The Ill-Made Knight

by Christian Cameron

  He had one puncture wound under his jaw. Somewhat idly, I pushed my eating skewer into it, and it went right up into his brain. I cleaned my skewer on his shirt, and yes, I ate with it that night.

  Later, I took Alison back to my blankets and we made the beast with two backs – about six times. In daylight. I had been fiercely loyal to Emile for a long time, but word of her second pregnancy gave me the excuse I craved to behave badly. Alison was wild, and not altogether of our world; her eyes glittered in an odd way. On the other hand, she had hair as red as mine and no inhibition that I encountered, and if I wanted to lose myself in a body, her body was made for me.

  When we were tired, or sore, I watched her play with my clothes. She knelt, naked, on my blankets, and she tied every set of points on my doublet. She arranged everything, almost like I had the clothes on.

  I was admiring her, and wondering why she had to fuss endlessly, when she said, ‘Who killed him?’

  If you are a man, a naked man on an early fall day, lying with a naked woman, it’s not murder that comes to mind. More especially, if you are a killer, and murder is done every day. ‘Foot pads?’ I said, running a finger over her hip. ‘A brigand?’ I added, meaning it as a joke.

  ‘I knew him,’ she said.

  ‘So did I,’ I added.

  ‘No, I lay with him,’ she added, without shame. Alison wasn’t much on shame. ‘He was kind the way you are. Why don’t you have points all the same colour?’

  Her changes of subject were always too much for me. ‘Who cares?’ In truth, I had leather laces on a third of my points, and four or five different colours of wool and silk cord, and some linen. Half my ‘points’ no longer had their metal tips. I looked like a rag-picker’s child.

  ‘I care,’ she said. ‘I almost didn’t come with you. You look . . . lopsided. Uneven.’ She ran her hand over my stomach. ‘Naked, you look right. Animals are never lopsided. That’s why they look right.’

  Mad as a drunken monk.

  ‘When an animal is lopsided – when a cow loses a horn – other animals worry about her and stay away.’ She looked at me. ‘One of my breasts is larger than the other. I’m lopsided.’ She smiled. ‘That’s all right. I’m getting used to it. I must go.’ She pulled her kirtle over her head. She didn’t kiss me; she just walked away, hips swaying. If one of her breasts was larger than the other, it didn’t show in clothes.

  I stayed with Seguin de Badefol until November, then we signed an agreement with the Lieutenant of Languedoc and collected a small ransom. De Badefol kept most of the money and left us.

  The Great Company began to break up.

  John Hughes, Perkin and I sat around a small campfire. It was raining, but we were old campaigners – we had a set of other men’s cloaks and blankets rigged to make a pretty fair shelter, and we had a good fire and some stolen wine.

  Hughes sat on his blanket roll, sewing a pair of hose. Patching, probably. We looked like jesters in suits of motley. ‘John Hawkwood is on his way back,’ he said. ‘He was fighting for Montferrat in Italy, now he’s coming back this way.’ He looked up. ‘That’s what the bankers say.’

  For John Hughes, that was a long speech.

  ‘You want me to go back to Hawkwood,’ I said. ‘He sent me a letter.’

  ‘We all know,’ said Perkin.

  Hughes met my eye. ‘Yes,’ he said. ‘We’ll be brigands in a month at this rate, preying on travellers.’ He shrugged. ‘I’ve done it. I’m a soldier. The line may be thin, but I know which side I want to be on.’ He looked at the fire. ‘And there’s Perkin and Amory and the rest. You agree?’

  The other men looked up.

  ‘If we don’t show them something better, what will they become?’ Hughes said.

  I grunted and thought, What have I already become?

  ‘Let’s go find Hawkwood,’ I said.

  Out trip across northern Provence was perilously close to brigandage. My carthorse developed something grim and died, suddenly, on a rainy December day – and we waylaid a small convoy of churchmen, took their money and their horses, and rode on. They had six men-at-arms and a dozen crossbowmen. We took an insane risk, and it paid off: the crossbowmen all ran and the men-at-arms were worthless.

  As a side comment, routiers had a saying in those days that if a man-at-arms was worth a shit, he was with us. And only the cowards and the worthless men were on the other side.

