Читать книгу Three Great English Victories: A 3-book Collection of Harlequin, 1356 and Azincourt - Bernard Cornwell - Страница 17

There was a fuss back in La Roche-Derrien. Sir Simon Jekyll complained to Richard Totesham that Will Skeat had failed to support him in battle, then also claimed to have been responsible for the death or wounding of forty-one enemy men-at-arms. He boasted he had won the skirmish, then returned to his theme of Skeat’s perfidy, but Richard Totesham was in no mood to endure Sir Simon’s querulousness. ‘Did you win the fight or not?’

‘Of course we won!’ Sir Simon blinked indignantly. ‘They’re dead, ain’t they?’

‘So why did you need Will’s men-at-arms?’ Totesham asked.

Sir Simon searched for an answer and found none. ‘He was impertinent,’ he complained.

‘That’s for you and him to settle, not me,’ Totesham said in abrupt dismissal, but he was thinking about the conversation and that night he talked with Skeat.

‘Forty-one dead or wounded?’ he wondered aloud. ‘That must be a third of Lannion’s men-at-arms.’

‘Near as maybe, aye.’

Totesham’s quarters were near the river and from his window he could watch the water slide under the bridge arches. Bats flittered about the barbican tower that guarded the bridge’s further side, while the cottages beyond the river were lit by a sharp-edged moon. ‘They’ll be short-handed, Will,’ Totesham said.

‘They’ll not be happy, that’s for sure.’

‘And the place will be stuffed with valuables.’

‘Like as not,’ Skeat agreed. Many folk, fearing the hellequin, had taken their belongings to the nearby fortresses, and Lannion must be filled with their goods. More to the point, Totesham would find food there. His garrison received some food from the farms north of La Roche-Derrien and more was brought across the Channel from England, but the hellequin’s wastage of the countryside had brought hunger perilously close.

‘Leave fifty men here?’ Totesham was still thinking aloud, but he had no need to explain his thoughts to an old soldier like Skeat.

‘We’ll need new ladders,’ Skeat said.

‘What happened to the old ones?’

‘Firewood. It were a cold winter.’

‘A night attack?’ Totesham suggested.

‘Full moon in five or six days.’

‘Five days from now, then,’ Totesham decided. ‘And I’ll want your men, Will.’

‘If they’re sober by then.’

‘They deserve their drink after what they did today,’ Totesham said warmly, then gave Skeat a smile. ‘Sir Simon was complaining about you. Says you were impertinent.’

‘That weren’t me, Dick, it was my lad Tom. Told the bastard to go and boil his arse.’

‘I fear Sir Simon was never one for taking good advice,’ Totesham said gravely.

Nor were Skeat’s men. He had let them loose in the town, but warned them that they would feel rotten in the morning if they drank too much and they ignored that advice to make celebration in La Roche-Derrien’s taverns. Thomas had gone with a score of his friends and their women to an inn where they sang, danced and tried to pick a fight with a group of Duke John’s white rats, who were too sensible to rise to the provocation and slipped quietly into the night. A moment later two men-at-arms walked in, both wearing jackets with the Earl of Northampton’s badge of the lions and the stars. Their arrival was jeered, but they endured it with patience and asked if Thomas was present.

‘He’s the ugly bastard over there,’ Jake said, pointing to Thomas, who was dancing to the music of a flute and drum. The men-at-arms waited till he had finished his dance, then explained that Will Skeat was with the garrison’s commander and wanted to talk with him.

Thomas drained his ale. ‘What it is,’ he told the other archers, ‘is that they can’t make a decision without me. Indispensable, that’s me.’ The archers mocked that, but cheered good-naturedly as Thomas left with the two men-at-arms.

One of them came from Dorset and had actually heard of Hookton. ‘Didn’t the French land there?’ he asked.

‘Bastards wrecked it. I doubt there’s anything left,’ Thomas said. ‘So why does Will want me?’

‘God knows and He ain’t telling,’ one of the men said. He had led Thomas towards Richard Totesham’s quarters, but now he pointed down a dark alley. ‘They’re in a tavern at the end there. Place with the anchor hanging over the door.’

‘Good for them,’ Thomas said. If he had not been half drunk he might have realized that Totesham and Skeat were unlikely to summon him to a tavern, let alone the smallest one in town at the river end of the darkest alley, but Thomas suspected nothing until he was halfway down the narrow passage and two men stepped from a gateway. The first he knew of them was when a blow landed on the back of his head. He pitched forward onto his knees and the second man kicked him in the face, then both men rained kicks and blows on him until he offered no more resistance and they could seize his arms and drag him through the gate into a small smithy. There was blood in Thomas’s mouth, his nose had been broken again, a rib was cracked and his belly was churning with ale.

A fire burned in the smithy. Thomas, through half-closed eyes, could see an anvil. Then more men surrounded him and gave him a second kicking so that he rolled into a ball in a vain attempt to protect himself.

‘Enough,’ a voice said, and Thomas opened his eyes to see Sir Simon Jekyll. The two men who had fetched him from the tavern, and who had seemed so friendly, now came through the smithy gate and stripped off their borrowed tunics showing the Earl of Northampton’s badge. ‘Well done,’ Sir Simon told them, then looked at Thomas. ‘Mere archers,’ Sir Simon said, ‘do not tell knights to boil their arse.’

A tall man, a huge brute with lank yellow hair and blackened teeth, was standing beside Thomas, wanting to kick him if he offered an insolent reply, so Thomas held his tongue. Instead he offered a silent prayer to St Sebastian, the patron saint of archers. This plight, he reckoned, was too serious to be left to a dog.

‘Take his breeches down, Colley,’ Sir Simon ordered, and turned back to the fire. Thomas saw there was a great three-legged pot standing in the red-hot charcoal. He swore under his breath, realizing that he was the one who was to get a boiled arse. Sir Simon peered into the pot. ‘You are to be taught a lesson in courtesy,’ he told Thomas, who whimpered as the yellow-haired brute cut through his belt, then dragged his breeches down. The other men searched Thomas’s pockets, taking what coins they found and a good knife, then they turned him onto his belly so that his naked arse was ready for the boiling water.

Sir Simon saw the first wisps of steam float from the pot. ‘Take it to him,’ he ordered his men.

Three of Sir Simon’s soldiers were holding Thomas down and he was too hurt and too weak to fight them, so he did the only thing he could. He screamed murder. He filled his lungs and bellowed as loud as he could. He reckoned he was in a small town that was crowded with men and someone must hear and so he shrieked the alarm. ‘Murder! Murder!’ A man kicked his belly, but Thomas went on shouting.

‘For Christ’s sake, silence him,’ Sir Simon snarled, and Colley, the yellow-haired man, kneeled beside Thomas and tried to stuff straw into his mouth, but Thomas managed to spit it out.

‘Murder!’ he screamed. ‘Murder!’

Colley swore, took a handful of filthy mud and slapped it into Thomas’s mouth, muffling his noise. ‘Bastard,’ Colley said, and thumped Thomas’s skull. ‘Bastard!’

Thomas gagged on the mud, but he could not spit it out.

Sir Simon was standing over him now. ‘You are to be taught good manners,’ he said, and watched as the steaming pot was carried across the smithy yard.

