The Ill-Made Knight (18 page)

I drank with him, then I proposed the healths of other men. The Bourc sat up.

‘But why am I last?’ he asked. His eyes, as I say, glittered.

I’d had enough of his shit, even if he was the top sword in Gascony. ‘Last?’ I asked him.

‘You propose the healths of other men before me,’ he said.

‘You lie,’ I insisted. ‘I had no intention of toasting your health at all.’

Every head turned.

And Seguin de Badefol, who was a great lord and no one’s bastard, roared a great laugh, kicked his longsword from under the table with his left leg and slapped me on the back.

The Bourc was on his feet

Seguin shook his head. ‘No, Bertucat. I forbid it. He’s a boy, and a brave boy, and you only got what you had coming.’ He looked at me. ‘So, what of it, messieur? Will you come with us to Normandy?’

I intended to go with them. What did I have to hold me in Bordeaux? Poverty? The Prince? He scarcely knew my name.

‘What will we do in Normandy? Will we take service with a lord?’ I asked.

The four of them looked at each other, as wolves look around their circle when they discuss dismembering a flock of sheep, I imagine.

‘We will serve the King of England, of course,’ Seguin said. He twirled his moustache, which tapered to needle points. ‘But we will
be
the lords. We will be companions, and sign articles to form a Company of Adventure, as they do in Italy and Greece. We will take ransoms and share the profits; we will take castles and sell them to the King of England.’

‘And if he doesn’t want them, we will sell them back to the owners!’ said Albret – the younger one.

Sir John nodded. ‘A little scouting to find the weak lords and weak holdings, and then, in two or three weeks of work, we storm a dozen of them, sell the ransoms, put the screws to the peasants for protection, then sell the castle and move on.’ He reached out and took the lace point that tied my somewhat threadbare jupon. It had once been gilt bronze and the replacement was waxed leather. ‘A man can make a hundred Venetian ducats a month.’

‘Easily,’ Seguin de Badefol said.

‘A virgin like this won’t make a fart,’ Camus said. ‘Listen, cook’s boy. The fastest way to make silver is to take convents of nuns. Rape them all with your soldiers – rape a girl ten times and she’s a willing whore. You know why nuns make better whores, boy? Because they won’t kill themselves. They believe in God.’ Camus stared at me.

‘You speak like a horse shits, Gascon. God will punish you for suggesting such a course – no man would actually do as you suggest.’ My hand was on my sword, and my blade was four inches clear of the scabbard.

He laughed. ‘God is a lie, boy. There is only Satan, and I am his disciple.’

‘Shut up, Bertucat. You’re drunk.’ Sir John sounded merely weary, not disgusted.

‘I don’t like the little cook and I want him to stay here,’ said the Bourc. ‘But I need someone to rape the little choirboys. There’s men who will pay for that, too.’

Sir John put his hand on my arm. I had started to rise from my chair.

Camus leaned back and his eyes rested on mine. He was tall – taller than me – with black eyes. He was handsome, with high cheekbones. He had a bone in one ear instead of an earring – the bone of a woman, everyone said, but no one said which bone or whose it was.

‘Stop staring at me, catamite. I do not like your eyes.’ His, which were deceptively gentle, bored into mine.

‘No man tells me where I may look or not look. Much less a man who advocates the raping of nuns.’ I was on my feet.

‘I’ll kill you when Seguin is not here to stop me, little cook’s boy,’ he said. ‘I break things I do not like. I do not like you.’

I looked at him. My hands were shaking, but his mad gaze was no madder than my uncle’s. In fact, there was something similar about them, and my hate boiled over.

‘Let’s go,’ I said.

Sir John grabbed my hand. ‘Not like this, boy. He’ll gut you. Let him go, Bertucat.’

‘Fuck that,’ I said with all the bravado of my sixteen years. I got to my feet and walked outside into the yard, turned and drew my sword.

The Bourc emerged from the inn, grinned and drew.

Sir John was behind him. It was dark in the courtyard, but there were torches.

He came at me while I was still thinking we might abuse each other with words, and I just managed to turn his first strike, which was as fast as an adder’s tongue and as strong as a smith’s hammer stroke. I fell back a pace and he cut at me again – one, two, to either side of my head.

