She smiled at me, before turning back to laugh with practised skill at some joke of Seguin’s. Then they vanished into the crowd.
“You can close your mouth now, and wipe away the drool,” Ralph said drily, “let’s move on, before we get our throats cut.”
I emerged from my trance to see people grinning at me, and a couple of hard-faced soldiers who didn’t look amused in the slightest. Seguin was said to inspire fierce loyalty in his followers, and these two wouldn’t have appreciated some stripling eyeing up their master’s woman. Ralph grasped my arm, and we hurried away.
The next evening Bernard invited me and Calveley to supper, at his lodgings in one of Brioude’s best hotels. I was overawed by the spotless white-plastered walls, beautiful mirrors and elaborate hand-carved furniture, and baffled by the cringing servants who bowed and genuflected and attended to my every whim. I had never been in such a place before, nor seen my reflection in a mirror, and was shocked by the burly, lank-haired creature I saw in the glass, one of God’s less subtle works, roughly made and coarsely wrapped.
There were twelve attending the supper, and most were no finer, with the exception of Bernard and his brother Hortingo, another lean black-haired creature, who had decked their bodies in stolen jewels and finery. There was another captain present, John Cresswell, the Englishman who had been out ravaging the countryside with the Old Brigand and just that day come back to Brioude. He was a stolid, practical Northumbrian, flaxen-haired and double-chinned, and spent much of the meal attending to the mountain of game and roast beef heaped on his silver plate.
Hook was not there, and I hadn’t seen him since he handed us over to Bernard’s care. I assumed he had completed whatever his secret business was in Brioude, and ridden away to cause more mischief on the frontier.
Bernard was interested in Calveley’s claim of kinship with his famous namesake, and more inclined to believe it than Hook. To my surprise, Calveley had recovered some of his old poise, and spoke of his family with a degree of pride and conviction, though he still looked shabby, and the bruises had not yet faded away.
After a while the Gascon tired of listening to the history of the Calveleys, their exploits in ancient wars and the quality of the hunting in Cheshire, and turned to question me. He was pleasant and softly-spoken, but I noticed the rest of the table was silent when he spoke, and there was no doubting his calm air of authority.
“You rode next to Hook,” he said, idly fiddling with the large gold ring on his middle finger. The ring boasted a gleaming red stone, like the eye of some malevolent imp, and had probably belonged to some local nobleman or civic dignitary. “That is quite an honour. He is a wary creature, our Hook, and gets bored easily. Why did he find you such good company?”
I shrugged. “I could not say, Captain.”
“He told me you spent a lot of time studying his maps. Planning a grand campaign, were you?”
There was a rumble of laughter around the table, and one black-bearded toady raised his goblet to toast his commander’s wit. Calveley tried to intervene, spluttering that he was no follower of mine, but I spoke over him.
“Not at all,” I replied, and decided to roll the dice, “but I have a question for you. Are we the Tard-Venus?”
It was a risky thing to say, and Bernard’s brows knitted together as he scowled at me. Everyone present seemed to hold their breath for a moment, waiting for his reaction. I glanced fearfully at Cresswell, looking for support from a fellow Englishman, but he merely winked at me and stuffed another hunk of beef into his maw.
“Indeed we are,” said Bernard, and the world exhaled as he showed no sign of anger, “since the likes of the Brigand and Cresswell here, and that grasping bastard Seguin, have given the Auvergne a good sweeping, leaving us to pick at the crumbs in the gutter.”
“I think this one has a plan,” said Hortingo, who was even more softly-spoken than his brother. He tipped back his wine and smiled at me as he wiped his mouth on his sleeve. “Englishmen can be clever, as we all know. Let’s hear it, young man.”
Bernard shrugged, and suddenly all eyes were on me. They were a fearsome audience, and my heart thumped at the sight of those villainous, scarred faces studying me with a mixture of contempt, amusement and disdain, but I took a deep breath and plunged on regardless.
“Over a hundred miles to the north of here,” I said, keeping my eyes fixed on the table as I drew a map in a puddle of wine, “on the east bank of the Loire, and twenty miles west of Bourges, is the town of La Charité-sur-Loire. I expect you all know it.”
