The Ill-Made Knight

by Christian Cameron

  At any rate, Hawkwood was made captain of Pisa. Directly he took the baton – I think it was February of the year of our lord 1364 – he led us on a raid across Tuscany, into Florentine lands in mid-winter.

  It had worked against Milan, and I think it had been his idea. But we tried to go too far into the highlands, and the snow was the worst in fifty years – so much snow that the horses couldn’t get grass and began to die. A dead war horse is the single most expensive corpse you’ll ever see.

  We passed Carmignano undetected, but the passes were blocked with snow, and after a particularly nasty skirmish at the gates of the Mugello – nasty because everything that hurts, hurts more in bitter cold, and I got knocked off my horse by a German I never saw – Sir John admitted we were beaten and we retreated.

  We had no supplies and no baggage train.

  Men started to die.

  A battle is a crisis, if you like, but it is one for which you plan and train, and it isn’t a surprise – one hopes. That march taxed all of us to, and beyond, our limits. And the strain didn’t come all at once; it built day by day.

  I was injured – not wounded, merely badly hurt. I’d fallen well, if falling off a tall horse is ever good, on my arse. I had a bruise as big as Lombardy and a roll of muscle that seemed like an internal wound, it hurt so badly, but I could ride and I could give orders.

  Instead of fighting the enemy, we were foraging and building fires, and that became the limit of my command. Men would wander off in the snow and vanish and we’d never see them again. Except that when it was Juan, I turned my horse’s head – still the war horse I’d taken from Father Pierre Thomas, in what seemed like a different world – and rode back along our trail until I found him.

  ‘I’m sleepy,’ he said.

  I put him on my horse and pinned him against me until I reached Janet’s fire.

  ‘Some men will do anything to sleep with me,’ she quipped, and put him in her blankets while her squire piled wood on her personal fire.

  He lost all the toes on his left foot.

  Richard Grimlace wasn’t so lucky. He went into a stone barn and peasants killed him. We rode back to find him, and we killed the peasants – even though I knew that was wrong.

  We made a fort of their barn and waited out the last of the snow there, with a fire in the corner. We had seventy men and one woman in that barn, and all of us lived to see Pisa.

  I slept between Perkin and Milady. At some point in the night – you have to imagine us packed like salt herrings, so banish any salacious thought – I knew she was awake. In her ear, I said, ‘Do you ever miss Richard Mussard?’

  ‘No,’ she said.

  I paused. ‘He wanted to marry you,’ I said. ‘I seem to remember.’

  She rolled a quarter turn. ‘We did marry,’ she said. She shrugged, and John Hughes, sleeping on her other side, groaned. I suspect I groaned, too.

  ‘He’ll get over me,’ she said.

  I thought of Richard at Turin. It occurred to me that she’d already run away from him by then – and then he’d seen me. What would he think?

  When the snow cleared, we rode for Pisa. We collected another twenty men on our way, but the White Company would have lost fewer men in a heavy defeat. The snow did to us what the Germans could not. We lost 400 lances and were half the size we’d been the summer before.

  There was talk of taking the command from Sir John. I had never seen him so low – he slept too much, went to meetings with Pisans and spent too little time with men like Andrew Belmont and me.

  The Pisans tightened their belts and hired another famous knight – one of the most famous: Hannekin Baumgarten. He was a Knight of the Holy Roman Empire, a member of two famous orders of chivalry and a dozen well-known tournament societies. He was a big, handsome man, and his Cologne German was less offensive to the English than Swabian. He was also a fine jouster.

  He brought a small army of Germans. Each ‘nation’ had about 1,000 lances.

  Spring came and seemed to dispel the last of the Plague. I received a letter from Fra Peter when the passes opened, and another, from my sister, in the same packet. They made me happy. I sat and wrote back to them the same day, and spent from my dwindling store of florins to send them to Avignon and London.

  We had two incidents that spring, neither of which brought me any pleasure.

  We marched on Florence in mid-April, as yet unpaid. We marched as far as Pistoia with Baumgarten, but our 8,000 cavalry was too much for one web of narrow roads, so we elected to go our seperate ways. Sir John was back in command, and he sent Andrew Belmont to sieze Prato by night – the way we’d taken Pont-Saint-Esprit. We rode hard, caught them with the drawbridge down, and then everything went wrong and Andrew was badly wounded.