Then the gate opened and a newcomer stepped into the yard. ‘What in God’s name is happening here?’ the man asked, and Thomas could have sung a Te Deum in praise of St Sebastian if his mouth had not been crammed with mud, for his rescuer was Father Hobbe, who must have heard the frantic shouting and come running down the alley to investigate. ‘What are you doing?’ the priest demanded of Sir Simon.

‘It is not your business, father,’ Sir Simon said.

‘Thomas, is it you?’ He turned back to the knight. ‘By God, it is my business!’ Father Hobbe had a temper and he lost it now. ‘Who the devil do you think you are?’

‘Be careful, priest,’ Sir Simon snarled.

‘Be careful! Me? I will have your soul in hell if you don’t leave.’ The small priest snatched up the smith’s huge poker and wielded it like a sword. ‘I’ll have all your souls in hell! Leave! All of you! Out of here! Out! In the name of God, get out! Get out!’

Sir Simon backed down. It was one thing to torture an archer, but quite another to get into a fight with a priest whose voice was loud enough to attract still more attention. Sir Simon snarled that Father Hobbe was an interfering bastard, but he retreated all the same.

Father Hobbe knelt beside Thomas and hooked some of the mud from his mouth, along with tendrils of thick blood and a broken tooth. ‘You poor lad,’ Father Hobbe said, then helped Thomas stand. ‘I’ll take you home, Tom, take you home and clean you up.’

Thomas had to vomit first, but then, holding his breeches up, he staggered back to Jeanette’s house, supported all the way by the priest. A dozen archers greeted him, wanting to know what had happened, but Father Hobbe brushed them aside. ‘Where’s the kitchen?’ he demanded.

‘She won’t let us in there,’ Thomas said, his voice indistinct because of his swollen mouth and bleeding gums.

‘Where is it?’ Father Hobbe insisted. One of the archers nodded at the door and the priest just pushed it open and half carried Thomas inside. He sat him on a chair and pulled the rush lights to the table’s edge so he could see Thomas’s face. ‘Dear God,’ he said, ‘what have they done to you?’ He patted Thomas’s hand, then went to find water.

Jeanette came into the kitchen, full of fury. ‘You are not supposed to be here! You will get out!’ Then she saw Thomas’s face and her voice trailed away. If someone had told her that she would see a badly beaten English archer she would have been cheered, but to her surprise she felt a pang of sympathy. ‘What happened?’

‘Sir Simon Jekyll did this,’ Thomas managed to say.

‘Sir Simon?’

‘He’s an evil man.’ Father Hobbe had heard the name and came from the scullery with a big bowl of water. ‘He’s an evil thing, evil.’ He spoke in English. ‘You have some cloths?’ he asked Jeanette.

‘She doesn’t speak English,’ Thomas said. Blood was trickling down his face.

‘Sir Simon attacked you?’ Jeanette asked. ‘Why?’

‘Because I told him to boil his arse,’ Thomas said, and was rewarded with a smile.

‘Good,’ Jeanette said. She did not invite Thomas to stay in the kitchen, but nor did she order him to leave. Instead she stood and watched as the priest washed his face, then took off Thomas’s shirt to bind up the cracked rib.

‘Tell her she could help me,’ Father Hobbe said.

‘She’s too proud to help,’ Thomas said.

‘It’s a sinful sad world,’ Father Hobbe declared, then knelt down. ‘Hold still, Tom,’ he said, ‘for this will hurt like the very devil.’ He took hold of the broken nose and there was the sound of cartilage scraping before Thomas shouted in pain. Father Hobbe put a cold wet cloth over his nose. ‘Hold that there, Tom, and the pain will go. Well, it won’t really, but you’ll get used to it.’ He sat on an empty salt barrel, shaking his head. ‘Sweet Jesus, Tom, what are we going to do with you?’

‘You’ve done it,’ Thomas said, ‘and I’m grateful. A day or two and I’ll be leaping about like a spring lamb.’

‘You’ve been doing that for too long, Tom,’ Father Hobbe said earnestly. Jeanette, not understanding a word, just watched the two men. ‘God gave you a good head,’ the priest went on, ‘but you waste your wits, Tom, you do waste them.’

‘You want me to be a priest?’

Father Hobbe smiled. ‘I doubt you’d be much credit to the Church, Tom. You’d like as not end up as an archbishop because you’re clever and devious enough, but I think you’d be happier as a soldier. But you have debts to God, Tom. Remember that promise you made to your father! You made it in a church, and it would be good for your soul to keep that promise, Tom.’

Thomas laughed, and immediately wished he had not, for the pain whipped through his ribs. He swore, apologized to Jeanette, then looked back to the priest. ‘And how in the name of God, father, am I supposed to keep that promise? I don’t even know what bastard stole the lance.’

‘What bastard?’ Jeanette asked, for she had picked up that one word. ‘Sir Simon?’

‘He is a bastard,’ Thomas said, ‘but he’s not the only one,’ and he told her about the lance, about the day his village had been murdered, about his father dying, and about the man who carried a banner showing three yellow hawks on a blue field. He told the story slowly, through bloody lips, and when he had finished Jeanette shrugged.

‘So you want to kill this man, yes?’

‘One day.’

‘He deserves to be killed,’ Jeanette said.

Thomas stared at her through half-closed eyes, astonished by those words. ‘You know him?’

‘He is called Sir Guillaume d’Evecque,’ Jeanette said.

‘What’s she saying?’ Father Hobbe asked.

‘I know him,’ Jeanette said grimly. ‘In Caen, where he comes from, he is sometimes called the lord of the sea and of the land.’

‘Because he fights on both?’ Thomas guessed.

‘He is a knight,’ Jeanette said, ‘but he is also a sea-raider. A pirate. My father owned sixteen ships and Guillaume d’Evecque stole three of them.’

‘He fought against you?’ Thomas sounded surprised.

Jeanette shrugged. ‘He thinks any ship that is not French is an enemy. We are Bretons.’

Thomas looked at Father Hobbe. ‘There you are, father,’ he said lightly, ‘to keep my promise all I must do is fight the knight of the sea and of the land.’

Father Hobbe had not followed the French, but he shook his head sadly. ‘How you keep the promise, Thomas, is your business. But God knows you made it, and I know you are doing nothing about it.’ He fingered the wooden cross he wore on a leather lace about his neck. ‘And what shall I do about Sir Simon?’

‘Nothing,’ Thomas said.

‘I must tell Totesham, at least!’ the priest insisted.

‘Nothing, father.’ Thomas was just as insistent. ‘Promise me.’

Father Hobbe looked suspiciously at Thomas. ‘You’re not thinking of taking your own revenge, are you?’

Thomas crossed himself and hissed because of the pain in his rib. ‘Doesn’t our Mother Church tell us to turn the other cheek?’ he asked.

‘It does,’ Father Hobbe said dubiously, ‘but it wouldn’t condone what Sir Simon did tonight.’

‘We shall turn away his wrath with a soft answer,’ Thomas said, and Father Hobbe, impressed by this display of genuine Christianity, nodded his acceptance of Thomas’s decision.

Jeanette had been following the conversation as best she could and had at least gathered the gist of their words. ‘Are you discussing what to do to Sir Simon?’ she asked Thomas.

‘I’m going to murder the bastard,’ Thomas said in French.

She offered him a sour grimace. ‘That is a very clever idea, Englishman. So you will be a murderer and they will hang you. Then, thanks be to God, there will be two dead Englishmen.’

