1356 (Special Edition)

by Bernard Cornwell

  ‘Sire,’ the captal said, ‘you can punish me for this, but I don’t want to lose you.’ He leaned over, took hold of Foudre’s bridle, and dragged the prince back towards the willows. The prince called encouragement to the defeated foot soldiers as he allowed himself to be pulled out of danger.

  ‘Tomorrow,’ he called, ‘tomorrow we’ll have our revenge! Tomorrow we’ll sack Tours!’

  Yet the next dawn brought no reprieve. The wind still howled across the wet land and the rain fell and the thunder bellowed and lightning tore the sky. God, it seemed, wanted Tours to be safe. He wanted to trap the English and their Gascon allies south of the River Loire. And the next day after that, because to remain still was to invite the French to surround them, the prince’s army turned back towards the south.

  The retreat had begun.

  The weapons were stored in the dungeons beneath the keep of Castillon d’Arbizon’s castle. There were five cells there, and one of those was occupied by Pitou, who was waiting for his father to send Thomas’s men back from Montpellier. Two other cells were empty. ‘I put the drunks in those,’ Thomas explained to Keane.

  ‘Jesus, they must be full all the time.’

  ‘Rarely,’ Thomas said, leading the Irishman into the largest cell, which was his makeshift armoury. The two wolfhounds sniffed in the passageway, anxiously watching Keane as he ducked into the cell. ‘They know they can get drunk as much as they like,’ Thomas went on, ‘but not when they’re supposed to be sober.’ He raised the lantern and hung it on a hook embedded in the ceiling, though the flickering candle gave small light. ‘You stay alive by being good,’ he said.

  ‘By being sober?’ Keane sounded amused.

  ‘By being good,’ Thomas said, ‘by practice, by being fast, by being strong enough to pull a bow or carry a heavy sword. Weapons need skills and the man you end up fighting might have been practising those skills for twenty years so you have to be better. If not, you’re dead. And out here? We’re a small garrison surrounded by enemies, so we have to be the best.’

  ‘And if a man’s not good enough?’

  ‘I discharge him. There’s plenty want to serve here. They make money.’

  Keane grinned. ‘Coredors with a castle, eh?’

  He had meant it as a jest, but Thomas flinched anyway because there was truth in the jest. Coredors were bandits, men and women driven from their land to live wild in the hills and prey on travellers or small communities, and the incessant wars in France meant that there were many coredors. The largest highways were patrolled by men-at-arms, but other roads were dangerous except to formidable bands of armed men. The coredors were hated, but what were the Hellequin if not coredors? Except that they served a lord, in this case William Bohun, Earl of Northampton, who was God knows how many miles away watching the border between Scotland and England, and it was the Earl of Northampton’s wish that Thomas dominated this stretch of France. Did that make it right? Or was Saint Sardos’s church in Castillon d’Arbizon rich in silver and bright with wall paintings because Thomas suspected otherwise? ‘I first met Genevieve in this cell,’ he told Keane.

  ‘Here?’

  ‘They were going to burn her as a heretic,’ Thomas said. ‘They’d already built the fire. They had piles of straw for kindling and they’d stacked the faggots upright because they burn more slowly. That way the pain lasts longer.’

  ‘Jesus,’ Keane said.

  ‘Not pain,’ Thomas corrected himself, ‘but agony. Can you imagine Jesus burning someone alive?’ he asked. ‘Can you imagine him making a fire to burn slowly, then watching someone scream and writhe?’

  Keane was surprised by the pure anger in Thomas’s voice. ‘No,’ he said cautiously.

  ‘I’m a devil’s whelp,’ Thomas said bitterly, ‘a priest’s son. I know the church, but if Christ came back tomorrow he wouldn’t know what the hell the church was.’

  ‘We’re all evil bastards,’ Keane said uncomfortably.

  ‘And you’re not fast enough with a sword,’ Thomas said. ‘Another five years’ practice and you might be swift enough. Here, try this.’

  The weapons in the cell were all captured from enemies. There were swords, axes, crossbows, and spears. Many were useless, their blades just waiting to be melted down and recast, but there was plenty of good weaponry, and Thomas had chosen a poleaxe. ‘Christ, that’s wicked,’ Keane said, hefting the heavy axe.

