The Ill-Made Knight (37 page)

We penned all the women – high born and low – in the chapel, and protected them until all of our own men were gone. It was the beginning of something.

Richard and I didn’t talk of it, but when our eyes met . . .

We knew.

About the same time, the King was landing at Calais, and with him was the Prince of Wales and the Duke of Clarence, Lionel and all the best English captains. Richard and I sat in a mercenary garrison and writhed with anger. We drank. It is a tribute to our friendship that we didn’t go for each other.

Richard and I were not captains of the town, by any means – that job went to a rising star in the companies, a Scotsman named Sir Walter Leslie – but we were captains of smaller companies, and if men thought us hard, that was all to the good. We staked out the Angel, the best inn left standing in the Auxerre, which had thirty girls and six good cooks. It was a fine inn, three storeys of whitewashed plaster and heavy dark beams, with good red wine and terrible ale.

Have I told you that inns are to soldiers as paradise is to priests?

My enemy, the Bourc Camus, held the next castle-town for Knolles. He raided the countryside that belonged to my town, as if we were enemies. Even among criminals and murderers, he was a byword for evil. He struck the weak whenever he could, and his special provenance was taking women and turning them into whores, whom he sold to traders like chattels.

My friends, we were hard men. We did many bad things, and our sins piled up like gold in a money-changer’s booth, but the Bourc was a different kind of evil. He pleasured himself in the abject humiliation of the weak.

We had a skirmish at night – we caught his retinue raiding our sheepfolds, and we drove them off. I tried to get to him, but my horse was too shy of the dark and wouldn’t cross a wall. The Bourc escaped, but we rounded up half a dozen of his brigands – peasant boys he’d turned into spearmen.

Of the six we cut off, three fought to the death.

Listen. In our kind of war, no one fights to the death except the peasants on whom we preyed. I confess that if one of the French lords were to capture men like this, they’d be hanged – not for nothing were they called brigands – but between ourselves, we’d sell them back. We had our own infantry by then: Gascon mountaineers. They carried small bucklers and a pair of wicked javelins, and they could fight in any terrain.

These boys were different. They weren’t Gascons at all; they were locals. There were men and women in Champlay who knew them, yet they were fighting devils.

The other three had to be beaten to the ground with spear-staves. It’s not that they were particularly good fighters, merely that they kept fighting.

When we tried to talk to them, they sat like sullen animals and said nothing. Even when John used a little rough persuasion.

I’d never seen the look those peasant boys had, except on broken men going to be hanged in London. Their eyes were dead somehow, and yet they burned with hate.

Three days later, the Captain of Champlay (as he called himself) had a parley with the Bourc at a stone bridge. The bastard sat on his horse with his black and white banner, and most of his followers in his own motley. He had two of the Albret bastards in their father’s arms, and a couple of Englishmen, but all the rest of his ‘knights’ wore his colours.

I sat on my bad war horse and watched him through my lowered visor. Neither my commander, Sir Walter Leslie, my friend Richard, nor I, trusted the Bourc a whit.

As Sir Walter parleyed with him, I watched his knights. They had miserable armour and one was mounted on a plough horse. The ones with open-faced helmet looked shockingly young.

Sir Walter released our three captives, and they stood, abject, by our servants. Finally, one of the archers pressed them forward at spear point, and they walked, like condemned men, across to the middle of the span.

The Bourc looked down at them. ‘You surrendered?’ he asked, laughing.

All three flinched.

‘Please, my lord, we were beaten to the ground,’ one boy whined. They were the first words I’d heard him speak, even when John Hughes broke one of his fingers.

The Bourc drew his sword and killed the boy with a single snap of his wrist.

The other two didn’t run. They just stood in the centre of the span until the Bourc’s sword took their souls.

Then he looked at Sir Walter. ‘Don’t bother bringing me any more trash,’ he said. He turned his horse and his eye caught mine.

He laughed. ‘Hello, Butt Boy.’

I was growing up. I didn’t flush or stammer. I rode forward and raised my visor. ‘Wounds all healed?’ I asked. ‘Or shall I kick your arse again to remind you which of us—’

He snarled. He had a sword in his hand, still dripping from the cold murder of three brigands, and he swung at me. Under a flag of truce.