‘What’s she saying, Thomas?’ Father Hobbe asked.

‘She’s agreeing that I ought to forgive my enemies, father.’

‘Good woman, good woman,’ Father Hobbe said.

‘Do you really want to kill him?’ Jeanette demanded coldly.

Thomas shuddered with the pain, but he was not so hurt that he could not appreciate Jeanette’s closeness. She was a hard woman, he reckoned, but still as lovely as the spring and, like the rest of Will Skeat’s men, he had harboured impossible dreams of knowing her better. Her question gave him that chance. ‘I’ll kill him,’ he assured her, ‘and in killing him, my lady, I’ll fetch you your husband’s armour and sword.’

Jeanette frowned at him. ‘You can do that?’

‘If you help me.’

She grimaced. ‘How?’

So Thomas told her and, to his astonishment, she did not dismiss the idea in horror, but instead nodded a grudging acceptance. ‘It might really work,’ she said after a while, ‘it really might work.’

Which meant that Sir Simon had united his enemies and Thomas had found himself an ally.

Jeanette’s life was encompassed by enemies. She had her son, but everyone else she loved was dead, and those who were left she hated. There were the English, of course, occupying her town, but there was also Belas, the lawyer, and the shipmasters who had cheated her, and the tenants who used the presence of the English to default on their rent, and the town’s merchants who dunned her for money she did not have. She was a countess, yet her rank counted for nothing. At night, brooding on her plight, she would dream of meeting a great champion, a duke perhaps, who would come to La Roche-Derrien and punish her enemies one by one. She saw them whimpering with terror, pleading for mercy and receiving none. But in each dawn there was no duke and her enemies did not cringe, and Jeanette’s troubles were unrelieved until Thomas promised to help her kill the one enemy she hated above the rest.

To which end, early in the morning after her conversation with Thomas, Jeanette went to Richard Totesham’s headquarters. She went early because she hoped Sir Simon Jekyll would still be in bed, and though it was essential he knew the purpose of her visit, she did not want to meet him. Let him learn from others what she planned.

The headquarters, like her own house, fronted the River Jaudy, and the waterfront yard, despite the early hour, already held a score of petitioners seeking favours from the English. Jeanette was told to wait with the other petitioners. ‘I am the Countess of Armorica,’ she told the clerk.

‘You must wait like the rest,’ the clerk answered in poor French, then cut another notch in a tally stick on which he was counting arrow sheaves that were being unloaded from a lighter that had come upriver from the deepwater harbour at Tréguier. A second lighter held barrels of red herrings, and the stench of the fish made Jeanette shudder. English food! They did not even gut the herrings before smoking them and the red fish came from the barrels covered in yellow-green mould, yet the archers ate them with relish. She tried to escape the reeking fish by crossing the yard to where a dozen local men trimmed great lengths of timber propped on sawhorses. One of the carpenters was a man who had sometimes worked for Jeanette’s father, though he was usually too drunk to hold a job for more than a few days. He was barefoot, ragged, hump-backed and hare-lipped, though when he was sober he was as good a labourer as any in the town.

‘Jacques!’ Jeanette called. ‘What are you doing?’ She spoke in Breton.

Jacques tugged his forelock and bobbed down. ‘You’re looking well, my lady.’ Only a few folk could understand his speech for his split lip mangled the sounds. ‘Your father always said you were his angel.’

‘I asked what you are doing.’

‘Ladders, my lady, ladders.’ Jacques cuffed a stream of mucus from his nose. There was a weeping ulcer on his neck and the stink of it was as bad as the red herrings. ‘They want six ever so long ladders.’

‘Why?’

Jacques looked left and right to make sure no one could overhear him. ‘What he says,’ he jerked his head at the Englishman who was supposedly supervising the work, ‘what he says is that they’re taking them to Lannion. And they’re long enough for that big wall, ain’t they?’

‘Lannion?’

‘He likes his ale, he does,’ Jacques said, explaining the Englishman’s indiscretion.

‘Hey! Handsome!’ the supervisor shouted at Jacques. ‘Get to work!’ Jacques, with a grin to Jeanette, picked up his tools.

‘Make the rungs loose!’ Jeanette advised Jacques in Breton, then turned because her name had been called from the house. Sir Simon Jekyll, looking heavy-eyed and sleepy, was standing in the doorway and Jeanette’s heart sank at the sight of him.

‘My lady,’ Sir Simon offered Jeanette a bow, ‘you should not be waiting with common folk.’

‘Tell that to the clerk,’ Jeanette said coldly.

The clerk tallying the arrow sheaves squealed when Sir Simon caught him by the ear. ‘This clerk?’ he asked.

‘He told me to wait out here.’

Sir Simon cuffed the man across the face. ‘She’s a lady, you bastard! You treat her like a lady.’ He kicked the man away, then pulled the door fully open. ‘Come, my lady,’ he invited her.

Jeanette went to the door and was relieved to see four more clerks busy at tables inside the house. ‘The army,’ Sir Simon said as she brushed past him, ‘has almost as many clerks as archers. Clerks, farriers, masons, cooks, herdsmen, butchers, anything else on two legs that can take the King’s coin.’ He smiled at her, then brushed a hand down his threadbare wool robe that was trimmed with fur. ‘If I had known you were gracing us with a visit, my lady, I would have dressed.’

Sir Simon, Jeanette noted gladly, was in a puppy mood this morning. He was always either boorish or clumsily polite and she hated him in either mood, but at least he was easier to deal with when he tried to impress her with his manners. ‘I came,’ she told him, ‘to request a pass from Monsieur Totesham.’ The clerks watched her surreptitiously, their quills scratching and spluttering on the scraped parchment.

‘I can give you a pass,’ Sir Simon said gallantly, ‘though I trust you are not leaving La Roche-Derrien permanently?’

‘I just wish to visit Louannec,’ Jeanette said.

‘And where, dear lady, is Louannec?’

‘It is on the coast,’ Jeanette said, ‘north of Lannion.’

‘Lannion, eh?’ He perched on a table’s edge, his bare leg swinging. ‘Can’t have you wandering near Lannion. Not this week. Next, maybe, but only if you can persuade me that you have good reason to travel.’ He smoothed his fair moustache. ‘And I can be very persuadable.’

‘I wish to pray at the shrine there,’ Jeanette said.

‘I would not keep you from your prayers,’ Sir Simon said. He was thinking that he should have invited her through into the parlour, but in truth he had small appetite for love’s games this morning. He had consoled himself for his failure to boil Thomas of Hookton’s backside by drinking deep into the darkness, and his belly felt liquid, his throat was dry and his head was banging like a kettledrum. ‘Which saint will have the pleasure of hearing your voice?’ he asked.

‘The shrine is dedicated to Yves who protects the sick. My son has a fever.’

‘Poor boy,’ Sir Simon said in mock sympathy, then peremptorily ordered a clerk to write the pass for her ladyship. ‘You will not travel alone, madame?’ he asked.

‘I shall take servants.’

‘You would be better with soldiers. There are bandits everywhere.’

‘I do not fear my own countrymen, Sir Simon.’

‘Then you should,’ he said tartly. ‘How many servants?’

‘Two.’

Sir Simon told the clerk to note two companions on the pass, then looked back to Jeanette. ‘You really would be much safer with soldiers as escort.’

