Clip heaved a sigh. ‘Aye, well, ye’ll all get murdered. That’s a fact.’
‘Hit him, someone,’ Eliot called, and Matt, who stood at Clip’s side, clumped him over the head.
‘Hoy! What was that for?’ Clip demanded.
‘Purely personal enjoyment,’ Matt replied.
‘Shut up, lads,’ Berenger said flatly. ‘So, Sir John, are we to march to the city?’
‘The French have chosen a marvellous site, with rising land leading to their position. It is protected on both flanks, I hear, with trees and thick undergrowth to prevent a charge, and they have Genoese mercenaries to bring down all our men from a great distance.’
Berenger pulled a face. The thought of charging into the Genoese arrow-storm did not appeal. He had fought in battles like that. Invariably it was better to be on the defensive than the attacking side.
Sir John gave a loud chuckle at his expression. ‘You think our King was joking when he said he would not meet the French at a time and place of their choosing? No, Fripper. We do not fight today. Instead, we are to cross the river and march north.’
‘I thought we were here to fight the French, Sir John,’ Geoff called out, frowning.
‘Aye, but at a time of our choosing – not theirs,’ Sir John replied. He nodded to Berenger and spurred away.
It took little time to strike camp. After the last weeks they were well-practised at packing their belongings and stowing cookpots and bedrolls, blankets and bags into the back of the cart, along with the bows and arrows.
‘Wonder how the Donkey is,’ Clip said as he threw his little haversack in with the others.
‘Why? You never cared about him while he was here,’ Geoff said.
‘He had his uses. Good at fetching and carrying, he was, so long as there weren’t any Welsh around.’
‘Did you see the Welshman’s face?’ Geoff said quietly. ‘After she flung the powder into the fire. I’ve never seen anything like it.’
Matt nodded. He was on her side. He liked women. Always had. ‘She was in the right. That bastard was going to rape her – our maid, the girl who saved our Donkey. Then all the other men would take their turn. The Welsh bastard deserved all he got!’
‘She stole that powder from Archibald,’ Geoff persisted. ‘Those damned gynours are more in league with the Devil than His own demons! I hate the smell of brimstone. That poor Welshman. He had no eyes left, did he?’
‘He should have left Béatrice alone,’ Matt said unsympathetically. ‘They were all planning to have their fun with her. It’s one thing to take a wench from a town after an assault, but they knew she was with us. I wouldn’t see her molested by a bunch of hairy-arsed sheep-swivers. It makes them worse than the French!’
‘I’m just glad the wench isn’t here any more,’ Geoff grumbled on. ‘She’s a witch. She threatens all our—’
‘Oh, change the song, Master Millerson,’ Matt sighed. ‘I’ve heard that refrain too often. She’s no more a witch than I am!’
‘She is bringing bad fortune.’
‘Ballocks! She helped the leech to nurse our vintener. Look at him! You can hardly see he was injured.’
‘Yes – and isn’t that proof enough?’ Geoff snarled.
‘No,’ Matt said. He leaned against the cart’s wheel and studied Geoff. ‘The fact is, the girl is innocent. We’re not suffering disaster. Our army is safe still, and when we meet the French, God willing, we shall carry the field.’
‘Why do you protect her?’ Clip intervened. ‘She’s only another little wench with a plump arse.’
‘Why? Because she came to us freely. She didn’t come to bargain her safety. When she saw us first, it was to save the Donkey, and after that, she stayed because she trusted us,’ Matt said, looking meaningfully at Geoff.
Geoff coloured. ‘Are you saying I—’
‘I’m saying nothing, Geoff. But you did betray her trust, didn’t you?’
‘She would have been worth a tumble though,’ Clip said with a sidelong glance at Geoff.
‘Shut up!’ he rasped.
‘Go on! We all saw her tit!’ Clip taunted him. ‘How was she? Did you only get a quick fondle, or was she keen enough as well?’
Geoff’s bitterness and frustration boiled over. In a moment he had spun about, grabbed Clip’s cotte and shoved hard, thrusting the other man up against the wagon, Geoff’s elbow at his throat. Eyes wild, Clip saw Geoff’s fist clench, ready to pound his face, and felt for his knife to defend himself.
