Sir John Chandos put a hand on my shoulder. ‘I’m sorry, lad. I thought, after du Guesclin spoke up for you, that you were made.’ He gave a little sniff. ‘I’ll send you word. You’d best go.’
Tom appeared from the torchlight and took my arm.
I found it hard to see.
I was crying.
I was living in a tent – I couldn’t afford an inn in Calais. I went to my tent, and Perkin, who had already heard the news through the endless network of servants, handed me a cup of wine.
Before I could be drunk, du Guesclin appeared. He came straight in through the flap and caught me sobbing.
Monsieur, have you ever been offered all you want? And then had it taken away?
When I left Emile, it was to fight in the lists as a gentleman beside my Prince, wearing her favour. Win or lose, I would have been made. If the Prince didn’t place me in his retinue, with steady, honorable pay, then some great lord would have done so. Perhaps even Oxford or Lancaster.
In an hour, because of an ugly rumour started by a man whose life I once saved, that was gone. And yet, while I wallowed in it, I also saw that like Sir Gawain, I was the author of my own failure. I lay with Emile, and earned the pettish hatred of this man, who in that hour, I hated more than I hated the Bourc.
Du Guesclin came into my tent. Perkin poured him wine.
‘I’m sorry, my lord. I am unmanned.’ I was helpless to talk.
Du Guesclin shrugged. ‘They are all much alike, Princes,’ he said, and drank some wine. ‘Mine thinks I’m a routier, too.’
In the end, we played chess. I’d like to say we spoke of love, or chivalry, but instead, he offered to sell me a good horse at a reasonable price.
I was moving a piece, and my glance fell on Emile’s ring.
‘Would you take a letter – to a friend?’ I asked.
Du Guesclin’s eyes went to my ring. ‘You ask a great deal,’ he said, and grinned. ‘Par dieu, monsieur, if it were not for the great love I bear you, I might try to know your sweet friend the better myself.’ He leaned back. ‘I will take you her letter. And any other you send me.’
I leaped to my feet. ‘By Christ, monsieur, you are a true friend.’
Du Guesclin shook his head. ‘For an English routier, you are a good man.’
I warmed my hands on the brazier and wrote Emile a note.
Madame,
The writer of this missive wishes you every felicity, every comfort in your delivery and every hope for . . . I paused. Women – young women – died like flowers in childbirth. What I wanted to wish her was life. I stared at my small square of parchment – where did Perkin find these things? . . . every hope for a speedy recovery for mother and child.
A sudden chill prevents the writer from paying his devotions in person. Be assured, my sweet friend, that the writer will think of no other until . . .
Until what? Until I earned so much notoriety that I was just another routier? A hired killer? A collector of patis? What other endgame was there?
By God, I was determined to find one.
. . . Until your devoted servant is able to come to your side.
I finished it.
Du Guesclin held out his hand. ‘Let me see it before you seal it,’ he said gruffly. ‘If I’m to carry my death warrant—’
‘Is d’Herblay so dangerous?’ I asked.
‘He represents a certain . . . kind.’ Du Guesclin shrugged. ‘He has money, and the ear of the Dauphin.’
As I finished folding my note, I heard a stir. I had a moment of hope that it might be Sir John Chandos, coming to tell me that all was forgiven? At some level, I wondered that the Prince hadn’t even mentioned our original transgression, the Three Foxes. Forgotten? I put wax on it and jammed my seal into the wax.
As if summoned in a passion play, Master Chaucer poked his head into my tent.
‘Pax?’ he asked. He was parchment white – afraid of me, and little wonder. The beeswax candles and the oil lamps together couldn’t give him a ruddy glow, he was so pale.
‘Monsieur du Guesclin?’ I said with a bow. ‘Master Chaucer, an English squire. Who you may recall.’
The two men eyed each other warily.
Du Guesclin palmed my note, sealed and folded a dozen times. He bowed. ‘I must go prepare for the lists,’ he said. ‘I remain sorry that I will not face you there.’
‘Monsieur may be satisfied that in the fullness of time, we will meet on some field or other,’ I said.
We embraced. Chaucer watched us like a falcon, and when du Guesclin was gone, he shook his head.