‘God will preserve me,’ Jeanette said.

Sir Simon watched as the ink on the pass was sanded dry and a blob of hot wax was dropped onto the parchment. He pressed a seal into the wax, then held the document to Jeanette. ‘Maybe I should come with you, madame?’

‘I would rather not travel at all,’ Jeanette said, refusing to take the pass.

‘Then I shall relinquish my duties to God,’ Sir Simon said.

Jeanette took the pass, forced herself to thank him, then fled. She half expected that Sir Simon would follow her, but he let her go unmolested. She felt dirty, but also triumphant because the trap was baited now. Well and truly baited.

She did not go straight home, but went instead to the house of the lawyer, Belas, who was still eating a breakfast of blood sausage and bread. The aroma of the sausage put an edge to Jeanette’s hunger, but she refused his offer of a plate. She was a countess and he was a mere lawyer and she would not demean herself by eating with him.

Belas straightened his robe, apologized that the parlour was cold, and asked whether she had at last decided to sell the house. ‘It is the sensible thing to do, madame. Your debts mount.’

‘I shall let you know my decision,’ she said, ‘but I have come on other business.’

Belas opened the parlour shutters. ‘Business costs money, madame, and your debts, forgive me, are mounting.’

‘It is Duke Charles’s business,’ Jeanette said. ‘Do you still write to his men of business?’

‘From time to time,’ Belas said guardedly.

‘How do you reach them?’ Jeanette demanded.

Belas was suspicious of the question, but finally saw no harm in giving an answer. ‘The messages go by boat to Paimpol,’ he said, ‘then overland to Guingamp.’

‘How long does it take?’

‘Two days? Three? It depends if the English are riding the country between Paimpol and Guingamp.’

‘Then write to the Duke,’ Jeanette said, ‘and tell him from me that the English will attack Lannion at the end of this week. They are making ladders to scale the wall.’ She had decided to send the message through Belas, for her own couriers were two fishermen who only came to sell their wares in La Roche-Derrien on a Thursday, and any message sent through them must arrive too late. Belas’s couriers, on the other hand, could reach Guingamp in good time to thwart the English plans.

Belas dabbed egg from his thin beard. ‘You are sure, madame?’

‘Of course I’m sure!’ She told him about Jacques and the ladders and about the indiscreet English supervisor, and how Sir Simon had forced her to wait a week before venturing near Lannion on her expedition to the shrine at Louannec.

‘The Duke,’ Belas said as he ushered Jeanette to the house door, ‘will be grateful.’

Belas sent the message that day, though he did not say it came from the Countess, but instead claimed all the credit for himself. He gave the letter to a shipmaster who sailed that same afternoon, and next morning a horseman rode south from Paimpol. There were no hellequin in the wasted country between the port and the Duke’s capital so the message arrived safely. And in Guingamp, which was Duke Charles’s headquarters, the farriers checked the war horses’ shoes, the crossbowmen greased their weapons, squires scrubbed mail till it shone and a thousand swords were sharpened.

The English raid on Lannion had been betrayed.

Jeanette’s unlikely alliance with Thomas had soothed the hostility in her house. Skeat’s men now used the river as their lavatory instead of the courtyard, and Jeanette allowed them into the kitchen, which proved useful, for they brought their rations with them and so her household ate better than it had since the town had fallen, though she still could not bring herself to try the smoked herrings with their bright red, mould-covered skins. Best of all was the treatment given to two importunate merchants who arrived demanding payment from Jeanette and were so badly manhandled by a score of archers that both men left hatless, limping, unpaid and bloody.

‘I will pay them when I can,’ she told Thomas.

‘Sir Simon’s likely to have money on him,’ he told her.

‘He is?’

‘Only a fool leaves cash where a servant can find it,’ he said.

Four days after the beating his face was still swollen and his lips black with blood clots. His rib hurt and his body was a mass of bruises, but he had insisted to Skeat that he was well enough to ride to Lannion. They would leave that afternoon. At midday Jeanette found him in St Renan’s church.

‘Why are you praying?’ she asked him.

‘I always do before a fight.’

‘There will be a fight today? I thought you were not riding till tomorrow?’

‘I love a well-kept secret,’ Thomas said, amused. ‘We’re going a day early. Everything’s ready, why wait?’

‘Going where?’ Jeanette asked, though she already knew.

‘To wherever they take us,’ Thomas said.

Jeanette grimaced and prayed silently that her message had reached Duke Charles. ‘Be careful,’ she said to Thomas, not because she cared for him, but because he was her agent for taking revenge on Sir Simon Jekyll. ‘Perhaps Sir Simon will be killed?’ she suggested.

‘God will save him for me,’ Thomas said.

‘Perhaps he won’t follow me to Louannec?’

‘He’ll follow you like a dog,’ Thomas said, ‘but it will be dangerous for you.’

‘I shall get the armour back,’ Jeanette said, ‘and that is all that matters. Are you praying to St Renan?’

‘To St Sebastian,’ Thomas said, ‘and to St Guinefort.’

‘I asked the priest about Guinefort,’ Jeanette said accusingly, ‘and he said he had never heard of him.’

‘He probably hasn’t heard of St Wilgefortis either,’ Thomas said.

‘Wilgefortis?’ Jeanette stumbled over the unfamiliar name. ‘Who is he?’

‘She,’ Thomas said, ‘and she was a very pious virgin who lived in Flanders and grew a long beard. She prayed every day that God would keep her ugly so that she could stay chaste.’

Jeanette could not resist laughing. ‘That isn’t true!’

‘It is true, my lady,’ Thomas assured her. ‘My father was once offered a hair of her holy beard, but he refused to buy it.’

‘Then I shall pray to the bearded saint that you survive your raid,’ Jeanette said, ‘but only so you can help me against Sir Simon. Other than that I hope you all die.’

The garrison at Guingamp had the same wish, and to make it come true they assembled a strong force of crossbowmen and men-at-arms to ambush the Englishmen on their way to Lannion, but they, like Jeanette, were convinced that La Roche-Derrien’s garrison would make their sally on the Friday and so they did not leave till late on Thursday, by which time Totesham’s force was already within five miles of Lannion. The shrunken garrison did not know the English were coming because Duke Charles’s war captains, who commanded his forces in Guingamp while the Duke was in Paris, decided not to warn the town. If too many people knew that the English had been betrayed then the English themselves might hear of it, abandon their plans and so deny the Duke’s men the chance of a rare and complete victory.

The English expected victory themselves. It was a dry night and, near midnight, a full moon slid out from behind a silver-edged cloud to cast Lannion’s walls in sharp relief. The raiders were hidden in woods from where they watched the few sentinels on the ramparts. Those sentinels grew sleepy and, after a time, went to the bastions where fires burned and so they did not see the six ladder parties creep across the night fields, nor the hundred archers following the ladders. And still they slept as the archers climbed the rungs and Totesham’s main force erupted from the woods, ready to burst through the eastern gate that the archers would open.

The sentinels died. The first dogs awoke in the town, then a church bell began to ring and Lannion’s garrison came awake, but too late for the gate was open and Totesham’s mail-clad soldiers were crying havoc in the dark alleys while still more men-at-arms and archers were pouring through the narrow gate.