Sir Walter raised his hand, even as the Bourc’s blow missed me by a finger’s breadth as I leaned back in the saddle. Our archers sprung forward, arrows to bows, and the Bourc raised his sword. He laughed. ‘You’re a dead man,’ he said.

‘I’ve heard all this before,’ I said. ‘And here I am.’

Richard had my bridle.

I pushed my big horse forward. The deaths of the boys penetrated my armour of vice. Many things did that autumn. Why? Because they were like me, those boys? Because I was not utterly lost to sin?

‘You are a coward and a caitiff, Camus, and I challenge you. I will prove on your body that you are nothing but a terror to boys and virgins.’

My words hit him like a flight of heavy arrows. Hah! I was growing up.

He turned. ‘Easy to challenge me when you have all these war bows at your back, Butt Boy.’ He spat. ‘Someday I’ll catch you alone and use you like a woman.’

‘Does that thought excite you?’ Richard called out.

The Bourc froze and his face grew as red as new blood.

We laughed.

‘Dead! Both of you! I will destroy your souls and send you to an eternity in the abyss!’ he hissed and rode away, and his retinue fell in behind him.

The peasants called him ‘the demon’.

I rode back into our little town as filled with emotion as if I had just fought a battle, and Richard and I laughed and embraced over it. A war of words, yes. But we won. There comes a point in every man’s life – perhaps in every woman’s, too – where you learn how to turn the words of your adversary. To fight word to word, like sword to sword. Some never learn. Some become word-bullies.

A few days later a party of Bretons tried to kill us and take the inn. Richard took a nasty wound in the thigh, and I might have died if Sam hadn’t put arrows into three men. They attacked without warning, but by then I slept with a dagger in my hand, and when I slept alone, I wore mail. There were loaded and cocked crossbows in three places about the inn, and we were wary when we went out.

We killed them all. Four of them were, as I say, Breton mercenaries, but the other two were young boys of twelve or thirteen.

I had been to Mass the day before – I was learning to pray again. I stood there with the blood of a twelve-year-old boy dripping down my longsword to form a puddle on the tiled floor and I prayed. Good Christ, how I prayed.

I prayed that there might
be a God.
That’s all I could manage.

I tell you true, monsieur. It took less than a week for God to answer.

Richard and I were sitting in the inn. In fact, we were discussing leaving Knolles and running for the coast – to see if the Prince, or Prince Lionel, would take us.

‘We have nothing to lose,’ Richard said.

‘They might hang us, or publicly degrade us,’ I argued.

Richard spread his hands, which were long-fingered and delicate compared to mine. ‘If I stay here much longer,’ he said, ‘I will be nothing but a criminal. A felon.’ He looked away.

We had probably had far too much to drink already when a party came in – probably the last party to get through the gate that day. There was a priest, a pair of monks and two nuns. The girls had a go at them because the church provided us with some ready customers, but the nuns didn’t even unveil and the monks were silent.

At some point I became suspicious of them, and I ordered Helen, one of the older girls, to see if the nuns were women at all. She took them a flagon of wine, leaned over the table and put a hand on a nun’s gown. The nun gave a very nun-like screech and backed into a corner.

Better safe than sorry, thought I, and gave Helen a moulin of silver for her trouble.

The priest ordered wine for all of them and they kept to themselves. He was a nondescript man in a brown gown that reached to the ground – what we used to call a long gown – but under the gown, he wore boots with spurs, like a knight. That made me suspicious.

The two nuns made me suspicious, too. As soon as they relaxed a little, they were too loud, too free, and they gave the man orders. Something about them wasn’t right.

After they had eaten, the priest asked Helen to speak to the innkeeper, and she sent for me. I went over to the table with Richard at my back. He was limping. I was ready to draw, my blade oiled and loosened in my scabbard.

The nuns sensed my alarmed hostility and became silent. More, the younger one cowered against the back of their snug. The monks glared with that mixture of fear and anger that characterizes the man with no fighting skills.

The priest, on the other hand, appeared very calm. He indicated empty places. ‘Please,’ he said, ‘join us and share a cup of wine.’

I sat, and Richard watched my back. That’s how it was.

‘I need to get to Avignon,’ he said carefully. His eyes flicked up to Richard. ‘You may sit. I confess that I have several weapons, but none of them to hand.’ He smiled.