  ‘The head’s weighted with lead,’ Thomas explained. ‘It doesn’t take a lot of skill, but it needs strength. Mind you, skill helps.’

  ‘To hack?’

  ‘Think of it as a quarterstaff with a blade. You can trip with it, thrust with it or hack with it.’ The poleaxe was short, just five feet long, with a thick wooden haft. The head, forged from steel, had an axe blade and opposite it a hooked spike, while both ends of the haft had short spikes. ‘A sword isn’t much good against an armoured man,’ Thomas said. ‘Mail will stop a cut, and even boiled leather will stop most sword slashes. A sword thrust might work against mail, but that,’ he touched the spike at the tip of the poleaxe, ‘works against all armour.’

  ‘Then why do men carry swords?’

  ‘In battle? Most don’t. You have to batter a man down if he’s in armour. A mace, a morningstar, a flail, an axe will all do better.’ He turned the head to show the hooked spike. ‘You can pull a man off balance with the fluke. Hook or trip him onto the ground and beat the bastard to death with the axe head. If you like it, take it, but tie some rags under the head.’

  ‘Rags?’

  ‘You don’t want blood trickling down the haft and making it slippery. And ask Sam to weave you some bow cord to improve the grip. You know the blacksmith in town?’

  ‘The one they call Squinting Jacques?’

  ‘He’ll put an edge on it for you. But go into the courtyard first and practise with it. Hack one of the stakes to bits. You’ve got two days to become an expert.’

  The courtyard was already filled with men practising. Thomas sat on top of the keep’s steps and smiled a greeting to Sir Henri Courtois, who sat beside him, then flexed an ankle and flinched. ‘It still hurts?’ Thomas asked.

  ‘Everything hurts. I’m old.’ Sir Henri frowned. ‘Give me ten?’

  ‘Six.’

  ‘Sweet Jesus, only six? How about arrows?’

  Thomas grimaced. ‘We’re short of arrows.’

  ‘Six archers and not many arrows,’ Sir Henri said unhappily. ‘We could just leave the castle gates wide open?’

  ‘It would be much less trouble,’ Thomas agreed, provoking a smile from Sir Henri. ‘I’ll leave you a thousand arrows,’ he suggested.

  ‘Why can’t we make arrows?’ Sir Henri asked unhappily.

  ‘I can make a bow in two days,’ Thomas said, ‘but one arrow takes a week.’

  ‘But you can get arrows from the Prince of Wales?’

  ‘I’m hoping so,’ Thomas said. ‘He’ll have brought hundreds of thousands. Wagonloads of arrows.’

  ‘And each takes a week?’

  ‘It takes a lot of people,’ Thomas said, ‘thousands of folk in England. Some cut the shafts, some forge the heads, some collect the feathers, some glue and bind them, some nock them, and we shoot them.’

  ‘Ten men-at-arms?’ Sir Henri suggested.

  ‘Seven.’

  ‘Eight,’ Sir Henri said, ‘otherwise you’re leaving me unlucky thirteen.’

  ‘Fourteen with you,’ Thomas said, ‘and you should have sixteen soon.’

  ‘Sixteen?’

  ‘That prisoner downstairs He’s to be exchanged for Galdric and our two men-at-arms. They should arrive any day now. So sixteen. Jesus! I could hold this castle till Judgement Day with sixteen men!’

  They were discussing how the castle was to be protected. Thomas planned to ride north and wanted to take as many of the Hellequin as he could, but he dared not leave the castle too lightly garrisoned. There were chests in the great hall that contained the gold and silver that Thomas wanted to
take back to England. A third of it belonged to his lord, the Earl of Northampton, but the rest would buy him a fair estate. ‘In Dorset,’ he said, thinking aloud, ‘back home.’

  ‘I thought this was home?’

  ‘I’d rather live in a place where I don’t need sentinels every night.’

  Sir Henri smiled. ‘That sounds good.’

  ‘Then come to Dorset with us.’

  ‘And listen to your barbaric language every day?’ Sir Henri asked. He was over fifty now, a man who had spent his long life in mail and plate. He had been the commander of the old Count of Berat’s men-at-arms, and thus had been an enemy of Thomas, but the new count had reckoned Sir Henri was too old and too cautious. He had scornfully promised Sir Henri command of the small garrison at Castillon d’Arbizon when it was recaptured, but instead the count’s siege had been defeated. Sir Henri, abandoned by the count, had been taken prisoner by Thomas, who, recognising the older man’s vast experience and common sense, had kept the count’s promise by making Sir Henri his own castellan. He had never regretted it. Sir Henri was reliable, honest, stoic, and determined to make his former lord regret his scorn. ‘I hear Joscelyn has gone north,’ Sir Henri said.