Skeat’s men were the rearguard and so waited outside the town as the sack began. Church bells were clanging wildly as the town’s parishes woke to nightmare, but gradually the clangour ceased.

Will Skeat stared at the moon-glossed fields south of Lannion. ‘I hear it was Sir Simon Jekyll who improved your looks,’ he said to Thomas.

‘It was.’

‘Because you told him to boil his arse?’ Skeat grinned. ‘You can’t blame him for thumping you,’ Skeat said, ‘but he should have talked to me first.’

‘What would you have done?’

‘Made sure he didn’t thump you too much, of course,’ Skeat said, his gaze moving steadily across the landscape. Thomas had acquired the same habit of watchfulness but all the land beyond the town was still. A mist rose from the low ground. ‘So what do you plan to do about it?’ Skeat asked.

‘Talk to you.’

‘I don’t fight your goddamn battles, boy,’ Skeat growled. ‘What do you plan to do about it?’

‘Ask you to lend me Jake and Sam on Saturday. And I want three crossbows.’

‘Crossbows, eh?’ Skeat asked flatly. He saw that the rest of Totesham’s force had now entered the town so he put two fingers to his lips and sounded a piercing whistle to signal that his own men could follow. ‘Onto the walls!’ he shouted as the hellequin rode forward. ‘Onto the walls!’ That was the rearguard’s job: to man the fallen town’s defences. ‘Half the bloody bastards will still get drunk,’ Skeat growled, ‘so you stay with me, Tom.’

Most of Skeat’s men did their duty and climbed the stone steps to the town’s ramparts, but a few slipped away in search of plunder and drink, so Skeat, Thomas and a half-dozen archers scoured the town to find those laggards and drive them back to the walls. A score of Totesham’s men-at-arms were doing much the same – dragging men out of taverns and setting them to loading the many wagons that had been stored in the town to keep them from the hellequin. Totesham particularly wanted food for his garrison, and his more reliable men-at-arms did their best to keep the English soldiers from drink, women or anything else that would slow the plunder.

The town’s garrison, woken and surprised, had done their best to fight back, but they had responded much too late, and their bodies now lay in the moonlit streets. But in the western part of the town, close to the quays which fronted the River Léguer, the battle still went on, and Skeat was drawn to the sound. Most men were ignoring it, too intent on kicking down house doors and ransacking warehouses, but Skeat reckoned no one in town was safe until all the defenders were dead.

Thomas followed him to find a group of Totesham’s men-at-arms who had just retreated from a narrow street. ‘There’s a mad bastard down there,’ one of them told Skeat, ‘and he’s got a dozen crossbowmen.’

The mad bastard and his crossbowmen had already killed their share of Englishmen, for the red-crossed bodies lay where the street bent sharply towards the river.

‘Burn them out,’ one of the men-at-arms suggested.

‘Not before we’ve searched the buildings,’ Skeat said, then sent two of his archers to fetch one of the ladders that had been used to scale the ramparts. Once the ladder was fetched he propped it against the nearest house and looked at Thomas, who grinned, climbed the rungs and then clambered up the steep thatch. His broken rib hurt, but he gained the ridge and there took the bow from his shoulder and fitted an arrow onto the cord. He walked along the rooftop, his mooncast shadow long on the sloping straw. The roof ended just above the place where the enemy waited and so, before reaching the ridge’s peak, he drew the bow to its full extent, then took two steps forward.

The enemy saw him and a dozen crossbows jerked up, but so did the unhelmeted face of a fair-haired man who had a long sword in his hand. Thomas recognized him. It was Sir Geoffrey de Pont Blanc, and Thomas hesitated because he admired the man. But then the first bolt whipped so close to his face that he felt the wind of its passing on his cheek and so he loosed, and he knew the arrow would go straight into the open mouth of Sir Geoffrey’s upturned face. He did not see it strike, though, for he had stepped back as the other crossbows twanged and their bolts seared up towards the moon.

‘He’s dead!’ Thomas shouted.

There was a tramp of feet as the men-at-arms charged before the crossbowmen could reload their clumsy weapons. Thomas stepped back to the ridge’s end and saw the swords and axes rise and fall. He saw the blood splash up onto the plastered house fronts. Saw the men hacking at Sir Geoffrey’s corpse just to make certain he was really dead. A woman shrieked in the house that Sir Geoffrey had been defending.

Thomas slithered down the thatch and jumped into the street where Sir Geoffrey had died and there he picked up three of the crossbows and a bag of bolts that he carried back to Will Skeat.

The Yorkshireman grinned. ‘Crossbows, eh? That means you’ll be pretending to be the enemy, and you can’t do that in La Roche-Derrien, so you’re waylaying Sir Simon somewhere outside the town. Am I right?’

‘Something like that.’

‘I could read you like a bloody book, boy, if I could read, which I can’t on account of having too much sense.’ Skeat walked on towards the river where three ships were being plundered and another two, their holds already emptied, were burning fiercely. ‘But how do you get the bastard out of town?’ Skeat asked. ‘He’s not a complete fool.’

‘He is when it comes to the Countess.’

‘Ah!’ Skeat grinned. ‘And the Countess, she’s suddenly being nice to us all. So it’s you and her, is it?’

‘It is not her and me, no.’

‘Soon will be, though, won’t it?’ Skeat said.

‘I doubt it.’

‘Why? Because she’s a countess? Still a woman, boy. But I’d be careful of her.’

‘Careful?’

‘Hard bitch, that one. Looks lovely on the outside, but it’s all flint inside. She’ll break your heart, boy.’

Skeat had stopped on the wide stone quays where men were emptying warehouses of leather, grain, smoked fish, wine and bolts of cloth. Sir Simon was among them, shouting at his men to commandeer more wagons. The town was yielding a vast fortune. It was a much bigger place than La Roche-Derrien and, because it had successfully fought off the Earl of Northampton’s winter siege, it had been reckoned a safe place for Bretons to store their valuables. Now it was being gutted. A man staggered past Thomas with an armload of silver plate, another man was dragging a half-naked woman by the shreds of her nightdress. One group of archers had broken open a vat and were dipping their faces to drink the wine.

‘It was easy enough getting in here,’ Skeat said, ‘but it’ll be the devil’s own job to get these sodden bastards back out again.’

Sir Simon beat his sword on the backs of two drunks who were getting in the way of his men emptying a storehouse of its bolts of cloth. He saw Thomas and looked surprised, but he was too wary of Will Skeat to say anything. He just turned away.

‘Bastard must have paid off his debts by now,’ Skeat said, still staring at Sir Simon’s back. ‘War’s a good way to get rich, so long as you ain’t taken prisoner and ransomed. Not that they’d ransom you or me, boy. Slit our bellies and prick our eyes out, more like. Have you ever shot a crossbow?’

‘No.’

‘Ain’t quite as easy as it looks. Not as hard as shooting a real bow, of course, but it still takes practice. Goddamn things can pitch a bit high if you’re not used to them. Do Jake and Sam want to help you?’

‘They say so.’

‘Of course they do, evil bastards that they are.’ Skeat still stared at Sir Simon, who was wearing his new, shining armour. ‘I reckon the bastard will carry his cash with him.’

‘I would think so, yes.’

‘Half mine, Tom, and I’ll ask no questions come Saturday.’

‘Thanks, Will.’

