by Tom Harper
I almost hail them, but something makes me hold back. Why are they riding so far from the road? Why are they armed as if for war? I press myself into the moist earth. With my javelin and my buckskin cloak I look like a small Welshman, and there are many stories of knights ambushed on the road. I don’t want them to mistake me for an enemy.
The knights pass by. Behind them, a company of men creep through the trees. In their brown leather hauberks and grey-green tunics, they’re almost invisible. They don’t speak or laugh, as men on the road usually do. Some carry bows, and some spears or axes – but the blades are uncovered, and the bows strung. They mean to use these weapons soon. As I watch their progress I realise they’re following the stream.
I know where that stream goes. It flows to my father’s castle.
I crawl, then I run, then I ride. Well before I reach the house, I know it’s too late. I can see the smoke rising from the thatched roofs – my father said they were no good for a castle. The watchtower hasn’t saved us. When I get to the brow of the hill and look out, to the open plain and the sea shimmering behind the smoke, the battle’s already lost. The knights have surprised us utterly. The gates stand open, and the defenders I can see have had no time to arm. Some of them are fighting with rakes and wood-axes; several already lie dead. One of them has a sickle in his hand and is using it to fend off a mounted knight. With a lurch, I realise it’s my father.
My old mare is no warhorse. I jump off and run down the hill, sliding and tripping on the uneven ground. No one sees me coming – or, if they do, they think I’m one of them. I cross the bridge over the stream and enter the gate unmolested. The smoke stings my eyes. The battle must nearly be over – some of the foot-soldiers have already turned to plunder – but in the far corner, under the pilings of the watchtower, there’s still resistance. Two of the mounted knights are circling a figure who’s trying to hold them off with a billhook.
It’s Ralph.
I run towards them. Ralph doesn’t see me. He lunges at one of the knights who blocks the blow with his shield and chops the billhook out of Ralph’s hand. The other darts forward. He stabs with his spear, and Ralph collapses in the mud.
I scream; the knight turns, and the moment I see his face I let fly my javelin.
But I’m only ten years old, and though I’m accurate I’m not strong yet. The javelin sticks in his shield like an arrow. He laughs, pulls it free and drops it in the mud. He walks his horse towards me, not knowing whether to spear me on his lance or just trample me into the ground. I grab a smouldering brand that was once a cruck beam and swipe it in front of me.
The other knight rides up and touches his captain’s arm.
‘Look at his head.’ He’s seen my tonsure. He wheels his horse to face his captain. ‘It’s a sin to kill a priest.’
‘And folly to leave a son alive.’ The captain is a huge man, taller than the roof of the hall – or so it seems to my ten-year-old imagination. He wears a chain ventail laced on to his helmet so I can’t see his face; his helmet puts his eyes into shadow. I stare at him unblinking. I’ve heard that if you see the man who kills you, you haunt him ever afterwards as a ghost.
It’s only afterwards that I realise he was speaking in French. At the time, I don’t notice. The captain is deciding whether to kill me. His horse paws the ground. Warhorses are not bred to stand still in battle.
Somewhere in the distance a horn blows. I don’t know who has sounded it, but it speaks to the captain. He pulls his own horn from his saddle and repeats the call. Around me, I sense the tide of the battle ebbing.
The captain pricks his spurs without warning. The horse springs forward and thunders towards me – I know I should jump out of the way, but I can’t move. Perhaps the greater part of me wants to die. The ground trembles under my feet, as if the earth is opening itself to receive me. I close my eyes and wait for death.
And then the ground is still and the horse is behind me. I haven’t moved. I look down, and realise I’m still holding the brand. At the last moment, the horse must have swerved away from the fire. Whether the knight chose to spare me, or whether he missed his opportunity, I’ll never have the chance to ask. If I ever see him again I’ll kill him on sight.
The other knight rides by. He doesn’t want to kill me, but as he passes he swings the butt of his spear into my ribs, knocking me back onto the ground. By the time I get to my feet, the battle’s over.
