by Terry Jones
Then he had returned. They had walked for a short while (although it may have been a couple of hours) in her mother’s orchard, hidden by low branches of apple and pear, and he had told her he was going away. He did not know for how long. But he was going far away. He was going to join the Black Prince’s army in France. He would get rich. He would send word. But he did not know when he would ever see her again.
And then he was gone.
At first she did not think it was possible. She woke up every morning and thought she had dreamed that Peter had gone, but that in fact he was still there . . . perhaps sleeping in the room next door. But then she would wake up properly and realise that that was the dream. The reality was that Peter de Bury had gone out of her life.
It was on one of those mornings that she had formed the plan of running away and going to find Peter, wherever he might be. Perhaps she would have waited for the spring to turn to summer, if something had not happened to make her decide to leave then and there.
Her father had ordered her into the solar – an upper room in which there were actually glazed windows, which were a matter of great pride to the whole family. When she entered, her father was standing with an elderly man whose face she could not place.
‘Girl,’ said her father. ‘This man is to be your husband. He has asked for your hand and I have agreed.’
The elderly man bowed to Ann, and his eyes ran eagerly all over her. She felt as if she had been assaulted by that look. And she knew that, whatever happened, whatever it took, whatever would transpire, she would never . . . never . . . let that man – whoever he was – touch her.
And that was it, really. She ran away the next day with all the money she could lay her hands on. She regretted that. She did not want to steal from her father. She was also sorry that her father would lose the not inconsiderable dowry that the elderly man had promised to hand over on their wedding day. He was, it turned out, a wealthy merchant from Oxford, whose wife had died the previous year, and who enjoyed the thought of buying his way into a family with some claim to nobility.
In Oxford, Ann had taken on the identity of the Squire Alan. She had bought some boy’s clothes, pretending she was taking them to her twin brother who was living with a noble family some miles away. She had then borrowed some scissors, and cut short her hair. In the town of Wycombe, she had encountered the thoroughly disreputable Sir John Hawkley, who, mistaking her for a boy, had taken her on as his squire. Some time later, on the way to Sandwich, she had met Tom, and the two of them had journeyed together with Sir John to France to join Edward III’s chevauchée.
But all the time, every step of the journey, Ann was keeping her ears open, hoping to glean some information about Peter de Bury and his whereabouts.
It was not until they were in the Duke of Lancaster’s retinue, encamped outside Reims, however, that she first had any real news of him. A young man who had been in the Earl of Exeter’s retinue and who had known Peter well told her that the youth she sought had become a squire to Sir Richard Markham and that Sir Richard had left the Black Prince’s army and joined up with Sir Robert Knolles.
Now Sir Robert Knolles was a man of considerable abilities, but one who preferred to fight the French without having to share the spoils of war with the English Crown. Naturally Sir Robert swore allegiance to the king of England, and naturally the king of England often found Sir Robert’s depredations against the French useful in the campaign of terror by which he hoped to seize the French throne. Anything that weakened and demoralised the country over which he hoped to one day rule was fine by Edward III. But the fact remained that Sir Robert was a mercenary and a freebooter, fighting for no cause other than to make himself richer.
But then perhaps that was all any of them were doing – those knights and lords, those dukes and earls – perhaps they were all in it for what they could make out of it? That’s what Ann thought, anyway.
In any case, if Peter de Bury was fighting with Sir Robert Knolles, that was where Ann wanted to be. Even if Sir Robert Knolles was burning and devastating towns and villages throughout France, killing and maiming wherever he went.
And now here she was face-to-face with Peter de Bury after three years, or was it more? She had hardly recognised him when she had seen him from a distance. But there was something about the way he walked, something about the way he carried himself, that told her instantly that it was him.
And now she was closer to him, neither the sun-browned skin nor the scar across the eye could disguise who he was. He was her Peter . . . only there was something else about him that she did not recognise. There was something in those blue eyes of his, something in the way he looked at her, that was unfathomably different from the Peter de Bury who had become the familiar companion of her mind.