There was no reply, so I continued. “The town commands the river, and the road from Bourges which leads into Burgundy. It is a strong place, I grant you, with nine towers and a castle, and no doubt strongly garrisoned. If the Companies took the place, it would make Seguin’s coup of capturing Brioude look like a child’s trick. As Hook said, I have studied maps, and to me it seems that anyone who holds La Charité has a perfect stronghold and a base for storing plunder. From there, raiding parties could ride westward over the river, into Berry and the Orleánais, to the east into Burgundy, and south into the Nivernais. It would give us command of the upper Loire valley. Duke Philip could not touch us, or his pet Archpriest, provided we kept the place well-provisioned and stuffed with men. His entire western frontier would be at our mercy.”
I sat back, gulping for breath, and waited. After a silence that seemed to last centuries, someone started to clap, very slowly, and I glanced up to see it was Cresswell.
“Damn good,” he grunted through a mouthful of meat, slapping his great hairy paws together,” damn good.”
After a moment Hortingo joined in, smirking and tapping his fingertips together in a gentle parody of Cresswell’s heartier effort. Bernard folded his arms, stuck his tongue in his cheek and nodded at me.
“It can be done,” he said, “it can be done, and by Mary and all the Saints, it shall be. Not by the Brigand, or Seguin, but by us!”
That was the signal for the other brigands and robber knights sat at the table to start making enthusiastic noises, and someone thumped me on the back and pressed a cup of wine into my hand.
The evening broke up into fevered discussion of how La Charité might be taken. I said little, since I was a novice and had no knowledge of siege craft, but sat and listened in a cloud of joy and relief.
It was one of the greatest evenings of my life, with just one sour note. Calveley had glared at me all the way through my proposal, his single eye glittering with malice, but I took little notice of him. Afterwards, as I sank my third cup of wine and looked around for him, feeling heady enough to try and be pleasant to the wretch, I saw his chair was empty.
13.
Like Hook, our captains insisted on travelling by night and resting in the woods by day. I was growing used to the routine by now, and managed to keep up with the vanguard of the combined force, some six hundred English and Gascons under the overall command of Bernard de la Salle, that rode from Brioude. We left suddenly and under cover of darkness, for the de la Salle brothers and Cresswell didn’t want the other captains to learn of our plan and insist on joining in. They would soon learn of our departure, but hopefully dismiss it as a hopeless sortie.
For much of the journey I stayed close to Hobbes and Pasmore, though on occasion I was invited to Bernard’s tent to share supper with him and the other captains. He honoured me because the attack on La Charité was my idea, and I was my usual cautious self, saying nothing except when asked and laughing when others laughed.
There was still no sign of Calveley. “Perhaps he has deserted,” I said to Pasmore one night as we carefully guided our rounceys over some rough, broken ground. We were shivering inside our woollen cloaks, for the deep winter had arrived, draping the land in frost and damp grey mists.
“Let’s hope so,” he replied with a sniff, wiping a drip from the end of his nose, “Calveley is an idiot and a coward. I can imagine it suits him to play the deserter as well.”
&n
bsp; Even so, I couldn’t help feeling paranoid, and imagined him out there, somewhere in the darkened forests, stalking us with revenge in his heart and a sharp knife in his hand.
I spoke to Ralph about my disquiet, but he never had much of an imagination, and laughed it off. “Perhaps John Heym is with him too,” he said, cuffing me playfully about the head, “they would make a pretty pair, wouldn’t they? Don’t be a fool. You always did start at shadows.”
“You’re right,” I agreed, returning his blow with interest, but even so the shadow of Calveley remained lodged in my mind. I saw his eye glittering at me in the gloom of my dreams, and heard the faint strains of his damned harp.
The Companies always liked to move fast, baffling their enemies with their speed and unpredictable tactics, and so it was during the ride to La Charité. Six hundred men was a strong force, but the Burgundians had the numbers to match it, if given the time to pool their garrisons and summon the Archpriest.
