Hawker and the King's Jewel by Ethan Bale

Author:Ethan Bale
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Canelo
Published: 2022-01-15T00:00:00+00:00

18

Ellingham stood on the rooftop loggia of Hawker’s casa and gazed out upon his new world. The morning haze was lifting from the city, streaks of pinkish cloud sitting low in the sky and cutting across the unending horizon of brick chimneys. Venice had been awake since before dawn, its narrow alleys and canals filling with merchants, costers, beggars, artisans and foreign visitors lost in the maze of stone. Strange voices floated up to him, incomprehensible, the people invisible. Shouts, laughter, the repeated calls of some hawker or waterman. The smell of the canals was earthy, almost rank. Nevertheless, he was here.

Despite his survival in both battle and skirmish, his bravado was wearing thin, the mask ever threatening to drop from his face, showing his companions that he was not the cocksure knight they thought he was. He was no better than a mummer. And one day they would all find out. If his stepfather had not driven him – prodded him – into seeking advancement as a man-at-arms, he might have ended up with the Church. At least there he could have had security and good food and drink without the risk of a bloody death. And even now, after the disaster at Leicestershire and the death of his true father, the flight from the sheriffs’ grasp and the journey south, he still was unsure of his destiny. Unsure because none of it had been his choice. And the thought that King Richard had been his father clawed at the back of his mind most of all. Half of him wanted to believe it, the other half did not.

Now, the expectation was for him to become a captain of mercenaries in the service of a man he hardly knew in a country about which he hardly cared. He had toyed with the thought of the Hospitallers on Rhodes, those knights of worth who foreswore wealth and privilege. Was that so reckless a plan? He had proved he could swing a sword. And he was halfway to Rhodes already by his reckoning, a ship notwithstanding. But that path was also the path of celibacy. He sank further into dark melancholy, disheartened by the swaying pendulum of choices.

Dieudonné wandered up, running his hand along the parapet. The Frenchman let out a deep sigh, joining him in drinking in the view of rooftops under a sky now as blue as a starling’s egg.

‘What shall today bring us then, Giles? Better fortune, perhaps?’

‘It is known only to God,’ Ellingham mumbled in French. Dieudonné nodded thoughtfully at the reply and there was silence between them. Ellingham then plucked up his courage a little. ‘You don’t much like taking prisoners, do you? I mean… those Swiss on the road. The two who pleaded with you on their knees.’

Dieudonné pulled back slightly, seeming somewhat surprised by the question. A confused, awkward sort of smile spread across his lips. ‘My dear friend, what an odd thing to remark upon. What else were we to do?’

‘They had surrendered to you, asking for Christian mercy.

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