I TOLD YOU,” SAID SERLE. “YOU SHOULD HAVE GOT THEM mended before we left Venice.”
“They were all right then,” I said. “They only need a few stitches.”
But all morning I had to trail from camp to camp, searching for a shoemaker, and I was barefoot because my hose stops at my ankles.
The man in the Doge’s camp was the first to turn me away. He was lining a pair of boots with some kind of cherry-red material and told me he had far too much to do.
It was the same wherever I went.
“You see this pile?”
“I’ve no time at all. I can’t even look at them.”
“It takes time, son. Lining. Punching the holes. Lacing the sides. Folding over the caps.”
You might have thought I wanted shoes inset with precious stones and threaded with gold, or magic shoes to climb a glass mountain. “They only need a few stitches,” I said.
“So you can trample all God’s enemies under your feet? Well, boy, you’ll just have to wait.”
Eventually, though, I did find a shoemaker in one of the Italian camps who was willing to help me. He spoke some English and had his own little pavilion.
“Picardians and Venetians and Poitevins and Angevins,” he said, “they’re just cobblers. I’m a shoemaker. I’m a cordwainer. Look!”
Stacked in the corner of the pavilion were rolls of skin, dyed olive green and mustard and chestnut.
“Goat,” said the shoemaker.
“Doesn’t it tear?” I asked. “Goatskin used for parchment is so thin, it always tears.”
“You wouldn’t want it for marching,” the shoemaker replied. “Goatskin for ladies’ shoes.”
“On the crusade?”
The shoemaker smiled a leathery smile. “I’ll sell along the way. Embroidered shoes. Scorpion-tailed shoes. Boots edged with fur. And if there are any left when I get home, the ladies of Milan won’t disappoint me.” He pointed at another, much thicker roll, the color of old beech-mast. “Cow,” he said. “Cow for soles.”
“You could make up a riddle about shoes,” I said. “They’ve got souls, and tongues. They’ve got eyes.…”
In another corner there were half a dozen lasts, all over the floor were little snips of leather, and seven pairs of beautiful new boots stood ankle to ankle on a trestle bench.
“Let’s have a look, then,” the shoemaker said.
I handed him my boots.
The shoemaker made a sucking sound. “Dreadful!” he said. “You’re doing your feet a mischief, you are. And if you don’t care for your feet, what kind of man are you?”
“What about monks who wear hair shirts?” I said. “And crusaders who scorch their own bodies?”
“I don’t know about that,” the shoemaker said. “You squires, you all think you’re clever and you all wreck your boots.”
“I’m not a squire. I’m a knight,” I said.
“You? A knight? What’s your name?”
“Arthur. Sir Arthur de Gortanore.”
“Well, your boots are a disgrace.”
“I know.”
The shoemaker picked up a pair of handsome calf-length boots and smiled. “Signor Artù,” he said. “You buy these.”
“No, I can’t. I’ve only got three farthings.”
“When you buy,” the shoemaker said, “always ask three questions. How long they last? How comfortable? And how elegant?”
“I wish I could buy them,” I said. “My brother has boots like that. Can you mend mine, though?”
The shoemaker stared at me. “Feet first?”
“What do you mean?”
“Were you born feet first?”
“I don’t know,” I said. “I know I was born left-handed. I can write with my left hand and my right hand.”
“You ask your mother, Signor Artù.”
“My mother! Yes! Yes, I will, then.”
The shoemaker started to stitch the seam of my right boot. “Feet first means magic. You can heal people.”
“No,” I said. “I can’t do that.”
“How do you know?” he asked me.
Then the shoemaker opened his tinderbox, and blew the spark into a flame, and held a strip of leather over it until it began to smolder. It smelled disgusting.
“What are you doing that for?” I asked.
“You know nothing,” said the shoemaker. “To keep away demons.”