BERNARD CORNWELL

Copyright

Published by HarperCollinsPublishers Ltd

1 London Bridge Street

London SE1 9GF

www.harpercollins.co.uk

First published by HarperCollinsPublishers 2012

Copyright © Bernard Cornwell 2012

Maps © John Gilkes 2012

Bernard Cornwell asserts the moral right to be identified as the author of this work

A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library

This novel is entirely a work of fiction. The names, characters and incidents portrayed in it, while at times based on historical figures, are the work of the author’s imagination.

All rights reserved under International and Pan-American Copyright Conventions. By payment of the required fees, you have been granted the non-exclusive, non-transferable right to access and read the text of this e-book on-screen. No part of this text may be reproduced, transmitted, down-loaded, decompiled, reverse engineered, or stored in or introduced into any information storage and retrieval system, in any form or by any means, whether electronic or mechanical, now known or hereinafter invented, without the express written permission of HarperCollins.

Source ISBN: 9780007331864

Ebook Edition © 2013 ISBN: 9780007510900

Version: 2018-04-20

is for my grandson, Oscar Cornwell, with love.

‘The English are riding, no-one knows where.’

Warning sent in fourteenth-century France, quoted in

A Fool and His Money by Ann Wroe

Contents

Cover

Title Page

Copyright

Dedication

Epigraph

Map

Prologue: CARCASSONNE

Part One: AVIGNON

Chapter One

Chapter Two

Chapter Three

Part Two: MONTPELLIER

Chapter Four

Chapter Five

Chapter Six

Chapter Seven

Chapter Eight

Chapter Nine

Part Three: POITIERS

Chapter Ten

Chapter Eleven

Chapter Twelve

Chapter Thirteen

Part Four: BATTLE

Chapter Fourteen

Chapter Fifteen

Chapter Sixteen

HISTORICAL NOTE

Keep Reading

About the Author

Also by Bernard Cornwell

The Sharpe Series (in chronological order)

About the Publisher

PROLOGUE

Carcassonne

He was late.

Now it was dark and he had no lantern, but the city’s flames gave a lurid glow that reached deep into the church and gave just enough light to show the stone slabs in the deep crypt where the man struck at the floor with an iron crow.

He was attacking a stone incised with a crest that showed a goblet wreathed by a buckled belt on which was written Calix Meus Inebrians. Sun rays carved into the granite gave the impression of light radiating from the cup. The carving and inscription were worn smooth by time, and the man had taken little notice of them, though he did notice the cries from the alleyways around the small church. It was a night of fire and suffering, so much screaming that it smothered the noise as he struck the stone flags at the edge of the slab to chip a small space into which he could thrust the long crow. He rammed the iron bar down, then froze as he heard laughter and footsteps in the church above. He shrank behind an archway just before two men came down into the crypt. They carried a flaming torch that lit the long, arched space and showed that there was no easy plunder in sight. The crypt’s altar was plain stone with nothing but a wooden cross for decoration, not even a candlestick, and one of the men said something in a strange language, the other laughed, and both climbed back to the nave where the flames from the streets lit the painted walls and the desecrated altars.

The man with the iron crow was cloaked and hooded in black. Beneath the heavy cloak he wore a white robe that was smeared with dirt, and the robe was girdled with a three-knotted cord. He was a Black Friar, a Dominican, though on this night that promised no protection from the army that ravaged Carcassonne. He was tall and strong, and before he had taken his vows he had been a man-at-arms. He had known how to thrust a lance, cut with a sword, or kill with an axe. He had been called Sire Ferdinand de Rodez, but now he was simply Fra Ferdinand. Once he had worn mail and plate, he had ridden in tournaments and slaughtered in battle, but for fifteen years he had been a friar and had prayed each day for his sins to be forgiven. He was old now, almost sixty, though still broad in the shoulders. He had walked to reach this city, but the rains had slowed his journey by flooding the rivers and making fords impassable and that was why he was late. Late and tired. He rammed the crow beneath the carved slab and heaved again, fearing that the iron would bend before the stone yielded, then suddenly there was a coarse grating sound and the granite lifted and then slid sideways to offer a small gap into the space beneath.