‘Enough! Enough!’ Berenger bellowed, shoving Geoff away. ‘There are thousands of Frenchmen waiting to kill us – do you want to do their work for them? Geoff, back! Back! Clip, take your hand off your knife right now. I won’t have fighting in my vintaine!’
‘He went mental,’ Clip said, rubbing at his throat. ‘Just because he got his hand up that French tart’s skirt, he tried to kill me!’
‘Get moving!’ Berenger said, pushing him forwards. ‘We’re supposed to be marching.’
He turned to face Geoff, who wouldn’t meet his look, but mumbled, ‘I’m sorry, Frip. It won’t happen again.’
‘Fucking right it won’t, Geoff. Because if it does, I’ll have you flogged!’
They were within sight of the great cathedral town of Beauvais when they stopped for the night. Berenger set the guards and took a turn around the perimeter before he went to the fires and hunkered down at the side of Geoff and Matt.
‘All well?’ Matt asked.
‘I hope so,’ Berenger said, glancing at Geoff. ‘You all right now?’
Geoff sighed. ‘It won’t happen again, Frip, like I said. I’m sorry, but he kept on needling me.’
‘About the maid?’
‘Yes. And I won’t have it.’
‘You’ll bloody have to, Geoff. If you don’t, the King will see you dangle! This is an army, man! You need to contain your anger.’
‘So you said.’
‘I’ll say it again and again if I think there’s any risk of another outburst like that,’ Berenger said.
Matt snorted and hawked. ‘Any news?’
‘The smoke behind us was the bridge going up in flames,’ Berenger told him. ‘The French won’t be able to follow us that way. They’ll have to march through Paris to come out this side of the Seine, and then they’ll head straight for us, I suppose. They won’t want us to harm any more towns or cities.’
‘Do you think they’ll actually come to blows with us this time?’ Matt said. He felt for his sword’s hilt with an anticipatory grin. ‘This hanging about is hard on a man. I want to get the fight over with so we can concentrate on plunder!’
‘I think we’ve tugged the French King’s beard so hard, it’s made his eyes water,’ Berenger said.
‘Beard? I think it was his short and curlies, Frip.’ Matt laughed.
‘Well, he’s bound to take action now. If he doesn’t, none of his people will respect him ever again.’
They were sitting on a little hillock, next to a small stand of beech trees. From here they could see in the far distance a darkening grey cloud where the smoke from the town rose. As the light began to fade, Matt got up, rubbing his arse.
‘I’m off to find a small skin of wine and take my ease. After all, if you’re right, I may not have many more chances, eh?’
As he wandered off back down towards their camp, Berenger looked over at Geoff, sitting moodily nearby.
‘What is it, Geoff? You can tell me. This chevauchée has brought you low.’
‘It’s just that Frenchwoman,’ Geoff said. He took a deep breath, closing his eyes. Remembering.
There were so many regrets when a man reached his age. So many opportunities lost, so many hollow challenges that could have been better ignored, so many dreams that had been discarded as reality came and thrust them away.
‘You just want to go home, old friend. When you get there and see your woman again, you’ll be content,’ Berenger said soothingly.
‘Aye.’
>
Geoff thought of her now: Sarra, his wife.
‘She was a grubby young thing when I met her, you know,’ he said. ‘A peasant-daughter from the next vill – lean, potent, with a pair of breasts that swung at every step, and an arse like puppies in a sack. And so pretty: an oval face with catlike hazel eyes, and a wicked, beckoning look to her. I fell in love with her the first moment I saw her.’
‘You married her a long time ago.’
‘It was the Feast of Saint John the Baptist, fourteen, fifteen years ago. Her father wouldn’t let me near, so we met in a little leaf-strewn clearing in the trees, and there we straightway made love. There was no discussion, no lengthy negotiation. We both knew that we were meant to be married.
‘After that, things moved swiftly. We made our vows there in the leaves, in front of friends, before visiting the doddery old fool of a priest, who blessed us at the church door. Afterwards, he declared that it was the first wedding he had legitimised for a couple in love.’
