Читать книгу Three Great English Victories: A 3-book Collection of Harlequin, 1356 and Azincourt - Bernard Cornwell - Страница 23

Next morning Sir Guillaume, escorted now by a half-dozen men-at-arms, took Thomas to the Abbaye aux Hommes. A crowd of petitioners stood at the gates, wanting food and clothing that the monks did not have, though the abbey itself had escaped the worst of the plundering because it had been the quarters of the King and of the Prince of Wales. The monks themselves had fled at the approach of the English army. Some had died on the Île St Jean, but most had gone south to a brother house and among those was Brother Germain who, when Sir Guillaume arrived, had just returned from his brief exile.

Brother Germain was tiny, ancient and bent, a wisp of a man with white hair, myopic eyes and delicate hands with which he was trimming a goose quill.

‘The English,’ the old man said, ‘use these feathers for their arrows. We use them for God’s word.’ Brother Germain, Thomas was told, had been in charge of the monastery’s scriptorium for more than thirty years. ‘In the course of copying books,’ the monk explained, ‘one discovers knowledge whether one wishes it or not. Most of it is quite useless, of course. How is Mordecai? He lives?’

‘He lives,’ Sir Guillaume said, ‘and sends you this.’ He put a clay pot, sealed with wax, on the sloping surface of the writing desk. The pot slid down until Brother Germain trapped it and pushed it into a pouch. ‘A salve,’ Sir Guillaume explained to Thomas, ‘for Brother Germain’s joints.’

‘Which ache,’ the monk said, ‘and only Mordecai can relieve them. ’Tis a pity he will burn in hell, but in heaven, I am assured, I shall need no ointments. Who is this?’ He peered at Thomas.

‘A friend,’ Sir Guillaume said, ‘who brought me this.’ He was carrying Thomas’s bow, which he now laid across the desk and tapped the silver plate. Brother Germain stooped to inspect the badge and Thomas heard a sharp intake of breath.

‘The yale,’ Brother Germain said. He pushed the bow away, then blew the scraps from his sharpened quill off the desk. ‘The beast was introduced by the heralds in the last century. Back then, of course, there was real scholarship in the world. Not like today. I get young men from Paris whose heads are stuffed with wool, yet they claim to have doctorates.’

He took a sheet of scrap parchment from a shelf, laid it on the desk and dipped his quill in a pot of vermilion ink. He let a glistening drop fall onto the parchment and then, with the skill gained in a lifetime, drew the ink out of the drop in quick strokes. He hardly seemed to be taking notice of what he was doing, but Thomas, to his amazement, saw a yale taking shape on the parchment.

‘The beast is said to be mythical,’ Brother Germain said, flicking the quill to make a tusk, ‘and maybe it is. Most heraldic beasts seem to be inventions. Who has seen a unicorn?’ He put another drop of ink on the parchment, paused a heartbeat, then began on the beast’s raised paws. ‘There is, however, a notion that the yale exists in Ethiopia. I could not say, not having travelled east of Rouen, nor have I met any traveller who has been there, if indeed Ethiopia even exists.’ He frowned. ‘The yale is mentioned by Pliny, however, which suggests it was known to the Romans, though God knows they were a credulous race. The beast is said to possess both horns and tusks, which seems extravagant, and is usually depicted as being silver with yellow spots. Alas, our pigments were stolen by the English, but they left us the vermilion which, I suppose, was kind of them. It comes from cinnabar, I’m told. Is that a plant? Father Jacques, rest his soul, always claimed it grows in the Holy Land and perhaps it does. Do I detect that you are limping, Sir Guillaume?’

‘A bastard English archer put an arrow in my leg,’ Sir Guillaume said, ‘and I pray nightly that his soul will roast in hell.’

‘You should, instead, give thanks that he was inaccurate. Why do you bring me an English war bow decorated with a yale?’

‘Because I thought it would interest you,’ Sir Guillaume said, ‘and because my young friend here,’ he touched Thomas’s shoulder, ‘wants to know about the Vexilles.’

‘He would do much better to forget them,’ Brother Germain grumbled.

He was perched on a tall chair and now peered about the room where a dozen young monks tidied the mess left by the monastery’s English occupiers. Some of them chattered as they worked, provoking a frown from Brother Germain.

‘This is not Caen marketplace!’ he snapped. ‘If you want to gossip, go to the lavatories. I wish I could. Ask Mordecai if he has an unguent for the bowels, would you?’ He glowered about the room for an instant, then struggled to pick up the bow that he had propped against the desk. He looked intently at the yale for an instant, then put the bow down. ‘There was always a rumour that a branch of the Vexille family went to England. This seems to confirm it.’

‘Who are they?’ Thomas asked.

Brother Germain seemed irritated by the direct question, or perhaps the whole subject of the Vexilles made him uncomfortable. ‘They were the rulers of Astarac,’ he said, ‘a county on the borders of Languedoc and the Agenais. That, of course, should tell you all you need to know of them.’

‘It tells me nothing,’ Thomas confessed.

‘Then you probably have a doctorate from Paris!’ The old man chuckled at this jest. ‘The Counts of Astarac, young man, were Cathars. Southern France was infested by that damned heresy, and Astarac was at the centre of the evil.’ He made the sign of the cross with fingers deep-stained by pigments. ‘Habere non potest,’ he said solemnly, ‘Deum patrem qui ecclesiam non habet matrem.’

‘St Cyprian,’ Thomas said. ‘‘‘He cannot have God as his father who does not have the Church as his mother.’’’