The space was dark because the devil’s flamelight from the burning city could not reach into the grave, and so the friar knelt by the dark hole and groped. He discovered wood and so he thrust the crow down again. One blow, two blows, and the wood splintered, and he prayed there was no lead coffin inside the timber casket. He thrust the crow a last time, then reached down and pulled pieces of splintered wood out of the hole.

There was no lead coffin. His fingers, reaching far down into the tomb, found cloth that crumbled when he touched it. Then he felt bones. His fingers explored a dry eye-hole, loose teeth, and discovered the curve of a rib. He lay down so he could stretch his arm deeper and he groped in the grave’s blackness and found something solid that was not bone. But it was not what he sought; it was the wrong shape. It was a crucifix. Voices were suddenly loud in the church above. A man laughed and a woman sobbed. The friar lay motionless, listening and praying. For a moment he despaired, thinking that the object he sought was not in the tomb, but then he reached as far as he could and his fingers touched something wrapped in a fine cloth that did not crumble. He fumbled in the dark, caught hold of the cloth, and tugged. Some object was wrapped inside the fine cloth, something heavy, and he inched it towards him, then caught proper hold of it and drew the object free of the bone hands that had been clutching it. He pulled the thing from the tomb and stood. He did not need to unwrap it. He knew he had found la Malice, and in thanks he turned to the simple altar at the crypt’s eastern end and made the sign of the cross. ‘Thank you, Lord,’ he said in a murmur, ‘and thank you, Saint Peter, and thank you Saint Junien. Now keep me safe.’

The friar would need heavenly help to be safe. For a moment he considered hiding in the crypt till the invading army left Carcassonne, but that might take days and, besides, once the soldiers had plundered everything easy they would open the crypt’s tombs to search for rings, crucifixes, or anything else that might fetch a coin. The crypt had sheltered la Malice for a century and a half, but the friar knew it would offer him no safety beyond a few hours.

Fra Ferdinand abandoned the crow and climbed the stairs. La Malice was as long as his arm and surprisingly heavy. She had been equipped with a handle once, but only the thin metal tang remained and he held her by that crude grip. She was still wrapped in what he thought was silk.

The church nave was lit by the houses that burned in the small square outside. There were three men inside the church, and one called a challenge to the dark-cloaked figure who appeared from the crypt steps. The three were archers, their long bow staves were propped against the altar, but despite the challenge they were not really interested in the stranger, only in the woman they had spreadeagled on the altar steps. For a heartbeat Fra Ferdinand was tempted to rescue the woman, but then four or five new men came through a side door and whooped when they saw the naked body stretched on the steps. They had brought another girl with them, a girl who screamed and struggled, and the friar shuddered at the sound of her distress. He heard her clothes tearing, heard her wail, and he remembered all his own sins. He made the sign of the cross, ‘Forgive me, Christ Jesus,’ he whispered and, unable to help the girls, he stepped through the church door and into the small square outside. Flames were consuming thatched roofs that flared bright, spewing wild sparks into the night wind. Smoke writhed above the city. A soldier wearing the red cross of Saint George was being sick on the church steps and a dog ran to lap up the vomit. The friar turned towards the river, hoping to cross the bridge and climb to the Cité. He thought that Carcassonne’s double walls, towers and crenellations would protect him because he doubted that this rampaging army would have the patience to conduct a siege. They had captured the bourg, the commercial district that lay west of the river, but that had never been defensible. Most of the town’s businesses were in the bourg, the leather shops and silversmiths and armourers and poulterers and cloth merchants, yet only an earth wall had surrounded those riches, and the army had swarmed over that puny barrier like a flood. Carcassonne’s Cité, though, was a fortress, one of the greatest in France, a bastion ringed by vast stone turrets and towering walls. He would be safe there. He would find a place to hide la Malice and wait until he could return it to its owner.