He remembered it all. ‘You know, when I was told to go and fight the Scots, I was dead keen. And when I returned – Christ’s pains! – Sarra was so glad to have me return, it was a day before she allowed me from our bed!’
‘You are lucky, Geoff. I’ve never found a woman like that.’
‘I never had reason to doubt her affection.’ Never, in all those years, he told himself wonderingly.
Berenger was called away by Matt, and when he was alone, Geoff remained, staring into the distance.
She had always been there to look after him: the one fixed point of his life. Until the beginning of summer, when he met Edith.
Young, fresh, wriggling and gorgeous as a summer’s morning, she worked in the tavern, and all the men adored her. Her ivory skin, her rich auburn hair, the perfect roses of her lips. She was sweet and taut and soft and bitter, and he longed for her when he was away from her in a way that tormented his soul. Sarra, in comparison, looked like a worn-out drudge.
At his neglect, Sarra grew sharp, with a poisonous tongue that could slay a saint. It made his visits to the tavern to see Edith all the more delightful. Until that day when he wandered home drunk, after spending the day with her, and Sarra tore into him. She shouldn’t have done that. It wasn’t her place to demand, to insult him and say that he was whoring with all the sluts in the alehouses. She shouldn’t have spoken to him like that. No man could keep his anger under control, when provoked like that.
The next morning, he found her down behind the table, her throat cut. And the memory returned – of their shouting, their fighting, her spitting at him, raking at his face with fingers like claws, kicking and punching at him, her face twisted into a mask of hatred while their little boys watched.
That was why he never joined in the rapes in the towns; that was why he couldn’t take Béatrice by force when he had the chance. Not because he didn’t want to, but because every time he took a woman, he saw his Sarra’s eyes, her dead eyes, looking back at him accusingly.
17 August
‘Up! The lot of you: up!’
Berenger was awake at the first shout. Before the second, he was on his feet, sword in hand.
All around him, men were yawning, rubbing their eyes and grumbling in the gloom. This was not their usual routine. Most mornings, it would be Berenger moving about them kicking the occasional figure, beating on a pot or shouting. Today, however, Grandarse and Sir John’s esquire were hurrying about the camp, waking everyone.
‘What’s the matter?’ Berenger demanded.
‘We’re to break camp,’ Richard Bakere said tersely.
‘You heard him,’ Grandarse snapped. ‘Now! We’re leaving the wagon train and anything unnecessary. Bring all the oxen and horses, but the heavy ballocks are to be left behind.’
Berenger felt the words hit him in the belly. ‘Leave the wagon train? The enemy are that close?’
‘The mother-swyving sons of whores have already closed on us. We’re told to find ourselves horses or ponies, anything with four legs we can steal to get away from here. I’d cut their throats if we could stop and fight, you lads would shoot ’em so full of arrows they’d look like my lady’s pin-cushion, but the fact is, they are a large army, and we are depleted. Damn their black souls, but I didn’t think they’d catch us so speedily!’
Grandarse was already off again, swearing and shouting at Roger’s vintaine, and Berenger walked to a tree and pulled down his hosen, pissing long while trying to come to terms with the news.
‘Will they catch us, do you think?’ Matt asked quietly, taking his post at the tree a moment or two later.
‘If they’re on the same plain, they may, I suppose. It’s ludicrous to think that they’d risk it though,’ Berenger said.
‘Is that the view of my friend the vintener, or the politics of a commander?’ Matt grinned. ‘I am a man, Frip. I can take the truth.’
‘Very well. If they can, they will fall on us like wolves on a flock. But we still have our King and his advisers. You know what they say: if five Englishmen were attacked by fifteen French it would be an unfair fight, like five wolves attacked by fifteen sheep.’
‘Aye, but these sheep have steel fangs and mail for fleece!’
Berenger shrugged. ‘I cannot think of the last time the French managed to assault us and win. Can you?’
Clip overheard them, and called out gleefully, ‘Aye, if they get much closer, they’ll murder the lot of us. We’ll all be slain!’
Matt spat on the grass at his feet. ‘I’ll bloody murder you myself if they don’t manage it first,’ he said.