‘I see you are not from Paris after all,’ Brother Germain said. ‘The Cathars rejected the Church, looking for salvation within their own dark souls. What would become of the Church if we all did that? If we all pursued our own whims? If God is within us then we need no Church and no Holy Father to lead us to His mercy, and that notion is the most pernicious of heresies, and where did it lead the Cathars? To a life of dissipation, of fleshly lust, of pride and of perversion. They denied the divinity of Christ!’ Brother Germain made the sign of the cross again.

‘And the Vexilles were Cathars?’ Sir Guillaume prompted the old man.

‘I suspect they were devil worshippers,’ Brother Germain retorted, ‘but certainly the Counts of Astarac protected the Cathars, they and a dozen other lords. They were called the dark lords and very few of them were Perfects. The Perfects were the sect leaders, the heresiarchs, and they abstained from wine, intercourse and meat, and no Vexille would willingly abandon those three joys. But the Cathars allowed such sinners to be among their ranks and promised them the joys of heaven if they recanted before their deaths. The dark lords liked such a promise and, when the heresy was assailed by the Church, they fought bitterly.’ He shook his head. ‘This was a hundred years ago! The Holy Father and the King of France destroyed the Cathars, and Astarac was one of the last fortresses to fall. The fight was dreadful, the dead innumerable, but the heresiarchs and the dark lords were finally scotched.’

‘Yet some escaped?’ Sir Guillaume suggested gently.

Brother Germain was silent for a while, gazing at the drying vermilion ink. ‘There was a story,’ he said, ‘that some of the Cathar lords did survive, and that they took their riches to countries all across Europe. There is even a rumour that the heresy yet survives, hidden in the lands where Burgundy and the Italian states meet.’ He made the sign of the cross. ‘I think a part of the Vexille family went to England, to hide there, for it was in England, Sir Guillaume, that you found the lance of St George. Vexille …’ He said the name thoughtfully. ‘It derives, of course, from vexillaire, a standard-bearer, and it is said that an early Vexille discovered the lance while on the crusades and thereafter carried it as a standard. It was certainly a symbol of power in those old days. Myself? I am sceptical of these relics. The abbot assures me he has seen three foreskins of the infant Jesus and even I, who hold Him blessed above all things, doubt He was so richly endowed, but I have asked some questions about this lance. There is a legend attached to it. It is said that the man who carries the lance into battle cannot be defeated. Mere legend, of course, but belief in such nonsense inspires the ignorant, and there are few more ignorant than soldiers. What troubles me most, though, is their purpose.’

‘Whose purpose?’ Thomas asked.

‘There is a story,’ Brother Germain said, ignoring the question, ‘that before the fall of the last heretic fortresses, the surviving dark lords made an oath. They knew the war was lost, they knew their strongholds must fall and that the Inquisition and the forces of God would destroy their people, and so they made an oath to visit vengeance on their enemies. One day, they swore, they would bring down the Throne of France and the Holy Mother Church, and to do it they would use the power of their holiest relics.’

‘The lance of St George?’ Thomas asked.

‘That too,’ Brother Germain said.

‘That too?’ Sir Guillaume repeated the words in a puzzled tone.

Brother Germain dipped his quill and put another glistening drop of ink on the parchment. Then, deftly, he finished his copy of the badge on Thomas’s bow. ‘The yale,’ he said, ‘I have seen before, but the badge you showed me is different. The beast is holding a chalice. But not any chalice, Sir Guillaume. You are right, the bow interests me, and frightens me, for the yale is holding the Grail. The holy, blessed and most precious Grail. It was always rumoured that the Cathars possessed the Grail. There is a tawdry lump of green glass in Genoa Cathedral that is said to be the Grail, but I doubt our dear Lord drank from such a bauble. No, the real Grail exists, and whoever holds it possesses power above all men on earth.’ He put down the quill. ‘I fear, Sir Guillaume, that the dark lords want their revenge. They gather their strength. But they hide still and the Church has not yet taken notice. Nor will it until the danger is obvious, and by then it will be too late.’ Brother Germain lowered his head so that Thomas could only see the bald pink patch among the white hair. ‘It is all prophesied,’ the monk said; ‘it is all in the books.’

‘What books?’ Sir Guillaume asked.

‘Et confortabitur rex austri et de principibus eius praevalebit super eum,’ Brother Germain said softly.

Sir Guillaume looked quizzically at Thomas. ‘And the King from the south will be mighty,’ Thomas reluctantly translated, ‘but one of his princes will be stronger than him.’

‘The Cathars are of the south,’ Brother Germain said, ‘and the prophet Daniel foresaw it all.’ He raised his pigment-stained hands. ‘The fight will be terrible, for the soul of the world is at stake, and they will use any weapon, even a woman. Filiaque regis austri veniet ad regem aquilonis facere amicitiam.’

‘The daughter of the King of the south,’ Thomas said, ‘shall come to the King of the north and make a treaty.’

Brother Germain heard the distaste in Thomas’s voice. ‘You don’t believe it?’ he hissed. ‘Why do you think we keep the scriptures from the ignorant? They contain all sorts of prophecies, young man, and each of them given direct to us by God, but such knowledge is confusing to the unlearned. Men go mad when they know too much.’ He made the sign of the cross. ‘I thank God I shall be dead soon and taken to the bliss above while you must struggle with this darkness.’

Thomas walked to the window and watched two wagons of grain being unloaded by novices. Sir Guillaume’s men-at-arms were playing dice in the cloister. That was real, he thought, not some babbling prophet. His father had ever warned him against prophecy. It drives men’s minds awry, he had said, and was that why his own mind had gone astray?

