The Ill-Made Knight (42 page)

The King’s army wasn’t shattered. English armies had supply trains and remounts, fletchers and armourers – they could, and did, bring food all the way from England – but men and horses died that night, and carts were lost. Men called it ‘Black Monday’ for a generation. Most of us who are there say that Black Monday cost the King Paris, and thus France.

De Badefol’s men didn’t have regular supplies, so we had to forage, and as the rain fell and our horses starved, we had to go farther and farther into the countryside – up to forty miles from Paris – to forage. The Dauphin had come up with a strategy to avoid facing us and only raid our supplies – du Guesclin’s strategy, whether it was he who mouthed it or not – and we faced fighting every day as we foraged in the rain.

It was announced that the King was sending representatives to Chartres to arrange a peace.

At the time, I was almost at the borders of Normandy, trying to find enough grain to feed 200 horses for a few days. France was so badly scarred that it had begun to appear that there simply wasn’t any grain.

I was sitting on Jack at a crossroads. My archers were all searching the village to the south of us, combing the cellars, literally, for a trap door holding a treasure of grain. And to the north, most of my men-at-arms were plunging their lances into a series of sodden hayricks, looking for anything, or anyone, who could lead us to food. The rain poured down like God’s tears for our sins, and the road under Jack’s forefeet was as soft as mush.

I had sentries out in each cardinal direction – mounted men at the corners of fields. One was Perkin.

He sounded the alarm, blowing a small horn, and then bolted towards me.

I stood in my stirrups and turned Jack. It was hard to see in the rain, but something seemed to be moving across the fields to the north, and also behind me, to the south.

Richard was laying siege to Paris and I hadn’t seen him in days. This raid was all mine, and something was wrong.

I had to assume that the force behind me was French.

I rallied my men-at-arms, who reached me first. I formed them in a tight knot on the road and pointed at de la Motte. ‘Cut your way through them, make a hole for the archers and keep going.’

‘What are you doing?’ he asked me.

I pointed at our two Hainaulters and the younger bastard of Albret, who had stuck with my force since the fall. They all had excellent armour and were good men-at-arms.

‘We’ll be the rearguard. Go!’ I shouted.

Hainaulters are solid men. Antoine and Marcus shrugged, wiped the water off their faces and put on their gauntlets. With Perkin, who was the best mounted page, we had five men-at-arms. We rode along behind the main force, watching the body of French come down from the north like a hammer on an anvil.

Sam led the archers out of the village and joined de la Motte on the road. He waved at me and I waved back.

The force from the north was now close enough to count. There were forty of them.

Marcus whistled between his teeth.

‘Please tell me you are not going to fight all of them,’ he said in his clipped, Germanic way.

I watched as de la Motte’s men-at-arms slammed into the force to the south of us. I saw Sam wave his arms, and I saw my archers ride off into the fields, mud and all.

‘My lord,’ Marcus said.

The Frenchmen behind us were forming for a fight.

Perkin looked at me.

I shrugged. ‘We’re going to charge them,’ I said. ‘If we fight well, we can push through and run for it. If not, friends . . . well, I’ll see you in hell.’

Marcus laughed. ‘We could just throw down our arms,’ he said. But he had his visor down.

We lowered our lances and charged.

I had the best horse, so I was in front. My adversary – I knew him immediately – also had the best horse. Jehan le Maingre. Boucicault.

I knew his coat armour when we were still forty horse lengths apart. I set myself and got two deep breaths.

As our lances crossed, his dipped slightly and slapped mine to the ground – his lance point caught me in the centre of the breastplate, just above my bridle arm, and slammed me back against my cantle. I lost my lance, but not my seat, and passed him.

By St George, he was a good lance.

Jack baulked at the dense mass of the French. Being a very different horse from Alexander, he turned and jumped the stone wall that lined the road, and as I was still trying to recover my seat from the lance strike, I came off.

My arse hit the wall and my shoulder hit the ground – I went upside down over the wall, and pain lanced through me. Still, I got to my feet, sword in hand, in the mud of the field.

