Slowly, so as not to cause alarm, Hawkwood withdrew his lances east into the Romagna, closer to where he and his family resided, made peaceful overtures to Mantua, then waited to see how Bernabò would react. With him seemingly quiescent he could set about the business of raiding and plundering in Tuscany, allying himself to a German, also a son-in-law of Bernabò, their combined force a formidable twelve hundred lances.
For two years their successes were measured in thousands of florins, though as usual much was expended on keeping the company whole, while Hawkwood had personal overheads that needed to be met, such as protecting his home, which meant a strong garrison permanently based at Bagnacavallo. Just as much went to support his other properties against anything that might threaten them, which meant his father-in-law.
He was not without information of what was taking place in Lombardy, such as the death of Galeazzo, naturally replaced as ruler by his son Giangaleazzo who, it was reported, had become exceedingly pious, surrounding himself with priests, carrying a rosary everywhere, praying frequently and dressing without show. Such news extended from gossip written by old friends to Donnina, through whispers brought by passing travellers, to downright betrayal of the Visconti family, who like any Italian rulers had many internal enemies though the family were better at suppression than most of their rivals.
When he was home he was plagued by the usual supplicants needing aid, men coming to rejoin his company but in need of funds for equipment and horses. Letters seeking help arrived frequently – for debts or other obligations – and John Hawkwood was heard to wonder if his past generosity in supporting those he had led in battle was wise, given the ongoing cost, but they were not the only petitioners.
Just as often it was conspirators seeking his aid to overthrow the established authorities in whichever commune from which they hailed. Pisa he welcomed since that had at one time been to him a place of refuge, but none of the plotters ever seemed to have enough support to overthrow the individuals who had succeeded Giovanni Agnello; others he always treated with caution, given too many of these schemes were hatched to put into power Guelfs or Ghibellines.
Historical rivals, these factions should have atrophied two hundred years previously when the original cause of the dispute between the papacy and the Holy Roman Empire had been resolved. To John Hawkwood it was typically Italian that it had morphed into factionalism so fluid you could never be sure which side represented what and why; it seemed to have a life of its own set aside from normalcy, yet it could be deadly.
It set fathers against sons, brother against brother, city traders against country landowners, artisans against exploitation by factors, various guilds taking sides and sometimes just sheer bloody-mindedness to keep a dispute alive and extract revenge for slights real or imagined. Every city state and commune down to the smaller towns seemed to be full of folk holding clandestine meetings in which grievances could be aired to eventually grow into an attempt at rebellion.
Most would be nipped in the bud, for if conspiracy came naturally to the people of Italy, suspicion of treachery was its soulmate and guardian. Thus did those who held power protect themselves against usurpers, and the means by which that was achieved held no relation to fair dealing. Everything was permitted: spying was endemic, torture was rife and judicial murder commonplace, while the mood it created affected the whole country.
It was a party of Guelfs who came from Florence to Bagnacavallo with a scheme to overthrow the present Ghibelline Signoria, full of promises of rich reward. Donnina, who entertained them as the chatelaine while awaiting Hawkwood’s return from raiding, was quick to point out to him that they were not the bankers or large wool and cloth merchants, but landed folk from outside the limits of the city.
Naturally those elected to run Florence favoured those who resided within its walls and not those who grew the food to keep the city fed. Donnina was of the opinion that even if they owned large productive estates, these men could not have access to the funds they claimed and so what they promised, if it ever arrived, would be in some very distant future when they had control of the Florentine Treasury; that was not a proposition she found alluring.
Hawkwood never failed to listen to his clever and beautiful young wife. She had been raised in a Milanese court and had an Italian nose for intrigue, more specifically its chances of success, not great in the orbit of Bernabò given when it came to being suspicious the man was in a league of his own. He had the advantage of being a sole ruler; communes like Florence, run by committee, were more vulnerable.
‘So you rate them as exaggerating their support and what they can pay?’
‘I do.’
Having been delivered of a second daughter, Donnina had recovered her figure as well as the opportunity to ride, which she enjoyed and of which pregnancy had deprived her. Now she was out with her husband as he toured his outlying properties to ensure those stewards he had left in charge were carrying out their duties properly and not wasting even more of his money.
‘Even if they were not,’ Donnina added, ‘does another rebellion in Florence suit our needs?’
