The Ill-Made Knight

by Christian Cameron

  ‘You’re a canting hypocrite, and your lying story landed us in this state—’ I barked.

  ‘You can’t kill everything you don’t like, bully-boy,’ Chaucer said. ‘I never lied—’

  ‘Yon story about the treaty – Master Hoo never said such a word! Or if he did, he didn’t say it to you!’ I shouted.

  Chaucer deflated. ‘Never said it to me – aye. That’s the truth. But I heard him say it to Sir John Hawkwood.’

  ‘Leave off, Will. You do have a foul temper and we don’t need it just now,’ Richard added.

  ‘And some of us are trying to sleep, gentle knights,’ said Christopher.

  ‘Ah, my friends. Tempers flaring?’

  I whirled. My sword was on my bed-roll; his sword was at my nose.

  Bertrand du Guesclin, of course.

  ‘My turn to be host, I think?’ he exclaimed.

  He had twenty men-at-arms with him, emerging out of the rain.

  I saw Sam Bibbo strike Christopher sharply, and the two of them rolled out from under the wooden floor into the rain and were gone.

  Du Guesclin never even saw them go.

  I sighed. ‘God’s curse is on me,’ I said.

  Du Guesclin smiled. ‘What do you think you are worth to ransom?’

  We spent Christmas with the French knight. He was growing more famous every day, so Frenchmen were flocking to his banner. As yet he had no office – in fact, part of his problem was that there was no government to give him an office – but in Normandy he was the French commander.

  We slept warm, in wattle huts in the woods.

  We were spoiled of all our armour. And our horses.

  ‘Just a loan,’ he quipped. ‘I know full well you didn’t strip me, but France’s need is great.’ He smiled. He wasn’t a cruel bastard, but he did lord it over us.

  He must have gone on a long raid – a chevuachée – but he came back after a week, and he had a great hart, a boar and other meat, so we had a proper Christmas feast. He let us hunt, and Richard and I managed two brace of hares – we fed the camp for a day and a night.

  The wine flowed. And talk turned to feats of arms and the war, as it was bound to do. It took du Guesclin a fortnight to ask us why we were abroad in France – with so many routiers riding, he took us for another such party until some chance remark of Chaucer’s got his attention – it was Candelmas night, I think. We’d just heard Mass from du Guesclin’s priest, a big fellow with a weight of muscle that belied a quick head. Unlike most priests, this one – Père Joseph – read Latin well, and knew his gospels and his Aquinas. He hated Englishmen, but we got on well enough, and he taught me the new beads I’d only seen monks use: prayer beads. I’d all but stopped praying until I was taken. I owe Père Joseph for that. With him, I started saying the paternoster and the Ave Maria like a son of the church.

  But that bores you, I’m sure.

  At any rate, we were seated around a great open fire. It was Candelmas eve, we’d all taken Communion, and we were sitting together like comrades – he had six other English knights, a dozen prosperous archers and ten of his own men gathered around a bon-fire, like an open-air round table.

  He turned to Chaucer. ‘What treaty is this you had?’ he asked.

  I missed whatever had led up to this, but at the word treaty, all fell silent.

  Chaucer bit his lip and looked at me.

  ‘If there ever was a secret,’ I said, ‘it scarcely matters now.’

  Du Guesclin’s eyes locked on mine. ‘What treaty?’ he asked.

  ‘King John signed a treaty with King Edward at Windsor – in August.’ I shrugged. ‘Master Chaucer was there – he can tell it full. We had orders—’ suddenly I had that feeling again that I was in over my head. The worst of it was that I liked du Guesclin. Better than I liked Robert Knolles or the Bourc Camus.

  ‘Yes?’ du Guesclin asked.

  ‘To take a copy to the Dauphin,’ I said.

  The Frenchmen present all became quiet. The Englishman closest to me was a man-at-arms from the north, James Wright. I saw him again in Italy. He made a face as if he’d eaten something bad. ‘The Dauphin? He is the enemy, surely?’

  Du Guesclin leaned forward. He put a skewer of deer meat across two big stones, moved his riding boots a little to see they were toasted, and held out a silver beaker for a villain to refill. ‘You never made it?’ he asked.

  Richard laughed bitterly. ‘We made it. An hour before Charles of Navarre rolled into Paris.’ He shrugged. ‘Your Dauphin burned the treaty.’