I raised my sword to parry the two head cuts – each block took my hands higher. With a snort of pure contempt, he punched with his left hand at the pommel of my sword, flinging my arms over my head. I lost my balance, and he kicked me between the legs. I fell forward on the ground, puking from the pain.

Sir John roared, ‘No!’

Camus laughed and he kicked me again, in the back, so I fell forward in the mud. Then he stabbed his sword deep into my arse – once, and twice.

‘Butt Boy,’ he mocked.

I wished he’d killed me.

I tried to get to my feet. I was weeping, and rage, fear and humiliation warred for possession of my soul. Blood trickled down the backs of my thighs.

He laughed. ‘I’ll have your sword, Butt Boy,’ he said.

I wasn’t going to give it to him. I don’t know what he expected, but he clearly thought the fight was over and he grabbed at the sword.

I flicked it at him, one handed, a weak, false-edge rising cut fuelled only by fear and hate.

I caught the base of his left hand and cut off a finger.

He dropped his sword. ‘
Merde!
’ he roared in Gascon French.

I raised my sword to kill him. I was absolutely going to kill him, unarmed.

Sir John Hawkwood saved my life and my career. He had already picked up a piece of firewood, intending, he told me later, to stop Bertucat Camus from killing me. Instead, he hit me on the head from behind.

I fell to the ground unconscious.

When I came to, I was in the Three Foxes, in a room paid for by Sir John. And my two little whores were waiting on me hand and foot.

Over the next month or so, Richard Musard and I became fast friends, and we took over the running of the Three Foxes. It proved, after the fact, that the Gascons had ‘protected’ the place until they left it, charging the landlord protection money and running a string of prostitutes under the eaves. It’s good for an innkeeper to have a good sword on his payroll – a soldier can often talk other soldiers out of doing damage or fighting, and a really good sword discourages violence.

I lay in bed for three days, and Richard visited twice. The two girls – named Marie and Anne, in the best tradition of Gascony – worked the inn, and no one stopped them, of course, because the inn’s strong arm had just ridden north to Normandy.

I’ll make this brief – you all want to hear about Paris and Brignais. I want you to know what our lives were like in the companies, and this is all part of that. So, in short, by the time my wounds healed, I had fifteen girls, and the Black Squire and I ran the inn. The innkeeper was a big man, but not a brave one, and he was used to being bullied by a much more evil bastard than me. Musard terrified him, with his black skin.

As to the girls, I am not proud of being a pimp, but there are ways and ways. Even then, I wasn’t willing to pimp directly. In fact, Marie did all the work, and all Richard and I did was glare at the customers and collect the coins.

Sometimes a girl would come and say she’d had a problem.

The first time was the worst, but it made life easier for us. Anne was working on her back and the man she’d taken started to hit her with his fists. She screamed. Marie came for me, but I was already moving. I went into that room – a room barely big enough to fuck – and there’s a man my size, stinking of wine, his hose and braes off, his hairy arse bare, pummelling this small girl—

Good Christ.

I caught one of his hands the way I’d learned from Abelard, in a dagger lock. Look here – punch at me, see? I catch your hand like this –
eh bien
? – I could make you scream like a woman giving birth.

So I trapped his hand under my dagger blade and twisted, and he came off the girl. He followed me down the steep steps to the courtyard, bellowing curses and bile all the way.

I put his left hand on the chopping block in the inn yard and drove my rondel dagger through it. I left him there, nailed to the block, until Anne came, kicked him a few times, raised her skirts and pissed on him.

Afterwards, she kissed me and called me her true knight.

Aye, the paragon of chivalry and protector of women.

Here’s the funny thing, though. I took good care of Geoffrey de Charny’s rondel dagger, but I must have left the man pinned to the chopping block too long. Because when I took the dagger free, the whoreson’s blood had left a stain on the steel, and I couldn’t polish it out.

Ah, I have shocked you, messieurs. Let us discuss this like gentlemen.

Running an inn was hardly to be reconciled with the life of a knight, you might think, and yet, what men-at-arms do in the field is rape and murder. We kill each other and we kill peasants. We burn farms and we take loot – even in Italy, and twice as much when fighting pagans or saracens.

I went to a hard school that summer of Poitiers. And when I was done, I had learned how to kill and how to survive. I thought I was a fine sword, a good lance and a gentleman. I confess to you that what I knew of chivalry might have fit inside one of the illuminated letters monks use at the beginning of a gospel – just one. I wanted to be worth more. I wanted to fight, and be
preux.
That’s what I knew.