The exploited artisans of Florence, those who washed and carded the wool and worked from dawn till dusk for starvation wages, had recently and spontaneously risen up to take over the city. They held out for six weeks of riot and mayhem in which the houses of the wealthy and those who governed, usually the same people, were ransacked and torched in what was claimed by the downtrodden to be the first genuine republic in Italy since before the Caesars.
The brutality with which it had been put down was harsh even by the standards of the day. The city was stormed by paid mercenaries and taken back with no quarter given, the massacres followed by executions that had lasted a week. Yet it was indicative as to how febrile the polity of it was that a second set of Florentines were looking to overthrow those so soon restored to power, while it transpired they had been part of the combination who had paid to subdue the workers.
‘What about your pension, Husband?’
‘That has been promised.’
‘And to support your expenses?’
‘Is there ever money enough for that?’ was the mournful response.
His wife knew of the costs of their position as well as he, perhaps better given she oversaw the ledgers. His estates were failing to produce the revenues needed for their upkeep and repair, so were a drain. It seemed the world knew to the florin how much John Hawkwood earned in plunder, pensions and ransoms; no one took into any calculation his outlays, and that was not just in property costs.
First, if no one else was paying his men, he must, or he would not keep them in his service. Promises from those who employed him were just that and, given it was to be disbursed in instalments, it was a rare day that they came when they should, which took no account of the many times it had never arrived at all.
The amounts he had outstanding were huge, not least in ransoms which, if negotiated, were sometimes never paid. If the obligation was met, it rarely came swiftly: those he captured did not have vaults full of silver florins whoever they were, so a ransom was an agreement to pay the sum at whatever date it could be raised by the captive himself or his relatives.
To hold a man till the debt was satisfied would eat away at the final profit, given a prisoner had to be fed and guarded, so it was often better to let them go on a promise of payment by a certain date and the slippage there was commonplace. What it added up to was straightforward: despite the successes he had enjoyed in his career, the Hawkwood coffers were never as full as was supposed.
He had also taken to remitting monies back to England to support a whole host of relatives and to purchase properties, being determined to finally settle there with his family when the time was ripe, which it was not now. John Hawkwood was in his sixties and did not keep active for pleasure; he did so out of necessity.
‘Florence pays you, Husband, and that is at present secure. I suggest it would be unwise to put that under threat given where we are placed at present.’
He had been in this situation before, going from plenty towards dearth and back again many times, which was the way of things in the life he led. But he had, in the past, been immune to concern, with only his own needs about which to worry. That was no longer the case: with a wife and two daughters and his other commitments the requirement for a steady flow of income was altered.
‘How much do you think that weavers’ rebellion cost Florence?’
‘Thousands of ducats.’
‘Then ask how much they would pay to avoid another uprising.’
Hawkwood fell silent as he considered what Donnina was suggesting, held until he hauled on his reins, bringing them both to a halt by a stream, where they could dismount and the horses could drink.
‘If I were to betray our present callers, it would be necessary to know of their schemes in every detail.’
Donnina came close enough to peck his cheek, her voice low. ‘Think like a Visconti, Husband, and also reflect that the people ruling Florence may not like you, but they respect you, pay you a pension and may in future need your services. What is worth more, a bird in the hand or—’
‘You’re a vixen,’ was his response, delivered with a smile.
‘About to cub again, John, I think. Another child will not ease the burdens you face, will it? Put your family to the fore.’
Christopher Gold was sent to the Florentine Signoria, asking what fee could be extracted to expose a definite conspiracy against them, with enough details but no names to ensure his constable was believed. He returned with an offer of twelve thousand florins, by which time Hawkwood had been made privy to the entire plan of the plotters who claimed a level of support that made their projects much brighter than Donnina had originally supposed; truly Florence was a hotbed of intrigue.
The exposure had to be as clandestine as the conspiracy. Nothing could be placed in writing, certainly by John Hawkwood, for to do so would leave a trail of evidence and that could impact on the future. There had been moments where he wondered if what he was engaged in could be justified, for if he was happy with duplicity when on a field of battle, this seemed less worthy. It was his determined wife who kept him on the chosen path.
‘You did not seek these people out, they came to you and in doing so put their heads on the block. If the axe falls it is their own doing, not yours.’
The Florentine envoys never came near his home; he met them instead at Cotignola in a house barren of furniture bar the chairs on which they sat, the only light coming from the logs burning in the huge grate of the hall. The details of the plot were revealed, the leather sacks of coins unloaded from the mules and handed over. There were no pleasantries, no smiles, which meant that Hawkwood’s parting remark fell on deaf ears.