‘The lance,’ Thomas said, trying to cling to fact instead of fancy, ‘was taken to England by the Vexille family. My father was one of them, but he fell out with the family and he stole the lance and hid it in his church. He was killed there, and at his death he told me it was his brother’s son who did it. I think it is that man, my cousin, who called himself the Harlequin.’ He turned to look at Brother Germain. ‘My father was a Vexille, but he was no heretic. He was a sinner, yes, but he struggled against his sin, he hated his own father, and he was a loyal son of the Church.’

‘He was a priest,’ Sir Guillaume explained to the monk.

‘And you are his son?’ Brother Germain asked in a disapproving tone. The other monks had abandoned their tidying and were listening avidly.

‘I am a priest’s son,’ Thomas said, ‘and a good Christian.’

‘So the family discovered where the lance was hidden,’ Sir Guillaume took up the story, ‘and hired me to retrieve it. But forgot to pay me.’

Brother Germain appeared not to have heard. He was staring at Thomas. ‘You are English?’

‘The bow is mine,’ Thomas acknowledged.

‘So you are a Vexille?’

Thomas shrugged. ‘It would seem so.’

‘Then you are one of the dark lords,’ Brother Germain said.

Thomas shook his head. ‘I am a Christian,’ he said firmly.

‘Then you have a God-given duty,’ the small man said with surprising force, ‘which is to finish the work that was left undone a hundred years ago. Kill them all! Kill them! And kill the woman. You hear me, boy? Kill the daughter of the King of the south before she seduces France to heresy and wickedness.’

‘If we can even find the Vexilles,’ Sir Guillaume said dubiously, and Thomas noted the word ‘we’. ‘They don’t display their badge. I doubt they use the name Vexille. They hide.’

‘But they have the lance now,’ Brother Germain said, ‘and they will use it for the first of their vengeances. They will destroy France, and in the chaos that ensues, they will attack the Church.’ He moaned, as if he was in physical pain. ‘You must take away their power, and their power is the Grail.’

So it was not just the lance that Thomas must save. To Father Hobbe’s charge had been added all of Christendom. He wanted to laugh. Catharism had died a hundred years before, scourged and burned and dug out of the land like couch grass grubbed from a field! Dark lords, daughters of kings and princes of darkness were figments of the troubadours, not the business of archers. Except that when he looked at Sir Guillaume he saw that the Frenchman was not mocking the task. He was staring at a crucifix hanging on the scriptorium wall and mouthing a silent prayer. God help me, Thomas thought, God help me, but I am being asked to do what all the great knights of Arthur’s round table failed to do: to find the Grail.

Philip of Valois, King of France, ordered every Frenchman of military age to gather at Rouen. Demands went to his vassals and appeals were carried to his allies. He had expected the walls of Caen to hold the English for weeks, but the city had fallen in a day and the panicked survivors were spreading across northern France with terrible stories of devils unleashed.

Rouen, nestled in a great loop of the Seine, filled with warriors. Thousands of Genoese crossbowmen came by galley, beaching their ships on the river’s bank and thronging the city’s taverns, while knights and men-at-arms arrived from Anjou and Picardy, from Alençon and Champagne, from Maine, Touraine and Berry. Every blacksmith’s shop became an armoury, every house a barracks and every tavern a brothel. More men arrived, until the city could scarce contain them, and tents had to be set up in the fields south of the city. Wagons crossed the bridge, loaded with hay and newly harvested grain from the rich farmlands north of the river, while from the Seine’s southern bank came rumours. The English had taken Evreux, or perhaps it was Bernay? Smoke had been seen at Lisieux, and archers were swarming through the forest of Brotonne. A nun in Louviers had a dream in which the dragon killed St George. King Philip ordered the woman brought to Rouen, but she had a harelip, a hunchback and a stammer, and when she was presented to the King she proved unable to recount the dream, let alone confide God’s strategy to His Majesty. She just shuddered and wept and the King dismissed her angrily, but took consolation from the bishop’s astrologer who said Mars was in the ascendant and that meant victory was certain.

Rumour said the English were marching on Paris, then another rumour claimed they were going south to protect their territories in Gascony. It was said that every person in Caen had died, that the castle was rubble; then a story went about that the English themselves were dying of a sickness. King Philip, ever a nervous man, became petulant, demanding news, but his advisers persuaded their irritable master that wherever the English were they must eventually starve if they were kept south of the great River Seine that twisted like a snake from Paris to the sea. Edward’s men were wasting the land, so needed to keep moving if they were to find food, and if the Seine was blocked then they could not go north towards the harbours on the Channel coast where they might expect supplies from England.

‘They use arrows like a woman uses money,’ Charles, the Count of Alençon and the King’s younger brother, advised Philip, ‘but they cannot fetch their arrows from France. They are brought to them by sea, and the further they go from the sea, the greater their problems.’ So if the English were kept south of the Seine then they must eventually fight or make an ignominious retreat to Normandy.

‘What of Paris? Paris? What of Paris?’ the King demanded.

‘Paris will not fall,’ the Count assured his brother. The city lay north of the Seine, so the English would need to cross the river and assault the largest ramparts in Christendom, and all the while the garrison would be showering them with crossbow bolts and the missiles from the hundreds of small iron guns that had been mounted on the city walls.

‘Maybe they will go south?’ Philip worried. ‘To Gascony?’

‘If they march to Gascony,’ the Count said, ‘then they will have no boots by the time they arrive, and their arrow store will be gone. Let us pray they do go to Gascony, but above all things pray they do not reach the Seine’s northern bank.’ For if the English crossed the Seine they would go to the nearest Channel port to receive reinforcements and supplies and, by now, the Count knew, the English would be needing supplies. A marching army tired itself, its men became sick and its horses lame. An army that marched too long would eventually wear out like a tired crossbow.

