The Tyrant and the Squire

by Terry Jones

  Chapter 12

  Marvejols 1361

  ‘A wolf the size of a cow,’ croaked the old woman. ‘That’s what those who have seen it say. Though there are few enough that have looked at it and lived.’

  Tom and Emily were sitting with their backs against the hut, while the old woman blew a few bits of charcoal into life under a pot. The prospect of a little food had cheered them slightly less than the old woman’s story had alarmed them.

  ‘And what does this Beast do?’ asked Emily, although she was pretty sure of the answer.

  ‘It leaps out of the dark night on lonely travellers, and tears them limb from limb. It steals babies from their cribs and devours young and old alike,’ said the old woman. It was exactly what Emily had been expecting.

  Tom thought back to the black impenetrable night they had just walked through, and felt his throat constricting.

  ‘But whereabouts does it live, exactly?’ he asked.

  ‘No one knows,’ said the old woman, ladling some thin soup into the one bowl that she possessed. ‘But they say that its lair is somewhere in the great forest of Gévaudan, some miles north of here.’

  ‘Surely it hasn’t attacked anyone round here though?’ asked Tom nervously. He was thinking of Ann.

  ‘No one knows where the Beast will strike next,’ replied the old woman. ‘It has killed over at Saint-Amans, and they say it has been seen as far south as Millau. Farmers and farmer’s wives, shepherds in their cots and merchants stepping out of town, young men on their way to the wars and milkmaids carrying the cheese to market . . . the Beast will strike at anyone at any time and anywhere. I expect one night to hear it sniffing outside this very hut and then all I shall be able to do is pray that Mary in her mercy keeps me safe from its claws and teeth.’

  Tom looked down into the bowl of soup he was holding and saw the reflection of his face was white even in the flickering candlelight. But it wasn’t his face he was seeing – it was Ann’s. Where was she? Had she got to the town? Or had she ended up like them, lost on the mountainside?

  All that night Tom could not sleep, even though he was as tired as a miller’s donkey. The moment he started to fall asleep he saw Ann staggering back as the great slavering Beast of Gévaudan leapt towards her . . .

  By the time the sun had lit up the first thistles on the highest rocky outcrops of the Truc du Midi, Tom had become so inured to the idea of Ann’s death under the claws of the terrible Beast that he quite expected to find her half-devoured body lying outside the old woman’s hut. Instead he found a glorious morning, with the sun cuffing the terrors of the dark out of the light to creep back into the holes and hollows of the earth.

  The Truc du Midi no longer seemed so daunting. Even its name seemed comical, now Tom came to think of it. Roughly translated it means ‘The Thing in the Midi’ (which is an area of France).

  ‘You must return back along the path you came, for there is no way through to the town from here,’ the old woman told them.

  But Tom insisted they must carry on . . . for they had to find Ann before they could turn around.

  ‘But why are you so sure she came up this way?’ asked Emily.

  ‘Because she left an arrow!’ Tom felt slightly exasperated. ‘You remember? You saw it too!’

  ‘Yes, but it was pointing up the other path,’ said Emily.

  In the silence that followed, Tom watched the mist that still clung to the lower slopes drift across the mountain and brush over the forest firs. The mist seemed as opaque and hard to grasp hold of as the mind of his companion.

  ‘What do you mean, “It was pointing up the other path”?’ asked Tom.

  Emily looked rather hurt. ‘Well, I kept trying to ask you why you decided to go this way when the arrow was pointing the other way, but you wouldn’t listen,’ she said. ‘I thought you knew something I didn’t.’

  ‘But the arrow was pointing this way,’ replied Tom. ‘Otherwise I wouldn’t have chosen to come this way!’

  ‘It was pointing the other way,’ said Emily.

  ‘Look! Why would I have taken this path if the arrow was pointing up the other one?’

  ‘Well, that’s what I wanted to ask you . . .’

  ‘Look! We have to find Ann!’

  ‘But if she left the arrow, she went up the other path, and there’s no point in looking around here.’