I could just about stand. The pain in my lower back and hips was as intense as anything I’d ever known.

Bertrand du Guesclin rode up to the wall on the other side. I raised my sword in salute and he raised his visor. ‘If you’ll come back to the wall of your own free will, I’ll knock a hundred florins off your ransom,’ he said, grinning.

‘I don’t think I can climb the wall,’ I admitted. ‘But I yield to you.’ I took a few steps in the mud and fell, and that’s all I remember.

I returned to my wits in Reims. I’d been hurt badly – I had the black bruises to prove it – and I’d caught something in the cursed rain. But Perkin stayed by me and nursed me, and I lived. I missed about thirty days.

My ransom was set at 200 florins, which seemed to me unfair. It was a large sum, and I had no estates to pay it. But Boucicault explained to me that it was based on the damage I’d done to the French, which I suppose was flattering, in a way.

I was surprised to find the very noble Jehan le Maingre was willing to speak to me, but he sat on my bedside and laughed. He even laughed ruefully.

‘De Charny thought you had something, and he was never wrong,’ Boucicault said. He made a face. ‘In ’58, men said you’d raped my cousin, the Dauphine.’ He shook his head. ‘I almost killed you, but now I find that she rather likes you, and you helped defend her castle – bah. I’ll never kill a man for a rumour again. In fact, I owe you an apology.’

‘Which didn’t keep you from unhorsing me,’ I said, still smarting from the ease of his strike.

He held his arms wide. ‘That is war. I am a better knight than you, that is all.’ He saw me writhe and smiled. Jehan le Maingre set an international standard for arrogance. But he was handsome, slim, extremely rich, a fine musician and a brilliant soldier. He and du Guesclin vied to be the ‘best lance in France’. I, on the other hand, was a penniless Englishman, a self-taught man-at-arms, and who was I to resent him?

‘Indeed, you are lucky that your service to my cousin is so well known,’ he said. ‘The Dauphin ordered us to kill every routier taken in arms.’ He smiled – a very expressive smile that admitted he was no hypocrite and didn’t see routiers as very different from other kinds of soldiers. ‘Du Guesclin reminded him that you served him at Meaux, and he included you in his cartel. My old friend the Captal is covering your ransom. You have friends.’ He smiled. ‘Really, du Guesclin should have charged more for you.’

I will confess to you that this sign that some men accepted me as a knight – as a man-at-arms – made it worth being captured.

He paused in the doorway. ‘By the way,’ he said, ‘The Vicomtesse d’Herblay is in Reims. She sends her regards.’

The name meant nothing to me. ‘I am not acquainted with the vicomtesse,’ I said, trying for my very best Norman French accent.

He looked down his long nose at me. ‘I think you are mistaken,’ he said. ‘If I were to mention that her baptismal name was Emile . . .’ he added.

‘
Par dieu!
’ I said, all but springing from my bed.

‘I have not told her that I met you as an apprentice in a shop.’ He smiled.

Ha! I told her myself.

At some point I had stopped wearing her favour. There’s something particularly grim about wearing a woman’s favour while you threaten peasants and bully women into revealing where they hide their grain. I wondered where it was. Packed with my spare shirts? I had a leather bag of clean, dry linen shirts, and it lived with my good doublet, my two best pairs of matched hose without holes, and some bits of jewellery – in the wagon of a Genoese banker who rode with the Captal. He held all my ready money, too.

The next day, du Guesclin visited me. He was coming to be thought a great man amongst the French, which suited me – the more especially as he introduced me, at my bedside, to a room full of Norman and Breton knights.

‘William Gold, gentlemen. He took me in ’57 and was quite the gentleman about it; he helped save the Dauphine at the Bridge of Meaux – you know the story?’

‘By God, sir, did you save the Duke de Bourbon?’ asked a sprig.

‘
Par Dieu
, monsieur, I may have. I was busy, you understand,’ I drawled. Being a man of reknown – even a little reknown – was vastly more pleasurable than being thought a brigand, liar, thief or rapist.