‘But do it proper, Tom,’ Skeat said savagely, ‘do it proper. I don’t want to watch you hang. I don’t mind watching most fools doing the rope dance with the piss running down their legs, but it’d be a shame to watch you twitching your way to the devil.’

They went back to the walls. Neither man had collected any plunder, but they had already taken more than enough from their raids on the north Breton farms and it was now the turn of Totesham’s men to gorge themselves on a captured town.

One by one the houses were searched and the tavern barrels were drained. Richard Totesham wanted his force to leave Lannion at dawn, but there were too many captured carts waiting to get through the narrow eastern gate and not nearly enough horses to pull the carts, so men were harnessing themselves the shafts rather than leave their pickings behind. Other men were drunk and senseless, and Totesham’s men-at-arms scoured the town to find them, but it was fire that drove most of the drunks from their refuges. The townsfolk fled south as the English set the thatched roofs alight.

The smoke thickened into a vast dirty pillar that drifted south on the small sea wind. The pillar glowed a lurid red on its underside, and it must have been that sight which first told the approaching force from Guingamp that they had arrived too late to save the town. They had marched through the night, expecting to find some place where they could lay an ambush for Totesham’s men, but the damage was already done. Lannion was burning and its wealth was piled on carts that were still being manhandled through the gate. But if the hated English could not be ambushed on their way to the town, then they could be surprised as they left and so the enemy commanders swung their forces eastwards towards the road which led back to La Roche-Derrien.

Cross-eyed Jake saw the enemy first. He was gazing south through the pearly mist that lay over the flat land and he saw the shadows in the vapour. At first he thought it was a herd of cows, then he decided it had to be refugees from the town. But then he saw a banner and a lance and the dull grey of a mail coat, and he shouted to Skeat that there were horsemen in sight.

Skeat peered over the ramparts. ‘Can you see anything, Tom?’

It was just before dawn proper and the countryside was suffused with greyness and streaked with mist. Thomas stared. He could see a thick wood a mile or more to the south and a low ridge showing dark above the mist. Then he saw the banners and the grey mail in the grey light, and a thicket of lances.

‘Men-at-arms,’ he said, ‘a lot of the bastards.’

Skeat swore. Totesham’s men were either still in the town or else strung along the road to La Roche-Derrien, and strung so far that there could be no hope of pulling them back behind Lannion’s walls – though even if that had been possible it was not practical for the whole western side of the town was burning furiously and the flames were spreading fast. To retreat behind the walls was to risk being roasted alive, but Totesham’s men were hardly in a fit condition to fight: many were drunk and all were laden with plunder.

‘Hedgerow,’ Skeat said curtly, pointing to a ragged line of blackthorn and elder that ran parallel to the road where the carts rumbled. ‘Archers to the hedge, Tom. We’ll look after your horses. Christ knows how we’ll stop the bastards,’ he made the sign of the cross, ‘but we ain’t got much choice.’

Thomas bullied a passage at the crowded gate and led forty archers across a soggy pasture to the hedgerow that seemed a flimsy barrier against the enemy massing in the silvery mist. There were at least three hundred horsemen there. They were not advancing yet, but instead grouping themselves for a charge, and Thomas had only forty men to stop them.

‘Spread out!’ he shouted. ‘Spread out!’ He briefly went onto one knee and made the sign of the cross. St Sebastian, he prayed, be with us now. St Guinefort, protect me. He touched the desiccated dog’s paw, then made the sign of the cross again.

A dozen more archers joined his force, but it was still far too small. A score of pageboys, mounted on ponies and armed with toy swords, could have massacred the men on the road, for Thomas’s hedge did not provide a complete screen, but rather straggled into nothingness about half a mile from the town. The horsemen only had to ride round that open end and there would be nothing to stop them. Thomas could take his archers into the open ground, but fifty men could not stop three hundred. Archers were at their best when they were massed together so that their arrows made a hard, steel-tipped rain. Fifty men could make a shower, but they would still be overrun and massacred by the horsemen.

‘Crossbowmen,’ Jake grunted, and Thomas saw the men in green and red jackets emerging from the woods behind the enemy men-at-arms. The new dawn light reflected cold from mail, swords and helmets. ‘Bastards are taking their time,’ Jake said nervously. He had planted a dozen arrows in the base of the hedge, which was just thick enough to stop the horsemen, but not nearly dense enough to slow a crossbow bolt.

Will Skeat had gathered sixty of his men-at-arms beside the road, ready to countercharge the enemy whose numbers increased every minute. Duke Charles’s men and their French allies were riding eastwards now, looking to advance about the open end of the hedge where there was an inviting swathe of green and open land leading all the way to the road. Thomas wondered why the hell they were waiting. He wondered if he would die here. Dear God, he thought, but there were not nearly enough men to stop this enemy. The fires continued to burn in Lannion, pouring smoke into the pale sky.

He ran to the left of the line, where he found Father Hobbe holding a bow. ‘You shouldn’t be here, father,’ he said.

‘God will forgive me,’ the priest said. He had tucked his cassock into his belt and had a small stand of arrows stuck into the hedgebank. Thomas gazed at the open land, wondering how long his men would last in that immensity of grass. Just what the enemy wanted, he thought, a stretch of bare flat land on which their horses could run hard and straight. Only the land was not entirely flat for it was dotted with grassy hummocks through which two grey herons walked stiff-legged as they hunted for frogs or ducklings. Frogs, Thomas thought, and ducklings. Sweet God, it was a marsh! The spring had been unusually dry, yet his boots were soaking from the damp field he had crossed to reach the hedgerow. The realization burst on Thomas like the rising sun. The open land was marsh! No wonder the enemy was waiting. They could see Totesham’s men strung out for slaughter, but they could see no way across the swampy ground.

‘This way!’ Thomas shouted at the archers. ‘This way! Hurry! Hurry! Come on, you bastards!’

He led them round the end of the hedge into the swamp where they leaped and splashed through a maze of marsh, tussocks and streamlets. They went south towards the enemy and once in range Thomas spread his men out and told them to indulge in target practice. His fear had gone, replaced by exaltation. The enemy was balked by the marsh. Their horses could not advance, but Thomas’s light archers could leap across the tussocks like demons. Like hellequin.

‘Kill the bastards!’ he shouted.

The white-fledged arrows hissed across the wetland to strike horses and men. Some of the enemy tried to charge the archers, but their horses floundered in the soft ground and became targets for volleys of arrows. The crossbowmen dismounted and advanced, but the archers switched their aim to them, and now more archers were arriving, dispatched by Skeat and Totesham, so that the marsh was suddenly swarming with English and Welsh bowmen who poured a steel-tipped hell on the befuddled enemy. It became a game. Men wagered on whether or not they could strike a particular target. The sun rose higher, casting shadows from the dead horses. The enemy was edging back to the trees. One brave group tried a last charge, hoping to skirt the marsh, but their horses stumbled in the soft ground and the arrows spitted and sliced at them so that men and beasts screamed as they fell. One horseman struggled on, flailing his beast with the flat of his sword. Thomas put an arrow into the horse’s neck and Jake skewered its haunch, and the animal screeched piteously as it thrashed in pain and collapsed into the swamp. The man somehow extricated his feet from his stirrups and stumbled cursing towards the archers with his sword held low and shield high, but Sam buried an arrow in his groin and then a dozen more bowmen added their arrows before swarming over the fallen enemy. Knives were drawn, throats cut, then the business of plunder could begin. The corpses were stripped of their mail and weapons and the horses of their bridles and saddles, then Father Hobbe prayed over the dead while the archers counted their spoils.