I stagger to the gate and see the departing raiders streaming back across the bridge with our livestock, my father’s horses, whatever bits and pieces of our household they can carry. One has a duck under his arm; another is carrying a stack of our silver plates as if he’s just cleared them from the table. A goblet wobbles on top of the pile.
My mother runs after them, screaming a cry that tears open my soul. She catches up with the knights at the head of the bridge. One of them turns; he makes a movement I can’t see, and my mother collapses to the ground. She looks as if she’s fainted, but she’ll never get up. My father is dead, run through his thighs with a lance and then beheaded. My brother Ralph died beside him. Wandering through the ashes, I see the crows and rooks coming to pick out his eyes. I run towards them in a fury, but I’m so feeble that day they barely move. They flutter onto a broken plough and watch, waiting for their chance. There are no buildings where I can hide Ralph’s body, so I dig his grave right there.
The Welsh love their feuds, as ready to avenge a hundred-year-old insult as one suffered this morning. They’re vindictive, bloodthirsty and violent. Perhaps, living among them, I’ve learned something of their ferocity, for now I have sworn revenge.
I am the oldest son now. Knighthood is my right, and my duty.
IX
East London
A FOG HUNG over London that morning. The streetlamps were still lit, casting a false dawn over the cobbled alleys and brick warehouses. If not for the lights of the burglar alarms winking from their gables, it might have been a hundred years ago.
Ellie stood waist deep in boxes and wished she’d worn gloves. The rain the day before had turned the cardboard to pulp, which came away in long strips when she touched it. The skip stank of damp and urine; the ground squelched underfoot. On the wall above, a scarred sign advertised the Rosenberg Automation Company.
Delicately, as if she were handling medieval parchments and not the refuse in a back alley behind a factory, she peeled the boxes apart to find the names written on them. She wrote them down on a pad of paper. Some had telephone numbers or web addresses, and she wrote those down too with shivering, sticky fingers.
When she was done, she clambered out of the skip and went round to the café across the street from the factory entrance. A Chinese woman brought her greasy eggs and coffee while she watched the morning shift arrive. Some of the workers came in to get breakfast or a cup of tea, and she listened carefully to their conversation. If any of them had seen her the day before, they didn’t connect her with the young woman who’d arrived in the Bentley and the thousand-pound suit. That morning, Ellie had scraped her hair back into the tightest ponytail she could manage, and put on an old tracksuit she hadn’t touched since she left Newport. She wore no make-up. She wondered if this was how she’d have looked if she’d never left home, never gone to Oxford, never written an essay for the Spenser Prize and never come to the attention of Vivien Blanchard. All I need is the baby, she thought.
She sat there most of the morning, pretending to read the Sun and observing the delivery vans come and go. At eleven o’clock she drained her last cup of coffee and found a bus to take her west. She showered at her flat and tried to scrub the dirt from under her fingernails. She looked longingly at the new clothes from the day before: would it be wrong to wear them two days in a row? She was sure Blanchard would notice.
‘I wondered if you would join us this morning,’ he said, when she finally reached the office. It was half-past twelve and he looked angry. Ellie didn’t care.
‘I’ve got it,’
she announced. ‘Rosenberg. We have consolidated our supply chain, he said, remember? They went too far. There’s a component in their products, a logic board, and they only have one supplier. They’re completely dependent on them.’
Blanchard leaned back in his chair and drew on his cigar. Ellie already recognised the trick: to lure you on with indifference, ready to snap back at a moment’s notice. ‘How do you know this?’
‘The accounts. Last year they spent a quarter less on components than the year before, but their sales stayed constant. I went down to the factory and looked around. There are only two companies in the world that make these logic boards, and only one of them has boxes going into that factory.’
Blanchard stared at the painting on the wall, at the helpless damsel tied to the tree.
‘They can insure against supply-chain disruption.’
