‘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.
The fellow looked up at John and smiled.
I had never seen her smile, but I knew immediately that it was Milady. I was still mounted and I rode over.
She looked up at me. She didn’t appear afraid. She said, ‘I know how to fight.’ She said it as if we’d had a hundred conversations.
I was dumbfounded. ‘You washed your hair,’ I said.
‘It was filthy,’ she said. ‘I cut a lot of it off.’
‘Leave her be,’ said John in a low voice.
‘I’m going to be a man, now, if you don’t mind,’ she said.
Later, in Italy, we had twenty women in harness. We were famous for it, and the Italian men-at-arms shat themselves to think they were fighting women – and losing. But in the summer of 1361, there weren’t a lot of women fighting in armour in the world. I thought about it.
‘That’s fine,’ I said.
John Hughes gave me a small, approving nod.
Milady took a place in our little company as if born to it. She could fight and she could forage. She was small, but her riding was a far sight better than mine or even Richard’s, and her use of the lance was as pretty as . . . as she might have been.
The next night, when Richard produced his dice box, she joined in.
I still have no idea what happened. It was as if she lost her soul, and then, one day, she found it – or another soul, the soul of a harder person. A man.
No. Not a man, as you’ll hear.
Her name was Janet. And in the complex cross-currents around us, as dangerous as the currents in a river when boys are swimming, the fact that she kept a woman’s name said something.
She changed our people.
The very first day she recovered her voice, we were sharing the loot from the dead Provençal knights, and Milady – we continued to call her that – looked at me.
‘Just give me the fucking money,’ Jack Sumner said for the third time to young Amory, who apparently owed him gambling debts.
Milady looked at me and frowned. ‘I will not have swearing,’ she said. ‘Not among my lord’s retainers.’
Jack looked abashed. He mumbled and apologized.
I reached for my share of the money.
‘You should have a man to carry your purse,’ she said to me. ‘It is ignoble for you to handle this money yourself. You practice largesse – you give to the poor, you host others in your hall. You pay no attention to money. That is the way of being a knight. Let another man watch it for you.’ Her mad eyes bored into mine. ‘When did you last give money to the poor?’
Perkin bowed to her. ‘Milady, I am Master William’s squire, and I will carry his purse.’
She sniffed. ‘See that it is done.’
Perkin beamed at her.
We mounted up and rode, heading north to rejoin the main ‘army’ of routiers. We called ourselves the Grand Company, and we had a good few men-at-arms.
As we rode through the sunshine, Milady began to sing. She was a southerner, an Occitan, and she sang the old songs. Her French – it wasn’t really all French – was hard to understand, but par dieu, she sang comme une ange, like an angel. She sang the songs of courtly love, and songs of war. She sang of Richard Coeur de Lion, and she sang of a peasant girl on a hillside refusing the love of a knight.
She held us spellbound.
That night – the first night of her speaking – we paid for a sheep from two terrified young peasants, butchered it and ate it in the shephe
rd’s stone cot, which was open on one side, where we built a roaring fire. The sheep we did in parts, not whole, and we had wine. Then Richard produced a deck of cards – the new cards that all the routiers spoke of. I hadn’t seen them. Some men said they came from the east – from India, even.
The cards Richard had were like the ones the Dominicans used to teach the catechism, except that the religious symbols had been replaced by those of venery – stags, ducks, spears and hawks. They were beautiful – hand-painted on fine parchemnt and pasted like artworks on fine paste board. Richard had taken them off a merchant we’d despoiled in the taking of Pont-Saint-Esprit.
Milady pounced on them like a young girl on a silk ribbon. ‘Do you play?’ she asked. ‘Piquet?’ She smiled. ‘I promise that I will deal gently with you, messieurs. My father taught me to play.’
At the words ‘my father’ her whole body gave a convulsive shudder. Then she pasted a smile on her face. ‘No matter. Let me teach you, eh bien?’
