Blood on the Sand (5 page)

Not that it would necessarily be true, he knew as he looked about him. The Genoese were in the employ of the French. The King of France had paid them handsomely to come and sail for him. They
were simple mercenaries, he thought with disgust, available to the man with the largest purse. They had no sense of honour or duty.

‘Your men, they are thirsty?’ the Genoese asked. He was watching a shipman who had been pierced by a pair of bolts, and who sat, panting, at a companionway. ‘That man is in
great pain.’

‘A little drink would be received with gratitude,’ Berenger said. He could not help a grimace pass over his features.

‘You too are in pain?’

‘No, but I shall be. The French are not kind to captured prisoners,’ Berenger said.

‘I will not have my prisoners assaulted needlessly,’ the Genoese said dismissively.

‘Yes. For certain.’

‘I swear it, my friend.’ The Genoese waved a hand expansively over the vessel. ‘My name is Chrestien de Grimault. You are my guest and friend while you are on my ship, and
because you did not choose to fight on needlessly and cause the death or injury of my men, I honour you. While you are aboard the
Sainte Marie
you need not fear. My men will leave you in
peace. You can enjoy the journey, and when we deposit you on French soil, there will be a good bed and food. You will not be harmed. I swear this on my son’s life.’ The Genoese bowed
low.

Berenger could not help but give a twisted smile.

‘I am grateful, Master, for the honour you do us,’ he said. ‘Where did you learn to speak English so well?’

Chrestien stood upright again. ‘Ah, well, I have plied my trade all about the Mediterranean Sea, and there are many English who still live with the Knights of Malta and who populate the
harbours and ports. I have learned to enjoy the company of the English.’

‘Yet you take up arms with the French.’

‘Ah, my friend,’ Chrestien gave a shamefaced shake of his head. ‘That is sad, but it is the way of things. Genoa is allied to France, so when the French King asked for our
help, we were duty bound to assist him.’ He shrugged, and the piratical expression returned to his eyes. ‘Especially since he pays us nine hundred florins a month for our
service.’

His grin was infectious enough to make Berenger forget his misery for the present.

‘That is better, my friend. I will have wine brought so we may seal our friendship. There is no need for disputation amongst friends, is there? We are honourable combatants, and should
deal fairly with each other, no? Now, my friend: your name, I beg of you?’

‘My name is Berenger Fripper.’

‘Berenger? But surely you are a knight, with your warlike appearance and bold attire?’

Berenger felt his mouth fall open. ‘No, I’m no knight, only a man-at-arms for a knight.’

‘You bear yourself well for a mere warrior, my friend. But no matter.
Wine! I will have wine here!
’ he called out. Then, turning back to Berenger, he added in a quieter tone,
‘I managed to raid a storehouse before setting sail, and have some very excellent barrels that I think had been destined for a bishop. It would have been a waste, to see such a good wine go
down a religious gullet!’

He arrived as dusk was beginning to fall, a fellow of middling height with a round face and grey-blue eyes that sparkled. He was hooded and bent, walking like a man twenty
years his senior. For him, changing his gait was a matter of habit when he was walking out amongst the English. The Vidame was too used to concealment to walk normally here.

The light was fading, and the shadows lengthening. It was his favourite time to go for a stroll. At night, men were on their guard, but in the twilight they took less notice of other people,
even strangers. For a spy, this was the best time to go abroad.

Their meeting place was a grim little chamber off an alley in what had once been a suburb of the town. He cast an eye about the place as he entered. Old sacking mingled with the refuse of the
years, with broken spars, and bits and pieces of frayed rope. A rat’s corpse lay partially mummified beside a shred or two of rag. It was a shit-hole, basically. Not his first choice, but it
served.

‘What happened?’ he demanded as soon as the door was closed behind him.

‘It wasn’t my fault,’ the big man said immediately.

‘It never is
your
fault, is it, Bertucat?’ he said. ‘Not even when you go to a private assignation with me and get into a fight!’