  Du Guesclin narrowed his eyes. ‘You were on a diplomatic errand?’

  I nodded.

  ‘You took a little time off to fight me?’ he asked. Aside, in his broad Norman French – to an Englishman, the language of lawyers! – he said to his friends, ‘He captured me – the ambush at La Foret.’ He made a motion as if to say ‘that story I’ve told you’.

  It was my turn to laugh. ‘John Hawkwood made me. When he asks me to ride, I ride.’

  Several of the French men nodded in approval. One said, ‘That’s how it is,’ and nodded emphatically.

  Du Guesclin rubbed his beard with his left hand and sipped wine. ‘Really, then, I should release you all.’

  Richard nodded. ‘Yes!’ he said.

  Du Guesclin looked off into the dark.

  ‘Perhaps you could decide that the lot of us were worth a hundred florins,’ I said.

  ‘Hah! I’ve already paid you,’ he said.

  ‘I’ll just send it back,’ I said. I could tell we were winning this round.

  He sighed. ‘So many gold florins slipping through my fingers.’

  ‘You lucky bastard!’ Jamie Wright said. ‘Well done!’

  The next night, we watched snow fall. Du Guesclin restored Goldie to me – an act of true friendship, and one I treasure. My horse and arms were his by right. No one in Normandy in those days made quibbles about diplomatic missions and sauvegardes. We were lucky – had one of the other French routiers taken us, we’d have been dead or bled for silver.

  The way we’d have done if we took them.

  Du Guesclin had an iron stool; it folded, and he sat on it like a King. ‘Tell me of the Dauphin,’ he said. ‘Our commander, de Clermont—’

  I was sitting on carefully broken-up firewood, and I was more sprawled than sitting. ‘The Marshal of Normandy,’ I said. ‘I met him in Paris. We almost exchanged blows.’

  ‘That would have been honour for you,’ he said. ‘He is a great knight, and a most puissant man-at-arms.’

  ‘Hmm,’ I said. ‘He had a pole-hammer and I had a horse.’

  Du Guesclin laughed. ‘I like you. For an Englishman, you are not so very bad.’ He leaned forward. ‘Tell me of the Dauphin.’

  I shrugged.

  ‘Many in Normandy would have me support Charles of Navarre,’ du Guesclin said. ‘Men say he’s reached an accord with the Dauphin.’ He shrugged. ‘I’m a country boy. I don’t pretend to understand what is happening in Paris.’

  ‘Nor I,’ I said. ‘Bertrand, it’s not my place to tell you how to run your country.’

  ‘The more so as you’ve done your part to pull it to pieces, eh?’ he asked.

  I nodded.

  ‘But nonetheless.’ He laughed.

  ‘Well . . .’ I remember sitting, not sure what to say, when Chaucer joined us, bringing me wine – he wasn’t always an arse. I made space for him on the wood pile, and he shared the wine.

  ‘Bertrand wants to know what’s happening in Paris,’ I said.

  Chaucer shook his head and rolled his eyes. ‘I think that might count as comforting the enemy.’

  I took a swallow of wine and spat it in the snow, where it showed like new blood. ‘Who exactly is the enemy?’ I asked.

  Chaucer met my eye and nodded. ‘Sometimes, even you have a point,’ he said. He turned to du Guesclin. ‘Paris is rent by factions, and anything I tell you is probably already changed, but there are at least four factions. The Dauphin’s
party – men who consider themselves the government.’

  ‘But they are not the government,’ du Guesclin said. ‘The King is the government.’

  Chaucer waved his arms. ‘Just so, mon vieux. The second faction is the King’s party, men who served the King – many of them were at Poitiers and are now prisoners – some released or ransomed, some who escaped from that field. They consider themselves the government, and the Dauphin to be either a tool of the enemy or a dupe.’

  ‘Yes!’ du Guesclin said.

  ‘The third faction is that of the Paris Commune. It, itself, is split into two factions, one led by the Mercer, Etienne Marcel, who seems to want to be the Tyrant of Paris – he and Robert Le Coq and the Council of Eighty intend to rule France, I guess, by assembly and election.’

  Du Guesclin shook his head. ‘I have heard all this, of course, but never put this way. Surely this Parisian grocer has little power.’

  ‘Twenty thousand men, an army and many professional soldiers,’ I said. ‘Your Marshal told me he had hired a professional knight to train the militia – Pierre de Villiers.’