  ‘But she didn’t!’ exclaimed Tom. Once again, Tom couldn’t recall any instances of a chivalric knight arguing with the lady whom he loved and served, but here he was doing it.

  The old woman, who had been following this exchange with some amusement, shook her head.

  ‘Listen, you two,’ she rasped. ‘Go back to the fork in the road – it will only take you half an hour in daylight. There you will see what you will see, and then you can decide what to do.’

  It was two against one, so Tom hoisted Emily’s clothes onto his back, thanked the old woman for her goodness, and the two of them set off down the mountainside and into the morning mists which seemed to vanish as they entered them.

  When they reached the fork in the paths, there was no mistaking the arrow. It was a large clear arrow, formed out of twigs, which pointed the way as clear as daylight. But it wasn’t on the ground, it was arranged boldly and confidently on a large boulder.

  Tom realised that he had been so busy looking at the ground that he simply hadn’t raised his eyes up high enough to see the real arrow on the boulder. And when he looked at the random pile of twigs that he had somehow made into an arrow he had simply shut his eyes. How is it possible that one’s mind can do things like that?

  ‘Why did you want to go the way we did?’ asked Emily, quite reasonably.

  ‘Er . . . well . . . never mind . . .’ said Tom. ‘Let’s find Ann. At least she’ll have reached town and won’t have been eaten by the Beast.’

  The town of Marvejols, then the capital of the whole of the Lozère region, was entered by three imposing gates, each set between two tall towers. Tom and Emily entered through the Porte du Soubeyran and found themselves immediately swallowed up in the busy streets. They had been on top of the world, and they both now lowered their heads as if the buildings that here loomed over them were crushing their spirits.

  But it wasn’t the buildings that crushed their spirits . . . it was the fact that as they tramped through the narrow streets and round and round the narrow marketplace and through the even narrower backstreets they found not a single trace of Ann. They asked at the inns and they asked people in the streets, but nobody had seen a clean-shaven young man in a short blue jerkin with brown hose carrying a bag on his shoulder.

  ‘They say the Beast was on the prowl again last night,’ a butcher reassured them. ‘I pity anyone who didn’t make it into town before nightfall.’ He shook his head and shuddered as he sliced through a piece of steak. ‘The Beast has claws that can rip through the hide of an ox,’ he added for good measure, as he separated the two bloody halves of steak and cleaned his knife.

  But the old woman selling eggs by the fountain shook her head. ‘I never heard the Beast was in these parts last night. Oh, sure enough, it’s out there somewhere . . . but no . . . not last night . . . not here, my dears . . . I never heard nothing . . .’

  ‘Thanks,’ said Tom.

  ‘What’s that you say?’ asked the old egg woman.

  ‘She’s deaf as a post,’ said Emily in a loud voice.

  ‘Sh!’ said Tom.

  ‘That’s right,’ said the old woman. ‘The big ones are duck eggs.’

  ‘I heard it last night, howling sure enough!’ said the blacksmith. ‘It was out beyond the walls, sure enough. I lay there shivering in my bed, sure enough.’ And sure enough, he didn’t look like the kind of man who would be frightened easily.

  ‘We saw its prints as we drove our animals here this morning,’ said a shepherd. ‘They were as far apart as the length of my crook . . . the creature must be huge . . . God save us!’

  By the end of the
morning, Emily and Tom found themselves sitting in the marketplace, staring blankly at each other, until finally Emily burst out:

  ‘The Beast ate her!’

  ‘Don’t jump to conclusions.’ replied Tom sensibly. ‘Just because she didn’t reach town last night, doesn’t mean she got eaten by . . .’ But no matter how sensible he tried to be, Tom couldn’t shake off the same thought, and all the sensible words died in his throat.

  ‘You think the Beast ate her too! You do, don’t you, Tom?’ said Emily. For once all her innate superiority seemed to have deserted her. She sounded almost lost . . . which was something unthinkable for the Lady Emilia de Valois.

  ‘No!’ said Tom. ‘I don’t think anything at all about what happened to Ann. And I won’t have any opinion until we find out for sure.’

  ‘But how can we do that?’ asked Emily.