‘I trust you will recall what Florence owes me.’
The time came, as it did with all freebooting companies, that a natural division seemed best and on this occasion the parting into two sections was amicable. But since he was static some of Hawkwood’s own lances began to drift away and his force was seriously reduced, bringing risks.
‘We are too close to Milan, Christopher, and that means too much within the orbit of Bernabò.’
‘He has shown little sign of wishing to disturb you.’
‘My wife keeps telling me to think like a Visconti. When I do it is a lack of activity that raises my hackles. The Lord of Milan is not much given to forgiveness and making his own daughter a widow will trouble him not. But if not here, where do we go to ply our trade?’
‘There are few options. The Accord of Sarzana has held better than you supposed.’
‘Aye, I admit to misreading it. Our two popes are concerned more with fighting each other than the recovery of fiefs, though that may alter with Urban’s success.’
The accord had held, even if it turned out to be truly unsatisfactory to all concerned, Milan excepted. The papacy was still barred from those places where its representatives had been ejected. Florence, if no longer under papal interdiction, was still saddled with the huge financial penalties first laid out by Pope Gregory. His twin successors were locked in their internecine conflict but that was now in flux.
Urban, with the aid of an Italian condottiere who now led the Company of St George, had routed the forces of Clement north of Rome, destroying the Bretons and taking their leaders prisoner. This caused the Breton captain holding the Castel Sant’Angelo to surrender, allowing Urban to take possession of the Vatican.
Clement was checked but not defeated: he went south to Naples, accepting the invitation from the French-born Queen Joanna to afford him sanctuary. In this she misread her subjects, who were all for an Italian pope and especially one who had grown up in Naples. They rose up and drove the one-time Robert of Geneva out of the city, forcing him to take ship and go back to Avignon, while Urban, who had once been favoured by Joanna, saw her aid to his papal rival as an affront; she must be deposed and a new ruler appointed.
The vehicle for this was a magnate by the name of Charles of Durazzo. He was invited to swap a fairly impoverished kingdom on the Dalmatian coast for the fabulous prize of one of the greatest sea-trading cities in Italy. The price he was asked to pay seemed incredible – he would be required to release his most valuable provinces – not least because the recipient would be a nephew of Pope Urban, one Francesco Prignano.
Born into poverty he might have been, but like most popes, Urban was determined his family would gain from his position; the occupants of the Holy See never seemed to take cognisance of how this lowered them in the eyes of the laity.
John Hawkwood might observe this with a jaundiced eye but he was required to look to his own concerns. First he must unburden himself of the cost of the properties his marriage had brought him. These were mortgaged to the Marquis d’Este, a lord who paid a great deal to get his salt through Cotignola. He agreed to take possession for twenty years for a fee of sixty thousand gold ducats. Now free of encumbrances and with healthy coffers Hawkwood marched south with his family and three hundred men, sending ahead a letter to the Signoria of Florence, desiring permission to purchase a house in the city.
‘They said no, the ungrateful wretches.’
There was some posturing in that; if John Hawkwood thought Florence owed him a debt of gratitude, they did not see it in the same light. This was a man who had besieged their walls, beaten their army at Incisa, and one whom they had been required to buy off too many times. He had a pension, it was true, but that had not been given freely; it was the cost of having their fields left with wheat to be harvested instead of destroyed by fire.
Another letter outlining his dissatisfaction got a more emollient reply. This informed him he was held in high regard in the city but they did not relish the presence of his company, which made them decline to grant his wish. Had he been a fly on the wall of their deliberations, Hawkwood would have heard the Signoria seeking a way out of what they saw as an impasse.
The English Company within the walls and resident was anathema, too dangerous by far, but to upset such a powerful mercenary as John Hawkwood had to be unwise. His fractured relationship with Bernabò Visconti was no mystery yet he was still wedded to the Lord of Milan’s natural and much-loved daughter. He might be a friend and as such would be beneficial but it would be foolish to turn him into an enemy. If Milan came calling for his services, as they had in the past, Florence could suffer.
As a compromise he was given permission to purchase a home outside the city, the sequestered property of a fellow who had betrayed Florence in the War of the Eight Saints. The estate of San Donato lay on the road to Prato and was substantial enough to accommodate the family in comfort. In addition it produced any number of crops to help finance its upkeep.