So the French reinforced the great fortresses that guarded the Seine’s crossings and where a bridge could not be guarded, such as the sixteen-arched bridge at Poissy, it was demolished. A hundred men with sledgehammers broke down the parapets and hammered the stonework of the arches into the river to leave the fifteen stumps of the broken piers studding the Seine like the stepping stones of a giant, while Poissy itself, which lay south of the Seine and was reckoned indefensible, was abandoned and its people evacuated to Paris. The wide river was being turned into an impassable barrier to trap the English in an area where their food must eventually run short. Then, when the devils were weakened, the French would punish them for the terrible damage they had wrought on France. The English were still burning towns and destroying farms so that, in those long summer days, the western and southern horizons were so smeared by smoke plumes that it seemed as if there were permanent clouds on the skylines. At night the world’s edge glowed and folk fleeing the fires came to Rouen where, because so many could not be housed or fed, they were ordered across the river and away to wherever they might find shelter.

Sir Simon Jekyll, and Henry Colley, his man-at-arms, were among the fugitives, and they were not refused admittance, for they both rode destriers and were in mail. Colley wore his own mail and rode his own horse, but Sir Simon’s mount and gear had been stolen from one of his other men-at-arms before he fled from Caen. Both men carried shields, but they had stripped the leather covers from the willow boards so that the shields bore no device, thus declaring themselves to be masterless men for hire. Scores like them came to the city, seeking a lord who could offer food and pay, but none arrived with the anger that filled Sir Simon.

It was the injustice that galled him. It burned his soul, giving him a lust for revenge. He had come so close to paying all his debts – indeed, when the money from the sale of Jeanette’s ships was paid from England he had expected to be free of all encumbrances – but now he was a fugitive. He knew he could have slunk back to England, but any man out of favour with the King or the King’s eldest son could expect to be treated as a rebel, and he would be fortunate if he kept an acre of land, let alone his freedom. So he had preferred flight, trusting that his sword would win back the privileges he had lost to the Breton bitch and her puppy lover, and Henry Colley had ridden with him in the belief that any man as skilled in arms as Sir Simon could not fail.

No one questioned their presence in Rouen. Sir Simon’s French was tinged with the accent of England’s gentry, but so was the French of a score of other men from Normandy. What Sir Simon needed now was a patron, a man who would feed him and give him the chance to fight back against his persecutors, and there were plenty of great men looking for followers. In the fields south of Rouen, where the looping river narrowed the land, a pasture had been set aside as a tourney ground where, in front of a knowing crowd of men-at-arms, anyone could enter the lists to show their prowess. This was not a serious tournament – the swords were blunt and lances were tipped with wooden blocks – but rather it was a chance for masterless men to show their prowess with weapons, and a score of knights, the champions of dukes, counts, viscounts and mere lords, were the judges. Dozens of hopeful men were entering the lists, and any horseman who could last more than a few minutes against the well-mounted and superbly armed champions was sure to find a place in the entourage of a great nobleman.

Sir Simon, on his stolen horse and with his ancient battered sword, was one of the least impressive men to ride into the pasture. He had no lance, so one of the champions drew a sword and rode to finish him off. At first no one took particular notice of the two men for other combats were taking place, but when the champion was sprawling on the grass and Sir Simon, untouched, rode on, the crowd took notice.

A second champion challenged Sir Simon and was startled by the fury which confronted him. He called out that the combat was not to the death, but merely a demonstration of swordplay, but Sir Simon gritted his teeth and hacked with the sword so savagely that the champion spurred and wheeled his horse away rather than risk injury. Sir Simon turned his horse in the pasture’s centre, daring another man to face him, but instead a squire trotted a mare to the field’s centre and wordlessly offered the Englishman a lance.

‘Who sent it?’ Sir Simon demanded.

‘My lord.’

‘Who is?’

‘There,’ the squire said, pointing to the pasture’s end where a tall man in black armour and riding a black horse waited with his lance.

Sir Simon sheathed his sword and took the lance. It was heavy and not well balanced, and he had no lance rest in his armour that would cradle the long butt to help keep the point raised, but he was a strong man and an angry one, and he reckoned he could manage the cumbersome weapon long enough to break the stranger’s confidence.

No other men fought on the field now. They just watched. Wagers were being made and all of them favoured the man in black. Most of the onlookers had seen him fight before, and his horse, his armour and his weapons were all plainly superior. He wore plate mail and his horse stood at least a hand’s breadth taller than Sir Simon’s sorry mount. His visor was down, so Sir Simon could not see the man’s face, while Sir Simon himself had no faceplate, merely an old, cheap helmet like those worn by England’s archers. Only Henry Colley laid a bet on Sir Simon, though he had difficulty in doing it for his French was rudimentary, but the money was at last taken.

The stranger’s shield was black and decorated with a simple white cross, a device unknown to Sir Simon, while his horse had a black trapper that swept the pasture as the beast began to walk. That was the only signal the stranger gave and Sir Simon responded by lowering the lance and kicking his own horse forward. They were a hundred paces apart and both men moved swiftly into the canter. Sir Simon watched his opponent’s lance, judging how firmly it was held. The man was good, for the lance tip scarcely wavered despite the horse’s uneven motion. The shield was covering his trunk, as it should be.

If this had been a battle, if the man with the strange shield had not offered Sir Simon a chance of advancement, he might have lowered his own lance to strike his opponent’s horse. Or, a more difficult strike, thrust the weapon’s tip into the high pommel of his saddle. Sir Simon had seen a lance go clean through the wood and leather of a saddle to gouge into a man’s groin, and it was ever a killing blow. But today he was required to show the skill of a knight, to strike clean and hard, and at the same time defend himself from the oncoming lance. The skill of that was to deflect the thrust which, having the weight of a horse behind it, could break a man’s back by throwing him against the high cantle. The shock of two heavy horsemen meeting, and with all their weight concentrated into lance points, was like being hit by a cannon’s stone.