The enemy was gone by mid-morning. They left two score of dead men, and twice that number had been wounded, but not a single Welsh or English archer had died.

Duke Charles’s men slunk back to Guingamp. Lannion had been destroyed, they had been humiliated and Will Skeat’s men celebrated in La Roche-Derrien. They were the hellequin, they were the best and they could not be beaten.

The following morning Thomas, Sam and Jake left La Roche-Derrien before daybreak. They rode west towards Lannion, but once in the woods they swerved off the road and picketed their horses deep among the trees. Then, moving like poachers, they worked their way back to the wood’s edge. Each had his own bow slung on his shoulder, and carried a crossbow too, and they practised with the unfamiliar weapons as they waited in a swathe of bluebells at the wood’s margin from where they could see La Roche-Derrien’s western gate. Thomas had only brought a dozen bolts, short and stub-feathered, so each of them shot just two times. Will Skeat had been right: the weapons did kick up as the archers loosed so that their first bolts went high on the trunk that was their target. Thomas’s second shot was more accurate, but nothing like as true as an arrow shot from a proper bow. The near miss made him apprehensive of the morning’s risks, but Jake and Sam were both cheerful at the prospect of larceny and murder.

‘Can’t really miss,’ Sam said after his second shot had also gone high. ‘Might not catch the bastard in the belly, but we’ll hit him somewhere.’ He levered the cord back, grunting with the effort. No man alive could haul a crossbow’s string by arm-power alone and so a mechanism had to be employed. The most expensive crossbows, those with the longest range, used a jackscrew. The archer would place a cranked handle on the screw’s end and wind the cord back, inch by creaking inch, until the pawl above the trigger engaged the string. Some crossbowmen used their bodies as a lever. They wore thick leather belts to which a hook was attached and by bending down, attaching the hook to the cord and then straightening, they could pull the twisted strings back, but the crossbows Thomas had brought from Lannion used a lever, shaped like a goat’s hind leg, that forced the cord and bent the short bow shaft, which was a layered thing of horn, wood and glue. The lever was probably the fastest way of cocking the weapon, though it did not offer the power of a screw-cocked bow and was still slow compared to a yew shaft. In truth there was nothing to compare with the English bow and Skeat’s men debated endlessly why the enemy did not adopt the weapon. ‘Because they’re daft,’ was Sam’s curt judgement, though the truth, Thomas knew, was that other nations simply did not start their sons early enough. To be an archer meant starting as a boy, then practising and practising until the chest was broad, the arm muscles huge and the arrow seemed to fly without the archer giving its aim any thought.

Jake shot his second bolt into the oak and swore horribly when it missed the mark. He looked at the bow. ‘Piece of shit,’ he said. ‘How close are we going to be?’

‘Close as we can get,’ Thomas said.

Jake sniffed. ‘If I can poke the bloody bow into the bastard’s belly I might not miss.’

‘Thirty, forty feet should be all right,’ Sam reckoned.

‘Aim at his crotch,’ Thomas encouraged them, ‘and we should gut him.’

‘It’ll be all right,’ Jake said, ‘three of us? One of us has got to skewer the bastard.’

‘In the shadows, lads,’ Thomas said, gesturing them deeper into the trees. He had seen Jeanette coming from the gate where the guards had inspected her pass then waved her on. She sat sideways on a small horse that Will Skeat had lent her and was accompanied by two grey-haired servants, a man and a woman, both of whom had grown old in her father’s service and now walked beside their mistress’s horse. If Jeanette had truly planned to ride to Louannec then such a feeble and aged escort would have been an invitation for trouble, but trouble, of course, was what she intended, and no sooner had she reached the trees than the trouble appeared as Sir Simon Jekyll emerged from the archway’s shadow, riding with two other men.

‘What if those two bastards stay close to him?’ Sam asked.

‘They won’t,’ Thomas said. He was certain of that, just as he and Jeanette had been certain that Sir Simon would follow her and that he would wear the expensive suit of plate he had stolen from her.

‘She’s a brave lass,’ Jake grunted.

‘She’s got spirit,’ Thomas said, ‘knows how to hate someone.’

Jake tested the point of a quarrel. ‘You and her?’ he asked Thomas. ‘Doing it, are you?’

‘No.’

‘But you’d like to. I would.’

‘I don’t know,’ Thomas said. He thought Jeanette beautiful, but Skeat was right, there was a hardness in her that repelled him. ‘I suppose so,’ he admitted.

‘Of course you would,’ Jake said, ‘be daft not to.’

Once Jeanette was among the trees Thomas and his companions trailed her, staying hidden and always conscious that Sir Simon and his two henchmen were closing quickly. Those three horsemen trotted once they reached the wood and succeeded in catching up with Jeanette in a place that was almost perfect for Thomas’s ambush. The road ran within yards of a clearing where a meandering stream had undercut the roots of a willow. The fallen trunk was rotted and thick with disc-like fungi. Jeanette, pretending to make way for the three armoured horsemen, turned into the clearing and waited beside the dead tree. Best of all there was a stand of young alders close to the willow’s trunk that offered cover to Thomas.

Sir Simon turned off the road, ducked under the branches and curbed his horse close to Jeanette. One of his companions was Henry Colley, the brutal yellow-haired man who had hurt Thomas so badly, while the other was Sir Simon’s slack-jawed squire, who grinned in expectation of the coming entertainment. Sir Simon pulled off the snouted helmet and hung it on his saddle’s pommel, then smiled triumphantly.

‘It is not safe, madame,’ he said, ‘to travel without an armed escort.’

‘I am perfectly safe,’ Jeanette declared. Her two servants cowered beside her horse as Colley and the squire hemmed Jeanette in place with their horses.

Sir Simon dismounted with a clank of armour. ‘I had hoped, dear lady,’ he said, approaching her, ‘that we could talk on our way to Louannec.’

‘You wish to pray to the holy Yves?’ Jeanette asked. ‘What will you beg of him? That he grants you courtesy?’

‘I would just talk with you, madame,’ Sir Simon said.

‘Talk of what?’

‘Of the complaint you made to the Earl of Northampton. You fouled my honour, lady.’

‘Your honour?’ Jeanette laughed. ‘What honour do you have that could be fouled? Do you even know the meaning of the word?’

Thomas, hidden behind the straggle of alders, was whispering a translation to Jake and Sam. All three crossbows were cocked and had their wicked little bolts lying in the troughs.

‘If you will not talk to me on the road, madame, then we must have our conversation here,’ Sir Simon declared.

‘I have nothing to say to you.’

‘Then you will find it easy enough to listen,’ he said, and reached up to haul her out of the saddle. She beat at his armoured gauntlets, but no resistance of hers could prevent him from dragging her to the ground. The two servants shrieked protests, but Colley and the squire silenced them by grabbing their hair, then pulling them out of the clearing to leave Jeanette and Sir Simon alone.

Jeanette had scrabbled backwards and was now standing beside the fallen tree. Thomas had raised his crossbow, but Jake pushed it down, for Sir Simon’s escort was still too near.