I remember that I leaned forward. ‘Would you rather dice, my lady?’
And she shook her head. ‘Dice are all very well, but a gentleman plays cards.’
I wanted to humour her – even then. ‘For high stakes?’ I asked.
‘A true knight never counts the cost, my lord,’ she said. ‘He wagers whatever he will, and if he loses, why, he pays. Rich or poor, a true knight never counts his coins like a merchant.’
Richard laughed. ‘This is why merchants own more and more of the world!’ he said. ‘And why Italian bankers defeat French knights.’
She frowned. ‘No, sir. Whatever amount of coin they amass, they are men of no worth. Only those who put their bodies in peril can be accounted preux. Those who will not risk death can have no preux.’ She smiled at me. ‘Surely I need not tell you this, monsieur.’
She smiled at me, and at Richard.
I sat back. ‘What of us? We take coin to fight.’
She shrugged. ‘Bah! A gentleman must feed his horses and his servants. Only a fool . . . my father . . .’ She paused and a shade passed over her face. ‘My father says only a fool or the Pope can expect a man to fight for nothing.’
I liked her nonsense. ‘And can a base-born man enoble himself by a life of arms?’ I asked.
She smiled. It was the pure smile of a maiden – lips slightly parted, eyes bright. ‘Of course!’ she maintained. ‘Who but a malcontent or caitiff would say else?’
Richard was grinning like a fool, or a big, happy dog. ‘Jesus,’ he said aloud.
‘And I will thank you not to take the lord’s name in vain,’ Milady said. ‘A knight is at all times respectful of his lord’s passion. A knight, by the pain of his armour and the labour of his wars, suffers with our lord every day.’
I think I swallowed. Hard.
But we drank, we played cards, and all the silver from my purse went into Milady’s. She giggled. ‘I will need my own squire,’ she allowed. Her eyes fixed on Amory. ‘You – you have a gentle way with you. Do you fancy being my squire?’
The snap of her words brought the boy to a position of deference and he leaped to do her bidding.
I think we all did.
The next few days were spent moving fast. We stared down a pair of knights at a river crossing and convinced them to move aside. We saw a strong force coming on the road an hour later, and we judiciously moved into the high hills south of Narbonne, with the sheep and the wolves. I don’t remember much of those days, except that we were enjoying her company so much we scarcely noticed that we were suddenly the focus of a papal hunt for malcontents. There were twenty papal men-at-arms chasing us, and another twenty mounted corssbowmen, and we were riding through deadly country, where a sudden rockfall could kill your horse. But again, Milady knew the area, and again, she knew how to move through it.
‘We hunted here,’ she said with a brittle smile, because hunting reminded her of her father, which reminded her of Pont-Saint-Esprit. I could follow her thought, and I was careful not to mention anything to do with that place. Richard was not so quick, and I had to kick him a few times.
There are few things as fatiguing as commanding men – and women – in flight, and doing so while attempting to control their tempers and their emotions. Richard couldn’t take his eyes off Janet, despite some admonitions from me. Amory was in the same state – not so much love as helpless adoration. John Hughes looked at her with a fatherly, protective air, which made him surly with me. And so on.
It wore on my temper, and when the load slipped on Jack Sumner’s mule, I lost my temper.
‘Get your head out of your arse and see to that animal!’ I shouted. ‘By the mother that bore you and god’s Grace, I should leave you to be taken. And the papal knights will string your useless corpse up by the roadside unshriven!’
Sumner had hovered by the pre-dawn breakfast fire instead of taking care with his packing. I’d noted it.
He didn’t quite meet my eyes and his face was working.
I could feel her coming. I could hear the horse picking its way along the hillside.
I thought I knew what she was going to say, and I was ready to have it out with her. Her presence was focusing our men on the wrong things.
She rode up next to me without so much as jostling my horse on the narrow track. Among her other abilities, she rode like a centaur in one of her romances.
‘Well?’ she said, imperiously, to Sumner.