All this went through Ann’s thoughts as she saw his expression change when she told him who she was.
‘Ann?’ said Peter de Bury. ‘You mean you’re not a boy?’
‘I’m Ann!’ Ann blurted out. ‘I love you! I’ve come all this way to find you!’
Tom was still lying hog-tied on the ground where he’d been thrown. From there he saw Peter de Bury’s eyes glance around at his companions, who were all trying to hide their smirks with varying degrees of lack of success.
‘Ann?’ repeated Peter de Bury. ‘Ann from Woodstock? . . . ha!’ He looked round at his men, and pointed to Ann. ‘We played together as children,’ he explained.
Emily, who had been untied, was busy snatching her clothes back from the various ruffians who had picked them up, but she now stopped and turned to look from Ann to Peter de Bury.
‘That’s right!’ said Ann. ‘We were childhood sweethearts.’
‘Well! This calls for a celebration!’ called out Peter de Bury to those around him. ‘Let’s open up that cask of good Burgundy!’
He clearly knew how to win the hearts and minds of his men, for a cheer went up at this suggestion.
‘Oh, Peter!’ cried Ann, and the next second she had run across to him and thrown her arms around his neck and was kissing him all over his face.
Tom, once again, noticed Peter de Bury’s eyes flicking around the faces of his men. They were all now watching him, waiting for his order. Even the imperious Emily was standing there watching Peter de Bury as if waiting for him to announce the next move. It was clear why he was the leader.
After a while he prised Ann off his shoulder and said in a kindly voice: ‘Well, I wouldn’t have recognised you!’
‘I almost didn’t recognise you!’ laughed Ann, holding on to him as if he might disappear again. She looked round – radiant with happiness – and suddenly noticed Tom on the floor.
‘Oh! And these are my friends!’ she said to Peter de Bury. ‘That’s my best friend Tom . . . we’ve had such adventures together you won’t believe it . . . and that’s Emily.’
‘Fine,’ said Peter de Bury. ‘You’d better untie him,’ he told the man from Cheshire. Then he held Ann and looked into her eyes.
For Ann, that was the moment she’d been waiting for . . . the moment when her eyes met those cool blue eyes of Peter de Bury, and even though they were so cool something inside her melted as it had done all those years ago in her mother’s orchard back in Woodstock.
‘Oh, Peter!’ was all she could say.
‘I can’t wait to hear about everything that’s happened to you,’ he said.
That evening, the companions sat around the fire, drinking the good Burgundy wine and eating pieces of the lamb that was roasting on the improvised spit. Tom kept watching Ann. He had never seen her so happy or so unlike the Ann he had known. She seemed neither like the old Ann nor like the new Ann: it was as if a totally alien being that had been lurking inside her all this time had now taken her over.
Ann told the stories of their adventures: of Sir John Hawkley and the shipwreck, of the siege of Laon, of how she and Emily escaped from the unwelcome hospitality of the Abbot Gregory in the great city of Troyes by climbing do
wn through the lavatory, and of how she was imprisoned in the Pope’s palace at Avignon and finally escaped with Tom and Emily by jumping from the roof.
But it was not Ann telling it, it was a young woman whom Tom had never met before, describing adventures that had happened to somebody else.
And all the time Ann’s eyes never seemed to leave Peter de Bury’s face. It was as if his features (that she remembered so well and yet that seemed so different) contained some special eye-adhesive that only affected her. Perhaps she was examining him to make sure that this was indeed the Peter that she had been seeking all this time and not some imposter that had occupied his body.
Sometimes, when he was looking round his men, or sharing a joke with them, a dreadful fear clamped itself around her heart, and she was convinced that her search had not ended, and that she was still looking for the Peter de Bury she had loved all this time.
But then he would turn to her and smile and it was all right.
Tom, meanwhile, was doing his best to defend the beautiful Lady Emilia de Valois from the rude advances of the soldiery amongst whom they now found themselves.
