The Half-Hanged Man

by David Pilling

  Charles ruefully shook his head. “No tact, no tact at all,” he said, “very well then, to business. You may know that the Holy Roman Emperor and the Pope have called for a Crusade against the Turks in Hungary?”

  I nodded, while Seguin glowered and stuffed a handful of figs into his mouth.

  “They have done so for reasons of self-interest,” Charles explained, “the Emperor because he wishes to chase the Turks from the borders of his eastern territories, the Pope because he wishes to rid France and Italy of brigands. If the Companies can be directed against the Turks, they pose no more threat to Christendom. The logic is simple.”

  “Your Majesty would make a most unlikely Crusader,” I said, “I assume you are not proposing to join the holy enterprise.”

  He smiled complacently, and laced his fingers together. “Absolutely not. I don’t give a damn about the Holy Roman Emperor, or the Turks, or the fate of France and Italy. However, there are plans afoot for another Crusade. A much more interesting and potentially lucrative one. I believe Seguin is losing interest.”

  In fact Seguin was clutching his belly and making horrible choking noises, like a dog trying to vomit. He looked at me and Charles with bulging, desperate eyes, bits of half-chewed fruit dropping from his mouth, and knocked his chair over as he tried to stand.

  “Take my advice, Sir Hugh,” said Charles, indicating the dish of fruit Seguin had been eating from, “don’t touch the yellow crystallised pears. I have a notion they may be a trifle over-ripe.”

  I, who had witnessed and perpetrated countless stabbings, hangings, flayings, beheadings, burnings and whatnot in a lifetime of soldiering, had never witnessed a poisoning before. It was an unnerving experience. I forced myself to remain calm and attend to my food. Charles watched Seguin writhe for a while, and then summoned his guards.

  “Monsieur Badefol needs to rest, I think. Take him to his bedchamber,” he said. Four burly men-at-arms picked the helpless, shuddering Frenchman up by his arms and legs.

  Seguin’s face was swollen and almost as black as his whiskers, his eyes bloodshot and bulging and threatening to burst from their sockets. He uttered dreadful whining noises, like a pig in torment, as the guards carried him out.

  “Now,” Charles said calmly when the door had closed and the echoes of Seguin’s screams had died away, “back to business. The cessation of war in France has left vast numbers of French, English, Gascon and Navarrois soldiers out of work and out of pocket. Vast numbers, Calveley. Am I right?”

  I selected an apple and carefully examined it before taking a bite. “Enough to overrun France, Italy and anywhere else unless their energies are channelled to some useful purpose,” I replied, fighting to keep a tremor out of my voice, “this adventure in Hungary may appeal to a few of their captains, but not all. I see no profit in fighting the Holy Roman Emperor’s enemies for him.”

  “Quite. However, the Moors, equally valid enemies of Christ, remain in occupation of parts of Granada. You have soldiered in Spain, and know the situation.”

  I shrugged, unable to rid my mind of Seguin’s hideously swollen face. “I have. The Moors and Christians of southern Spain have fought and lived alongside each other for generations. A Crusade led by foreigners would upset a great deal of vested interests in the region. I cannot imagine it succeeding.”

  Charles winked and tapped the side of his sharp little nose. “Bluff, Sir Hugh, bluff. The language of Crusade is merely convenient rhetoric. You are an honest man, unlike that filthy swindler I just disposed of. I will confide in you. Some weeks ago, I signed an agreement with Peter of Aragon and Pedro of Castile, as part of a three-way pledge to raise armies for a Crusade against the Moors.”

  I snorted. Charles’ capacity for shameless treachery was boundless.

  “Pedro thinks that King Peter and I are in earnest,” Charles went on, “really, for such a cruel and paranoid ruler, he is remarkably naïve at times. Since old Don Albuquerque died, he has committed folly after folly. I have undertaken to attract certain worthy Captain-Generals to the Moorish Crusade, such as yourself and Bertrand du Guesclin.”

  “Du Guesclin is leading the army marching on Hungary,” I pointed out, but Charles brushed that aside.

  “The Hungarian Crusade is poorly conceived,” he said dismissively, “and certain to fail. Du Guesclin will be out of contract inside a few months. I am already in correspondence with him.”