  Joscelyn was the new Count of Berat, a headstrong man who had still not given up his dream of reclaiming Castillon d’Arbizon. ‘To Bourges?’ Thomas asked.

  ‘Probably.’

  ‘Where is Bourges?’

  ‘North,’ Sir Henri said, though he was plainly uncertain. ‘If it was me I’d ride to Limoges and ask the way from there.’

  ‘And the Prince of Wales?’

  ‘He was near Limoges,’ Sir Henri said cautiously, ‘or so they say.’

  ‘They?’

  ‘A friar was here last week. He said the English had ridden somewhere north of Limoges.’

  ‘And where’s Limoges?’ Thomas wondered. ‘Is Bourges to the east or the west of Limoges?’

  ‘I know it’s north of it,’ Sir Henri said, ‘but I have a mind it’s eastwards of it too? You could ask Father Levonne. He’s travelled a lot.’

  Thomas was trying to make a picture of unknown territory and to fit within that vague idea an estimation of what the armies did. He knew the French were gathering forces, and that the men from southern France were assembling at Bourges while the northerners, under the king, would surely gather somewhere near Paris. But what of the Prince of Wales? He was making another chevauchée, a destructive march through the heart of France that left farms burned, mills destroyed, towns ruined, and livestock slaughtered. A chevauchée was brutal and cruel, but it left the enemy impoverished. Eventually, if the French wanted to stop the English, they had to come out from their castles and fortresses to fight, and that was when the arrows would fly. Hundreds upon thousands of goose-fledged arrows.

  ‘If I was you,’ Sir Henri said, ‘I’d go westwards. Limoges first, then up to Poitiers and keep going north from there towards Tours. You’re bound to come across the prince somewhere.’

  ‘Is Poitiers in Poitou?’

  ‘Of course.’

  ‘The man who tried to blind Genevieve might be there,’ Thomas said, and did not add that la Malice might be there too, but he was not sure he even believed in la Malice.

  ‘And what about Genny?’ Sir Henri asked. ‘Will she stay here?’

  Thomas shook his head. ‘Saint Paul said wives should be submissive to their husbands, but no one bothered to tell Genny that.’

  ‘How is her eye?’

  Thomas grimaced. Genevieve had made herself a leather eye-patch which she hated wearing, but she preferred it to the milky white of her ruined eyeball. ‘Brother Michael thinks she’ll keep it, but it’s blinded.’ He shrugged. ‘She thinks she’s ugly now.’

  ‘Genny couldn’t be ugly if she tried,’ Sir Henri said gallantly. ‘And what about Brother Michael? Will you take him?’

  Thomas grinned. ‘He’s all yours. Give him a crossbow; he should manage to shoot one of those without killing himself.’

  ‘You don’t want him?’

  ‘And watch him despair over Bertille?’

  Sir Henri chuckled. ‘God, he’s fast!’ He was watching the Sire Roland de Verrec, who was fighting two men at once, fending them off with his swift sword. He seemed to do it effortlessly, though the two men attacking him were plainly straining every muscle to get past his parries. ‘He’ll go north with you,’ Sir Henri said.

  ‘He wants to, yes.’

  ‘You know why? He doesn’t want to be the virgin knight any more.’

  Thomas laughed. ‘That’s easily remedied. I’m amazed it isn’t already.’

  Sir Henri watched Roland fight. ‘He’s extraordinary! How did he parry that thrust?’

  ‘Skill,’ Thomas said, ‘and practice.’

  ‘And purity,’ Sir Henri said. ‘He believes his skill lies in his purity.’

  ‘God, I must be such a weakling. Really?’

  ‘Which means he must make Bertille a widow before he can marry her, and he won’t lose his virginity until he is married.’

  ‘Dear God,’ Thomas said. ‘Truly?’

  ‘He says they’re betrothed. Can you be betrothed to a married woman? Anyway, he’s talked to Father Levonne, and reckons he can keep his purity by marrying, but to marry the countess she has to be a widow, so first he has to kill the husband.’