Sir Simon was not thinking about any of this. He was watching the oncoming lance, glancing at the white cross on the shield where his own lance was aimed, and guiding his horse with pressure from his knees. He had trained to this from the time he could first sit on a pony. He had spent hours tilting at a quintain in his father’s yard, and more hours schooling stallions to endure the noise and chaos of battle. He moved his horse slightly to the left like a man wanting to widen the angle at which the lances would strike and so deflect some of their force, and he noted that the stranger did not follow the move to straighten the line, but seemed happy to accept the lesser risk. Then both men rowelled back their spurs and the destriers went into the gallop. Sir Simon touched the horse’s right side and straightened the line himself, driving hard at the stranger now, and leaning slightly forward to ready himself for the blow. His opponent was trying to swing towards him, but it was too late. Sir Simon’s lance cracked against the black and white shield with a thump that hurled Sir Simon back, but the stranger’s lance was not centred and banged against Sir Simon’s plain shield and glanced off.

Sir Simon’s lance broke into three pieces and he let it fall as he pressed his knee to turn the horse. His opponent’s lance was across his body now and was encumbering the black-armoured knight. Sir Simon drew his sword and, while the other man was still trying to rid himself of the lance, gave a backswing that struck his opponent like a hammer blow.

The field was still. Henry Colley held out a hand for his winnings. The man pretended not to understand his crude French, but he understood the knife that the yellow-eyed Englishman suddenly produced and the coins, just as suddenly, appeared.

The knight in the black armour did not continue the fight, but instead curbed his horse and pushed up his visor. ‘Who are you?’

‘My name is Sir Simon Jekyll.’

‘English?’

‘I was.’

The two horses stood beside each other. The stranger threw down his lance and hung the shield from his pommel. He had a sallow face with a thin black moustache, clever eyes and a broken nose. He was a young man, not a boy, but a year or two older than Sir Simon.

‘What do you want?’ he asked Sir Simon.

‘A chance to kill the Prince of Wales.’

The man smiled. ‘Is that all?’

‘Money, food, land, women,’ Sir Simon said.

The man gestured to the side of the pasture. ‘There are great lords here, Sir Simon, who will offer you pay, food and girls. I can pay you too, but not so well; I can feed you, though it will be common stuff; and the girls you must find for yourself. What I will promise you is that I shall equip you with a better horse, armour and weapons. I lead the best knights in this army and we are sworn to take captives who will make us rich. And none, I think, so rich as the King of England and his whelp. Not kill, mark you, but capture.’

Sir Simon shrugged. ‘I’ll settle for capturing the bastard,’ he said.

‘And his father,’ the man said, ‘I want his father too.’

There was something vengeful in the man’s voice that intrigued Sir Simon. ‘Why?’ he asked.

‘My family lived in England,’ the man said, ‘but when this king took power we supported his mother.’

‘So you lost your land?’ Sir Simon asked. He was too young to remember the turmoil of those times – when the King’s mother had tried to keep power for herself and for her lover and the young Edward had struggled to break free. Young Edward had won and some of his old enemies had not forgotten.

‘We lost everything,’ the man said, ‘but we shall get it back. Will you help?’

Sir Simon hesitated, wondering whether he would not do better with a wealthier lord, but he was intrigued by the man’s calmness and by his determination to tear the heart out of England. ‘Who are you?’ he asked.

‘I am sometimes called the Harlequin,’ the man said.

The name meant nothing to Sir Simon. ‘And you employ only the best?’ he asked.

‘I told you so.’

‘Then you had best employ me,’ Sir Simon said, ‘with my man.’ He nodded towards Henry Colley.

‘Good,’ the Harlequin said.

So Sir Simon had a new master and the King of France had gathered an army. The great lords: Alençon, John of Hainault, Aumale, the Count of Blois, who was brother to the aspiring Duke of Brittany, the Duke of Lorraine, the Count of Sancerre – all were in Rouen with their vast retinues of heavily armoured men. The army’s numbers became so large that men could not count the ranks, but clerks reckoned there were at least eight thousand men-at-arms and five thousand crossbowmen in Rouen, and that meant that Philip of Valois’s army already outnumbered Edward of England’s forces, and still more men were coming. John, Count of Luxembourg and King of Bohemia, a friend of Philip of France, was bringing his formidable knights. The King of Majorca came with his famed lances, and the Duke of Normandy was ordered to abandon the siege of an English fortress in the south and bring his army north. The priests blessed the soldiers and promised them that God would recognize the virtue of France’s cause and crush the English mercilessly.

The army could not be fed in Rouen, so at last it crossed the bridge to the north bank of the Seine, leaving a formidable garrison behind to guard the river crossing. Once out of the city and on the long roads stretching through the newly harvested fields, men could dimly comprehend just how vast their army was. It stretched for miles in long columns of armed men, troops of horsemen, battalions of crossbowmen and, trailing behind, the innumerable host of infantry armed with axes, billhooks and spears. This was the might of France, and France’s friends had rallied to the cause. There was a troop of knights from Scotland – big, savage-looking men who nourished a rare hatred of the English. There were mercenaries from Germany and Italy, and there were knights whose names had become famous in Christendom’s tournaments, the elegant killers who had become rich in the sport of war. The French knights spoke not just of defeating Edward of England, but of carrying the war to his kingdom, foreseeing earldoms in Essex and dukedoms in Devonshire. The Bishop of Meaux encouraged his cook to think of a recipe for archers’ fingers, a daube perhaps, seasoned with thyme? He would, the bishop insisted, force the dish down Edward of England’s throat.