‘Well, I wouldn’t mind making my bed next to ’ee!’ Tom caught one of them leering at her, and he had been just about to tell the man to mind his manners, when Emily felled the fellow herself, with one of her most lethal and withering looks. It was hard to act the part of the chivalrous knight defending your lady when the lady in question was quite capable of defending herself, thank you very much.
A moment later, Tom noticed the bandit with the turban slipping his arm around the beautiful Emily’s waist. In no time, Tom had drawn the sword that Emily had bought him in Marvejols, and leapt to her defence. The result was not dissimilar to when he had last attempted to use the thing. Only this time, the bandit with turban shook his head, and simply walked straight up to Tom and said:
‘You’re too young to be playing with a dangerous weapon.’
Upon which the man wrested the sword out of Tom’s grip and, much to the amusement of the others, threw it off into the brambles that crept down to the riverbank.
Tom was so humiliated he couldn’t face retrieving the sword for the time being. But he noted where it had disappeared and determined he’d get it back when no one was looking. At least the man in the turban had given up interfering with Emily, thought Tom, so perhaps he’d scored a partial victory after all.
And in a way he couldn’t blame these rough soldiers for the way they milled around Emily like moths around a flame. In that bandits’ lair, under the overhanging rock, surrounded by the harness of warfare, Emily looked lovelier than Tom had ever seen her.
At the same time, Tom couldn’t help stealing occasional glances at Ann and Peter de Bury. Of course, he’d known for a long time that this had been her goal, and he had been happy to accept it as his goal too. Yet now they had reached it, he was overtaken by a feeling of loss. And the more he tried to focus on the miraculous presence of the beautiful Emily, the more he kept remembering little moments between Ann and himself, when they had seemed to be an inseparable team, each one essential to the other.
‘Tom, I’m tired. Come and lie down beside me!’
It was the beautiful Emily speaking. Tom’s train of thought came back to the present: what was this? Emily – the lovely Emily – was inviting him to make his bed beside her? He knew, of course, that she was just protecting herself from the soldiers who were now getting ready for the night, but even so it was an invitation that made his heart beat out of all reason.
Emily had wrapped herself in her thick black cloak, so that she was encased as tight as a chrysalis. Tom lay down beside her, with his head resting on a small roll of clothes. And he lay there full of wonder – to think that he was spending the night beside the lovely Emily, under the stars . . . how could life get any better?
At the same time, he noticed Ann going with Peter de Bury to find their bed away from the others on the other side of some rocks. But at that moment he felt Emily’s dainty arm come to rest on his shoulder, as she snuggled up against his back. He hardly dared to breathe lest he should disturb her, or lest she took that magical hand away from his arm.
And he lay there all night, not daring to move.
*
The next morning Tom could have sworn he had not slept a wink, but Emily was up and about already without his noticing. She had already dressed and done her hair, and had tied her clothes up into their bundle ready for Tom to carry. She had even taken the small roll from under Tom’s head to include in her pack.
‘Come on, sleepyhead!’ said Emily. ‘Let’s get away from this lot.’
Tom struggled to get himself up onto his feet. The routiers were stirring too, packing their horses and making preparations to break camp.
‘Surely you’re not going to miss breakfast?’ he muttered.
‘I couldn’t stomach anything after watching Ann fawning over that villain . . .’
It was so unlike Emily to willingly forgo breakfast that Tom knew there was no point arguing, but at that moment he felt an iron grip on his arm. He span round only to find the Frenchman looking intently into his eyes.
‘I come from Compertrix,’ said the man.
‘Compertrix?’ repeated Tom blankly.
‘In Champagne,’ said the man.
And suddenly Tom’s mind was racing back to a little village outside Chalons-sur-Marne in the region of Champagne, where the poor villagers were so hard-pressed by both the ravaging English marauders and the avaricious French nobility that they had taken to living underground. There he had been befriended by the giant Anton. Together they had journeyed to Avignon, to plead with the head of the Catholic Church to alleviate the suffering of the villagers by cancelling the taxes they were due to pay him.