  “Let us assume that I contract to serve against the Moors,” I said slowly, aware of his bright little eyes watching me intently, “and that you manage to snare Du Guesclin in your net as well, and sundry other captains. What then?”

  “Treachery,” said Charles, savouring the word, “of the purest and best sort. The Companies will not be going anywhere near Granada. Instead they march to Barcelona, where Pedro the Cruel’s half-brother, Enrique de Trastamara, will join them. The combined host will then attack Castile, throw Pedro the Cruel off his throne and replace him with Enrique.”

  “To what end?” I asked, enraptured. Charles’ words were opening up new and glittering prospects before me.

  “To a great many ends. With Aragon and Castile embroiled in a war, I get to keep Navarre intact. The new King of Castile will be grateful to me, and in debt, and happy to give me anything I ask. I am not the only one who stands to gain.”

  I had already raced to that conclusion. “I want a fair division of the spoils, and lordships and castles in Spain,” I said hoarsely.

  Charles grinned. “The horse-trading and details of your contract can be discussed later,” he said, “but I promise you shall be wealthy as any prince of Iberia.”

  “We discuss my contract now,” I said sharply, stabbing the table with my forefinger. That was the wrong sort of tone to use with Charles of Navarre, but sheer greed had overridden my fear of him: I doubted there was any more poisoned fruit, and the little runt barely came up to my waist. I could have broken his neck between finger and thumb.

  Fortunately, he was in a cheerful mood. “Very well,” he said, “I shall call for quill and parchment, and we can set the matter down in writing.”

  “There is one clause I must insist on,” I said while a servant fetched the materials, “or else I will lead my Company out of Spain, and nothing you can offer or promise would entice me to serve you.”

  He raised a languid eyebrow. “What is it?”

  “You do not enter into any communication or contract with Thomas Page and the Company of Wolves. Page is my enemy, and I have sworn to avenge the blood of my kinsman and the theft of my banner on him.”

  Charles thought for a moment, drumming his fingers on the table. “Difficult,” he said, “the Wolves are in Aragon, and already in the service of King Peter. They are currently encamped with the rest of his troops on the Castilian border. I cannot order him to turn them loose.”

  “If I see Page, I will kill him,” I said flatly, “so if King Peter insists on employing the bastard, then you and he must endeavour to keep us apart.”

  Charles didn’t care over-much about a private feud between two mercenary captains, and so agreed. We spent the rest of the evening and the following day hammering out the provisional terms of my contract, while Seguin de Badefol lay in another part of the castle and vomited his life out.

  4.

  The Frenchman’s fate was a truly awful one. Six days he lingered at Falces Castle, while the skin slowly peeled from his body and his innards dissolved, until at last he yielded up the ghost. The news of his murder soon spread, and the name of Charles the Bad became even more reviled and feared than before.

  None of which mattered to me. I spent the next few months as Charles’ guest in Navarre, planning the campaign ahead and my profitable share in it, drilling my soldiers and sending riders south and north, to watch the movements of the Company of Wolves and gather news of the Crusade in Hungary.

  As Charles had predicted, the Crusade was a dismal failure. Possibly influenced by the King of Navarre’s letters, Bertrand
du Guesclin declined to lead the expedition, and so command was passed to the Archpriest, Arnaud de Cervole. That fat old thief ordered the Companies to rendezvous in the Lorraine, but their progress was blocked by the citizen-levies of Strasbourg, who had gathered in force to prevent them crossing the Rhine Bridge. The Holy Roman Emperor pleaded with the citizens to let the mercenaries pass, but they sensibly ignored him. After a month of this deadlock, the Companies dispersed and went back to pillaging France, leaving the Archpriest to grind his teeth and write furious letters of complaint to the Emperor, the Pope and anyone else he could think of.

  As for Thomas Page, I wracked my brains to think of a way of getting at him. His Wolves remained camped on the Aragonese-Castilian border, raiding territories that Pedro the Cruel had recently seized from Aragon, and skirmishing with Castilian troops.

  I longed to move south to destroy Page and retrieve my banner, but that would mean marching through Aragon without obtaining King Peter’s permission, an act of war that might disrupt the fragile alliance between Navarre and Aragon. Both monarchs would be howling for my blood, the campaign against Castile would vanish into the dust, and my glorious career would come to an abrupt end via a noose or an executioner’s blade – or, knowing Charles, a piece of poisoned fruit.