‘But you’ll gut each other with poleaxes,’ he said.
‘Have you met Guillaume de Machaut?’ I asked.
Chaucer paused. ‘Yes,’ he admitted, as if I’d dragged it from him. For once in our relationship, I had him off guard.
‘I met him at Reims. He impressed me deeply. And I thought of you.’ I shrugged.
Chaucer was dressed to ride, in a short wool gown and tall boots. ‘Sir John Chandos is sending me to Hawkwood,’ he said. ‘He said that you would escort me.’
He turned to face me and our eyes met.
‘The Prince employs Hawkwood, then? Unofficially?’ I asked.
He looked away. ‘Not my damned business to answer.’
‘I’m just a routier?’ I put in again.
Chaucer bit his lip. ‘You know the score as well as I do.’ He turned away, his nerves showing. ‘Damn it, Gold! I didn’t rat you out to the Prince in the first place! In fact, I tried to make it better.’
I shrugged. ‘There’s a lot of dirty water under that particular bridge,’ I assured him. ‘I’ll escort him. I assume that Sir John Chandos expects me to take service with Hawkwood?’ I paused. ‘Even in peacetime?’
Chaucer set his face. ‘It’s a dirty business, Gold, and no mistake.’
My name was struck from the rolls of the lists at Calais. I collected my borrowed armour and the clothes my love had bought me, and I rode east, looking for Sir John Hawkwood. I had Chaucer at my side, and Perkin, and I picked up almost a dozen English archers in Calais. They knew which way the winds were blowing. The King was selling his garrisons in France to the King of France, and when that happened there’d be no employment for archers at all.
The end of the war was forcing change, and some of those changes were hard on the professional soldiers. The King of France had to hand over more than a hundred castles to the King of England, but the King of England had to hand another sixty to the King of France. The problem both men faced is that of these almost 200 castles, routiers and brigands held two-thirds of them. They sat in all the vital castles and towns, collecting patis and fighting each other, looting the countryside and taking what they wanted. Some of them flew the flag of France, some the flag of England, and some of Navarre. The treaty included them, but no one had asked their opinion.
Sir John Hawkwood had a company in his own name, operating from a pair of castles in the Auvergne country in the very centre of France. They flew the flag of Navarre, and they served no interest but their own.
Sir John welcomed me with open arms. He spoke for two hours with Master Chaucer, who rode away again. Then he inspected my English archers and embraced me as warmly as du Guesclin had.
‘About time, lad. I’ll make your fortune,’ he said.
And that was my new goal. A fortune. And the settlement of a certain dispute with the Comte d’Herblay.
Richard Musard returned to Sir John in late September. He’d gone to Avignon with an English knight on an official embassage – and returned to Calais to find that he, too, was officially repudiated by the Prince. The Captal told him where to find me, and despite our shared anger, we were delighted to be reunited. We drank a great deal and he admired my clothes, which were still well-preserved at that point. There was very little fighting that summer. Everyone was waiting, on edge, to see what the King of England would do. Whether peace would be signed.
Richard had John Hughes wit
h him, and I had Perkin – the last remnants of our former lances. The rest of the men had melted away – most of the Hainaulters had gone to other companies, and Marcus, who could write, sent to us inviting us to join the German Albert Sterz in pillaging the north of France, but Sir John offered us steady employment and a home. Besides, most of his men-at-arms were English, and men like John Thornbury and Thomas Leslie kept the company well-ordered, if not prosperous. De la Motte joined us from a Gascon company, with news of the Bourc Camus, who was rising in favour with the Prince.
One of the developments of that autumn was that the moneylenders slowed their flow of cash to us to a trickle. It was clear that peace was to be signed. We were not going to get wages from anyone. Some of the men left for Brittany, the last active theatre not covered by the treaty.
There were rumours that we might get employment in Spain, or Italy. There was a papal order that all routiers prepare to go on crusade.
So with no credit, I had to bear the expenses of a war horse, two pack horses, a squire, four archers and my own food. Perkin had had a war horse, which he lost when he was taken outside Reims. As my status fell, his did, as well.