  ‘We’re going to look for her,’ said Tom.

  Chapter 13

  Marvejols 1361

  When you know that you’ve got to walk across the whole of France, and then cross to England, and then walk to London, it takes a surprising degree of determination to retrace your steps, but then Tom was surprisingly determined, and so that is what Tom and Emily did.

  Emily naturally insisted on a proper meal before they set off, and so Tom found himself sitting with her at a table in the grandest inn in town, confronted by some mutton chops and a flask of wine. At any other moment, Tom would have been more than happy to sit with the beautiful Emily eating a splendid meal, but right now he could hardly bear it. His mind was racing ahead to discover Ann, digging into fox holes, trampling down the undergrowth, searching every nook and cranny for any trace of his best friend.

  Every minute lost in getting on with the search might be the difference between life and death for Ann, he kept telling himself. And yet nothing he could say or do would shake Emily from her determination to eat. She had dressed herself for the day’s business but still managed to look elegant and cool, as she allowed Tom to pour her a little wine.

  ‘You cannot function properly,’ Emily told him, ‘unless you have had a proper meal at the proper time in the proper place. Nobody can. That’s why the poor are so hopeless at things: they don’t eat properly – or regularly enough! How can you think straight if your tummy’s rumbling? Or concentrate on anything if your mind’s running ahead to the next supper? One should always eat when one has the opportunity and time.’

  ‘But we haven’t the time!’ pleaded Tom. ‘Ann may be in trouble . . . she may be needing us . . .’

  ‘And she may not,’ said Emily . . . the implication of which was just too awful to contemplate.

  So in the end, Tom suffered himself to sit at the table and play with his chop, while Emily managed to scoff a quite remarkable quantity of meat and bread – goodness knows how she fitted it all into her slender frame.

  The moment she’d done, however, Tom leapt up and grabbed her bundle of clothes. ‘Come on then! Let’s go and find Ann!’ he said, and was halfway out of the inn before the innkeeper stopped him.

  ‘Sir!’ he said. ‘Take care out there today, for they say the Beast has been seen in these parts not many hours ago.’

  ‘Don’t worry,’ said Tom. ‘We’ll be back by nightfall.’

  ‘The Beast don’t respect neither night nor day,’ said the innkeeper. ‘You’d best wait for a party of travellers before you go on your way.’

  Tom lowered his voice, for he didn’t want Emily to catch this conversation. ‘We can’t wait. We’re looking for someone . . . someone who should have been here last night.’

  The innkeeper shook his head and gazed at Tom as if he were looking at him for the last time. ‘The Beast is full of evil – head to toe. It has taken folk in God’s daylight. I urge you, young sir, think twice before you set out with this young lady.’

  ‘What was the old innkeeper bending your ear about?’ asked Emily, as they strolled towards the city gates of Marvejols.

  ‘Oh, he was telling me some joke or other . . .’ said Tom, considerably more breezily than he felt.

  ‘I didn’t hear you laugh,’ said Emily.

  ‘I’d heard it before,’ replied Tom.

  ‘Oh,’ said Emily.

  Although it may not have sounded like it, that exchange was the first true piece of gallantry that Tom had performed for the lady whom he loved and served since they’d set out on their walk across France.

  They walked on in silence for a few paces, and then Tom stopped.

  ‘Emily,’ he said, ‘I don’t really believe in all this “Beast” stuff . . . but . . .’

  ‘I believe in it,’ said Emily.

  ‘Well, I don’t . . . but at the same time it’s best that we’re careful, and I don’t think you should come looking for Ann. I’ll do it.’

  The look in Emily’s eyes was all Tom needed for a reply.

  ‘All right!’ he tried to anticipate her. ‘I know it sounds like I’m playing the hero, but . . .’

  ‘Do you realise who you’re talking to?!’ exclaimed the Lady Emilia de Valois. ‘Perhaps we haven’t been travelling around the countryside together for the last few months?’

  ‘No, of course I . . .’

  ‘Or have you perhaps grown an extra pair of hands last night? So you can deal with whatever’s out there all on your own?’