He edged into a street that had not been fired. Men were breaking into houses, using hammers or axes to splinter doors. Most of the citizens had fled to the Cité, but a few foolish souls had remained, perhaps hoping to protect their properties. The army had arrived so swiftly that there had been no time to take every valuable across the bridge and up to the monstrous gates that protected the hilltop citadel. Two bodies lay in the central gutter. They wore the four lions of Armagnac, crossbowmen killed in the hopeless defence of the bourg.

Fra Ferdinand did not know the city. Now he tried to find a hidden way to the river, using shadowed alleys and narrow passages. God, he thought, was with him, for he met no enemies as he hurried eastwards, but then he came to a wider street, lit bright by flames, and he saw the long bridge, and beyond it, high on the hill, the fire-reflecting walls of the Cité. The stones of the wall were reddened by the fires blazing in the bourg. The walls of hell, the friar thought, and then a gust of the night wind swirled a great mask of smoke down to shroud his view of the walls, but not the bridge, and on the bridge, guarding its western end, were archers. English archers with their red-crossed tunics and their long deadly bows. Two horsemen, mailed and helmeted, were with the archers.

No way to cross, he thought. No way to reach the safety of the Cité. He crouched, thinking, then headed back into the alleys. He would go north.

He had to cross a major street lit by newly set fires. A chain, one of the many that had been strung across the roadway to hold up the invaders, lay in the gutter where a cat lapped at blood. Fra Ferdinand ran through the firelight, dodged into another alley, and kept running. God was still with him. The stars were obscured by smoke in which sparks flew. He crossed a square, was baulked by a dead-end alley, retraced his steps, and headed north again. A cow bellowed in a burning building, a dog ran across his path with something black and dripping in its teeth. He passed a tanner’s shop, jumping over the hides that were strewn on the cobbles, and there ahead was the risible earth bank that was the bourg’s only defence, and he climbed it, then heard a shout and glanced behind to see three men pursuing him.

‘Who are you?’ one shouted.

‘Stop!’ another bellowed.

The friar ignored them. He ran down the slope, heading towards the dark countryside that lay beyond the huddle of cottages built outside the earthen bank, as an arrow hissed past him, missing him by the grace of God and the width of a finger, and he twisted aside into a passage between two of the small houses. A steaming manure heap stank there. He ran past the dung and saw the passage ended in a wall, and turned back to see the three men barring his path. They were grinning.

‘What have you got?’ one of them asked.

‘Je suis Gascon,’ Fra Ferdinand said. He knew the city’s invaders were both Gascons and English, and he spoke no English. ‘Je suis Gascon!’ he said again, walking towards them.

‘He’s a Black Friar,’ one of the men said.

‘But why did the goddamned bastard run?’ another of the Englishmen asked. ‘Got something to hide, have you?’

‘Give it here,’ the third man said, holding out his hand. He was the only one with a strung bow; the other two had their bows slung on their backs and were holding swords. ‘Come on, arseface, give it me.’ The man reached for la Malice.

The three men were half the friar’s age, and, because they were archers, probably twice as strong, but Fra Ferdinand had been a great man-at-arms and the skills of the sword had never deserted him. And he was angry. Angry because of the suffering he had seen and the cruelties he had heard, and that anger made him savage. ‘In the name of God,’ he said, and whipped la Malice upwards. She was still wrapped in silk, but her blade cut hard into the archer’s outstretched wrist, severing the tendons and breaking bone. Fra Ferdinand was holding her by the tang, which offered a perilous grip, but she seemed alive to him. The wounded man recoiled, bleeding, as his companions roared with anger and stabbed their blades forward, and the friar parried both with one cut and lunged forward, and la Malice, though she had been in a tomb for over a hundred and fifty years, proved as sharp as a newly honed blade and her fore-edge skewered through the padded haubergeon of the nearest man and opened his ribs and ripped into a lung, and before the man even knew he had been wounded Fra Ferdinand had swept the blade sideways to take the third man’s eyes and blood brightened the alleyway and all three men were retreating now, but the Black Friar gave them no chance to escape. The blinded man tripped backwards onto the manure pile, his companion hacked his blade in desperation, and la Malice met it and the English sword broke in two and the friar flicked the silk-wrapped blade to cut that man’s gullet and felt the blood splash on his face. So warm, he thought, and God forgive me. A bird shrieked in the darkness, and the flames roared up from the bourg.