  Du Guesclin nodded. ‘I know that name. He is from here.’

  ‘The other Parisian faction is less tied to the assembly. It is led by the richest merchants, who want a complete reform of the laws and the coinage, and who accuse the King of gross mismanagement,’ I said. Chaucer cast me one of his few approving looks.

  ‘And into this mess rides Charles of Navarre,’ Chaucer said.

  ‘That imp of hell,’ du Guesclin said. ‘He leaves a trail of slime wherever he goes, like some foul snail.’

  I laughed. ‘I wish you’d speak your mind,’ I said. ‘Stop sitting in resentful silence.’

  Even Chaucer laughed.

  Du Guesclin shook his head. ‘He tried to buy me when he escaped.’ He glared at the fire. He really wasn’t much older than we. ‘Now his army is full of Englishmen. And yet he prates about saving France. He would be all things to all men, but he has no honour.’

  Chaucer sat back. He had Master Hoo’s boots on, I noted. ‘Honour,’ he said dismissively. ‘How can you two – knights – prate of honour? You saw the raped nuns on the road, William. What honour is there?’

  Du Guesclin shook his head. ‘There is honour everywhere! Almost every day, I fight. Every child in Normandy knows my name.’ He spoke with complete satisfaction. ‘I’ve faced the very flower of England and Gascony – and in the main, I have won.’ He bowed in his seat to me. ‘Sometimes, fortune has been against me. I rape no nuns; I fight my King’s enemies. There is honour everywhere.’

  ‘Master Chaucer is quick to see the flaws in chivalry and slow to see the glory,’ I said.

  Chaucer grunted. ‘This from a man who runs a brothel to pay for his horses.’

  To be honest, I had forgotten the brothel. Just for a few days, at the clearing in the woods of Normandy, I had prayed with a priest, practised my sword cuts with Jamie Wright and felt like a knight.

  ‘Who will protect the weak, if not the men-at-arms?’ I asked.

  ‘Sweet Jesu, William! How can you even ask that? Who in the name of God oppresses the weak? It’s only you men-at-arms. If you all died of a plague tomorrow, every peasant in France and England would only cheer.’ Chaucer drank more wine.

  Du Guesclin narrowed one eye and raised an eyebrow – it was a look he had, when he was thinking. ‘But surely this is what the “hoods” in Paris say?’

  Chaucer looked at his hands. ‘Perhaps,’ he admitted.

  Du Guesclin shook his head. ‘Foolishness. What would you prefer? A tyranny of money? Look at Italy! Men are bought and sold by merchants. Men-at-arms are at least men who crave public renown and fame, who are strong and well-trained and enobled by the thousand penances of war and pain. Are there bad men among us? Bien sur! But by St Denis, there are bad priests and bad Popes, and no one says that Christ should be dismissed! Is Paris so well-directed? What I hear is a tale of greed and crime, of women oppressed, of churches despoiled for their silver by the crowds.’

  Chaucer looked surly.

  ‘What of the Turks?’ I asked.

  Du Guesclin looked at me.

  ‘Surely it is noble to fight the Turks – who threaten all of Christendom?’

  Chaucer spat. ‘Go fight them then.’

  ‘Perhaps I will yet,’ I said.

  Du Guesclin laughed. ‘You two must be a pleasure to ride with, hein?’

  Du Guesclin had another problem, which was that suddenly all of the King of England’s officers in Normandy had become the captains of Charles of Navarre. Du Guesclin wasn’t at war with Charles of Navarre – it complicated his operations, and our release as well. I sent word to the Three Foxes – a letter copied fair by Master Chaucer – asking that one hundred florins be paid to du Guesclin’s agent, who proved to be our Genoese banker.

  Du Guesclin pointed this out to Chaucer. ‘You think it is the men-at-arms who make war,’ he said. ‘Ask who takes the gold from both sides.’

  I spent January learning to use a lance. Du Guesclin was a fine lance, and he was surprised I was so bad at using the weapon. He had a quintain in the woods, and when the ground was frozen hard, I rode at it every day. Jamie Wright hooted at my poor horsemanship, and Richard winced when I was struck by the sack of turnips on the back of the swinging arm. Almost a week into my training, I cocked it up so badly that I managed to fall onto frozen, bumpy ground.

