The Ill-Made Knight (47 page)

Hawkwood came in on horseback, by a gate we’d opened after we butchered its defenders, and he rode to the church with twenty men-at-arms, looked at it and gave it over as a bad job. He swept through the town like a blade through butter, and I could see from the way his mounted company moved that they were looking for something.

By nones the next day, the Bourc Camus arrived with another company. Richard and I avoided his black and white clad men. Houses were burned, but Hawkwood’s archers kept the mercenaries under control, and he began to negotiate a ransom for the whole town with several of the town’s magnates, who he already had in hand.

The papal army didn’t move.

It was the second day after the storming when the situation exploded. Richard and I were counting our winnings; we’d taken over a house, and if we roughed up the inhabitants, I swear to you we were the gentlest tenants in that place. We had coins and some gold objects, and Richard had acquired a squire named Robert and a pair of servants, two likely French lads named Belier and Arnaud. John had found himself another senior archer as a companion, Ned Candleman, and we had another eight archers. So we had mouths to feed and the loot had to be shared. We were already planning to start our own company, even then.

John Thornbury appeared in the street, shouting for us. I remember going to the window, my brigantine unbuckled – my armour was in a sorry state by then – and all I could think was that the papal army was going to attack us.

I leaned out into the street. ‘What ails you, John?’ I asked.

He was looking north. ‘Gather your lance. There’s going to be trouble with the Gascons.’

Nothing would please me better. A fight with Camus?

Richard and I had our men together and moving before you could say five paternosters. We pounded through the narrow streets and terrified locals cowered in doorways or slammed their doors shut.

We were late to the party.

We came to the square in front of the church, and it took me a moment to determine what was happening, because I came expecting a fight, not a massacre.

The Bourc had grown bored of laying siege to the church, so he offered them their lives and freedom in exchange for surrender – if they gave up the church and left the town, he’d let them take everything they could carry. It was a common enough solution to strongly held houses in the countryside.

Remember that these were the fifty richest and most noble families in the town. Remember, too, that Hawkwood was looking for something. The truth is, he’d encouraged Camus to get the little siege over with. Whatever Hawkwood was trying to find, it had become obvious that it was in the church.

As we came up to the square, the oath had been sworn, the Bible kissed, and the great nail-studded oak doors of the church were opening.

The Bourc Camus sat on his great black war horse in the middle of the square in front of the church, watching as the doors to the nave were thrown back. About forty men stood there, with their swords in their scabbards. Behind them cowered a hundred women. Most of the men and women were richly dressed, and all of them had bundles, like peasants.

The men began to file out the cathedral doors, led by a priest with a cross.

Camus spat on the ground in sheer disgust.

I was watching Hawkwood. He was looking at the newly surrendered refugees the way a man buying a horse watches the horse – eyes narrowed, nostrils flared. He touched his horse with his spurs and rode past Camus into the square. ‘Which of you,’ he said, ‘is Pierre Scatisse?’

The man at the head of the column was a nobleman. You could tell – straight back, unbowed head, angry eyes. A young woman clutched his arm. She glared at Hawkwood with the same look of contempt as her father.

The man stopped. ‘By what right do you ask anything of us?’ asked the man. ‘And where is our escort?’

‘Which of you is Pierre Scatisse?’ asked Hawkwood again.

The little column began to shuffle past him.

‘By God!’ he shouted. ‘Produce Monsieur Scatisse or take the consequences!’

The nobleman stopped. ‘None of us is Monsieur Scatisse,’ he said. ‘I live here. I would know.’

Hawkwood trembled with frustration. I could see his anger, and it transmitted to his horse, who began to fret. Later – much later – I learned that Scatisse was the man who was taking a convoy with the Pope’s contribution to the French King’s ransom.

And he wasn’t there.

Camus laughed. He rode his horse along the column, his horse’s hooves ringing on the square’s cobblestones in the cold air. He passed the nobleman, drew his sword and cut down at the priest, severing the man’s cross and cutting into his neck.

‘Kill them all,’ he called.

The nobleman whirled, drawing his sword. He cut down the first brigand to come for him, and the second, but Camus towered above him, hammered through his guard and split his head.

Every mercenary in the square fell on those folk. Except two.