  I got to him, pinned him to his saddle and got him clear of the crossbow bolts.

  We tried again that night, but they were ready, and the only thing we could do was ride around the town, whooping like imps of Satan. While my men distracted the militia on the walls, I climbed down into the ditch and crawled to the main gate, where I stood up and pounded on it with my fists.

  ‘I summon this town to surrender in the name of the White Company!’ I roared.

  It had no effect on the campaign, but was much talked about. When we returned to the army, Sir John summoned me.

  ‘I’m appointing you corporal,’ he said.

  Corporals commanded fifty lances – 200 men.

  I took Belmont’s division while he went back to Pisa. It was a very left-handed way to achieve command, though, and it made me uneasy.

  Janet was quick to congratulate me.

  I was surprised. ‘I thought you had a—’

  She looked at me in such a way as to deprive me of the power of speech. ‘Gentlemen don’t say everything that comes to their minds,’ she spat. ‘Andrew Belmont is nothing to me.’

  The second incident took place a few days later. It was not my day to patrol and I was in camp. A patrol of Rudolph von Hapsburg’s encountered a patrol of ours – of mine. It was led by Perkin – Master Smallwood. They met at the corner of a wood and it was a surprise to both parties. A German officer – Sir Heinrich, as the heralds reported to us – charged. He was reported to me as being a giant mounted on an elephant, but those Germans beat my men so badly I couldn’t get a straight story out of any of them.

  Sir Heinrich’s lance caught Perkin in the body armour. He didn’t have a steel breastplate and the blow crushed his ribcage. He probably died when he hit the ground. Seamus died there, too, cut from the saddle by a German knight’s axe.

  Kenneth had been in camp with me, and his reaction was so violent I ordered his squire to watch him every minute – I was afeared he’d desert to try and kill a German. The Irish are the most fiery men on the face of the earth.

  But Seamus and Perkin didn’t die for nothing. I went with a herald and reclaimed their corpses, giving Hapsburg’s camp a careful look as I did. The Swabians were contemptuous of us, and I met the giant Heinrich in person – I’m a big man, and he over-topped me by a head. He didn’t bother to conceal his camp, and he returned my friend to me with the trappings of chivalry, but few, if any, of the essentials.

  ‘He was easy to put down,’ Heinrich said in his heavily accented English. ‘None of you English is any match for a knight.’ He laughed. ‘Pitiful.’

  I turned to the German herald who accompanied us. ‘Is this what passes for courtesy in Swabia?’ I asked.

  ‘Save your tears, Englishman,’ Heinrich said. ‘None of you are knights. We know what you are: peasants who have stolen armour. We are not afraid of your White Company.’ He laughed.

  Perhaps I could have said something inspired, or merely insulting, but instead, I marked their banners and penants as carefully as I might. I put Perkin and Seamus in carts, and Arnaud, who had driven a few carts in his life, helped me drive them back to our lines.

  Courtesy and control. And perhaps, simply biding my time. Treating war as a busin
ess.

  We buried them and our other dead that night and a priest said Mass. And then we slipped away. We retreated.

  We left Rudolph von Hapsburg with nothing. He sat there for three days, waiting for us to attack him, so I’m going to guess that his Swabians weren’t as sure of themselves as Heinrich sounded.

  We pounded south, back to Prato, then we drove east, along the same path as Sir Hannekin. We broke up into smaller divisions to cover more ground, looting and burning across an empty countryside. We ate well, but something had gone out of me with Perkin’s death.

  I wanted to avenge him. I loved Father Pierre Thomas, but I was not going to turn the other cheek for the German bastard who’d killed my squire.

  It had become more personal and less chivalrous in the Hapsburg camp.

  Professional war is an odd thing, and personal animosity is not useful. As an example, when we passed through Prato the second time, we received reinforcements – both English and German. Erich von Landau joined us at Prato. The next night, at the fire, while our Italian servants cooked, Erich spoke to Fiore in German, and Fiore stood up carefully and nodded.