  It had some truth in it, or perhaps it’s just the lies men tell to justify themselves when they kill. In this case, the priest leading the column sat on a magnificent war horse and cursed his own defenders for being faithless cravens. I noted that he had nothing but a clean shirt, his Franciscan habit and his horse. I ordered him off the horse, and he dismounted with the strangest smile. I looked in his script and his bags. He had two clean shirts, a fine silk rope belt and a rope of coral beads around his waist. His horse had the plainest saddle, and his malle proved to hold two books of sermons and an unilluminated gospel. Every other priest in the convoy wore wool and silk and carried gold and silver, but this man, the leader, had nothing.

  I’ll be honest. I almost killed him, simply for having nothing. But I didn’t. The rain was pouring down and he stood unshivering in the road – I took my own heavy cloak off my cantel and put it around his shoulders.

  He raised his hand and blessed me.

  We left him alive, and warmer.

  We were chased by a French royal force for three days. If they’d taken us, they’d have hanged us at the roadside as brigands and highwaymen. And I suppose we were. But we eluded them and slipped north to Chalons, where we found Sir John Creswell. I knew him a little, and he knew of me, and here I was with three lances, short only a man-at-arms, and he hired us on the spot. He and his men were rich – they’d forced the Green Count himself to pay a huge ransom. I heard that Richard, my Richard, had saved the Green Count from capture and been richly rewarded.

  I was glad for Richard. And I was damned glad I’d given the good priest my cloak, even when I was wet through.

  Well. It’s good when a friend makes good. You have to be pretty low to curse another man’s good fortune.

  And I tried not to curse, tried not to blaspheme. I fought to control my temper, to give to the poor.

  But I swallowed a great deal of cursing that month. Another Christmas came and went, and I didn’t celebrate it. I rode out on patrols, collecting patis from peasants who hated me, beating a few of them for insolence or for hiding grain I needed for my mounts. I was good at all this, and I didn’t think of Emile, or of Geoffrey de Charny or Ramon Llull or the Hospitaller. I thought of my sister once or twice. She was safe, and I hoped that she would pray for me. I imagined her becoming a full sister. In my head, it was a knighting ceremony.

  I envied the others, because all the other men-at-arms were rich, and had fine armour and good horses, while I looked like one of the mounted brigands we’d mocked in the days after Poitiers.

  However, I was good at my work and known to be so, and just after Christmas, Creswell made me a corporal. In those days, a corporal was a man-at-arms who led many lances, often thirty or forty. Forty lances can be more than a hundred men.

  My promotion raised a lot of hackles. Sir Hugh Ashley – an actual belted knight – had moved from Hawkwood to Creswell in the mountains, expecting promotion, and he made it clear that he felt I was a poor choice.

  In truth, I was a late-comer to his company, and Creswell was busy adding men while he had the money to pay them – he said he planned to take us back east to Brittany to fight in the war there. I had to recruit my own men, but I found some, and I had ten lances. I borrowed money from a Jew – his rates were far kinder than the Genoese, whatever the church may say – and bought myself a good coat of plates and some repairs to my arms and legs. I got myself a new saddle for the first time in three years. When you command other men, looks matter.

  I missed Richard. I missed having a man as good as I am myself, to trust. Perkin was solid, a
nd John Hughes was worth his weight in minted gold coin, but Richard . . . By Christ, I missed him. Because Richard was my friend, and friendship is more than trust and shared experience.

  Our new Great Company was commanded by Petit Meschin – have I mentioned him before? Terrible bastard – a fine fighter, but cut from the same cloth as the Bourc Camus. The jest of it was that he was a Frenchman, not a Gascon or a German or an Italian. He was actually a vassal of the King of France, and he’d spent the Poitiers campaign fighting against us as a loyal servant of the French crown. But in the late winter of 1362, he rallied the little companies that Seguin de Badefol had largely abandoned in Languedoc and led them north, towards Burgundy. All told, we had almost 16,000 fighting men. Most of them were Gascons, but we had Germans, Hainaulters, Italians, Bretons, Scots, Irishmen, Frenchmen and a handful of Englishmen, which has its own dark comedy, because after Brignais, most men thought of our army as English.