  ‘I didn’t mean . . .’

  ‘Think you’ve suddenly grown up, do you? Well you haven’t! You’re still a little shrimp of a boy!’ Emily knew where to punch and how to make her punches land – even on a knight in shining armour. Tom had experienced her punches already, but these hurt more.

  ‘We are both going looking for Ann,’ said Emily, and although she didn’t stamp her foot, she certainly wiggled her hip.

  ‘All right. But we’ll have to be really careful – we haven’t any weapons.’

  ‘I assume you are joking?’ said the Lady Emilia de Valois in her most scornful voice.

  ‘I’m sorry?’ said Tom.

  ‘You don’t think I was intending to go out there and hunt for a fearsome beast without weapons, do you?’ Emily replied.

  To tell the truth it hadn’t occurred to Tom that Emily might have been thinking about anything other than digesting her lunch.

  ‘The armourer has a place by the main gate,’ said Emily. ‘I noticed it on the way in, and I assumed that that was where we were going.’

  ‘Oh,’ said Tom, feeling like a little shrimp of a boy.

  In his imagination, Tom had always received his first sword from the hands of the king – it didn’t really matter which one so long as he was a king. He’d always seen himself, in his mind’s eye, kneeling before His Majesty, King Whoever-It-Was, and receiving the weapon while the other courtiers and knights stood around him smiling their approval. He never in his wildest dreams thought he would be bought his first sword by a beautiful damsel or have it bestowed on him in a dingy armourer’s shop on the edge of a French town that he’d never heard of.

  Also, in his imagination his first sword was going to be shining and new – the latest and best weapon of its day. But the only sword that the armourer could offer was a decidedly old-fashioned affair. The armourer told them that the blade was of fabled Damascus steel, but even Tom could see it was pattern welded. A modern sword would be fashioned from a single bar of high-quality steel that meant its surface could be polished like a mirror. Pattern welding, on the other hand, produced a dull surface of densely packed whorls, where the alternate strips of hard and soft iron had been endlessly hammered together until they fused.

  The blade was also straight, for cutting and slashing, rather than the more fashionable pointed blade for thrusting that everyone seemed to favour these days.

  The hilt was also a little disappointing: a wooden grip with plain iron quillons and an undecorated pommel.

  Still, it fitted him, being a corta spada, or short sword, and Tom felt a surge of confidence as the armourer pushed it into the scabbard that now hung from
his belt.

  Emily for her part furnished herself with a berdona – an elegant, slender-bladed dagger that seemed as if it had been made for her.

  But as soon as the two friends stepped out through the town gate of Marvejols, Tom found that the feeling of invulnerability that his new sword had given him started to evaporate into the heat of the afternoon.

  As they looked about the granite hills that surrounded them, they both realised that Ann could be anywhere . . . and so could the Beast . . .

  Chapter 14

  Le Truc du Midi 1361

  The mountains to the south of Marvejols, that in yesterday’s sunlight had seemed remarkable for their beauty, now appeared equally remarkable – but for entirely different reasons. The sweeping hills and flat tops were still there to admire, but all Tom could see now were the thousands of nooks and crannies where a Beast might happily lie, ready to pounce on any unsuspecting person who came looking for their friend . . . a friend whom the Beast had most probably consumed the day before. Every rock was a hiding place, and every fold in the ground had become a monster’s lair from which Tom expected at any moment to see the great creature rear up.

  At which point Emily screamed: ‘Look!’ and Tom froze. A horned creature was indeed rising up from the tall grass ahead of them – a creature whose devilish eyes seemed to glare straight at them but who almost at once turned away and started chewing the grass again.

  ‘That,’ agreed Tom, ‘is the most terrifying goat I have ever seen!’

  Emily’s fingers still held on to Tom’s sleeve.

  ‘But what if it wasn’t a goat?’ whispered Emily.

  Tom tried to think of an answer but couldn’t. There was a logical conundrum involved, but he couldn’t quite put his finger on it.

  ‘We’ve got to keep our eyes peeled,’ said Emily.