The Ill-Made Knight

by Christian Cameron

  Sir John thought.

  Peter of Savoy grunted. ‘We have no choice. Needs must when the devil drives.’

  Camus sat slumped.

  ‘William Gold and I will take Brignais and Rive-de-Gier,’ Sir John Hawkwood said. ‘By escalade. You two wait six hours and try Lyon. If the garrison is alert, light the suburbs afire and retreat on us.’

  None of us disagreed. We had the more difficult task, and yet I was well satisfied. I finished my small beer and rode away into the watery sunshine.

  I was filled with confidence as we rode cross-country, and then, as I came down on my own convoy, I watched the line of carts and wondered why they were tailing along behind instead of protected in the middle of the column.

  I got my horse to a heavy trot, and rolled down the hill, headed for the front of the column, the priest’s excellent war horse labouring in the heavy mud of the unploughed fields.

  At the front, there were half a dozen horsemen, arguing. There was Sir Hugh and Richard Cressy, two other corporals and John Hughes. Hughes was as red as a beet. There was a dead man lying under the horse’s hooves.

  I knew immediately that Sir Hugh had usurped command in my half-day absence, and that he’d made some error that caused the others to come after him. I could see it all in their postures and those of their horses. I put my gauntlets on and made sure my sword was loose in my scabbard.

  They roared at each other like stallions fighting over a mare, and I rode up behind Sir Hugh without being noticed.

  ‘Gentlemen?’ I said, as I pushed my horse in behind his. I wasn’t too gentle.

  Cressy didn’t really know me. He was a good man-at-arms, as big as a small house and cautious. He was barely capable of being a corporal and lacked even the most rudimentary organizational skills.

  He also lacked both courtesy and self-control. Although even at twenty-two, I was learning that courtesy – the very foundation of knighthood – was all about self-control.

  I mention this because, alone among the corporals, he’d never suggested, by word or deed, that he thought he’d be a better acting captain that I was. His eyes met mine. ‘This idiot,’ he said, pointing at Sir Hugh.

  Sir Hugh tried to wheel his horse. He didn’t like having me behind him, and he was afraid of what I might do.

  ‘He took the wrong fucking turn and killed our guide!’ Cressy said.

  ‘He betrayed us!’ Sir Hugh said. ‘I made no error!’

  He had his horse around, now, and he was glaring at me with a hand on his sword.

  John Hughes, who was the informal captain of the archers, just shook his head. ‘He grabbed command from Cressy and fucked it away,’ he said. ‘Order of march changed, down the wrong road, all so he can grab some market town that isn’t where he thought it was.’

  I looked at him. I didn’t think anyone would back him – if he’d had skills like that, he’d have been a corporal. ‘I’m surprised any of you obeyed him,’ I said.

  Hughes spat. ‘He said he had orders from Sir John Creswell,’ he said.

  ‘Well, Sir Hugh? I asked. An hour with Sir John Hawkwood and I was emulating his careful, clipped speech and mannerisms.

  Sir Hugh glared at me. ‘I, sir, am a belted knight, a landed man, a servant of the King. I should be in command here. These men obey me as their natural superior.’

  I nodded. ‘Prepare yourself,’ I said. ‘We’re going to fight right here. If you unhorse me, you can try and command the company, but in truth, Sir Hugh, you couldn’t command a sack of meal in a mill. If I unhorse you, I expect nothing but silent obedience from you. We have an adventure ahead of us, and I, for one, don’t have any more time to waste on you.’

  ‘With pleasure, boy, he said. He gathered his reins and drew his sword. ‘Butt Boy!’

  I put that away for later. The Bourc’s insult in Sir Hugh’s mouth?

  He came for me without the formality of choosing ground or seizing a lance. He held up his sword, high above his head, and cut at me – one, two, three times. He wanted to close and grapple, and he pushed in as close as his horse could manage.

  My horse – the horse I’d stolen from a priest – proved to have more fight than I’d imagined. He side-stepped and bit Sir Hugh’s mount savagely, ripping off a piece of the other horse’s nose and scattering blood.