Sir Simon pushed Jeanette hard so that she sat down on the rotting trunk, then he took a long dagger from his sword belt and drove its narrow blade hard through Jeanette’s skirts so that she was pinned to the fallen willow. He hammered the knife hilt with his steel-shod foot to make sure it was deep in the trunk. Colley and the squire had vanished now and the noise of their horses’ hooves had faded among the leaves.

Sir Simon smiled, then stepped forward and plucked the cloak from Jeanette’s shoulders. ‘When I first saw you, my lady,’ he said, ‘I confess I thought of marriage. But you have been perverse, so I have changed my mind.’ He put his hands at her bodice’s neckline and ripped it apart, tearing the laces from their embroidered holes. Jeanette screamed as she tried to cover herself and Jake again held Thomas’s arm down.

‘Wait till he gets the armour off,’ Jake whispered. They knew the bolts could pierce mail, but none of the three knew how strong the plate armour would prove.

Sir Simon slapped Jeanette’s hands away. ‘There, madame,’ he said, gazing at her breasts, ‘now we can have discourse.’

Sir Simon stepped back and began to strip himself of the armour. He pulled off the plated gauntlets first, unbuckled the sword belt, then lifted the shoulder pieces on their leather harness over his head. He fumbled with the side buckles of the breast and back plates that were attached to a leather coat that also supported the rerebraces and vambraces that protected his arms. The coat had a chain skirt, which, because of the weight of the plate and ring mail, made it a struggle for Sir Simon to drag over his head. He staggered as he pulled at the heavy armour and Thomas again raised the crossbow, but Sir Simon was stepping back and forward as he tried to steady himself and Thomas could not be sure of his aim and so kept his finger off the trigger.

The armour-laden coat thumped onto the ground, leaving Sir Simon tousle-haired and bare-chested, and Thomas again put the crossbow stock into his shoulder, but now Sir Simon sat down to strip off the cuisses, greaves, poleyns and boots, and he sat in such a way that his armoured legs were towards the ambush and kept getting in the way of Thomas’s aim. Jeanette was struggling with the knife, scared out of her wits that Thomas had not stayed close, but tug as she might the dagger would not move.

Sir Simon pulled off the sollerets that covered his feet, then wriggled out of the leather breeches to which the leg plates were attached. ‘Now, madame,’ he said, standing whitely naked, ‘we can talk properly.’

Jeanette heaved a last time at the dagger, hoping to plunge it into Sir Simon’s pale belly, and just then Thomas pulled his trigger.

The bolt scraped across Sir Simon’s chest. Thomas had aimed at the knight’s groin, hoping to send the short arrow deep into his belly, but the bolt had grazed one of the whiplike alder boughs and been deflected. Blood streaked on Sir Simon’s skin and he dropped to the ground so fast that Jake’s bolt whipped over his head. Sir Simon scrambled away, going first to his discarded armour. Then he realized he had no time to save the plate and so he ran for his horse, and it was then that Sam’s bolt caught him in the flesh of his right thigh so that he yelped, half fell and decided there was no time to rescue his horse either and just limped naked and bleeding into the woods. Thomas loosed a second bolt that rattled past Sir Simon to whack into a tree, and then the naked man vanished. Thomas swore. He had meant to kill, but Sir Simon was all too alive.

‘I thought you weren’t here!’ Jeanette said as Thomas appeared. She was clutching her torn clothing to her breasts.

‘We missed the bastard,’ Thomas said angrily. He heaved the dagger free of her skirts while Jake and Sam thrust the armour into two sacks. Thomas threw down the crossbow and took his own black bow from his shoulder. What he should do now, he thought, was track Sir Simon through the trees and kill the bastard. He could pull out the white-feathered arrow and put a crossbow bolt into the wound so that whoever found him would believe that bandits or the enemy had killed the knight.

‘Search the bastard’s saddle pouches,’ he told Jake and Sam. Jeanette had tied the cloak round her neck and her eyes widened as she saw the gold pour from the pouches. ‘You’re going to stay here with Jake and Sam,’ Thomas told her.

‘Where are you going?’ she asked.

‘To finish the job,’ Thomas said grimly. He loosed the laces of his arrow bag and dropped one crossbow bolt in among the longer arrows. ‘Wait here,’ he told Jake and Sam.

‘I’ll help you,’ Sam said.

‘No,’ Thomas insisted, ‘wait here and look after the Countess.’ He was angry with himself. He should have used his own bow from the start and simply removed the telltale arrow and shot a bolt into Sir Simon’s corpse, but he had fumbled the ambush. But at least Sir Simon had fled westwards, away from his two men-at-arms, and he was naked, bleeding and unarmed. Easy prey, Thomas told himself as he followed the blood drops among the trees. The trail went west and then, as the blood thinned, southwards. Sir Simon was obviously working his way back towards his companions and Thomas abandoned caution and just ran, hoping to cut the fugitive off. Then, bursting through some hazels, he saw Sir Simon, limping and bent. Thomas pulled the bow back, and just then Colley and the squire came into view, both with swords drawn and both spurring their horses at Thomas. He switched his aim to the nearest and loosed without thinking. He loosed as a good archer should, and the arrow went true and fast, smack into the mailed chest of the squire, who was thrown back in his saddle. His sword dropped to the ground as his horse swerved hard to its left, going in front of Sir Simon.

Colley wrenched his reins and reached for Sir Simon, who clutched at his outstretched hand and then half ran and was half carried away into the trees. Thomas had dragged a second arrow from the bag, but by the time he loosed it the two men were half hidden by trees and the arrow glanced off a branch and was lost among the leaves.

Thomas swore. Colley had stared straight at Thomas for an instant. Sir Simon had also seen him and Thomas, a third arrow on his string, just stared at the trees as he understood that everything had just fallen apart. In one instant. Everything.

He ran back to the clearing by the stream. ‘You’re to take the Countess to the town,’ he told Jake and Sam, ‘but for Christ’s sake go carefully. They’ll be searching for us soon. You’ll have to sneak back.’

They stared at him, not understanding, and Thomas told them what had happened. How he had killed Sir Simon’s squire, and how that made him both a murderer and a fugitive. He had been seen by Sir Simon and by the yellow-haired Colley, and they would both be witnesses at his trial and celebrants at his execution.

He told Jeanette the same in French. ‘You can trust Jake and Sam,’ he told her, ‘but you mustn’t be caught going home. You have to go carefully!’

Jake and Sam argued, but Thomas knew well enough what the consequences of the killing arrow were. ‘Tell Will what happened,’ he told them. ‘Blame it all on me and say I’ll wait for him at Quatre Vents.’ That was a village the hellequin had laid waste south of La Roche-Derrien. ‘Tell him I’d like his advice.’

Jeanette tried to persuade him that his panic was unnecessary. ‘Perhaps they did not recognize you?’ she suggested.

‘They recognized me, my lady,’ Thomas said grimly. He smiled ruefully. ‘I am sorry, but at least you have your armour and sword. Hide them well.’ He pulled himself into Sir Simon’s saddle. ‘Quatre Vents,’ he told Jake and Sam, then spurred southwards through the trees.

He was a murderer, a wanted man and a fugitive, and that meant he was any man’s prey, alone in the wilderness made by the hellequin. He had no idea what he should do or where he could go, only that if he was to survive then he must ride like the devil’s horseman that he was.

So he did.