Sir Simon rode a seven-year-old destrier now, a fine grey that must have cost the Harlequin close to a hundred pounds. He wore a hauberk of close-ringed mail covered with a surcoat that bore the white cross. His horse had a chanfron of boiled leather and a black trapper, while at Sir Simon’s waist hung a sword made in Poitiers. Henry Colley was almost as well equipped, though in place of a sword he carried a four-foot-long shaft of oak topped with a spiked metal ball.

‘They’re a solemn bunch,’ he complained to Sir Simon about the other men who followed the Harlequin. ‘Like bloody monks.’

‘They can fight,’ Sir Simon said, though he himself was also daunted by the grim dedication of the Harlequin’s men.

The men were all confident, but none took the English as lightly as the rest of the army, which had convinced itself that any battle would be won by numbers alone. The Harlequin quizzed Sir Simon and Henry Colley about the English way of fighting, and his questions were shrewd enough to force both men to drop their bombast and think.

‘They’ll fight on foot,’ Sir Simon concluded. He, like all knights, dreamed of a battle conducted on horseback, of swirling men and couched lances, but the English had learned their business in the wars against the Scots and knew that men on foot defended territory much more effectively than horsemen. ‘Even the knights will fight on foot,’ Sir Simon forecast, ‘and for every man-at-arms they’ll have two or three archers. Those are the bastards to watch.’

The Harlequin nodded. ‘But how do we defeat the archers?’

‘Let them run out of arrows,’ Sir Simon said. ‘They must, eventually. So let every hothead in the army attack, then wait till the arrow bags are empty. Then you’ll get your revenge.’

‘It is more than revenge I want,’ the Harlequin said quietly.

‘What?’

The Harlequin, a handsome man, smiled at Sir Simon, though there was no warmth in the smile. ‘Power,’ he answered very calmly. ‘With power, Sir Simon, comes privilege and with privilege, wealth. What are kings,’ he asked, ‘but men who have risen high? So we shall rise too, and use the defeat of kings as the rungs of our ladder.’

Such talk impressed Sir Simon, though he did not wholly understand it. It seemed to him that the Harlequin was a man of high fancies, but that did not matter because he was also unswervingly dedicated to the defeat of men who were Sir Simon’s enemies. Sir Simon daydreamed of the battle; he saw the English prince’s frightened face, heard his scream and revelled in the thought of taking the insolent whelp prisoner. Jeanette too. The Harlequin could be as secretive and subtle as he wished so long as he led Sir Simon to those simple desires.

And so the French army marched, and still it grew as men came from the outlying parts of the kingdom and from the vassal states beyond France’s frontiers. It marched to seal off the Seine and so trap the English, and its confidence soared when it was learned that the King had made his pilgrimage to the Abbey of St Denis to fetch the oriflamme. It was France’s most sacred symbol, a scarlet banner kept by the Benedictines in the abbey where the Kings of France lay entombed, and every man knew that when the oriflamme was unfurled no quarter would be given. It was said to have been carried by Charlemagne himself, and its silk was red as blood, promising carnage to the enemies of France. The English had come to fight, the oriflamme had been released and the dance of the armies had begun.

Sir Guillaume gave Thomas a linen shirt, a good mail coat, a leather-lined helmet and a sword. ‘It’s old, but good,’ he said of the sword, ‘a cutter rather than a piercer.’ He provided Thomas with a horse, a saddle, a bridle and gave him money. Thomas tried to refuse the last gift, but Sir Guillaume brushed his protest aside. ‘You’ve taken what you wanted from me, I might as well give you the rest.’

‘Taken?’ Thomas was puzzled, even hurt, by the accusation.

‘Eleanor.’

‘I’ve not taken her,’ Thomas protested.

Sir Guillaume’s ravaged face broke into a grin. ‘You will, boy,’ he said, ‘you will.’

They rode next day, going eastwards in the wake of the English army that was now far off. News had come to Caen of burned towns, but no one knew where the enemy had gone and so Sir Guillaume planned to lead his twelve men-at-arms, his squire and his servant to Paris. ‘Someone will know where the King is,’ he said. ‘And you, Thomas, what will you do?’

Thomas had been wondering the same ever since he woke to the light in Sir Guillaume’s house, but now he must make the decision and, to his surprise, there was no conflict at all. ‘I shall go to my king,’ he said.

‘And what of this Sir Simon? What if he hangs you again?’

‘I have the Earl of Northampton’s protection,’ Thomas said, though he reflected it had not worked before.

‘And what of Eleanor?’ Sir Guillaume turned to look at his daughter who, to Thomas’s surprise, had accompanied them. Her father had given her a small palfrey and, unused to riding, she sat on its saddle awkwardly, clutching the high pommel. She did not know why her father had let her come, suggesting to Thomas that perhaps he wanted her to be his cook.

The question made Thomas blush. He knew he could not fight against his own friends, but nor did he want to leave Eleanor. ‘I shall come looking for her,’ he told Sir Guillaume.

‘If you still live,’ the Frenchman growled. ‘Why don’t you fight for me?’

‘Because I’m English.’

Sir Guillaume sneered. ‘You’re Cathar, you’re French, you’re from Languedoc, who knows what you are? You’re a priest’s son, a mongrel bastard of heretic stock.’

‘I’m English,’ Thomas said.

‘You’re a Christian,’ Sir Guillaume retorted, ‘and God has given you and me a duty. How are you to fulfil that duty by joining Edward’s army?’