In the autumn of 1360, it looked as if I was to have nothing. Richard complained of my temper, and Perkin tended to watch me out of the corner of his eye – I had hit him several times.
I was glad that Emile was not there to see me. I folded my red and black finery away and went back to my old clothes and my old ways. I even prepared a letter – a letter full of self pity, I promise you – to tell her to forget me, as I was nothing but a bandit.
In late autumn, a man came with a retinue. He bore no arms, but I knew him. Chaucer. And John Hughes knew the archers.
‘King’s men,’ he said smugly, in his Cumbrian accent. ‘Bodyguard archers.’ He pointed them out. ‘Sam was one of ’em, for a while. Paid by the King, or the Prince. The best.’
I thought that Chaucer would stay, but he was ahorse in our yard again in the time it took me to lace my doublet. I ran down in my hose and Hawkwood caught me at the base of the stairs.
‘Better hurry, Master Gold,’ he said. ‘Your friend isn’t staying.’
It was cold. Steam rose off the horses, and their nostrils vented smoke like dragons.
Richard had one of Chaucer’s hands in his when I went out.
‘I’m for London,’ Chaucer said. ‘I’m done with playing courier.’ He smiled his old, sly smile. ‘I’ve found something better.’
‘I’m glad someone has,’ I said. ‘Can I trouble you to take a letter to my sister?’
He looked at his archers, who shrugged.
‘I could do wi’ a cup o’ cheer,’ said the big bastard by Chaucer’s right side. He swung a leg over.
I ran into my corner of the common room, where most of the men-at-arms slept, and I wrote Mary a letter – a long letter.
I told her most of the truth – of what I was and who I served. I told her that I had paid a little less than two thirds of her dowry, and that the rest might have to wait, as I was short on war. I smiled when I wrote that. I smiled to think of her.
I folded it, sealed it and addressed it care of Clerkenwell.
Then gave it to Chaucer. He finished a jack of wine and poured more into his flask. ‘Clerkenwell?’ he asked, looking at the address. ‘Damn, Gold, you make me feel as if I was home already.’
‘Will you be back?’ I asked.
He looked at Richard, and then at me. ‘Not unless I have no other choice.’ He looked both ways. ‘What they are doing now . . . ?’ He shook his head.
‘If you see my sister, will you write to me?’ I asked.
Chaucer smiled. ‘You kept me alive a few times,’ he admitted. ‘I’ll write you about your sister.’
We bowed to each other, and he embraced Richard. Not me.
Then he rode away.
It was two days after Chaucer came and went that Sir John summoned us to the great hall, and we sat at trestle tables.
He came out in a gown, like a lord. ‘Fear not,’ he announced. ‘We have employ.’
Richard shouted, ‘Where?’ into the cheers.
Sir John laughed. ‘Provence,’ he said, and Richard frowned.
A great deal happened in a few weeks and I may not get the order of events the right way round, but the way I remember it, the first thing that happened was that Richard came to the room we shared. The word room is far too grandiose and makes one imagine a closed bed and a fine chimney, when what we had was the slates of the roof at the level of our necks so we had to stoop all the time, no window, and a space a little smaller than a soldier’s tent, which we shared with our armour, our spare saddlery, our clothes, and a woman or two with her own basket of goods.
I was sitting on my spare saddle, sewing a patch on my beautiful arming coat and thinking bitterly of Emile.
Richard arrived, not by the door, but by the smoke hole, which was an easier way into our little loft if one was superbly muscled. He lit a cresset.
‘You are sewing in the dark, brother,’ he said.
I snorted.
‘I think it’s time that someone told you that you have become a churl and a barbarian,’ he said cheerfully. ‘Cheer up. The world is not as dark as you seem to think.’
‘Sod off,’ I said. ‘I assume you got the miller’s daughter to lie in the leaves.’
Richard shook his head. ‘Nothing of the kind, brother. I went to visit our banker and arrange for a little loan.’
I kept my head down and continued sewing. My stomach turned over, though. I could face a dozen French knights, but the banker – good Christ how I hate bankers.
‘He informed me that we had a credit – if I may use the term we in the broadest sense – of two hundred and fifty florins.’ Richard grinned.