I received a certain amount of hero worship, and I felt much better.

The worship of good men is itself anodyne, messieurs.

After they left, I wondered why it was that I was more popular with my enemies than with my own people.

A day or two passed. I hadn’t read a book in years, but my host, the French King’s lieutenant of Reims, had a library of over twenty books, and all of them were about chivalry. I had never seen a book about chivalry – I used to read a little Aristotle, but mostly Aquinas, psalms and sermons. I read a poem by John Gower once, and enjoyed it, although I’m pretty sure he wrote it against men like me.

I knew there
were
books on chivalry. I knew that the great de Charny wrote a list of questions for the Order of the Star, and I knew that the stories of Sir Lancelot, for example, were written down. But I had never read anything like Master Llull’s book of chivalry, and I devoured it. I read it through, and then read it through again.

When du Guesclin came, I asked him about the book. He shrugged. ‘I was never much of a reader,’ he admitted. ‘But my father’s master-of-arms says he was some sort of Spaniard – that he was a knight, and fought the Moors, and then became a hermit, and then a priest.’

‘He thinks that knights are chosen, by God, to protect the people.’ I looked down the page. ‘He thinks there ought to be schools to train boys to be knights.’ I looked at du Guesclin and he smiled.

‘Anyone can be a knight,’ he said. ‘Surely we’ve seen that in the last ten years. Give a peasant a good horse and a harness and a few year’s of training, and if he has a good heart and a set of balls, he can fight. You and I both know this.’

I gnawed my lip. ‘But . . . isn’t there more to being a knight than having courage and a harness?’

Du Guesclin shrugged. ‘No.’ He smiled wryly at me. ‘Well, perhaps there is more. A good sword is a help.’

A voice from the doorway said, ‘Fie on you, Monsieur du Guesclin! I thought better of you, sir.’

Now, in France, as in England, when you are sick (if you are lucky and have rich friends) you are put in a closed bed, a bed with heavy hangings, many pillows and a pair of feather mattresses over a roped frame. You can’t see anyone beyond the hangings. This means that women may visit you so long as they don’t enter the hangings, so to speak.

That was Emile’s voice. I’d hoped, but how on earth could a noblewoman visit a routier without comment?

‘If any peasant with spirit can be a knight, why is this war so vicious?’ she asked. ‘Isn’t it true that when we let any lad be a knight, they murder and rob at will, drunk on the power of their arms, whereas true knights have discipline and restraint?’

Du Guesclin was inside the hangings with me. His eyes met mine and he shrugged. ‘Madame may have the right of it,’ he said, ‘but when I need to go up a hill into a shower of English arrows, I care little about the ability my lads have to show restraint, and only that they have the spirit to face the arrow storm.’

Emile’s voice hardened. ‘And when you’ve beaten the English and they all go home? What then?’

Du Guesclin shook his head. ‘Not a problem for me, Madame. I am the merest fighting man.’ He rose from my bed.

I grabbed his hand. ‘May I write a letter to Richard Musard? I asked.

He shook his head. ‘The Black Squire has gone away south to Avignon on a mission. The Captal sent a squire – Thomas, an Englishman – with an offer to pay your ransom, which,’ he smiled, ‘I may have done you the disservice of accepting. He left before you returned to consciousness.’

‘I’d like some clothes and things,’ I admitted.

‘I’m sure you have friends in Reims who might arrange to dress you,’ said du Guesclin. ‘I must go. I’ll visit tomorrow. Do you know that the peace is signed? The King is to return to France at midsummer. The war is over.’

The words chilled my blood. I was a soldier. I was in the twilight between being a man-at-arms, a squire or a knight – a recognized member of the community, a ranking gentleman. A knight would never need to feed himself, whilst a starving man-at-arms was called a brigand.

The war was ending just as I was making my name.

But I had no more time to consider the destruction of my fortunes, because Emile said, ‘Do you, too, believe any man can be a knight?’