  In desperation, I considered hiring assassins. There was no lack of unemployed swords-for-hire in Navarre who would happily take my money to make an end of the Wolf and the Raven, but that would be a hollow revenge. You must understand, Froissart: I wanted to tear out Thomas Page’s entrails with my own hands, and watch the light dying in his eyes. I wanted to mount his whitening skull, and that of his bitch-whore lover’s, on top of the banner they had stolen from me, and let the world know what happened to those who mocked and insulted Hugh Calveley.

  I won’t bore you with any more details of the build-up to the campaign that culminated with Pedro the Cruel being ejected from Castile and fleeing for sanctuary to France. Suffice to say that this new Crusade obtained the blessing of pope and emperor, and that English and French troops flooded across the Pyrenees to join the expedition. By Christmas of 1365 the allied army was gathering at Barcelona, as planned, where it was joined by Enrique de Trastamara and Bertrand de Guesclin. Charles of Navarre remained behind in Pamplona, embroiled in his usual web of plots and counter-plots, and to watch his rivals destroy each other from afar.

  I was happy to see Du Guesclin, though we had often lined up on opposite sides of a battlefield, and lightly mocked him over the size of the ransom the new King of France had paid for his release.

  “Forty thousand florins,” he said sorrowfully. He was an ugly, toad-like little man, with a big round head and oversized body mounted on scrawny bow legs. “I am indebted to King Charles for the rest of my days. Captain-General Bertrand du Guesclin, the lackey and hireling of a palsied degenerate! Have you seen him, Seur Hugh, this creature that now sits on the throne of France? He looks like nothing on God’s earth - a viper in human form, plagued by hideous sores and bodily afflictions that weep and stink.”

  I murmured that I had heard something of Charles’ unfortunate bodily ailments, but he was also said to be an intelligent man. Du Guesclin spat and threw up his hands and predicted that Charles would be dead or deposed within a year. He didn’t fool me: Bertrand du Guesclin and Charles V were lethal allies who knew each other’s worth. In years to come they would sweep France clean of her enemies.

  I was less happy to make the acquaintance of Enrique de Trastamara. He was a fine-looking man, fair-haired and muscular like his half-brother Pedro, but like Pedro the attractive shell concealed a rotten soul.

  From Barcelona the army of the bogus Crusade marched in disciplined order to Saragossa, where I quarrelled with Du Guesclin over the terms of my indenture and the division of spoil in the coming campaign.

  “My dear Calveley,” he said in his most reasonable, slippery tones, “you have a thousand men in your employ. A mere thousand, in an army of some ten to twelve thousand, the bulk of which are under my command. That is why three-quarters of the profit of the coming campaign must go to me, and one quarter to you. That is fair, surely?”

  I reluctantly admitted that it was. “But see here,” I said, pointing with my dagger at various parts of the map of Spain on the table between us, “King Peter has offered you the lordship of Borja and Magallon, and the valleys of Elda and Novelda in Valencia. Enrique has undertaken to give you the kingdom of Granada. What remains for me? Charles of Navarre promised me lands and castles in Spain in return for my service.”

  Enrique, who had arrived uninvited in my tent to ingratiate himself with his ‘Hector and Achilles’, as he called us, leaned forward and pored over the map. “When I am King of Castile, I will give you all the castles and palaces belonging to the Moorish king of Benamarin, north of the strait of Gibraltar,” he said pompously, “and I’ll find you a nice fat province somewhere, enough to bestow a title. Maybe even a wife. You would like to get married, I presume?”

  “The thought has entered my mind,” I said indifferently, “I’m almost forty now, and I’ll need sons to leave my lands to in Spain. Find me a nice Spanish girl, Don Enrique, one with lots of money and land. And beauty, if possible.”

  “I am the King of Castile,” he said sulkily, “you should address me as Majesty, or Highness.”

  I laughed in his face. “You are King of nothing yet, and without us you would die in penniless exile, begging your bread in Aragon or the Languedoc.”