  Sir Hugh’s horse stumbled and half-reared, and I got my sword in both hands and thrust Sir Hugh cleanly through the aventail. My sword went in just where the collarbone met the breastbone. I’ll be honest, I didn’t care if I killed him, because he was large and dangerous and I needed to get on with my part in Sir John’s plan.

  My two-handed thrust penetrated his chain aventail and stuck in bone, but the whole force went into his breastbone, and he lost his seat and fell to the ground. The fight was over.

  To add insult to injury, my horse kicked him when he tried to rise. Compared to the kick of a stallion, my little poke was a pinprick.

  I ignored the man under the hooves of my horse. ‘Gentlemen,’ I said. ‘We are going to try a bold adventure – to seize the walls of Brignais this very night.’

  Ah. Preux. yes, I had preux. Courtesy, loyalty, largesse, courage and preux.

  Four hours later, we left our warm fires of the previous light and mounted our horses. Our pages carried our ladders. We rode along the web of roads, following John Hughes and Ned, who had scouted the route, and we assembled our ladders in the ditch without being challenged.

  I had about ninety men. I’d left the rest in camp, under Cressy.

  ‘Fast as you can, mes amis!’ That was my first battlefield speech.

  We went up the ladders, and instead of being first, I waited with Courtney and Grice and six other men-at-arms with good harness and good fighting reputations. We were the reserve.

  We didn’t even have to fight. We utterly surprised the garrison, and took the place while most of them were locked into their guard rooms from the outside. As soon as we had the gate tower in our hands, I sent Courtney for the rest of the company.

  We stripped the garrison to their braes, and threw them out into the night, then built up the fires and gorged on their stores. We moved into their guardrooms and barracks and stables.

  A day later, Sir John Creswell came and took the reins away from me. His news was grim – Sir John had taken Rive-de-Gire, but the Bourc and Savoy had failed with Lyon and failed even to fire the suburbs. The main French army, with the archpriest and the Lord of Tancraville, was closing in on us from the north.

  He was coldly polite to me, and the only thing he said was, ‘Hawkwood says you’ve run the company better than I do myself.’

  Well, messieurs. I’m sure Sir John meant it as praise, although it is possible he meant it to sting Creswell. Hawkwood wasn’t called ‘The Fox’ for nothing.

  The second day after we stormed the place, Creswell sent me to find Petit Mechin with six lances. Every man he sent with me was one of my friends – men, squires and archers. With the countryside crawling with French troops, it was an insane risk to take. In fact, like David with Bathsheba’s husband Uriah, he was sending me out to die. He knew it, and I knew it, and worst of all, when he ordered me out, Sir Hugh stood at his shoulder, his right shoulder a mass of linen bandages, and smiled at me. He had what he wanted.

  We left before dawn, and I led my band away from Brignais and headed directly north; they didn’t question me. I’d had time to think, by then, and what I decided was that Camus was in league with Sir Hugh. I know that sounds insane, but command in an army of criminals and mercenaries isn’t about chivalry. Or gentility.

  No, that’s wrong. The qualities of chivalry had given me a good reputation. The men would follow me. I was just. I was well-spoken and temperate. It was my supposed peers who disdained chivalry and justice.

  So we went north until the sun began to rise, and then, when we could see Arnaud de Cervole’s outriders, I led my men into a stream bed, and rode along it until I’d crossed most of the archpriest’s fro
nt. Twice we stopped and stood, knee deep in icy water, holding our horse’s heads, but they were terrible scouts and we really needn’t have worked so hard.

  When we emerged from the stream, we were between the expanding crescent of his scouts and the main French army. We swept west, riding slowly and carefully from copse to copse, raising no dust. Four times that long late winter’s day, I came in sight of the main French host. I counted banners and whistled, then groaned. Jacques de Bourbon, Count of La Marche; Jean de Melun, Count of Tancraville; Jean de Noyers, Count of Joigny, and Gerard de Thurey, the Marshal of Burgundy, were all arms I knew and banners I could read. And, of course, there was the Count d’Herblay, in azur and or checky – I saw him immediately. I counted thirty-nine banners and had the whole of an apple down to the core while watching them from under a tree. I estimated they had more than 6,000 men-at-arms and another 4,000 armoured infantry.