‘There was an English archer eavesdropping on us. He tried to break in.’

‘An English archer? Bah! He would have been out for plunder, that’s all.’

‘Except he was with the same vintaine.’

‘What do you mean, the “same”?’

‘What do you think I mean? He serves with Berenger Fripper, the archer they call “Clip”.’

‘Do I care? If you were caught there it would have endangered me!’

‘You don’t like me, do you?’ Bertucat was a typical product of the streets about Marseilles. A brutish, dim-witted fool, with little to commend him but the size of his fists
and his fearlessness in a fight.

‘You have no idea what I like and what I don’t like. However, I do
not
like the thought of being hanged because you are too incompetent to finish things off! You should have
killed the man while you could.’

‘And have the vintaine come after his killer? They are loyal to each other in that band – you know that as well as me. Better to beat him up like the thieving scrote he is, and have
him thought to have been discovered while breaking in. This way we’re safe.’

‘I wonder.’

‘Why, Vidame? What is it? Worried about your own skin?’

The Vidame heard the sneer. It was tempting to kill the man, but Bertucat was built like a cathedral, massively. He had a thick neck like a knight, and a head that was narrow, as if it had been
squeezed into a helmet that was too small. His eyes were brown and bovine, but only in the sense of being like an angry bull’s.

However, Bertucat was useful. His unthinking belligerence made the Vidame feel safer. For now.

‘What is your news?’ the Vidame asked.

‘I wanted to make sure you had heard about the vintaine.’

‘What of it?’

‘They have all been captured. Their ship was taken.’

‘What of our friend?’

‘He was on the ship. Either he’s dead or he’s a prisoner too.’

The Vidame swore. ‘If he is slain, it will take many months to get another man of his calibre into the English camp.’

‘I could do his work.’

‘You?’ The Vidame was so surprised, he nearly laughed out loud.

It had taken him many weeks to find the right person to act as his spy. Bertucat could not appreciate what it was like, living with the enemy all day long, trying to show friendship to men who
were destroying the country like a plague. For such a spy, it was a deadly co-existence. The man had to have had two personalities, two nationalities, two lives. One was that of an Englishman keen
on plunder and slaughter, the other was a loyal servant of King Philippe, searching for any means to undermine the English army’s attempts to ravage poor France.

Only one man he had ever met could act the part convincingly. The man in question had a French mother, an English father, and had spent his life in both camps; because of this, the
Vidame’s spy was perfect. He was able to wear his Englishness like a cloak, to put on or take off at will.

Bertucat, by contrast, was a brainless thug, who wouldn’t last two minutes. No, the Vidame had to pray that his spy was returned safe and well.

It was early in the morning when the galley negotiated the harbour of the little port of Dunkirk.

‘And so, my friends, here we must soon part,’ Chrestien said.

Berenger and the others were held on the forecastle under the suspicious gaze of several heavily armed Genoese. In the crow’s nest, four men with spanned crossbows kept a close watch too,
not that Berenger or the others felt any urge to attempt an escape. There was no point. They could see all the galley’s men, over two hundred rowers and shipmen. Those were appalling odds for
the ship’s surviving sailors, thirty-odd at best.

Berenger smiled at Chrestien. ‘I am glad to have met you. You are a kindly captor.’

‘And you, my friend, are a most gracious guest,’ Chrestien replied. He walked to the wale and stared out at the port in the early-morning light. ‘I wish circumstances could
have been better when we met. I would have enjoyed your company, had we the time to meet over a mess of food. Perhaps we shall still have an opportunity to share a meal? I will raise it with the
keeper of prisoners here in the town. There is much about you I should like to learn.’

‘There is little to learn about me,’ Berenger said. ‘I am only a fighter in the King’s host.’

‘No, there is more to you than that,’ Chrestien said, waving a finger with his eyes narrowed. ‘You have been trained in chivalry, that is clear.’

‘Well, when we are given into the custody of the keeper of prisoners, I fear we shall not meet again,’ Berenger said with regret.

