Teodoro turned and saluted Simon smartly. "Your Signory, Peppino is a fool. But the Armenians provoked him. They insist on marching before us in the cortege. Are we not to march behind the French knights?"
Idiots! What difference did it make? They had forgotten that this parade was for Alain; they thought it was for them. He felt a dull hatred for both the Venetians and the Armenians.
Simon sent for Ana, the multilingual Bulgarian woman, who translated for the Armenians Simon's explanation that the French knights must ride as an honor guard directly behind Alain's bier, and that since the Venetians were directly under the command of the French, they must come next. Also, no one must come between the Tartar ambassadors and their Armenian bodyguards; therefore the Venetians must precede the Armenians.
"Sergentes, get your men back into line!" Simon shouted at the leaders of the hundred Monaldeschi men-at-arms milling about in the courtyard along with the Venetians and the Armenians.
Simon spurred his horse back to the head of the procession, where he took his position just behind Alain's bier, which was already in the street.
The Sire de Pirenne lay upon a huge square of red samite edged with gold, draped over the flat bed of a four-wheeled cart. Red ribbons were woven into the spokes of the wheels. The two farm horses that drew the cart, chosen for their docility, also wore red surcoats. Red, for martyrdom. Red for the blood poor Alain had shed. Simon sighed inwardly and hoped that God considered Alain a martyr and had taken him up to heaven. Had he not died while in the service of the Church? Was this not a crusade in all but name?
Alain was dressed in a white linen surcoat and a white silk mantle. Simon, Henri de Puys and the other four knights had dressed him themselves. What agony! The struggle to get poor dead Alain's big frame into his garments had taken nearly an hour.
Thank heaven de Puys had stopped Simon from trying to dress Alain in his mail shirt and hose, as Simon had originally intended. De Puys pointed out that Alain's family were poor, and that Alain's younger brother would have need of the expensive armor. So the armor would be sent back to the Gobignon domain along with the news that Alain was dead.
Oh, the woe Alain's widowed mother and younger brother would feel when Simon's letter reached them! Friar Mathieu had helped him compose the impossible lines, but Simon still felt they were not gentle enough, not comforting enough. He hated himself for feeling relieved that Alain's family was too far away for him to deliver the news in person. He had done the best he could, sending the letter and Alain's armor to his chaplain at Château Gobignon with instructions to take it personally to the de Pirennes and read it to them, offering them all possible consolation, they being almost certainly unlettered.
Around Alain's waist was clasped his jeweled belt of knighthood, and to his leather boots were fastened his knight's silver spurs. His velvet-gloved hands, resting on his chest, grasped the hilt of his naked longsword. Simon would buy another sword for his brother. His helmet, polished to mirror brightness by his sobbing equerry, rested beside his blond head. His shield, square at the top and pointed at the bottom, blazoned with five black eaglets on a gold ground, lay crosswise at his feet. Those things Alain must take to his final rest.