Thomas did not answer at once. Had God given him a duty? If so he did not want to accept it, for acceptance meant believing in the legends of the Vexilles. Thomas, in the evening after he had met Brother Germain, had talked with Mordecai in Sir Guillaume’s garden, asking the old man if he had ever read the book of Daniel.

Mordecai had sighed, as if he found the question wearisome. ‘Years ago,’ he’d said, ‘many years ago. It is part of the Ketuvim, the writings that all Jewish youths must read. Why?’

‘He’s a prophet, yes? He tells the future.’

‘Dear me,’ Mordecai had said, sitting on the bench and dragging his thin fingers through his forked beard. ‘You Christians,’ he had said, ‘insist that prophets tell the future, but that wasn’t really what they did at all. They warned Israel. They told us that we would be visited by death, destruction and horror if we did not mend our ways. They were preachers, Thomas, just preachers, though, God knows, they were right about the death, destruction and horror. As for Daniel … He is very strange, very strange. He had a head filled with dreams and visions. He was drunk on God, that one.’

‘But do you think,’ Thomas had asked, ‘that Daniel could foretell what is happening now?’

Mordecai had frowned. ‘If God wished him to, yes, but why should God wish that? And I assume, Thomas, that you think Daniel might foretell what happens here and now in France, and what possible interest could that hold for the God of Israel? The Ketuvim are full of fancy, vision and mystery, and you Christians see more in them than we ever did. But would I make a decision because Daniel ate a bad oyster and had a vivid dream all those years ago? No, no, no.’ He stood and held a jordan bottle high. ‘Trust what is before your eyes, Thomas, what you can smell, hear, taste, touch and see. The rest is dangerous.’

Thomas now looked at Sir Guillaume. He had come to like the Frenchman whose battle-hardened exterior hid a wealth of kindness, and Thomas knew he was in love with the Frenchman’s daughter, but, even so, he had a greater loyalty.

‘I cannot fight against England,’ he said, ‘any more than you would carry a lance against King Philip.’

Sir Guillaume dismissed that with a shrug. ‘Then fight against the Vexilles.’

But Thomas could not smell, hear, taste, touch or see the Vexilles. He did not believe the king of the south would send his daughter to the north. He did not believe the Holy Grail was hidden in some heretic’s fastness. He believed in the strength of a yew bow, the tension of a hemp cord and the power of a white-feathered arrow to kill the King’s enemies. To think of dark lords and of heresiarchs was to flirt with the madness that had harrowed his own father.

‘If I find the man who killed my father,’ he evaded Sir Guillaume’s demand, ‘then I will kill him.’

‘But you will not search for him?’

‘Where do I look? Where do you look?’ Thomas asked, then offered his own answer. ‘If the Vexilles really still exist, if they truly want to destroy France, then where would they begin? In England’s army. So I shall look for them there.’ That answer was an evasion, but it half convinced Sir Guillaume, who grudgingly conceded that the Vexilles might indeed take their forces to Edward of England.

That night they sheltered in the scorched remains of a farm where they gathered about a small fire on which they roasted the hind legs of a boar that Thomas had shot. The men-at-arms treated Thomas warily. He was, after all, one of the hated English archers whose bows could pierce even plate mail. If he had not been Sir Guillaume’s friend they would have wanted to slice off his string fingers in revenge for the pain that the white-fledged arrows had given to the horsemen of France, but instead they treated him with a distant curiosity. After the meal Sir Guillaume gestured to Eleanor and Thomas that they should both accompany him outside. His squire was keeping watch, and Sir Guillaume led them away from the young man, going to the bank of a stream where, with an odd formality, he looked at Thomas. ‘So you will leave us,’ he said, ‘and fight for Edward of England.’

‘Yes.’

‘But if you see my enemy, if you see the lance, what will you do?’

‘Kill him,’ Thomas said. Eleanor stood slightly apart, watching and listening.

‘He will not be alone,’ Sir Guillaume warned, ‘but you assure me he is your enemy?’

‘I swear it,’ Thomas said, puzzled that the question even needed to be asked.

Sir Guillaume took Thomas’s right hand. ‘You have heard of a brotherhood in arms?’

Thomas nodded. Men of rank frequently made such pacts, swearing to aid each other in battle and share each other’s spoils.

‘Then I swear a brotherhood to you,’ Sir Guillaume said, ‘even if we will fight on opposing sides.’

‘I swear the same,’ Thomas said awkwardly.

Sir Guillaume let Thomas’s hand go. ‘There,’ he said to Eleanor, ‘I’m safe from one damned archer.’ He paused, still looking at Eleanor. ‘I shall marry again,’ he said abruptly, ‘and have children again and they will be my heirs. You know what I’m saying, don’t you?’

Eleanor’s head was lowered, but she looked up at her father briefly, then dropped her gaze again. She said nothing.

‘And if I have more children, God willing,’ Sir Guillaume said, ‘what does that leave for you, Eleanor?’

She gave a very small shrug as if to suggest that the question was not of great interest to her. ‘I have never asked you for anything.’

‘But what would you have asked for?’

She stared into the ripples of the stream. ‘What you gave me,’ she said after a while, ‘kindness.’

‘Nothing else?’

She paused. ‘I would have liked to call you Father.’

Sir Guillaume seemed uncomfortable with that answer. He stared northwards. ‘You are both bastards,’ he said after a while, ‘and I envy that.’

‘Envy?’ Thomas asked.

‘A family serves like the banks of a stream. They keep you in your place, but bastards make their own way. They take nothing and they can go anywhere.’ He frowned, then flicked a pebble into the water. ‘I had always thought, Eleanor, that I would marry you to one of my men-at-arms. Benoit asked me for your hand and so did Fossat. And it’s past time you were married. What are you? Fifteen?’