‘You took a message from my poor village to the Pope!’ whispered the Frenchman. ‘You must be returning with His Holiness’ reply?’
Tom was about to say: ‘The only reply I got from the Pope was arrows!’, when Peter de Bury suddenly appeared from behind the rocks, and the Frenchman instantly melted into the busy mêlée of the waking camp.
Ann was hanging on Peter de Bury’s arm. She had become a spendthrift with smiles, bestowing them on whomever her glance happened to fall. It seemed as if she were trying to use up a lifetime’s supply of smiles all in one morning.
‘Hi!’ said Peter. ‘Where are you two off to?’
‘England,’ said Emily, who had clearly decided not to waste more words than was absolutely necessary on these ruffians.
‘Are you going too, Tom?’ asked Ann, throwing him one of her most valuable and radiant smiles.
‘Yes,’ said Tom. ‘I’m glad you found Peter.’
‘Oh, Tom, I’d never have done it without you,’ said Ann. By some miracle of willpower, Ann had detached herself from the side of Peter de Bury and now stood opposite Tom. She put her hands on his shoulders and kissed him on the forehead – as a mother might kiss a small child whom she is sending out to play.
‘I expect you would have done just fine,’ said Tom. ‘I’m really glad it’s turned out right for you.’ He smiled and Ann turned to Emily.
‘And Emily, thank you too,’ she said. ‘It’s been good knowing you.’
‘Yes . . .’ said Emily. And then it was Emily who suddenly had her arms around Ann. She kissed her briefly and held her just for a moment. Then she picked up her pack of clothes and handed it to Tom.
‘Come on,’ she said.
Ann turned back to Peter, still looking as if she were walking on clouds of good fortune and happiness. And Peter was smiling too. All the world seemed to be smiling this morning. Except that Peter’s voice was not smiling.
‘You’re not going anywhere, my fine Lady de Valois,’ he said. ‘You’re staying with us.’
Chapter 29
Milan 1385
When Tom received the summons to attend the Lady Donnina de’ Porri in her chamber, he thought: ‘I suppose I could save time and trouble
by handing myself over to the executioner straight away!’ Whatever the Lady Donnina had in store for him, he was convinced it was not compatible with his staying alive. Had she seen through his disguise? If not, why had she sent for him? To scold him for singing the praises of the woman she had murdered?
If she knew who he was, would she be suspicious that he had returned to the court in disguise? Or could he bluff her into thinking that he was playing safe? After all, Regina della Scala had warned him that the Lord of Milan suspected him of treachery.
Tom had little expectation that he could outwit the Lady Donnina. And even if she did not suspect him of anything, there was another reason to fear the Lady Donnina. Just suppose the reason for summoning him to her chamber was perfectly harmless . . . perfectly benign . . . that might be even worse . . . Tom could hardly bring himself to think of it . . . just suppose she squeezed his hand again . . . Tom broke out in a cold sweat.
Donnina de’ Porri was having her golden hair brushed when he was shown into her room. Sir Thomas English was quite shocked for a moment. He was used to seeing great ladies only once they had been groomed and dressed – prepared and packaged for presentation to the world.
But great ladies were not so concerned about how their servants saw them, and Tom had to remind himself that he was now a mere minstrel . . . a menial at the beck and call of the great lords and ladies of the Visconti court of Milan.
And yet the Lady Donnina looked perfectly lovely whatever her state of dress or undress. She also seemed to be perfectly well aware that Tom was not a servant.
‘I saw through your disguise the moment you stepped into the hall,’ she said. So he might not have escaped the kennels after all.
‘I did not dare return any other way, my lady, seeing my Lord Bernabò suspects me of treachery.’ Tom was relieved to hear how convincing it sounded.
‘Indeed,’ said Donnina de’ Porri. ‘I didn’t think you’d be so committed to our little business.’
‘And, my lady, you forget I have come for my squire, John!’