The men were killed.

The women were raped.

The nobleman’s daughter took her father’s sword, stood over his corpse and fought. She didn’t last long before a pair of Gascons threw her down and took her.

And that was the end of me.

I gather that I stood there for a long moment, watching the massacre unfold, neither helping nor harming. I have no memory of that time.

But when the two Gascons threw the girl down, something snapped.

I killed them.

I don’t remember it.

But I remember Camus. He was sitting on his horse, watching the rape and murder like Satan, with a gleam of savage satisfaction. This was his world. This was all he wanted of it – that men humiliate each other; that men suffer degradation whether they are victims or criminals.

I rammed my longsword’s point into the soft back of his thigh before he even knew I was there, and then I slammed an armoured fist into his hip and hammered him out of the saddle. His head hit the pavement with a hollow sound, like an empty gourd, and I raised my blade—

And John Thornbury took my sword arm from behind.

Both of the Ashleys had my arms, and Richard Musard stood between me and my prey. Camus lay on the stones and his eyes wouldn’t focus. Behind him, the French girl who’d used the sword tried to cover herself. She was bleeding and weeping.

Sir John planted himself in front of me. ‘William,’ he said, as if I was a fool. ‘What am I going to do with you? This is no place for a private quarrel.’ He spoke to me as if I was a small child.

‘Sir John, we
swore
to protect these people. To escort them to Avignon. We
swore!
’ I think I was sobbing. The French girl got a dagger from her father’s corpse.

Sir John shook his head. ‘You don’t know what this is about, lad. It’s not on your head. Now, be a good lad, take your men and walk away.’

John Hughes saw what the girl was about, bless him. She put the dagger to her throat, but before she could do it, he had the dagger. She raked her nails across his face, and he slugged her hard enough to put her down.

Then he picked her up and threw her across his shoulder, and we left the square.

The next day, John Thornbury brought me thirty day’s pay and told me that I had to go. He sat at my table, had a cup of French cider and apologized for Sir John.

I knew what was coming. It had been happening my whole life.

‘Sir John asks that you go away until the Bourc is somewhat calmer,’ he said. ‘We need the Bourc’s men, and his allies.’ He shrugged. ‘He’s a monster, and that’s the saviour’s own truth, but we can’t be too picky just now.’

I drew a deep breath and said nothing.

He went on, as embarrassed men do, speaking to hide silence. ‘If we’d found the ransom money here,’ he began.

‘What’s that?’ asked Richard.

Thornbury looked at both of us, his eyes narrow, then he looked away. ‘It doesn’t matter any more,’ he said.

But Richard started to stand up. ‘You mean all of this was about the King of France’s ransom,’ he said quietly.

Thornbury got to his feet. ‘Come back in a few days,’ he said. ‘Send Perkin or Robert to make sure of your welcome.’

We were all on our feet.

‘You mean to say,’ said Richard, ‘that the King of England, having made a treaty with the King of France based on his ransom, tipped you off to come and steal that ransom? So he could abrogate the treaty?’

‘And beggar France?’ I put in.

Thornbury spat. ‘You two children need to go to school. This is the world. We’re not knights of spotless renkown. We’re soldiers. We kill and maim. That’s what we do. If the King orders us to do something and it will make us all rich, who are we to question it? We should have picked up 400,000 florins when we took this town. Think of that, you two pious fucks – 400,000 florins. Your share would have been between 400 and 800 florins each. Enough to buy all the French girls in the world. Buy masses, if you want. Buy an indulgence from the Pope, if that’s what your pretty little conscience needs.’ He glared at Richard. ‘Don’t come back until you’ve mastered your tender soul, Monsieur. It’ll get you killed. Until you do, you are not welcome in this company.’

He pushed past me and left.

I stood there, breathing hard, then I looked at Richard. He was nearly red, he was so furious. ‘I will never come back,’ he shouted at John Thornbury. ‘Tell Sir John Hawkwood that I spit on him.

‘I doubt he cares,’ Thornbury shouted back.

I suppose we should have been worried that the Gascons would attack us, or that Hawkwood would take some revenge, but it didn’t happen like that. We collected our loot and summoned our people – Ned and John; Perkin and Robert; Arnaud and Belier; Amory and Jack and the other six. And the girl, whose name I didn’t know, who stared in stony silence. She’d eat and dress herself, but she hadn’t said one word since she came along with us.

