The Half-Hanged Man

by David Pilling

  That contented them, so we slung Calveley’s bleeding weight over the back of one of the rounceys. We moved on, and by unspoken consent I led the way as shreds of grey appeared in the early morning sky.

  The Wolf of Burgundy had his first command.

  11.

  The town lay on the east bank of the Loire, and was encircled with walls and ramparts reinforced by nine strong towers. There were four gates, all well-defended, and a mighty stone bridge to the north-east of the town led over the river. The bridge was overlooked by a castle, which also commanded the plateau and valley on the landward side.

  I was halfway up a tree in the valley and peering through the leafless branches at the fortified town, which was the most impressive I had seen since coming to France.

  “Quite a stronghold,” I shouted down to Ralph, who was standing with the others at the base of the tree, far below, “anyone who held it could dominate the land for miles around.”

  “If you say so,” he shouted back, cupping his hands, “and now you’ve had a good look at it, can you come down? We’re wasting time here.”

  I clambered down awkwardly, snagging my clothes, but the effort was worth it. We had glimpsed the town in the distance while toiling through the forest, following the river south, and I had insisted on getting closer to have a better look.

  “Well?” demanded Hobbes when I had finally reached the ground and brushed myself off.

  “We can’t go there,” I replied, shaking my head, “I saw the banners of Burgundy and France flying from the walls. I say we stop following the river and turn west.”

  “And get lost in the bloody forest,” said Pasmore, who could be almost as gloomy as O Neill.

  I spread my hands. “Whatever’s happening further to the west, the French have garrisons and fortresses all along the Loire. If we keep following the river, sooner or later we’re bound to run into a French patrol. And that will be the end of the Company of the Calf.”

  I glanced at Calveley, who cut a sorry figure, hangdog and silent, his face still disfigured by the marks of the beating my brother had given him. The livid bruises would go down eventually, but I reckoned nothing could mend his pride.

  “The Company is dead already,” said Ralph, “it died on the banks of the Loire, five days ago.”

  A thought struck me. Perhaps the Company could be reborn, though under a different name, and with a different leader…but that was for another time. Right now we had to concentrate on survival, and somehow make contact with the routiers apparently raging up and down the county west of the Loire.

  “West, then,” said Pasmore, with a shrug, “I’ve seen too many of my friends die on the end of French spears, and it ain’t pretty.”

  Hobbes grumbled, and Ralph seemed unsure, but in the end they agreed to my suggestion. They generally did, though they were stubborn souls and always insisted on an argument before doing what I told them. The exception was Calveley, who followed us about like a cowed child, frightened to speak in the presence of his elders.

  We plunged west into the deep forest, though without one of our rounceys, the brave beast that had carried me across the river. We had no food, and nothing to hunt with save our daggers, so we regretfully cut her throat and roasted great chunks of her carcase over a fire.

  There was no means of salting or preserving the meat, and in the following days we laboured through the woods with grumbling bellies. The few isolated cottages we came across were empty and stripped of anything edible. We seemed to be the only people left in existence, moving through a gloomy, tangled wilderness that hadn’t changed since God forged the world.

  “I’ve seen this desolation before,” said Pasmore, “people have been ordered to move out, taking their goods and livestock with them. The French must be trying to prevent the Companies living off the land.”

  The next morning we spotted a small group of horsemen riding towards us from the hills to the south-west. Our immediate reaction was to hide in case they were French, but then I spotted the banner they rode under.

  “A black calf’s head on a yellow field,” I said, “do you see it, Calveley?”

  He peered in the direction I pointed. “Impossible,” he mumbled, “my cousin is in Spain, and my own banner was taken by the Archpriest.”

  “They could be his men,” said Hobbes, but that made no sense to me.

  “Even if they captured our Company’s banner, why would they be riding under it? Come, let’s get their attention.”

  It was a risk, but the alternative was to wander in circles in the woods until we died of cold, dropped from starvation or were captured by the French. The others were used to following my orders by now, and once again I felt the burden of leadership pressing down on my shoulders as I led them out of the woods. Their lives had become my responsibility. If I was wrong, and the horsemen were French, then what followed would be on my conscience.