  In fact, there were just three English companies there – Creswell’s, Hawkwood’s and Leslie’s – although Sir Robert Birkhead was there, too. He had a company, but all his men were Gascons. Of course, Hawkwood already had Italians and Germans, and there were a handful of Englishmen in the Gascon companies.

  But by then, most of us had been together at least two years. We were no longer a mass of brigands and robbers assembled to loot. We were like a moving nation, with our own customs and own laws, and we had a certain spirit that’s hard to describe. We had contempt – deep contempt – for the fighting abilities of the enemy. And the enemy was anyone richer than we. Or weaker. Even our long tail of peasants and camp-followers had begun to develop a spirit.

  In late winter, we pounced on the Auvergne by rapid marches. We joined forces with Peter of Savoy – another bastard son – to take towns on the Rhône, while the King of France scrambled to raise armies ahead of us and behind us. My old captain the archpriest, Arnaud de Cervole, was put in charge of raising a mercenary army to fight us, but of course, all the best men were with us, and the King of France didn’t offer enough money.

  Jean de Bourbon, who I had rescued on the Bridge of Meaux, was appointed commander of a second French army. I imagined that Emile’s husband, the Count d’Herblay, would be with him. Indeed, their estates were in Burgundy.

  When I sketched this out on the frozen ground, I became very keen for the new campaign.

  But instead of sweeping a victorious, vengeful horde into Burgundy, the vice began to close on us in early March. We’d heard that there was another Great Company operating in the south – the Spaniards – and that they would occupy the King of France’s field army, but they accomplished nothing and made a truce, so a third French army was freed to contain us from the south.

  Creswell got sick. We were all sick that winter, because we were out in the open with no fires all day in rain, snow and mud – it never ended, and as the noose of steel closed around our necks, we had to move faster and faster to avoid getting hanged. At any rate, Sir John Creswell summoned me to his pavilion – a grandiose name for a simple square tent with a wattle-and-daub chimney laid up to allow for a fire – and ordered me to take command.

  I had never commanded anything but a handful of lances, and as the rain fell and the roads, such as they were, were churned into ever deeper mud, I had to coax several hundred men and their lemans and servants to rise with the sun, harness their carts, pack their goods and move. When all our lances were together, we had almost 300 lances in Sir John Creswell’s company, and as we marched north and west, the other corporals joined us, and my job became more difficult – twice. First, simply because I had more men to command. Second, because none of the other corporals thought I was the right choice to command.

  I suppose it was difficult, but I can’t remember being as happy since I was in the Prince’s service. I rode up and down, put my shoulder to a camp-follower’s cartwheel, dragged donkeys out of the thick black soup that filled the holes in the road, and generally led . . . by example.

  Every day, I practiced the lessons that Milady had taught.

  Courtesy – even to a prostitute with a stubborn mule.

  Largesse – to peasants burned out by their own knights.

  Loyalty – to Sir John Creswell, too sick to take command, and to my own people.

  Courage – the physical kind never came hard, but as that March wore on, a true Lent of the soul, the skies never once let us see the sun, and I had to be everywhere – cheerful, and sure.

  High up the Rhône, I rode across country with a pair of men-at-arms – good men who later followed me many years, John Courtney and William Grice. I knew them from better days and they came with me willingly enough. I needed to find the other companies we were supposed to make a rendezvous with, and plan our next move. We’d lost touch with Petit Mechin in the mountains, and I only knew the whereabouts of Peter of Savoy.

  I found him sitting on his horse in the watery March sunshine with Sir John Hawkwood and John Thornbury. They were wearing their arms, like noblemen, and Sir John had his own arms on a banner held by a man-at-arms, and I remember thinking, By God, he’s done well for himself.

  I didn’t ride very fast. I wasn’t sure what reception I’d get, and I wasn’t sure whose actions had been the right ones. But a fair distance away, Sir John raised a gauntleted hand and gave me a salute, and when I rode up, he clasped my hand and embraced me as if I was the prodigal son. Thornbury was more reserved, but he clasped my hand warmly enough.

  ‘I hear you are running Creswell’s company,’ Sir John said.

  ‘Trying, Sir John,’ I admitted.

  Sir John nodded. ‘I know you have it,’ he said simply. ‘I’m sorry we had a difference of opinion,’ he added.