‘Friends,’ I said, ‘Richard and I have been dismissed from Sir John’s company. We are not short on money and we can continue wages.’ My confident speech petered out – I had no idea where I was going or why, so I guess I frowned.

Richard nodded. ‘If you come with us, there could be some hard times,’ he said.

Arnaud laughed aloud. ‘Hard times?’ he asked. He shook his head. ‘I’ve eaten more in the last month than in the last five years.’

Belier said nothing, but I saw his eyes on the woman. Even stone-faced and silent, she was pretty. More than pretty.

‘Leave her alone,’ I said.

John Hughes nodded. ‘What do you reckon, gentles?’ he asked. ‘Take service with another lord? Petit Mechin has a company – and I hear he hates Camus like we do.’

In that moment, I loved John Hughes. The words ‘hates Camus like we do’, that moment of solidarity, rang like a clarion and was engraved on my heart.

‘Where’s Mechin?’ I asked. ‘Or Seguin de Badefol?’

Richard shook his head. ‘I think we should leave this life.’

Even in the circumstances, I remember being stunned. ‘And do what?’ I asked.

He shook his head. ‘I don’t know,’ he admitted. ‘I only know that if I don’t walk away soon, this will be the sum of who I am.’

I heard Emile, then:
But that need not be the sum of who we are
.

They all came with us, and we rode out of the gates of Pont-Saint-Esprit on the first day of the new year, 1361.

You want to hear about Brignais, so I’ll spare you the whole tale of my next year. We rode with de Badefol, and we came in sight of the Mediterranean, and swept like a horde of locusts along the Côte d’Azur until, by August, we came to Narbonne. The woman we’d taken – did we save her? I’m still not sure – rode with us. She didn’t speak, and nor did she lie with any of us. When an archer tried, I hit him.

She also didn’t bathe or brush her hair or behave like a woman, and after a few weeks, her presence was a burden on every campfire. We didn’t even know her name, so we called her Milady.

We took some small towns, but in general, the Narbonnais and their cousins in the Rouergue were ready for us. Their towns were strong and well-garrisoned, and we were always short of food and fodder, so we could never sit down to lay siege to so much as a fortified house without feeling hunger. We moved fast, trying to repeat the victories of the fifties, when companies of English and Gascon freebooters had surprised towns all over France, but the easy pickings were gone, and by a process of elimination of the weakest, only the strong remained.

The knights and militia of Carcassonne and Toulouse knew their business – perhaps having Gascons as neighbours had made them hard. They shadowed us night and day, struck our camps, killed our sentries, stole our horses and murdered our sick and wounded. Not that they had it all their own way. When we caught a party of them, the tables were turned, and if a man of Carcassonne wasn’t worth a ransom and we took him in arms, we hung him from a tree.

One day in May – already hot, under a magnificent blue sky – we fought four Provençal knights at a ford. We’d found a dovecote in which to camp, and they’d seen our smoke and come at us – four mounted knights and a dozen of their own routiers with spears and helmets.

It was a bitter little fight, with no quarter asked or given. I dropped one of their knights in the ford with my lance, and Richard got another, then we were fighting for our lives. Ned and John made all the difference, and as we fought on, they stood on the bank and slowly killed their way through our opponents, unhorsing the mounted men and killing the unarmoured footmen.

Finally, the last knight and half a dozen footmen broke and ran.

We killed them.

I rode the knight down, caught him and beat him from the saddle with my sword. Richard put his sword through a gap in the man’s coat of plates while he writhed on the ground, but he never requested our mercy. Then we chased the footmen.

All of them.

It took us some time, and when we returned to the ford, John and Ned were stripping the corpses with Arnaud and Belier. A slim young man was just lacing his hose on the river bank. I didn’t know him, but Ned didn’t seem to pay him any heed.

Provençal’s were good fighters, but their equipment was antiquated – mail shirts and leather reinforcement. The smallest of them had a nice pair of steel greaves, which I admired, but my legs were about a foot too long for them. John Hughes took them and, as I watched, he gave them to the young man.