  Erich said something in Italian.

  Fiore nodded. Sadly, I think.

  Erich went and shook his hand, and that was that. I don’t know that they discussed that the Friulian had killed Erich’s brother, but I assume that some accommodation was reached.

  I was watching Milady as she was behaving oddly. The day after Perkin died, I found her in camp, dressed in a kirtle and gown. She looked down her nose at me and I rode on.

  Perkin left a hole in my lances, and in my life – I couldn’t find anything. I never had six pair of lace points that matched. I didn’t have a squire just then, so I picked up the youngest man-at-arms to join us at Prato, an English boy still young enough to have pimples, who had come all the way out from England to fight in Italy. We were becoming famous. His name was Edward, and his father, he said, was a bishop.

  Edward Bishop, he called himself. And with the same draft from England came a Scot – or an Irishman – Colin Campbell.

  We rode further east and linked up with Baumgarten in the hills of Montughi, where we camped. Rudolph von Hapsburg had finally stopped waiting for us on the other side of the city and had retreated to Florence proper. All our marching hadn’t got us clear of him, though. We could see his camp fires.

  Beyond his fires, we could see Florence in the distance. Baumgarten and Hawkwood put their pavilions side by side, and we saw the two of them, sitting on camp stools, drinking wine.

  We drank wine, too. Probably too much. We were angry – angry as soldiers are when they feel they have not been well led. Soldiers – professional soldiers – are like the men and boys who put on the passion plays at Clerkenwell. You work and work – make your costume, write and rewrite your lines, and then you put on your performance, and for a few days you are the toast of London. But then some other guild puts on their bit – they have a splendid King Herod, a fine Jesus who moves the women to tears – and your brilliant bit is forgotten. We’d had our moment at Canturino, but since then, we’d been defeated by snow and the Germans; the crowd no longer sang our praises, but those of the Germans. Our own Italians were deserting. We’d left Pisa with 2,000 lances of English and Germans, and another thousand Italian men-at-arms. Now we had just a few hundred.

  I sat on a leather trunk, sewing a grommet. Grommets are the very sinews of armour – for every piece, there are a couple of grommets in your arming coat to hold the whole thing together. Sewing made me think of Perkin, who was, sans doute, the best squire I’d ever had. My new squire couldn’t sew and clearly thought the whole thing beneath him, so I sat in the firelight with my arming doublet, trying to coax the torn out holes back into shape so I could lace on my leg harnesses the next day – if we were going to fight.

  Perhaps I should have punished him. What I remember is being tired all the time. Tired with fatigue and – men tell you this often, monsieur? – tired of it all. When Perkin died, it was as if the whole game had no point. Let me tell you how it is. The more times you face the fight, and the more men you kill, the harder it is to smile, to laugh, to see the glory in the day. Even to have a friend or a lover. What comes easier is to drink hard, gamble and never, ever go inside your head to see what’s there. Perhaps I should have punished my lazy, arrogant squire, but had I roused myself, I might simply have killed him, because that is where you go, when all you do and all you breathe is fighting and death.

  Chivalry is the answer. Just as men have developed laws to protect us from greed – pale reflections of God’s law, perhaps, but rules nonetheless – so we have chivalry to protect us from violence. So that if we must kill, we have rules.

  I remember that night, because we were all there. Not Robert, killed by peasants, and not Seamus, killed by Germans, nor Perkin. But Janet was there, slim and blue, drinking from a Venetian glass and sitting in a broad chair her squire had stolen from a church. John Hughes was there, leaning over her, making a joke, and Sam Bibbo was quietly sharpening arrows. Fiore was watching her, but he was talking about feats of arms he’d heard of, and he had Juan’s attention and William Grice’s. Courtney was trying to shave in the dark, with a dozen men ‘helping’ by making suggestions, most of which would have made a Southwark girl blush. Arnaud was trying a pair of leg harnesses, and a patient armour merchant – a Florentine, no less – was making adjustments. John Thornbury was playing cards with de la Motte and a pair of Baumgarten’s men-at-arms. Kenneth MacDonald was repairing his jupon – a great deerskin coat stuffed with sheep’s wool – and trading Irish jibes with Colin Campbell.