He looked at her.
She raised an eyebrow. ‘You have justifiably angered your lord,’ she said.
Sumner stammered. Sumner was a tough bastard who’d have knifed his own mother to get a fresh horse, but he stammered.
She cocked an eyebrow at me and turned her horse’s head. I trotted up our column in a state of shock. I’d expected her to take his side, which, in retrospect, was foolish of me. She always deferred to my command.
At the head of the column, she motioned to Richard to fall back – he’d been riding with her – and when we had the privacy afforded by rapid movement on a narrow track, she said, ‘A knight does not lose his temper.’
‘Then I’m no knight,’ I said, spoiling for a fight.
She looked at me. ‘You are a knight. And if you seek the rank, and achieve it, it is on your shoulders to support it. A knight is in control of his temper – always. This is the essence of courtesy, and courtesy is at the heart of knighthood.’
I thought of Chatillon, and du Guesclin, and Sir John Chandos. And even Hawkwood.
I had never seen Sir John Hawkwood lose his temper. Then I considered Boucicault.
I winced.
She smiled. ‘If you wish to command others, you must always show that you are in command of yourself. This my father taught me.’ Her eyes met mine – too wide, too open, too bright.
‘Perhaps I’m just a common churl who kills men for money,’ I spat.
Her mad eyes met mine. ‘You saved me,’ she said in a low voice.
I couldn’t hold her eyes. There was something burning there and I had to look away.
I also remember another evening – we’d outrun our pursuit and found a stream coming out of the high hills towards Spain, so we washed off the dust and dirt, and in some cases blood, of five days of moving fast. She bathed with us – like the man she’d made herself – sometimes.
I refused to let myself look at her body, but I was aware of it.
And afterwards, we lay around the pool. All the men had put shirts on – that was the effect she had – so she put on a shirt.
That’s not what makes the moment memorable, nor was the flask of Gascon wine that was going around. Amory and Ned were in the rocks above us, on watch. John Hughes, moving carefully, climbed up to them with wine.
‘I could teach you to ride better,’ she said. She lay between Richard and me, and it was hard to tell which of us she addressed.
‘What is wrong with my riding?’ Richard asked. He raised his head.
She smiled at the blue sky. ‘You are not in c
ommand of your horse, and he knows it.’
Richard sat up. ‘Really?’
‘Yes,’ she said. She turned her head and smiled at me. Her teeth were much whiter than a peasant girl’s. ‘And you are no better. If I didn’t know better, I’d say that you were afraid of horses. Did you learn late?’
Par dieu, mes gentils! I sat up and found myself nose to nose with Richard.
She laughed.
I think that Richard had only known prostitutes and camp women. He was tough as nails, gentle and true, but he was a fool with women, and he never had a chance. My Lady had all the skills of the nobility – all the skills, to be frank, that Richard and I lacked. While we rode, she would chat, or even discourse. It was as if, having been silent for two months, she had to make up for lost time.
I liked her a great deal.
Richard was hit with a poleaxe.
In a matter of days, our lives changed and changed again. We caught up with the Grand Company, and as we rode past Narbonne and turned north into the Rouergue, Richard changed, too. One night, he saw his love to bed – not a sign, by the by, that his feelings were returned – and came to sit with me at the fire.
‘This is no life for a lady,’ he said.
I guess I’m an insensitive brute. I thought it was a fine life for her. Emile had given me some notion of what a well-born girl had to look forward to – and worse if she’d been publicly shamed like Milady. A convent? At best? Whereas with us, she was safe as houses. She seemed to me to be blooming like a summer flower in high heat.
So I shrugged. ‘She looks fine to me,’ I said. ‘Better every day.’
‘When I was in Avignon,’ he said, ‘I met a man – a great lord. The Count of Savoy.’
‘The Green Count?’ I asked. He was a great noble and a famous knight. One of the few great men who still risked his body in the field. I was picking up Milady’s language.
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