He killed all three archers, then used the silk wrapping to clean la Malice’s blade. He thought of saying a brief prayer for the men he had just killed, then decided he did not want to share heaven with such brutes. Instead he kissed la Malice, then searched the three bodies and found some coins, a lump of cheese, four bowstrings, and a knife.

The city of Carcassonne burned and filled the winter night with smoke.

And the Black Friar walked north. He was going home, home to the tower.

He carried la Malice and the fate of Christendom.

And he vanished into darkness.

The men came to the tower four days after Carcassonne had been sacked.

There were sixteen of them, all cloaked in fine, thick wool and all mounted on good horses. Fifteen of the men wore mail and had swords at their waists, while the remaining rider was a priest who carried a hooded hawk on his wrist.

The wind came harsh down the mountain pass, ruffling the hawk’s feathers, rattling the pines and whipping the smoke from the small cottages of the village that lay beneath the tower. It was cold. This part of France rarely saw snow, but the priest, glancing from beneath the black hood of his cloak, thought there might be flakes in the wind.

There were ruined walls about the tower, evidence that this had once been a stronghold, but all that was left of the old castle was the tower itself and a low thatched building where perhaps servants lived. Chickens scratched in the dust, a tethered goat stared at the horses, while a cat ignored the newcomers. What had once been a fine small fortress, guarding the road into the mountains, was now a farmstead, though the priest noticed that the tower was still in good repair, and the small village in the hollow beneath the old fortress looked prosperous enough.

A man scurried from the thatched hut and bowed low to the horsemen. He did not bow because he recognised them, but because men with swords command respect. ‘Lords?’ the man asked anxiously.

‘Shelter the horses,’ the priest demanded.

‘Walk them first,’ one of the mailed men added, ‘walk them, rub them down, don’t let them eat too much.’

‘Lord,’ the man said, bowing again.

‘This is Mouthoumet?’ the priest asked as he dismounted.

‘Yes, father.’

‘And you serve the Sire of Mouthoumet?’ the priest asked.

‘The Count of Mouthoumet, yes, lord.’

‘He lives?’

‘Praise be to God, father, he lives.’

‘Praise be to God indeed,’ the priest said carelessly, then strode to the tower door, which stood at the top of a brief flight of stone steps. He called for two of the mailed men to accompany him and ordered the rest to wait in the yard, then he pushed open the door to find himself in a wide, round room used to store firewood. Hams and bunches of herbs hung from the beams. A stair led around one half of the wall, and the priest, not bothering to announce himself or wait for an attendant to greet him, took the stairs to the upper floor where a hearth was built into the wall. A fire burned there, though much of its smoke swirled about the circular room, driven back through the vent by the cold wind. The ancient wooden floorboards were covered in threadbare rugs; there were two wooden chests on which candles burned because, though it was daylight outside, the room’s two windows had been hung with blankets to block the draughts. There was a table on which lay two books, some parchments, an ink bottle, a sheaf of quills, a knife, and an old rusted breastplate that served as a bowl for three wrinkled apples. A chair stood by the table while the Count of Mouthoumet, lord of this lonely tower, lay in a bed close to the smouldering fire. A grey-haired priest sat beside him, and two elderly women knelt at the bed’s foot. ‘Leave,’ the newly arrived priest ordered the three. The two mailed men came up the stairs behind him and seemed to fill the room with their baleful presence.

‘Who are you?’ the grey-haired priest asked nervously.

‘I said leave, so leave.’

‘He’s dying!’

‘Go!’

The old priest, a scapular about his neck, abandoned the sacraments and followed the two women down the stairs. The dying man watched the newcomers, but said nothing. His hair was long and white, his beard untrimmed, and his eyes sunken. He saw the priest place the hawk on the table, where the bird’s talons made scratching noises. ‘She is une calade,’ the priest explained.