  Du Guesclin stood over me and shook his head. ‘By St Lo,’ he said. ‘One hears this story, but never actually sees it.’

  All around the clearing, men were laughing.

  Jean de Flery and Michel de Carriere, two of his most trusted men, were laughing so hard that they sat in the snow.

  De Carriere looked at me and pointed, unable to speak. He wheezed and finally looked at his friend. ‘How is it these men are driving us out of Normandy?’ he asked.

  Richard, who was quite competent with the lance, rode a course, slammed his point into the shield so that splinters flew and trotted up to the laughing pair. ‘It’s the long bow,’ he said. ‘It’s faster than the lance.’

  Well, that shut them up, but it killed the bonhomie of the clearing for a day.

  I was black from the bottom of my arse to the top after that fall. It didn’t heal for two weeks, and every time I bathed, they all laughed again.

  Pentecost came, and we heard Mass again – it was more churching then I had had in years – then du Guesclin got word that our ransom had been paid.

  ‘I have Sir James’ ransom as well. And letters from the King of Navarre.’

  We had dinner, and all the French knights were silent. It was not a festive occasion.

  It can be hard with men who are both friends and enemies, but who speak a different language. I wasn’t sure about their silence – it might have been the season, with Lent about to start, or it might have been the war.

  We didn’t want to ask. In truth, although I’ve glossed over and made light of it, we were prisoners, and from time to time, an angry Frenchman would propose killing the lot of us. It’s happened. We were eager to go. It was so close that we all feared some last-minute difficulty.

  The tension at dinner that night was like the heavy air near the sea in mid-summer.

  After a few sallies that failed, I turned to my host. ‘What troubles you, my lord?’ I asked boldly.

  Chaucer stepped on my foot. But I thought then, and still do, that some things are best met head on.

  Du Guesclin made a face. ‘In this, I will hope that you can share our anger. Michel wants me to be silent – he thinks that to tell you this will be to tell a secret, yes?’ He looked at de Carriere, who glared at him.

  ‘The person of the Dauphin was seized by Etienne Marcel three days ago. They took him prisoner and killed Marshal Clermont and every other servant of the King that they could find in Paris.’ Du Guesclin pursed his lips.

  ‘And the King of Navarre condones it!’ shouted de Carriere – he was usuall
y a pleasant, if silent, man, as young as we ourselves, but he had drunk deep, and his anger was as deep as his draughts.

  Chaucer spoke carefully. ‘This is what we . . . sought to prevent.’

  ‘So you say,’ de Carriere said.

  Du Guesclin shook his head. ‘If you English dismember France,’ he said, ‘what will be left? Who will till and work the land? Who will pray? Have you English thought on what will happen if France collapses into anarchy?’

  There was, in decency, no answer we could make.

  The next day, wearing our own armour and riding our own horses, we rode away. We rode into Normandy, where there was no royal administration to be found. The siege of Rennes was over, and the men who’d participated in it were all serving in the King of Navarre’s armies.

  We rode south through lands that were already showing signs of recovery. It was early March and the men were tilling. Women leaned on stone walls and watched us ride by.

  This part of southern Brittany had never been a theatre of war, but now it was English, as English as Gascony. And when we reached Gascony, it looked prosperous. Spring was peeking out of every sunny morning; birds sang.

  We reached Bordeaux late in March. Lent was almost out. The air was clear, the girls were pretty and we sang as we rode the last few miles.

  The Three Foxes looked about the same, except that there was a table in the front of the yard, and at it sat Christopher Shippen and John Hughes, playing dice. I bridled, but Marie threw herself into my arms, and Sam Bibbo came down the stairs – was it her door that had opened?

  He clasped my hand, and we had to tell our stories ten times as wine was served and all the girls had a holiday. Ah, I had sworn a hundred times to give her up, cease my fornications and send the girls away.

  That good change did not last out my Marie sitting on my lap and telling over our accounts. Taxing me with having run risks and been captured.

  I put de Charny’s dagger on the oaken chest by our bed, looked at it and thought hard thoughts.

  But that didn’t keep me out of the bed.

  The Prince was in England for a tournament, and so was Sir John Chandos. The Prince’s Lieutenant for Gascony was Sir John Cheverston, and he was reported to be marching up the Dordogne valley. Richard and I rested a day, gathered our retinue and rode north after him.