Bernard de la Salle was determined to deny them the time, or even the knowledge of our presence, until it was too late. He set a hard pace, and we arrived within sight of the town on the third morning after leaving Brioude.
La Charité was as impressive as I remembered, and I remember feeling strangely possessive as I studied the sweeping walls and towers beside the Loire, dominated by the spire of the great Cluniac priory.
“My Camelot,” I said, without thinking, and looked around guiltily to check if anyone had heard me. Fortunately, everyone was too exhausted after the hellish night ride through difficult country to care what I said.
The defences were at their strongest facing the river, where a gatehouse guarded the stone bridge, and the castle to the north-east loomed over any approach from the valley. Bernard decided to split his company into three, with himself leading the division that would attempt to scale the landward-facing wall to the south, his brother the north, and John Cresswell the east.
“I will take the Gascons,” he said, “Hortingo will have command of the Navarrois, and Cresswell the English. Having men who speak different tongues shouting at each other in the dark is a sure way to confusion.”
“My Spanish is mediocre, but I’ll do my best,” said Hortingo, still wearing the lop-sided smirk that never seemed to leave his face. He and Bernard were armed cap-a-pie in the latest, most expensive steel harness. Cresswell, by comparison, looked like an unkempt brigand who had dressed in the dark. He wore an upturned iron soup basin for a helm, and was bare-legged under an ancient knee-length leather gambeson sewn with iron plates in a style that had gone out of fashion fifty years previously. He had a sword stuck into his belt, but his weapon of choice was an iron-shod mace.
Cresswell had been drinking, and was still taking swigs from a wineskin as he listened to Bernard’s plan of attack. I took one look at him and shuddered. This was the man who was going to lead us up and over the walls of La Charité, assuming he could stagger that far.
“Don’t worry, boy” said Thomas Ughtred, Cresswell’s vice-captain, “I’ve been with Cresswell for six years, and he works better with a drink inside him. Seen much fighting?”
I replied that I hadn’t, bar the brief massacre by the Loire. “Nothing to it,” he assured me, “stick close to me and a few of the other older lads, keep your head down, and you should be fine. Remember, those bastards inside the town don’t know we’re coming.”
Ughtred was a reassuring, bulky presence, a grey-haired veteran of any number of skirmishes and ambuscades, and with the scars to prove it, including the hideous legacy of a sword-slash that had taken away a large chunk of flesh between his jaw and cheekbone. Despite his comforting words I was scared, and resolved to stay well to the rear when we tried to rush the wall.
Bernard finished outlining his plan and clapped his gauntleted hands together. “Right, then,” he said, smiling at the armed men standing around him in the gloomy forest, “let’s be about it.”
Cresswell led us English through the trees with surprising speed and assurance for a man with so much wine swilling inside him, though our progress was impeded by the scaling ladders that had been pieced together while Bernard talked. I tripped and stumbled under the weight of my burden, earning filthy glares from the two men who shared it. Despite my determination to stay in the rear, I had been picked at random to help carry a ladder, and thus found myself in the vanguard.
The flinty walls and towers of La Charité loomed ever closer as we skirted the town. It was two or three hours past midnight, a time when most men are at their lowest ebb, and the unfortunate sentries on the walls would have been chilled to the marrow. The town slumbered on, peaceful and prosperous under a sliver of moon, oblivious to the trap slowly closing around it.
Cresswell had given orders that only he and his officers were allowed to speak, and now the order passed along for us to halt. I was grateful for the respite, and unnervingly aware of the men around me, like so many statues standing silent and motionless in the dark.
“Ladders forward, but slowly,” the words came whispering down the line, and we crept forward, soft-footing through the edge of the woods. The eastern wall was on raised ground, and we would have to race up the steep slope, fix our ladders and grapnels in place and swarm up them before the sentries knew what was happening.
We were on the verge of the trees now, those carrying scaling ladders strung out in a single widely-spaced line, the rest of the company clustered behind us.
The sound of a trumpet pierced through the night, a single clear rising note from the woods to the south, quickly answered by another to the north. Our own trumpeter joined the chorus, and someone shoved me in the back.