‘Their premiums haven’t changed.’ Ellie could hardly control her excitement. ‘The old man hasn’t told them. He’s driving without insurance and praying he doesn’t get in an accident. I made a few phone calls.’ Pretending to be a buyer from a rival firm, trembling with the deceit and the fear of getting caught. ‘It would take him six months to arrange a new supplier, and the business doesn’t have the cash to survive that long.’
She stopped talking and realised she was shaking. For the first time, she began to understand the energy that drove Blanchard.
‘And you propose …?’
‘Buy the supplier as well. It’s owned by a private equity firm who are sitting on a lot of losses. They’d bite your hand off. Then merge the two companies and make the business properly viable.’
Blanchard knitted his fingers together and stared at her, as if she were a work of art he was slowly coming to appreciate. His cigar burned untouched in the ashtray.
‘Ellie, this is good. Very good indeed. Our client will be delighted when I tell him.’
When I tell him. Ellie tried not to look disappointed. Blanchard saw it anyway.
‘I am not trying to steal your glory, Ellie. Not at all. But I cannot spare you. I need to send you on an assignment straight away. There is a company in Luxembourg that one of our clients wishes to acquire a stake in. It is a complex arrangement and there are other bidders. At the moment we are performing due diligence. I want you to dig through their files and see if you can find anything that would affect the value of the company, anything they are trying to hide from us.’
In Luxembourg? What would she tell Doug? ‘When do I leave?’
Blanchard consulted his watch. ‘A car will take you to the airport in ten minutes. You are booked into the Sofitel. Not the best hotel in Luxembourg, I am afraid, but it is where the other bidders are staying. Perhaps you can get to know them. I’m sorry there is no time to pack. Buy whatever you need at the airport, or when you get there. Our local manager is a woman called Christine Lafarge. She can help you.’
Ellie turned to go. Halfway out the door she remembered something.
‘Why does the Rosenberg deal have to be completed so quickly? That was the one thing I couldn’t work out.’
Blanchard smiled. ‘I am glad there are some secrets we can keep from you, Ellie. In a month, the Government will announce an inquiry into the possibility of building a new freight distribution terminal in Woolwich. Major infrastructure investment. The Rosenberg factory will double in value. Six months later, the Government will decide in favour and it will double in value again.’
He sounded so certain it would happen, as if he could lift the veil and peer into the future at will. Ellie remembered the ministerial Jaguar she’d seen outside the bank on the day of her interview.
The adrenaline was draining out of her; guilt had begun to set in. She thought of the old man’s stubbornness, the weight of the generations on his shoulders. ‘I suppose it’ll be good for the business,’ she said hopefully.
Blanchard stubbed out his cigar. ‘Very good for business.’
Three hours later Ellie landed in Luxembourg. It was hard to believe the day had started waist-deep in rotting cardboard. She breezed through immigration, had no bag to wait for, and walked straight past the man in the arrivals hall holding a sign with her name on it. He had to run to catch up with her.
‘This way, please.’
He led her out the front, where a long black Mercedes sat carelessly parked across a pair of double-yellow lines. A woman slid out of the back seat. Slim, elegant and agelessly beautiful, in a grey Chanel suit and diamond earrings, she held Ellie by the shoulders and kissed her on both cheeks.
‘Christine Lafarge – welcome. Vivian has told me all about you. He speaks very highly. Your journey was not tedious? Air travel is such a bore these days.’
It was the second time in her life Ellie had been on a plane – and the first that included free food and drink, let alone an executive lounge and dedicated check-in. She said it had been fine, and watched Luxembourg glide past the window as the car headed for the city.
‘I am sorry this is very unexpected. The work is going so slowly, and today one of my team has disappeared – pouf – off to a new job. Vivian has told you the situation?’
‘I read the file on the plane.’ Talhouett Holdings, a mining and chemicals concern. The Luxembourg government held a stake which it was trying to divest. Two bidders had been shortlisted, and were now frantically combing through the records trying to uncover any dirty laundry before they finalised their offers. There were two weeks to go.