Of chivalry’s finer feelings, I knew next to nothing. In fact, I was worse than that. I heard the old troubadour songs about courtly love, honour and loyalty, and I thought them lies.

I did fear the law and the loss of respect. I knew full well that if the Prince ever heard of any of this, I’d have been out in an instant. But thanks be to God, our clients were discreet. We gathered girls, and they came to us, for no better reason than that neither Richard nor I beat our girls – Christ, men are animals. I was an animal. I rutted with every girl in my stable. I was their lord and master.

I confess, I ate well, dressed well and, twice a week, I waited at table on my Prince. I remember one evening, he stopped in a corridor where I was enjoying a cup of his wine with two of his squires. I was wearing a good black linen jupon, carefully embroidered with crosses, and matching wool hose, and I had a silk coat over the whole in a fine red-brown. It was my best, and my shoes matched, and I had de Charny’s dagger in my belt.

The Prince stopped and I made my obeisance.

‘You have done well for yourself, Master Gold,’ he said. I flushed, because he knew my name. ‘Has your prisoner paid his ransom?’

‘No, my Prince.’ I tried to smile, to make it a joke. ‘Some . . . money from rents, your Grace.’

He laughed. ‘Ah, you have rents?’ he said, and I could see I’d just climbed in his estimation. ‘I am remiss, Master Gold. Are you John or William?’

‘William, your Grace.’ I bowed again.

‘I remember you from Poitiers, and elsewhere,’ he said. ‘I seem to remember you as a cook.’ He laughed.

‘I was a cook,’ I admitted. ‘My mother was a de Vere and my father served as a man-at-arms, but . . .’

He nodded absently. ‘Yes, of course.’ His eyes scanned the crowd of courtiers, who were pressing in, wondering who I was. Sir John Chandos stepped up closer to the Prince and took my hand.

Sir John Chandos, shaking my hand.

‘I remember you at Poitiers,’ he said. ‘You were there when de Charny fell.’

‘I have his dagger,’ I said. I didn’t mention that I’d just used the paragon of chivalry’s dagger to pin a bad client to a chopping block so my whores could punish him. That seemed like a bad idea.

The Prince smiled at me. ‘You fought well,’ he said. ‘Men like you, with the help of God, gave me that victory.’

He turned away and I was aglow. For a moment I forgot that I was a pimp. I was a great man-at-arms, a soldier in the retinue of the finest prince in Christendom, the best lance in the west.

Sir John Chandos waited until the Prince swept on down the corridor. ‘You were a cook,’ he said pleasantly. ‘And now you seem on the road to being a knight.’

No one was more pleased to hear it than me. I had waited tables in the archbishop’s palace for almost a year, and suddenly my service was remembered.

I went home, floating on a cloud of knightly valour, and ordered Marie to wash herself and decline clients. I ordered wine and we had a fine night.

Towards morning, she kissed me. ‘Am I allowed to tell you that I like you, protector?’

I rolled on top of her and tickled her. We were very young to be so hard, and neither one of us was as hard as we pretended.

Sometimes, we had a fine time.

Spring came, in the year of our lord 1358. Sir John sent me a letter for the Prince, which seemed to me an odd conceit, but I read his covering letter, blushing at his praise of me. He had more than eighty lances, and he had fought his way across Brittany – not, as it proved, Normandy.

I read enough of his letter to the Prince – pardon me, gentles, but the only seal was on his letter to me – to know that he had seized castles for the King of Navarre and was offering them, unofficially, to our Prince.

I gave his letter into Sir John Chandos’s hands, and he looked at me very thoughtfully and gave me five golden ducats for the delivery – a great deal of money.

It wasn’t many days after, when I stood in my room at the inn – a fine room – dressing for court. I was not wealthy enough to have a male servant, but Marie generally saw to my appearance with the practicality of a farm girl. I remember she wanted to go to Mass, and wanted me to come – she wanted us to go to Mass together. I was not an enemy to God like the Bourc, but neither was I a hypocrite, and I didn’t relish facing God with a purse stuffed full of coins from whores.

Killing men is so much nobler, now, isn’t it? And look at that young cock – afraid to face God while aglow with praise from his worldly Prince, and still breathing hard from a fine morning ride with his whore. How many men live in a man?