I turned in time to see Richard return the smile.

I nodded. It was possible he really was going to Avignon. It didn’t add up, but it was possible. And the man himself looked familiar. The hood on his gown made his face difficult to see and read, and he wore a white linen cap, like a scholar – or a soldier, except that his was a clean, sparkling white despite days on the road.

‘Whom do I pay?’ he asked. ‘For passage?’

I glanced at Richard. ‘You want an escort?’ I asked.

He nodded. ‘I had six men-at-arms and a dozen crossbowmen,’ he said. ‘I’ve lost all of them. I need to get to Avignon. With both of my brothers and both sisters. Intact.’ He nodded. ‘Alive.’

Again, he seemed familiar to me. But I couldn’t place him, and I didn’t know any priests, so I stopped staring at him and turned to Richard.

Richard sat. ‘I’m willing to discuss it,’ he said. ‘Messire.’

Richard and I still wanted to be great knights. We were more eager to do good deeds than farm boys safe at home. We had a great deal of sin to expiate.

‘It would be a bold adventure,’ I said.

But Richard shook his head. ‘Auxerre is packed with brigands,’ he said. ‘You are foolish to come this way.’

The priest shrugged. ‘I go where the good Lord sends me,’ he said. ‘I was with the convoy—’

‘What convoy?’ Richard asked.

‘The cardinals who went to make the peace treaty. We were with them on the road – they are too slow. And too rich.’ The priest smiled. ‘Everything about the church that I despise in that convoy. Arrogance. Worldly power. Pomp and display. Wanton sin.’ He shrugged. ‘My sisters are safer in an inn run by professional killers.’ He met my eyes. ‘I know you,’ he said. ‘I ask for your help.’

His eyes were not soft. Damn, I knew him from somewhere. His words –
I know you –
struck me like sword blows. He knew my kind? Or he knew me, personally?

I smiled, the way you smile when you think you may have to fight. ‘How far behind you is this convoy?’ I asked.

He shrugged. ‘I will not be the agent of its destruction,’ he said, and I swear he knew exactly what he’d just revealed.

‘You are English,’ I said.

He nodded. ‘I am a servant of God,’ he said. ‘Will you help us?’ He flipped back the hood on his gown. ‘Will you help us, William Gold?’

His face had a scar from the corner of his mouth to one eye. And a new scar – he was wearing a clean cap to cover a bandage.

I knew him then. He was the Hospitaller knight I’d met when I was about to flee London.

Richard was still hesitant. I wasn’t. I had prayed, and this was what God offered me.

‘I’ll take you past the worst of it,’ I said. ‘I’ll get you clear of the Auxerre.’

The priest – my eyes went to his right hand, and on it burned a ring – a red jewel with an eight-pointed cross, and the ring was on a hand with the swollen knuckles and scarred fingers of a swordsman. He wasn’t just a priest. But I knew that now.

He nodded. ‘God bless you,’ he said. ‘I am Fra Peter.’

That’s what comes of praying.

Richard was adamant. ‘You go,’ he said. ‘I’m going to take the convoy.’

We looked at each other for a moment, having switched roles too dramatically not to notice the change. Richard was going to raise a company of adventure to sack a church convoy, and I was going to escort nuns.

‘Why?’ I asked.

Richard shrugged. ‘The church has always been against the Prince,’ he said. ‘And they’re rich. They’re blood suckers, William. We can be rich.’

‘Come with me,’ I said.

Richard shook his head and wouldn’t meet my eye. ‘I misdoubt we can do both. Your man asked for you.’

I took his shoulder in my right hand. ‘Richard, we talk about being better men . . .’

Richard looked away, and then back into my eyes. ‘You go do what’s right for your sister,’ he said. ‘And so will I. I’ll split whatever I take with you. If you want to turn the money down, fine, but this is our chance to be free of this crap. This endless shit.’

I thought about it for half an hour. Then went and found him at a table with two of the Hainaulters we preferred, because they had no ties to the Gascons. ‘A word, Richard,’ I said.

Musard rose and followed me.

‘Better if I attack the convoy and you escort the nuns?’ I asked.

Musard shook his head. ‘No.’ He smiled. ‘But a damn courteous offer, brother.’

He didn’t call me brother often. Nor embrace – he didn’t like to be touched – but he threw his arms around me then.