  ‘I hope Father Levonne explained that Labrouillade probably won’t die in battle.’

  ‘He won’t?’ Sir Henri asked.

  ‘Of course not. He’s too rich. He’s worth a fortune as a prisoner. If things go badly for him he’ll surrender, and no one will forgo a vast ransom to help Roland de Verrec lose his virginity.’

  ‘I don’t think our virgin knight has quite reckoned with that,’ Sir Henri said. ‘And what about Sir Robbie?’

  ‘He goes with me,’ Thomas said, his voice sounding grim.

  Sir Henri nodded. ‘You don’t trust him?’

  ‘Let’s say I want him where I can see him.’

  Sir Henri massaged his ankle. ‘His man went back north?’

  Thomas nodded. Sculley had wanted to go back to the Lord of Douglas and so Thomas had thanked him, given him a purse and let him ride north. ‘The last thing he said to me was that he looked forward to killing me,’ Thomas said.

  ‘God, he was a horrible thing.’

  ‘Horrible,’ Thomas agreed.

  ‘You think he’ll make it to the French army?’

  ‘I think Sculley could ride through hell untouched,’ Thomas said.

  ‘Is that a Scottish name? Sculley?’

  ‘He told me his mother was English,’ Thomas said, ‘and he took her name because she didn’t know who his father was. She was captured from Northumberland by a Scottish raiding party and they evidently took turns on her.’

  ‘So he’s really an Englishman?’

  ‘Not according to him. I just hope I don’t have to fight the bastard.’

  Then there were two days of preparation, days of rubbing bows with lanolin, of trimming the fledging on hundreds of arrows, of mending harness, of sharpening swords and axes, of looking at the future and wondering what it held. Thomas could not get the fight at Crécy out of his mind. Not that he remembered much outside the chaos of battle, the screams of horses and the screams of men, the whimpering of the dying and the stink of shit across a field of slaughtered soldiers. He did remember the noise of a thousand arrows leaping off their strings, and the Frenchman in a pig-snouted helmet that had been decorated with long red ribbons, and how those ribbons had swirled around so prettily as the man fell from his horse and died. He remembered the heavy thunder of the French drums driving their horsemen onto murderous blades, and the destriers breaking their legs in the pits dug to trap them; he remembered the proud banners in the mud, the weeping women, the dogs feasting on eviscerated soldiers, and the peasants creeping in the dark to plunder the corpses. He remembered all the glory of battle: the red ribbons of a dying man, the blood-laced corpses, and the lost
child weeping inconsolably for his dead father.

  And he knew the French were gathering an army.

  And he was ordered to join the prince.

  And so, as the first leaves turned yellow, he led the Hellequin north.

  Jean de Grailly, Captal de Buch, sat his horse in the shadow of oak trees. Every time the courser moved its hooves there was the crunch of acorns. It was autumn already, but at least the driving rain that had defeated the army’s attempt to capture Tours had ended, and the ground had been dried by days of warm weather.

  The captal was not wearing his bold colours this morning. The striped yellow and black made him conspicuous and so, like the thirty-two men he led today, he was wearing a plain brown cloak. The courser was brown too. In battle the captal would ride a great destrier, trained to fight, but for this kind of combat the courser was better. It was faster and had more stamina.

  ‘I see sixteen,’ a man said softly.

  ‘There are more of them in the trees,’ another said.

  The captal said nothing. He was watching the French horsemen who had appeared at a tree line beyond a stretch of pasture. Beneath the brown cloak, the captal wore a sleeveless haubergeon of leather covered with mail. He wore a bascinet with no visor, and other than that he had no protection except the plain shield on his left arm. A sword hung at his left hip, while in his right hand was a lance. It had been shortened. A heavy lance, such as a man would carry in a tournament, was too clumsy for this work. The lance’s tip, which rested in the leaf mould, had a small triangular pennant showing the captal’s silver scallop shell on a field of black and yellow stripes. It was his one concession to the vanity of nobility.

  The prince’s army was a mile or more behind him, travelling south on roads leading through apparently endless forests, and all around the army were small bands of horsemen like this one that the captal led. They were the army’s scouts, and beyond the scouts were the enemy’s scouts. There was an enemy army somewhere too, but the prince’s scouts just saw bands of horsemen.