I broke into a run, and a great roar went up as the statues sprang to life, war-cries tearing from their throats as they poured out of the forest and sprinted for the wall.
The dozing sentries on the ramparts must have got the shock of their lives as the peaceful woods suddenly vomited a horde of ghastly, screaming Englishmen, along with the bands of Gascons and Navarresse attacking to the north and south.
I stumbled along, encumbered by the heavy ladder, keeping my head down and trying to avoid being trampled by my comrades. The scent of loot and death and women was in their nostrils, which meant Hell was about to descend on the people inside La Charité.
The soldiers on the walls didn’t even have time to gather their wits and aim a crossbow before the first of our people had gained the slope. Cresswell was to the fore, helping to get the first ladder placed against the wall. I saw my brother swarm eagerly up the rungs, just as he had climbed apple trees in the bailiff’s forbidden orchard in Deep Walden when we were boys.
“Ralph!” I shouted, but my hoarse croak was drowned in the general chaos. The first faint crash of church bells sounded a warning inside the town as we pushed our ladder against the wall. Two men-at-arms in steel helms and breastplates immediately scrambled up it.
A strange fierce song, wordless but thundering like a dozen war-drums, was playing inside my head. The war-delight was on me, as it had been when the Archpriest ambushed us beside the Loire, and my fears evaporated.
Another man-at-arms placed his foot on the ladder, but I gripped his shoulder and shoved him aside.
I scaled the rungs as fast as my limbs and those who had gone ahead would allow. The ladder bounced and shuddered under our combined weight, but I cared not. All that mattered was reaching the dark line of battlements that loomed overhead.
I gracelessly hooked one leg over the wall and flopped over onto the walkway. The town was spread out below me, shadowy streets gradually coming to life as lights flamed inside the windows. I imagined terrified citizens, woken by the sound of the bells, tumbling from their beds and yelling at each other as they fumbled for lamps and candles with shaking hands.
Bernard’s orders were simple: kill, plunder and generally cause havoc until daybreak, by which time the citizens and the garrison should be eager to surrender. Our men were more than capable of knocking the fight o
ut of the French, for they were past masters at it, but my chief concern was to find Ralph and stick close to him until the night was over.
Have you ever seen a town being sacked? There is no greater horror perpetrated in war, though I eventually grew immune to it. I first witnessed it at La Charité, and I could scarcely believe the evidence of my eyes as I ran through the streets and alleyways.
Something about being let loose on a defenceless populace wakes the darkness inside soldiers, making them devils rather than men. Bernard’s company was no different, though like all experienced routiers they looted and pillaged methodically, and with practised skill. I saw soldiers working in teams to ply their axes against the locked doors of shops and private houses, while their mates stood back and shot arrows at any citizens who dared to show their faces in the windows. Once the doors were broken the screams started as our men charged inside and did their considerable worst.
No-one paid any attention to me as I hurried through the chaotic, bloody night, picking my way over goods and furniture dragged out by the looters into the street, or else hurled from the upper storeys. La Charité was a prosperous place, and already were men staggering about the streets, drunk on stolen wine. Many of the braver citizens fought back against the scavengers that had come to kill and rob them, and blood ran freely in the gutters as small battles and individual combats erupted all over the town. I narrowly avoided being impaled by one white-haired old man as he came roaring out from a doorway, jabbing at my belly with a spear, and had to look lively to block his thrust and kick him in the groin.
“Goddam!” he shouted as he buckled to the ground, one hand clutching his private pain while he gamely poked the spear at me with the other, “goddam Anglais!”
I left him there, still shouting, and maybe he lived to crow about how he sent one of the hated foreign robbers fleeing for his life. I hope so.
All the time I shouted my brother’s name and experienced terrible visions of him lying helpless and bleeding his life out in some alleyway. It was absurd to hope he could hear my feeble, rasping voice above the noise of the town being murdered, the screams and shouts and clashing steel and clanging bells and smashing timber and whinnying horses. More and more of our men were streaming into La Charité, like a disease spreading inside a defenceless human body, eating it away from the inside.
The Half-Hanged Man Page 8