‘Nonsense! A good keeper will not begrudge us a conversation or two,’ Chrestien said heartily. He clapped Berenger on the back. ‘I shall visit you on the morrow. I must first
see to my stores and supplies, and prepare the
Sainte Marie
for sea, but as soon as I may, I shall come and we shall find the best inn in the town and enjoy a good meal and some intelligent
conversation.’

Berenger smiled but he doubted that the French would be willing to release him.

‘Frip, what now?’ Clip called.

‘We are to be taken to a gaol where we shall be held,’ he said without turning.

‘A gaol, eh? Well, you know what’ll happen, don’t you?’

‘Clip?’ Jack Fletcher called.

‘Aye?’

‘Don’t say it. Just shut up.’

Berenger had seen worse prisons. Years ago he had been kept in a noisome dungeon that was perpetually damp. Sitting down made a man’s hosen sodden from the ordure. This,
in contrast, was a goodly-sized chamber with dry walls and straw on the floor. Two leather buckets were provided for the men, and while they were not enough to cope with the needs of all thirty
men, at least they did not have to make a mess on the floor at first. All had been entangled with chains. Manacles and ankle-shackles hindered their movements.

‘What do we do now, Frip?’ Jack asked.

He had walked over to Berenger, and now squatted in front of his vintener. The other men drew near, shuffling closer, as best they could. Tyler, John of Essex, Clip and the rest formed an
anxious semicircle about him. Berenger eyed them all. They deserved better than this.

‘There’s nothing we can do at present,’ he said. ‘We just have to keep quiet and hope that the French won’t mistreat us.’

Clip nodded mutely, and chewed at a nail. The unaccustomed silence of the wizened, beggarly-featured man was eloquent proof of his inner turmoil. It was rare indeed that he would not declare the
vintaine lost and doomed. His assertion that all would shortly die was an irritating fixture in the men’s lives, and this curious silence from him was as shocking as a sudden death-rattle in
a man’s throat.

‘Lads, we’ll get out of here,’ Berenger said with a certainty he didn’t feel. ‘The French won’t want to upset our King more than they have to.’

‘Yes, Frip,’ Jack said flatly, and the men drifted away, none of them exchanging so much as a glance, as they selected areas to sit and think over their position.

Berenger stared at his hands. He had them clasped in his lap, and now he willed them apart, but for some reason he could not move them. They were linked as though bound with invisible thongs. He
felt a heaviness in his soul. Looking about him in the darkened interior of this chamber, he could see his men and the shipmen from the cog, all still and quiet, apart from one or two who stared
about them distractedly as though looking for a means of escape.

They all knew the reality. The English had been here in France for weeks, trying to bring the French to battle by means of
dampnum
– war by horror. They had waged war on the
peasants and the poor, burning, raping, looting and murdering over a broad front in order to prove the French King’s inability to honour his duty of protection towards his people. The aim was
to entice the French into King Edward III’s Peace and make them reject their own feeble King. Tens of thousands had been robbed, ransomed or slain since the English had landed at
St-Vaast-La-Hougue, and any Frenchman would want to take his revenge. If the roles were reversed, if this were Portsmouth or Southampton, and Frenchmen were captured after raiding in England,
Berenger knew exactly how the enemy would be punished. They would be tortured to within an inch of their souls’ release, allowed to recover, and then tortured again before finally being
executed slowly and painfully in front of a jeering crowd. And he expected exactly that kind of treatment.

His hands were shaking with his rising panic. In his breast he could feel the muscles tightening. Fear was engulfing him. He knew how the French executed people. In his mind’s eye he could
see the crowd before him as he was led to the wheel and bound to it, while the executioner spat and laughed at him, his collection of sticks and iron bars ready. He would break all Berenger’s
bones one by one. Fires would be lighted nearby to heat the metal brands to scorch and burn him; pincers would be arrayed to flay him alive . . . the horror of a vengeful death with all its
concomitant cruelty.