  Enrique was monstrously proud, like all Spanish noblemen. His handsome features twisted in rage. He would have delivered a furious retort, but had just enough sense to let the words die on his lips.

  “When your derriere is planted on your brother’s throne,” Du Guesclin said quietly, “remember how many good English and French soldiers died to put it there. Majesty.”

  He uttered the honorific with such contempt that Enrique stalked wordlessly out of the tent, his black cloak billowing around him like the fury of God.

  Froissart shivered. The fire was burning low in the hearth, and shadows were gathering in the corners of the hall. Rain lashed at the windows and drummed on the roof tiles, making him feel sleepy.

  “Night is coming on,” observed Calveley, wincing as he twisted his huge head to peer out of the nearest window, “that is fitting. I am about to reach the darkest part of my tale.”

  “It is dark enough already,” said Froissart, massaging his wrist to ease the cramp as he glanced over what he had written. “There is no romance or chivalry here. Nothing but vengeance, bloodshed, treachery and a base desire for profit.”

  “Then you are writing the truth. That was life, and war, as I knew it.”

  Froissart shifted impatiently. “It’s growing late. Skip over the details of the first Castilian campaign. I know what you did there. Tell me of the Wolf.”

  “As you wish,” said Calveley, shrugging his massive shoulders, “my thousand Englishmen spearheaded the advance up the Ebro valley. Pedro’s troops ran before us like rabbits. His many cruelties had alienated his subjects, and few were willing to fight for him. Burgos fell in March and our little pretender was crowned at Las Huelgas. He was true to his word, and made me Count of Carrión in Palencia. Didn’t find me a wife, though. She came later, much good it did me. I have no legitimate sons, and she refuses to leave Spain and live with me here.”

  Calveley paused to allow his mute steward to refill his cup. “Meanwhile Pedro was scurrying from place to place, trying to find someone willing to fight for him,” he went on, “we pushed south, taking Toledo and Seville in short order. By the summer Pedro had given up and fled. So now the roles of the half-brothers were reversed. It was Enrique’s turn to reign in glittering splendour at Seville, while Pedro was the homeless, wandering exile.”

  Calveley belched and spat into the fire, making the embers hiss. “Spanish royalty,” he rumbled, “nothing but a gang of poisonous degenerates. Charles of Navarre, Peter of Aragon, Pedro the Cruel,
Enrique de Trastamara…monsters, all of them. A hydra with four heads.”

  “The Wolf, Sir Hugh,” said Froissart, as sharply as he dared. The old soldier was wandering in his tale, and night was falling.

  “Ah yes, the Wolf,” Calveley said sourly, wiping his mouth, “now we come to it. The last stand of the Wolf of Burgundy, and the flight of the Raven. God rot them.”

  The campaign to place Enrique de Trastamara on the throne of Castile made me a rich and influential man in Spain. After being released from the terms of my indenture in the January of 1367, I demanded and received many rewards for my service from King Enrique and Peter of Aragon: castles and land in Granada, the rank of a baron of Aragon, a pension of two thousand gold florins, and the promise of another castle in the kingdom of Valencia.

  I was well placed, then, to make life in Spain uncomfortable for Thomas Page. His Wolves had acted as scouts for the Aragonese and plundered and burned a number of towns during the invasion of Castile, but stayed well clear of the main army, for obvious reasons. He knew my troops were in the van, and that I was after his head.

  The bugger had evaded me long enough, and it was time to settle our account. I took my increased Company, five hundred lances and a thousand archers, on a swift march north to the Navarrois-Aragonese border, where his Wolves were reported to be billeted in a valley between two hills. We found no wolves there, only a terrified local farmer, who told us that the Englishmen with wolf-badges on their breasts had fled south to a little town on a hill.

  I pursued and stormed the town, a pretty place, but ill-defended, and not so pretty once we were done with it. Again, much to my frustration, there were no wolves to be found.

  “The English left in the night,” the Mayor told me between gasps as two of my knights flogged his naked back with birch rods, “they knew you were coming, dread lord, and dared not stand against you.”

  The evidence of Page’s flight was strewn about the town: abandoned baggage and beasts, half-eaten meals and discarded equipment and clothing. Including - joy of joys - my stolen banner, which one of my men found stuffed into the bottom of a chest behind the altar of the church.