They were soon ready, packed and off.
Berenger watched the horizon closely as he rode his small black and white pony. They had found him in a field as they marched past, and then two decent rounseys at a stable, but Berenger took one look at the rounseys and decided to stick with the pony. It was less distance to fall. Together with the other beasts they had already found, these were enough for half the vintaine to ride. Those without horses padded along on the grass, for the most part complaining loudly that their legs ached.
Before they had covered a league, Matt had stopped and pulled off his shoe, saying he had a thorn in his foot, and Berenger saw that the shoe had almost no sole. The upper was flapping uselessly. Matt was not the only man to go near-barefoot though, and before long many others would be too.
The path they took was clearly used by villagers moving their cattle, and soon they found themselves in a small town.
It was a quiet little place. Smoke still rose from a hearth in one cottage, but the whole place was deserted. Only one ancient dog barked for a while, until one of the vintaine hit him with an axe handle.
‘Is there any drink?’ Clip demanded, hurrying into the nearest house.
There was little enough of anything. They moved cautiously, taking cover when a flight of duck flew overhead, jumping when a cock crowed, constantly fearing attack. Berenger whispered and hissed his commands, convinced that the French had encircled them by their quick marching and were already here.
Soon Berenger heard a loud noise from behind. A column of their own men was advancing, along with the lumbering wagons of Archibald, the Donkey and Béatrice marching at its side. On a whim, he walked to greet them.
‘Is he treating you well?’ he asked of the boy.
‘He’s very kind,’ Ed replied. But his face was thinner, and his eyes looked larger than ever.
‘Have you eaten?’ Berenger asked, shooting a suspicious look at the rotund Archibald.
‘Eaten, Master Fripper?’ the gynour replied. ‘Damn me if he has. Why should he eat?’
‘I didn’t supply you with a slave to be starved!’ Berenger snarled, and would have leaped onto the wagon to grab the man, but the Donkey put out a hand to prevent him.
‘No, Master, he hasn’t eaten either. No one has brought us any food.’
‘Is that true?’
‘It’s often the way,’ the gynour shrugged. Then he looked very
directly at Berenger, and jerked his head towards Béatrice.
‘It’s normal, Vintener. The others don’t like men like me. They think that since I smell of the Devil, the Devil can look to my meals! Eh? So, if you have a crust or two of bread, I’d be glad of it. Failing that, a half-ox would meet my own needs, washed down with a tun of good French wine!’
Berenger looked at Béatrice and back to Archibald again. It was clear that this was an invention to protect her feelings. Archibald and his little cavalcade had no food because too many of the soldiers feared her. Rumours that she could be a witch were widespread. Berenger grinned. ‘I don’t have much, but you can share in our fortunes. Would you ride with us in the front?’
‘I don’t know about that,’ Archibald said. ‘I’ve heard it’s dangerous to be at the point of the spear. But if you mean to tell me that there is more food to be had there, I’ll gladly chance my safety.’
Before Berenger could respond, a sly voice intruded. ‘Be careful of him, Master Gynour. That vintener is dangerous to know. People die around him.’
He turned to see that a party of Welshmen had caught up with them. Ed shrank away, and Béatrice moved until her back was at the wagon’s side. She fumbled at her belt, feeling for her knife.
‘Stop that, child, or you’ll cause more disturbance than you would wish,’ Archibald said firmly. He eyed the Welsh with contained belligerence.
The Welshman sneered at him and moved on past, their long ragged cloaks trailing.
Archibald watched them disappear, saying, ‘If I were to get myself in a tight spot, I shouldn’t like to have to rely on them. We had more trouble from them last night.’
‘What happened?’
‘That turd Erbin offered to purchase young Béatrice for the sum of one loaf and a bowl of pottage. When I told them where to go, they took away their food and we were left hungry.’
‘They didn’t try to attack you again?’
Archibald gave a cold smile. ‘I think they have learned that it’s not a good idea to try to surprise folks with experience of black powder.’
After that, Berenger kept close to Archibald’s wagon. If there were to be an ambush, it could become a stronghold for the men when arrows began to fly.
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