‘You are fucking with me,’ I said.
‘Not in the least, and may I add that I find this distrust injurious? Seriously, brother, you have been an arse and a half the last month. I’ve wonder what ails you.’
‘You were turned away by the Prince just as I was,’ I said.
‘Nor do I intend to live for ever as a routier but, brother, here we are, and we have enjoyed this life ere this. Have we not?’
I growled.
Richard pressed on, ‘So I must speculate that there was, or is, something more – something you lack that makes you such a snark.’
I turned on him, ready to put him on the floor for his presumption. I’d had enough of his shit, and I could tell he was mocking me the while.
Then I saw that he was holding a scroll, sealed with a swan.
‘And I asked myself, who is the Viscomtesse d’Herblay?’ he continued, stiff-arming me and holding the scroll as far from me as he could manage. ‘And will a letter from the lady help you or make you worse?’
‘You bastard!’ I shouted, and the two whores in the next smoke hole pounded on the wattle partition between our rooms.’
‘Untrue!’ Richard said. ‘I’m no bastard.’ He and I were well-matched in a hundred mock fights and a few real ones, and I couldn’t get the scroll from him.
‘Give me your word to cheer up!’ he shouted.
‘I swear!’ I promised.
Christ, I loved that man.
He gave me the scroll. Two months old, but most welcome nonetheless.
She had found my capture, and used her social wiles to force him to pay me his ransom. And she wrote, ‘Whatever your foolish Prince may think, you remain for me a true and gentle knight.’
Whatever my boil of loathing, she lanced it. With money and soft words.
‘Ah,’ said Richard. ‘You and this countess are friends?’
‘We were at Meaux together,’ I said.
‘Ah, she helped you hold the bridge?’ he said. ‘Or perhaps she is a nun?’
I looked at him, and he desisted. Real friendship is knowing when to stick the needle in, and when to leave off. Richard – perhaps because he’d been a slave – was always very tender with
me when I was down.
‘She found my French knight and made him pay his ransom!’ I said.
Richard smiled. ‘I gather that this cures whatever has been ailing you,’ he said.
I went to the bankers that day and paid a hundred florins on my sister’s dowry.
I think it was a few days later and Richard and I were eating a good meal in a good inn, which is why I think I must have gotten my long-lost ransom, when he told me of his trip to Avignon.
‘The Pope is a Frenchman,’ he said, which I acknowledged. All Popes were French, in my experience. I poured him some more good wine.
‘So the King – our King – sent to him to ask if he’d help raise the King of France’s ransom. To which the Holy Father agreed. After a great deal of negotiation.’ Richard shrugged. ‘One of the things our embassy guaranteed in the King of England’s name is that no English or Navarrese companies would attack Provence. So I ask myself why a royal messenger guarded by royal archers has come to Sir John.’
‘And now we march on Provence,’ I added in. ‘I can see through a brick wall in time,’ I added, one of John Hughes’ best expressions.
‘You can?’ asked Richard. He’d taken the rest of my archers, or rather, we shared them so that we had the biggest lances – the largest number of men. They were all gathered around, because we made the archers loose shafts every Sunday, and we rode at tilt or swaggered swords – anything to keep the edge on.
Amory, the youngest of my new archers, a Staffordshire man with no home to go to with peace, sat cross-legged, making bowstrings. He looked up.
‘Well, sirs, mayhap I cannot see through the wall. What’s it mean?’
Richard and I glanced at each other. He gave a slight nod, as if to say, You say it.
‘Good King Edward and his son – you’re all loyal to them, eh?’ I began.
The King himself would have been heartened by the response – the grunts and smiles from ten hard men.
‘If we went back to England, how would he get us back here to fight?’
Amory took the question seriously, rather than rhetorically. ‘On ships?’ he asked. ‘I come on a ship.’
Jack Sumner laughed, but I speared him with a glance. ‘Right you are, Amory. But that ship costs money, and arraying you in Staffordshire costs money and, who knows? Even an imp of Satan like yourself might go home and find a wife and decline to serve his Prince.’
The Ill-Made Knight Page 35