  This scout of mine is accounted one of my finest deeds of arms, but in all sober truth, I ran little risk. Cervole was a poor commander, and besides, Bourbon owed me his life, and if I’d been taken, I’d have made them release me, or so I told myself.

  At dark, I slipped Cervole’s forward pickets and rode due west. I assumed that if the archpriest was marching towards a target, that target must be Petit Mechin. But I overestimated the archpriest’s scouting, and by dawn the next day, I still hadn’t found Petit Mechin, or even his outriders or foragers.

  The sun was high in the sky when we turned back south, because we could see – well, John Hughes and I thought we could see – a smudge of dust on the far horizon.

  Hughes and I sat just below the edge of a ridge line, so we couldn’t be seen silhouetted against the bright sky.

  ‘Should we just ride clear?’ I asked him.

  Hughes had an apple, too. He chewed, groaned, then took another bite. ‘You’d know better than me,’ he said.

  We moved fast, despite fatigue, fear and horses near done – that was a long day, and a hard one, with our goal moving almost as swiftly as we did ourselves, so that every time we descended a small ridge, we lost all sight of them and our spirits went lower than our horse’s bellies.

  After nones we found foragers stripping a stone barn, and they were from Badefol’s company – that cheered me again, because despite the fact that he’d run off taking all our money the autumn before, he was a good leader and a brave man, and we were in a tight spot. In effect, he came out of retirement in Gascony when he heard how badly we’d fared.

  At last light, I rode in among his company from the north, and his lieutenant John Amory took me to the great man himself, where he sat on a camp stool, listening to a man recite the Chanson of Alexander. De Badefol was an old-fashioned man, but he rose and grinned.

  ‘Looking for work?’ he asked.

  ‘I come from Sir John Creswell,’ I said. ‘And I’ve seen Bourbon’s army.’

  Instantly, his banter went away. He took my shoulder. ‘Come, we must find Mechin,’ he said.

  We walked up the hill a little further. I wanted a fire and some of the wine – I swear I could smell wine a mile away in those days – but we walked over the rocky ground to the great captain’s pavilion, set with his banner high on the hillside.

  I had to explain everything that had happened for a week since we’d lost him in the hills.

  Mechin, as you may have heard, was not a big man. He was quite small, and he had the temper we always pretend Frenchmen have. He burned like a torch, for all that his hair was grey and his beard as white as mine is now, but he shared with John Hawkwood the kind of intelligence that allows a man to think his way out of a trap, or through a contract, or into a great marriage alliance.

  About the time that I said I’d taken Brignais, he bounced out of his seat. ‘Par dieu!’ he said. ‘Then we have a crossing of the Rhône, yes?’

  I had to demur. ‘Brignais doesn’t have its own bridge,’ I began.

  ‘We can put across a bridge of boats,’ he said.

  ‘Like Great Alexander!’ said Seguin de Badefol. He was obviously delighted to be emulating the great conqueror.

  Mechin all but bounced up and down. ‘We will pass over the bridge and pft – we’re gone.’

  I took a little while to describe the archpriest’s army. Forgive my digression – now I know that Tancraville was commander, but given my bias for professional men-at-arms, I took it for granted that Cervole, for all his failings, would have the command. More fool I!

  I told my story, and my count of banners, and Mechin winced. ‘By God, gentles,’ he said, ‘we do not want to face these armies together.’

  Badefol had scouted the army of Marshal Audreham to the south, and he reported fifty-four banners and two marshals of France. Now it was my turn to wince. Three to one – perhaps as much as five to one.

  We faced three armies: Audreham, the archpriest and Tancraville. Each of them was larger and better armed than our own. Worst of all, they took us seriously, and they moved with minimum baggage and no women, so that they moved faster than our ‘nation of thieves’.

  ‘Where’s Hawkwood?’ Mechin asked.

  I laid out the world around us as best I could: beans for the castles, grains of barley for our forces and peas for the enemy. I put in Lyons and Brignais and everything I could remember.

  Badefol slapped my shoulder. ‘You discourse about war like a priest talks theology’ he said. ‘Better, because you aren’t full of shit!’

  Well, you have to take flattery where you get it, I suppose.