They crawled through the outskirts of the city, a long strip of square apartment blocks and neon signs. Ellie had expected something grander.
‘There wasn’t much in the file about the bidder,’ she said tentatively.
‘Groupe Saint-Lazare. They are our biggest client, both here and across the company. They are also a shareholder in Monsalvat, so there is much pressure on us for success.’
At last they were approaching the heart of the city. The street widened into a grand boulevard lined with handsome neoclassical buildings, then swung along the edge of a vast ravine filled with trees. Ellie could see houses spilling down the steep slopes of the gorge, as if the city could no longer contain itself. Across its depths, glass office blocks faced vast stone bastions, impossibly high. The setting sun shone off the ramparts and cast them in a fiery, medieval light.
The car dropped Ellie outside the Sofitel. A porter appeared to take her luggage, but all she had was a black shoulder bag she’d bought at the airport with a few toiletries and a change of underwear.
‘Vivian said you had no time for baggage.’ Christine clicked her tongue. ‘This is my fault. Tomorrow I will show you some shops where you can buy clothes.’ She gave Ellie an appraising, motherly stare. ‘I think they will be very good on you. But now, I am sure you are tired after your journey. My number is in your phone if you need anything. I hope the hotel is not disagreeable.’
If Ellie hadn’t had the Barbican flat to compare it to, she’d have thought it was the most perfect room she’d ever seen. The bed alone was wider than her old bedroom; the towels in the marble bathroom were almost as big as the sheets. She ordered a gin and tonic from room service, shutting her eyes to the price, and went out on the balcony. Her room looked straight across the ravine to the old city perched on its plateau. She could see spires, and the turrets of the ducal palace, with the green waves of a forest rippling behind. It looked like a fairy tale.
The beauty of it made her feel lonely. She thought of Doug. She’d tried to ring him before she left, but he’d been in the library, his phone switched off. With a pang of guilt, she realised he didn’t even know she was in Luxembourg. She got her phone and hesitated. Unlimited calls, Destrier had said. Did that include calls from abroad?
It didn’t matter: Doug’s phone was still off. The library stayed open until eight – nine in Luxembourg – and Doug was quite capable of staying until it closed without coming up for breath. It was something they’d had in common.
She undressed and ran herself a bat
h. The gin had warmed her blood; she felt drowsy. She’d call Doug in an hour or two. She closed her eyes and let the hot water cover her.
Six storeys down and half a mile distant, the Mercedes prowled along the Boulevard de la Pétrusse. Christine Lafarge sat in the back, upright in the deep leather, and spoke softly into her phone.
‘She has arrived. She seems very sweet, Vivian; I can see why you like her so much. But are you sure she is suitable?’
She listened while Blanchard summarised the Rosenberg Automation deal. She smiled.
‘Perhaps your little kitten has claws. Did you get my package?’
‘Destrier has him on the sixth floor.’
‘I hope he gets what he wants.’
‘He is very thorough. But be careful, Christine. There will be others. Watch Ellie closely.’
X
Normandy, 1132
I LIE ON my mattress and listen to the night. I hurt all over. My arm aches from practising my sword strokes, and my chest and shoulders from being practised upon. My hands are raw from cleaning other men’s armour, working the bristles of my brush into the thin holes between the rings. I smell of sweat, oil, blood and straw.
It’s been three years since I crossed the sea, puking into the bilge as the storm battered us. I’ve taken service as a squire in the household of Guy de Hautfort. He’s my uncle’s cousin: my uncle arranged that I should come here to learn the skills of a knight. There are half a dozen of us, some from England, some from Normandy. I think Guy is a good man, but he has little concern for us. We’re thrown together like a litter of whelps, to snarl and chase and bite each other until we’ve found our places.
I’m not happy here. When I arrived, the other boys teased me for my accent and my tonsure. They called me ‘monk’ and ‘Welshman’; they stole my food and threw my clothes in the latrine. I cried a lot in those first months. Now I’ve learned to hide my feelings. Even when I’m naked, I have my armour.