‘Fifteen,’ she agreed.

‘You’ll rot away, girl, if you wait any longer,’ Sir Guillaume said gruffly, ‘so who shall it be? Benoit? Fossat?’ He paused. ‘Or would you prefer Thomas?’

Eleanor said nothing and Thomas, embarrassed, kept silent.

‘You want her?’ Sir Guillaume asked him brutally.

‘Yes.’

‘Eleanor?’

She looked at Thomas, then back to the stream. ‘Yes,’ she said simply.

‘The horse, the mail, the sword and the money,’ Sir Guillaume said to Thomas, ‘are my bastard daughter’s dowry. Look after her, or else become my enemy again.’ He turned away.

‘Sir Guillaume?’ Thomas asked. The Frenchman turned back. ‘When you went to Hookton,’ Thomas went on, wondering why he asked the question now, ‘you took a dark-haired girl prisoner. She was pregnant. Her name was Jane.’

Sir Guillaume nodded. ‘She married one of my men. Then died in childbirth. The child too. Why?’ He frowned. ‘Was the child yours?’

‘She was a friend,’ Thomas evaded the question.

‘She was a pretty friend,’ Sir Guillaume said, ‘I remember that. And when she died we had twelve Masses said for her English soul.’

‘Thank you.’

Sir Guillaume looked from Thomas to Eleanor, then back to Thomas. ‘A good night for sleeping under the stars,’ he said, ‘and we shall leave at dawn.’ He walked away.

Thomas and Eleanor sat by the stream. The sky was still not wholly dark, but had a luminous quality like the glow of a candle behind horn. An otter slid down the far side of the stream, its fur glistening where it showed above the water. It raised its head, looked briefly at Thomas, then dived out of sight, to leave a trickle of silver bubbles breaking the dark surface.

Eleanor broke the silence, speaking the only English words she knew. ‘I am an archer’s woman,’ she said.

Thomas smiled. ‘Yes,’ he said.

And in the morning they rode on and next evening they saw the smear of smoke on the northern horizon and knew it was a sign that the English army was going about its business. They parted in the next dawn.

‘How you reach the bastards, I do not know,’ Sir Guillaume said, ‘but when it is all over, look for me.’

He embraced Thomas, kissed Eleanor, then pulled himself into his saddle. His horse had a long blue trapper decorated with yellow hawks. He settled his right foot into its stirrup, gathered the reins and pushed back his spurs.

A track led north across a heath that was fragrant with thyme and fluttering with blue butterflies. Thomas, his helmet hanging from the saddle’s pommel and the sword thumping at his side, rode towards the smoke, and Eleanor, who insisted on carrying his bow because she was an archer’s woman, rode with him. They looked back from the low crest of the heath, but Sir Guillaume was already a half-mile westwards, not looking back, hurrying towards the oriflamme.

So Thomas and Eleanor rode on.

The English marched east, ever further from the sea, searching for a place to cross the Seine, but every bridge was broken or else was guarded by a fortress. They still destroyed everything they touched. Their chevauchée was a line twenty miles wide and behind it was a charred trail a hundred miles long. Every house was burned and every mill destroyed. The folk of France fled from the army, taking their livestock and the newly gathered harvest with them so that Edward’s men had to range ever further to find food. Behind them was desolation while in front lay the formidable walls of Paris. Some men thought the King would assault Paris, others reckoned he would not waste his troops on those great walls, but instead attack one of the strongly fortified bridges that could lead him north of the river. Indeed, the army tried to capture the bridge at Meulan, but the stronghold which guarded its southern end was too massive and its crossbowmen were too many, and the assault failed. The French stood on the ramparts and bared their backsides to insult the defeated English. It was said that the King, confident of crossing the river, had ordered supplies sent to the port of Le Crotoy that lay far to the north, beyond both the Seine and the River Somme, but if the supplies were waiting then they were unreachable because the Seine was a wall behind which the English were penned in a land they had themselves emptied of food. The first horses began to go lame and men, their boots shredded by marching, went barefoot.

The English came closer to Paris, entering the wide lands that were the hunting grounds of the French kings. They took Philip’s lodges and stripped them of tapestries and plate, and it was while they hunted his royal deer that the French King sent Edward a formal offer of battle. It was the chivalrous thing to do, and it would, by God’s grace, end the harrowing of his farmlands. So Philip of Valois sent a bishop to the English, courteously suggesting that he would wait with his army south of Paris, and the English King graciously accepted the invitation and so the French marched their army through the city and arrayed it among the vineyards on a hillcrest by Bourg-la-Reine. They would make the English attack them there, forcing the archers and men-at-arms to struggle uphill into massed Genoese crossbows, and the French nobles estimated the value of the ransoms they would fetch for their prisoners.

The French battleline waited, but no sooner had Philip’s army settled in its positions than the English treacherously turned about and marched in the other direction, going to the town of Poissy where the bridge across the Seine had been destroyed and the town evacuated. A few French infantrymen, poor soldiers armed with spears and axes, had been left to guard the northern bank, but they could do nothing to stop the swarm of archers, carpenters and masons who used timbers ripped from the roofs of Poissy to make a new bridge on the fifteen broken piers of the old. It took two days to repair the bridge and the French were still waiting for their arranged battle among the ripening grapes at Bourg-la-Reine as the English crossed the Seine and started marching northwards. The devils had escaped the trap and were loose again.

It was at Poissy that Thomas, with Eleanor beside him, rejoined the army.

And it was there, by God’s grace, that the hard times began.