  Mechin looked at my little illustration and nodded, fingering his moustache. ‘Let us turn further south,’ he said. ‘Let us turn towards the good Marshal Audreham.’

  Badefol nodded, satisfied. I was many years and social levels their junior, but I was temporarily one of them, and I dared greatly and asked, ‘Why?’

  Petit Mechin grinned. ‘You have a head on your shoulders and no mistake, young man, and your illustration on the table does me as much good as a painting of Christ does a poor sinner. So listen to me. If you have to fight two men in an alley, what do you do?’

  I stammered. ‘Run?’ I murmured.

  Mechin laughed. He had a woman’s laugh, high and wild, but genuine and happy, not mad like Camus. I liked him immensely for such short acquaintance.

  ‘No, young man. Or rather, certainly, but if your back is to the wall and you must fight them both?’

  Sometimes, being questioned freezes the head – you just stare at your interrogator and wonder. This was not my finest hour.

  Badefol got it. ‘You feint a thrust at one to buy a moment’s peace and run the other bastard through,’ he said.

  ‘I can see you’ve fought in some alleys,’ Mechin said.

  I was humbled. But they laughed and slapped my back, and someone finally put a cup of wine into my hands.

  The next day we marched south along a high ridge line. I took my six lances and we rode out far ahead of the army with most of Badefol’s company, and after nones we came in sight of Audreham’s advance guard.

  We had our orders.

  We attacked. We had sixty lances all told, and they had twice as many, and we met them in a ford, and drove them from it. We had about twenty English and Flemish long bow men, and they dismounted and ran to the streamside and began to loose shaft after shaft into the southerners. I saw a dozen enemy lances head upstream.

  ‘Follow me!’ I called, and led my men: Grice and Courtney, Perkin Smallwood and Robert Grandice, de la Motte – he’d just rejoined me – and a few others. Ah, messieurs, I should remember their names and styles, for they were good men of arms, every one, and that was a feat of arms for any book. We rode west through broken country for a quarter of a league or less and there they were, breasting the stream.

  Our opponents chose a terrible crossing, took a risk and paid. We caught them in the water and gaffed them like spawning fish with our spears. I captured a young knight – I was disappointed when he proved too small for his beautiful new
harness to fit me. It fit Perkin, though, and he took it and wore it. I sent the young man home on parole to get me a thousand Florins, a price he named himself.

  An afternoon’s fighting, I didn’t lose a man and I made a thousand florins. It’s a tale of its own how I came to be paid, but par dieu, gentlemen. With a dozen men-at-arms and ten archers, I held a mile of streamside against 300 knights.

  Another thing, the horse I’d stolen from the priest was magnificently trained. Every day I rode him, I learned another trick he could do – there were hand commands, knee commands and spur commands. I would discover them by mistake, but after three weeks on this magnificent animal, I spent time with him, riding around a field and trying different combinations. I suspected he had voice commands – he was a very intelligent animal, for a horse – and he fought brilliantly at the ford, backing under me and changing direction as soon as he felt a shift in my weight.

  As soon was we’d beaten them and seen their backs, we rode back north to find de Badefol, who sat twirling his moustache like Satan’s lieutenant – he was an evil-looking man, and no mistake. He grinned and nodded when he saw our prisoners and haul of armour.

  ‘If you weren’t such a giant, you’d be easier to arm!’ he called.

  In truth, after that skirmish I was the worst-armed man in our band, and it rankled. We were fighting in winter and had no servants – everything I owned was brown and orange, and my clothes were all besmottered with rust.

  And yet, 1,000 gold Florins, even in expectation, seemed to cure all my woes. And I was proud of my feat, and prouder still that I’d behaved with steady courtesy to the young knight I’d taken. I hadn’t had to despoil a peasant or burn a house in weeks.

  As soon as we were sure we’d driven them from the field, we turned tail and ran ourselves, all the way back to Mechin, who was waiting six miles up the valley with the rest of the Great Company, at the crossroads to Lyon.

  He already knew from our outriders, and before we reached him, the army was marching north. By chance, I was the first officer to reach the little man, and he hugged me. ‘The ill-made knight triumphs!’ he said, and other men laughed.