  We shouted and waved our arms, and the horsemen checked as their leader saw us and reined in. He stood up in his stirrups, shading his eyes to get a better look, and ordered his men toward us.

  “English?” he shouted, and my body, which had been as taut as a bowstring, sagged with relief at the blessed sound of his Southwark accent.

  “Yes,” I called out, still waving my arms like a fool, “we are English. By the grace of God, we are English!”

  He slowed his horse to a trot. “God or the Devil,” he replied, grinning as he signalled at his men to halt, “and the French would swear to the latter. I’m James Hook. What are you doing out here?”

  James Hook had a hard, blank face behind the pasted-on grin. I sensed he was something more than a soldier, and my relief at meeting fellow Englishmen was tempered with caution.

  “That banner,” said Calveley, showing an unexpected flicker of spirit, “it’s mine.”

  Hook glanced down at him, as one might glance at an insect creeping under one’s heel. “Yours?” he said, “we found it by the river, two days ago. We also found a great pile of burned bodies. Your mates, were they?”

  I nodded. “They were our Company. I’m Thomas Page, of Warwickshire. The Archpriest ambushed us. We’re all that’s left.”

  “Chewed you up, did he? Well, no shame to you. The Archpriest is a rotten bastard to have for an enemy, and you can’t trust him. Just wait. He’ll bankrupt the Duke, swindle his troops out of their wages and then abscond with the pay chest.”

  He ran his eye over us. “You look like bloody scarecrows,” he said, “I expect you’ve been having a grand time in the wild, sleeping under the greenwood tree and feasting on venison, that sort of thing.”

  I was bone-weary, but managed to muster a smile. “Sleeping in the pissing rain and living off acorns and horse meat, is more like it. We are badly in need of food, shelter, and new clothes.”

  Hook nodded. “Well, then,” he said, “you had best come along with us. We’re heading for Brioude, and now so are you.”

  At first Hook was a genial companion, and happy to answer my questions as we rode south towards Brioude. He had assumed that I was the leader of our little band and gave me his spare horse, while my companions had to ride two to a saddle with three disgruntled sergeants.

  “Brioude fell two weeks ago,” he told me, “not the biggest town in the Auvergne, but it belonged to the Chapter of Saint Julien, and was a nice, fat, rich little plum, just waiting to be gobbled up. It has strong walls, but the Mayor didn’t bother to get his defences in order. A few hundred of our fellows under Seguin’s command stormed it during the night, climbing over some buildings next to the walls that hadn’t been demolished. The garrison surrendered without drawing a sword in anger, and that was that. Easy.”

  I asked who Seguin might be, and he looked at me in surprise. “Why, Seguin de Badefol, of course. Don’t you know anything?”

  That stung, but I hid my annoyance. “Forgive me,” I replied, “but I have not been long in this country, and the Free Companies seem to have more captain-generals than
I have hairs on my backside. Seguin is a Frenchman, I presume, or a Gascon?”

  “French, from some petty noble house or other, but that don’t signify. What does is that he’s won more battles and taken more castles and towns than anyone cares to count, and the men who follow him are guaranteed a hefty share of any plunder. He’s an evil bastard, though, and not to be trusted.”

  “You said that about the Archpriest.”

  “And I wasn’t wrong. Listen, Page, you seem like a good lad, but good people don’t survive long in the Companies. Here’s the choice. Get out now, go home to England and live a dull, honest life, or toughen up.”

  It would have been easy to take offence at his bluntness, but Hook spoke sense. I quelled my resentment and listened as he told me more about recent events.

  The western frontiers of Burgundy, it seemed, were descending into chaos, despite the best efforts of Duke Philip to shore things up. Employing the unreliable likes of the Archpriest was a sign of his desperation, for the Companies were making incursions at will and threatening to wrench control of the entire region away from him.

