shook his head in disbelief. He had been bested by a rabbit.

  *

  The king’s messenger approached Hawkwood Manor late that afternoon, flanked by an escort of twelve. The party entered the courtyard and dismounted. Hawkwood went out to welcome them. The herald-at-arms stepped forward and saluted. ‘I bring news from Windsor, Sir John.’

  Hawkwood’s pulse quickened and a broad smile spread across his rugged face. This was what he had been waiting for these three long years. Three years almost to the day since the momentous battle on Poitiers Field.

  ‘I welcome such news, Master Herald.’

  The man, whom Hawkwood judged to be in his mid-twenties, hesitated, then averted his gaze and drew a parchment scroll from under his leather cape.

  Hawkwood’s eyes narrowed as the herald handed it over. There is something wrong here, he thought. He broke the seal and unfurled the document. It was in Latin.

  Let it be known that by solemn and irrevocable decision of His Most Royal Majesty King Edward III of England and of France, it is by the present established and declared that the conduct of the Knight of the Realm Sir John de Hawkwood is deemed unbecoming and dishonourable to his rank and title; in pursuance whereof, it is by the present decreed that henceforth and in perpetuity the aforesaid knight shall be excluded from that rank and title; yet, inasmuch as John of Hawkwood has long served the Crown, it is the King’s most gracious pleasure and gift that he continue to enjoy the usufruct of all present estates and all privileges and servitudes appertaining thereto; it is further decreed that, forthwith and without further recourse, the aforesaid John of Hawkwood shall be enjoined and admonished to indem
nify the Crown of England in the amount of twenty thousand gold crowns and eight destriers trained to the lance. Given under my hand and seal at Windsor Castle on the ninth day of September in the Year of Our Most Glorious Lord One Thousand Three Hundred and Sixty, Eduardus III Rex, King of England and France.

  Hawkwood read it through once, then a second time, slowly. He looked up at the young man and gave a curt nod. ‘I thank you, Master Herald, and I bid you convey my respects to His Majesty and assure him of my continuing allegiance. You are to inform him that it shall be as he has ordered.’

  The herald seemed uncertain what to do next.

  Hawkwood smiled. ‘Your escort will wish to water their horses.’

  ‘I thank you, Sir John’, replied the herald, then blushed at the faux pas. ‘Permit me only to say that – ’

  Hawkwood held up a hand. ‘There is nothing to be said, save that I thank you for your courtesy and wish you God’s speed.’

  Hawkwood turned on his heel and walked back into the house. He strode through the Great Hall, up the two stone steps to the solar and through the metal-studded oak door into his private quarters. Lady Margaret – no, he corrected himself, plain Margaret Hawkwood as of this instant – sat at her needlepoint. She glanced up as he entered the bedchamber, took in the expression on his face and knew at once that his mood was even blacker than of late.

  She said nothing, too afraid to speak.

  Hawkwood paced the floor, pausing at intervals to pound his right fist against the oak support beams at either end of the chamber. The sound reverberated in the room and his wife flinched at every blow. Suddenly, and without a word, he thrust the king’s message in her face.

  She looked down at it. ‘But, Sir John,’ she whispered, ‘I read no Latin.’