  I think I burst into smiles. Until I saw black and white colours coming down the road.

  It’s strange what can set a man off. I think I would have apologized to Sir John then and there – from his point of view I’d broken discipline, and I understood that better now that I was doing a little commanding of my own – but one sight of Camus and I was angry, ruffled and unrepentant.

  Sir John’s eyes went where mine had been and he put a hand on my reins.

  ‘He’s not worth the stinking carcass of a rotting dog,’ Sir John said. ‘Don’t rise to him.’

  Our eyes locked.

  What he was saying, for those of you too young to understand, was that if I crossed the Bourc in public again, Sir John would have to back him, and I’d lose my command. Or be dead. And that Sir John understood this to be unfair.

  This injustice is woven into the story of my life. Like Nan’s da, the alderman. He thought it was unfair, too. Even when he told me to never enter his house again.

  Perhaps I’d grown a little, or perhaps I was so in love with command that it steadied me. Perhaps all those lessons on knighthood were finally getting a grip on my stubborn heart. Camus rode up to join us with Peter of Savoy, and he turned his mad eyes to mine. ‘The Butt Boy,’ he said.

  I just sat my horse and bowed to Peter of Savoy. ‘I’m here for Sir John Creswell,’ I said. I explained that we had lost touch with Petit Mechin, and they all nodded, even Camus.

  Savoy shrugged. ‘Marshal Audreham is close behind us,’ he said. ‘We must take a couple of towns and win ourselves a crossing of the Rhône, or we are well and truly fucked.’

  Sir John nodded. To me, he said, ‘I believe I may have been mistaken in coming back from Tuscany.’ He smiled. ‘You have to see Tuscany to believe it. Impossibly rich. Beautiful.’ He smiled. ‘And full of little, foolish men who want to hire us to fight for them.’ Just for a moment he looked like Renaud the Fox.

  ‘Eh bien, Sir Jean. We are not in Tuscany, but right here, facing the might of France.’ The Bourc was wearing the kind of armour I dreamed of owning – Milanese white armour. Probably made for him. His eyes met mine again and he said, quite evenly, ‘Soon, I will kill you.’ He smiled. ‘I will humiliate you and then kill you, so men will mock you for ever after yo
u are dead.’

  I turned to Sir John. ‘Is this how knights talk to each other?’ I asked.

  ‘I mean it,’ hissed the Bourc.

  I shrugged. ‘Horse or foot. Any time, any weapon. To the death. I’ll make my challenge public, so that if you have me murdered, every man-at-arms in the army will know you for what you are.’ I straightened my back and met his eyes.

  Blessed Virgin. Later, in Italy, I read how the Goddess Athena, who the old men believed in before Christ came, used to whisper in the ears of heroes, sending ‘winged words’ to help them. I didn’t hear any words, and yet, the words came to me as if from God, and they struck him like the hammer blows of a poleaxe. I’m proud to say that I delivered my words in a tone of banter.

  Peter of Savoy laughed. ‘Fight Camus when we’re clear of the French, eh, Gold?’

  I nodded. ‘Yes, my lord.’ I said it crisply and loud.

  And men – these knights of ill-reknown – laughed. Not at me, but at Camus.

  We dismounted at an old roadside auberge – gutted, ruined, rebuilt, burned again and now roofed by a daring sutler with an old red and black striped pavilion. He’d collected stools and benches from the local town and made a decent sitting area that was snug. So snug, in fact, it was hard to breathe.

  As the leaders of three companies, we got a table and stools of our own. We drank small beer and Sir John made our plan. We had about 900 lances and we had to assume that Petit Mechin was on the other side of the ridge behind us, with the French right behind him.

  ‘Lyons,’ Sir John said. ‘If we take Lyons, they’ll have to pay us to leave. We’ll be rich. Best of all, we’ll be safe.’

  Peter of Savoy shook his head. We’ll never get into Lyons,’ he said. ‘Last spring they raised the wall. It has a bailli, two thousand men and two out-castles.’ Even as he spoke, he was drawing – in beer, of course – the course of the river. He put filberts down. ‘Rive-de-Gier and Brignais. And here’s Le Puy.’ He sighed. ‘I can’t see taking Lyons by escalade.’