  “Brioude is just a beginning,” Hook said cheerfully, “the Duke doesn’t know it yet, but we have a thousand men or thereabouts mustering to the south-east, just beyond the Saóne. Their job is to capture a town to use as a bridgehead across the river, probably Tournus or Uchizy. The Old Brigand is supposed to be somewhere near Brioude, along with his mates Cresswell and Birkhead, and we’ve also got a mob of nasty Gascons under the Hortingo brothers coming to join the feast.”

  “Like hungry rats,” I said, “or wolves.”

  “I prefer wolves,” said Hook, “there’s something noble about a wolf. Rats, less so.”

  The seed of an idea was sown inside my head, and started to flower as we continued to ride south. Brioude was over a hundred miles away, and in a quiet moment round the evening campfire I asked Hook why he had been wandering about so far to the north, and with so few men.

  “I’m not just a soldier,” he replied, “Charles of Navarre gave me a commission to work independently on the frontiers, stirring up unrest where I can and encouraging attacks on the Burgundians.”

  Mention of Charles intrigued me. I had heard his name mentioned before, but had little idea of who he was. Hook, who had already expressed disbelief at my ignorance, gaped at me when I asked.

  “God’s teeth, you really are an innocent, aren’t you?” he exclaimed, “Charles is the King of Navarre, otherwise known as Charles the Bad, and never was a nickname more deserved.”

  Hook was a strange man, with far more layers to him than first appeared, and I found him increasingly difficult company as we continued south. There was a steel door behind his grey eyes, and he refused to discuss his work in any further detail. Instead he turned the conversation to trivial subjects, hunting and weapons, the quality of wine and women in Burgundy, and I resented his obvious unwillingness to trust me. Perhaps he had decided I was some kind of idiot, or a liar, and so treated me accordingly.

  Part of the problem was the behaviour of Calveley, who openly resented Hook’s refusal to return his banner. Hook had no time for him, and laughed at his claim to be Hugh Calveley’s cousin.

  “A pitiful creature like you, kin to Captain-General Calveley?” Hook said with biting scorn, “I’ve seen him, and he would make three of you. Don’t lie to me again, worm, or I’ll cut your worm lips off.”

  Calveley slunk away, muttering darkly to himself. I watched him go, and reflected that something would have to be done about him. The man was useless baggage now, and useless baggage should be disposed of.

  Hook insisted on resting by day in the woods and riding by night, guided by the light of the waxing moon. He was wary of being ambushed by the Burgundians or their allies, and right to be so, but after two days I was thoroughly disorientated. Even so, I forced myself during the hours of rest to study Hook’s maps of central and southern France, absorbing the contours of the land and the names of towns and rivers, before fatigue dragged me down.

  Hook was hoping to meet up with any of the bands of English, Gascon or Navarrois Companies that plagued the Auvergne. The signs of their presence were everywhere, in the shells of burned-out villages, the rotting corpses of people and animals that littered the highway, and the desolate, empty ruins of sacked castles and abbeys scattered about the land. Southern France is a pleasant, fair country, rejoicing in warm weather and rich harvests, but the Companies had turned it into a graveyard.

  “The Tard-Venus,” I muttered, remembering O Neill’s words as we galloped past the shadowy ruins of yet another fire-gutted church. The whitening bones of the priest lay forlornly outside the porch, skeletal hands clasping a charred crucifix.

  We had glimpsed distant fires lighting the horizon to the south-west, and Hook led us towards them at a merciless pace, convinced that a considerable body of routiers must be in the region, burning and pillaging.

  He got his reward when bands of armed horsemen suddenly boiled out of the woods to east and west, many times our number, and quickly surrounded us. No trumpet sounded to herald their appearance, and they moved with menacing speed and silence.

  “Getting sloppy, Hook,” a man’s voice called out in a thick Gascon accent, and one of the horsemen spurred forward to meet us.

  He was a tall, active figure in rusting plate slathered with other men’s blood, his thinning black hair swept back from a narrow skull with high cheekbones. Handsome, I suppose, with his aquiline features and neatly trimmed moustache, but in a cruel way.