  I watched them all, and I thought of all the others. Ned Candleman. Chris Shippen. Richard.

  Christ, I missed Richard.

  And drinking and thinking about Perkin made me angry.

  ‘Tomorrow,’ I said, and everyone stopped. I must have sounded like a madman. Wode. Milady turned and looked at me, and her eyes were wide.

  ‘Tomorrow, we should show the Germans what we are,’ I said.

  Fiore looked at me and smiled. ‘Do you intend some feat of arms?’ he asked.

  ‘By God, that’s just what I intend,’ I said.

  Just after dark, a boy came and fetched me to Sir John Hawkwood. He had his feet up, and he was holding a silver cup. He looked quite relaxed. Sir Hannekin was sitting by him.

  ‘William,’ he said and nodded.

  ‘Sir John?’ I asked.

  ‘Hannekin, this is William Gold, whom I’ve known since he was a boy. He’ll command Andrew Belmont’s lances. William, we’re going to try for the city. We won’t take it – Florence has more people than we have grains of wheat in this camp – but I intend to drive in Hapsburg’s outposts and break his barricades.’

  ‘I’m in,’ I said.

  ‘You’d best be in, young William,’ Sir John said. ‘Your battle has the best armour. You are the vanguard. I want you to go first – right at their barricades.’

  I nodded. ‘Consider it done,’ I said. Or something equally brash.

  Baumgarten laughed. ‘Quite the young cock,’ he said. ‘I offered my best German knights, but Sir John must have you. I’ll have my eye on you, Master William.’

  I was given wine. I tried not to sound too drunk, and after a little while, and some polite noises, I went back to my people.

  They all looked at me.

  ‘Tomorrow,’ I said, ‘I mean to avenge Seamus and Perkin. And win my spurs, or die trying.’

  No one said a thing. The fire crackled and I went to my cloak.

  I mean, what else was there?

  I didn’t have Richard, and I didn’t have Emile, and I wasn’t ever going to be a knight. I was full of anger. And I thought, Plague take them all. I’ll just cut my way to the gates of hell.

  We rose before dawn. I didn’t have a hangover, and after two leather bottles of water, a cup of wine and some hard bread and honey, I felt ready to face my armour. It was the first of M
ay. I remembered May – the month of love. I took Emile’s favour out of my clothes and attached it to the peak of my helmet.

  ‘Let’s get this done, Edward,’ I said.

  He sighed.

  I put on a clean shirt and my arming doublet, the one I’d repaired the night before, over clean braes and my best red hose. He pointed my hose to my doublet. ‘This is servant’s work,’ he muttered.

  I said nothing.

  Perkin used to lay all my harness out on dry blankets. Edward didn’t know what to do – I think he’d only armed in dry castles and nice big pavilions. ‘I didn’t get much sleep last night,’ he said.

  ‘You attach the greave to the cuisse with the little key,’ I said. ‘Before you put it on my leg.’

  ‘I know that,’ he said, hurrying to do as I’d said, as if he’d known all along. He knew, at one level, but at another, he’d forget what he was doing.

  He was afraid, of course.

  He stopped to put my sabatons on, and he spent far too much time on just two buckles. Then he seated the left leg and closed the greave.

  ‘I need more light,’ he said.

  I said nothing.

  He took an aeon getting the buckles closed on the cuisse.

  Then he tackled the second leg. I had time to think how easy he had it – Perkin had had to arrange different armour all the time, as I damaged a leg, or plundered something I liked better. He’d been shaping into a good knight.

  I had only learned to be a squire under Fra Peter, and only after I’d been a man-at-arms for years.

  I was lucky, I decided. I had a lump in my throat and I was close to tears.

  ‘This belt is too stiff,’ Edward said.

  ‘Take a moment. Breathe. There’s no rush,’ I said.

  Milady Janet pranced by, fully armed.

  I laced my own points, cinching the points tight to the arming jacket. When you fight on foot, the worst thing that can happen is to have your leg harnesses slip down even a little.

  ‘I can do that,’ he insisted.

  No you can’t, I thought, but I didn’t say so. I was kind enough to know he didn’t need to face his first battle feeling like he’d failed me.