  “Hello, Bernard,” cried Hook, without a trace of enthusiasm, and raised his hand in greeting.

  “This is Bernard de la Salle, a Gascon and captain-general of the Red Lances,” he muttered to me, “he may look something of a fool, but don’t take him for one. Oh, and never trust him with money or women.”

  Bernard grinned as he rode closer, exposing teeth like brown needles.

  “Got bored up north, did you?” he said, “I don’t blame you. The best pickings are to be found down here, though you will have to hurry. The Auvergne is a carcase, and the best meat is already being stripped.”

  “I am no freebooter, Bernard, as well you know,” replied Hook, “and I have other reasons for being here, letters for Seguin and the Brigand. I’ve also brought you gifts. Five fine Englishmen, itching to join your Lances.”

  He nodded at me. “This one is their captain, and a bright young thing. Try not to get him killed too quickly.”

  I must have looked surprised, but he waved me into silence. “Don’t look so flabbergasted, boy. You cannot stay with me, and Bernard de la Salle is one of the finest captains you could wish to serve under. Don’t even consider refusing.”

  I could feel the heat of Calveley’s jealous glare, but he said nothing, and Hook was right. Bernard de la Salle had a feral look about him, and clearly not a man to be snubbed.

  “Honoured to join you, Captain,” I said, mustering a weak smile.

  12.

  In Brioude I saw the people of the town forced to line up in neat rows in front of a series of trestle tables set up in the market square. The tables were occupied by clerks and treasurers in the employ of the Companies, and their job was to assess the ransom value of each citizen, calling them forward one by one to interrogate them about their trade or occupation, families, servants and dependents, and the worth of their property and chattels. The details were noted down in enormous leather-bound ledgers, for war was a business, and the Companies were out to make a profit.

  The market was also full of soldiers, Gascons, Englishmen and Navarrois, all keeping a watchful eye on the citizens and moving in swiftly to quash any flicker of protest.

  I saw Seguin de Badefol strolling through the streets of the pretty little town he had conquered so easily. He looked well pleased with himself, a stocky, hard-muscled little man with receding black hair and a forked beard, wearing a garish semblance of Arab dress over his armour. A ridiculous-looking figure, but I
pity the man who ever underestimated Seguin, one of the best soldiers of the time, and one of the most purely evil souls you could ever wish to avoid.

  In Brioude also I set eyes on the Raven for the first time, and the sight of her drove Seguin quite out of my mind. She was walking by his side, one white hand draped over his steel-clad forearm, her eyes downcast, as demure as any nun.

  My new captain Bernardo had given his men the afternoon to do as we pleased, and I was wandering through the town with Ralph when I saw them. I stopped dead, transfixed, and my heart began to thump like the poor dead Snatcher’s drum as my eyes drank her in.

  The Raven was well named. Olive-skinned, slender and straight as a blade, her hair tumbled to her waist in a shining raven-black wave, and she wore it unfashionably loose, in the style of common whores. She was a whore, of course, but no common one.

  She wore a loose white gown, increasing her resemblance to a nun, gathered in at the waist by a belt made of golden florins linked in a chain. A joke at her own expense, I supposed, and more gold trinkets adorned her wrists and ears. She was no garish painted harlot, and wore just a touch of cosmetic to accentuate the graceful curve of her eyes and the sharpness of her cheekbones.

  I wasn’t the only man in the street to stop and gawp at her, but most quickly averted their eyes, either to avoid a scolding from their wives or the wrath of Seguin, who was no doubt jealous of her. I, however, who had seen so little beauty in my life, could not help but stare.

  Ralph nudged me sharply with his elbow. “Look away,” he said urgently, “unless you want your guts spilled. The man with her is Seguin de Badefol, the one Hook warned us about.”

  “I know who he is,” I replied, and was about to do the sensible thing and look away, when the Raven caught my eye.

  Seguin did not notice, else I would either be dead or have another terrible scar to add to the collection on my body. She held my gaze for just a few seconds, long enough for her black eyes to step into my soul, rummage about in the darkness, and then withdraw, leaving me feeling weak and drained.