‘Une calade?’ the count asked, his voice very low. He stared at the bird’s slate-grey feathers and pale streaked breast. ‘It is too late for a calade.’

‘You must have faith,’ the priest said.

‘I have lived over eighty years,’ the count said, ‘and I have more faith than I have time.’

‘You have enough time for this,’ the priest said grimly. The two mailed men stood at the stairhead and said nothing. The calade made a mewing noise, but when the priest snapped his fingers the hooded bird went still and quiet. ‘You were given the sacrament?’ the priest asked.

‘Father Jacques was about to give it to me,’ the dying man said.

‘I will do it,’ the priest said.

‘Who are you?’

‘I come from Avignon.’

‘From the Pope?’

‘Who else?’ the priest asked. He walked about the room, examining it, and the old man watched him. He saw a tall, hard-faced man, his priest’s robes finely tailored. When the visitor lifted a hand to touch the crucifix hanging on the wall his sleeve fell open to reveal a lining of red silk. The old man knew this kind of priest, hard and ambitious, rich and clever, the kind who did not minister to the poor, but climbed the ladder of clerical power into the company of the rich and privileged. The priest turned and gazed at the old man with hard green eyes. ‘Tell me,’ he said, ‘where is la Malice?’

The old man hesitated a second too long. ‘La Malice?’

‘Tell me where she is,’ the priest demanded and, when the old man said nothing, added, ‘I come from the Holy Father. I order you to tell me.’

‘I don’t know the answer,’ the old man whispered, ‘so how can I tell you?’

A log crackled in the fire, spewing sparks. ‘The Black Friars,’ the priest said, ‘have been spreading heresies.’

‘God forbid,’ the old man said.

‘You have heard them?’

The count shook his head. ‘I hear little these days, father.’

The priest reached into a pouch that hung at his waist and brought out a scrap of parchment. ‘The Seven Dark Lords possessed it,’ he read aloud, ‘and they are cursed. He who must rule us will find it, and he shall be blessed.’

‘Is that heresy?’ the count asked.

‘It is a verse the Black Friars are telling all over France. All over Europe! There is only one man to rule us, and that is the Holy Father. If la Malice exists then it is your Christian duty to tell me what you know. She must be given to the church! A man who thinks otherwise is a heretic.’

‘I am no heretic,’ the old man said.

‘Your father was a Dark Lord.’

The count shuddered. ‘The sins of the father are not mine.’

‘And the Dark Lords possessed la Malice.’

‘They say many things about the Dark Lords,’ the count said.

‘They protected the treasures of the Cathar heretics,’ the priest said, ‘and when, by the grace of God, those heretics were burned from the land, the Dark Lords took their treasures and hid them.’

‘I have heard that.’ The count’s voice was scarce above a whisper.

The priest reached out and stroked the hawk’s back. ‘La Malice,’ he said, ‘has been lost these many years, but the Black Friars say she can be found. And she must be found! She is a treasure of the church, a thing of power! A weapon to bring Christ’s kingdom to earth, and you conceal it!’

‘I do not!’ the old man protested.

The priest sat on the bed and leaned close to the count. ‘Where is la Malice?’ he asked.

‘I don’t know.’

‘You are very close to God’s judgement, old man,’ the priest said, ‘so do not lie to me.’

‘In the name of God,’ the count said, ‘I do not know.’ And that was true. He had known where la Malice was hidden, and, fearing that the English would discover her, he had sent his friend, Fra Ferdinand, to retrieve the relic and the count assumed the friar had done that, and if Fra Ferdinand had succeeded then the count did not know where la Malice was. So he had not lied, but nor had he told the priest the whole truth, because some secrets should be carried to the grave.

The priest stared at the count for a long time, then reached out his left hand to take the jesses of the hawk. The bird, still hooded, stepped cautiously onto the priest’s wrist. He lifted it down to the bed and coaxed the bird to stand on the dying man’s chest, then gently undid the hood’s laces and lifted the leather from the bird’s head. ‘This calade,’ he said, ‘is different. It does not betray whether you will live or die, but whether you will die in a state of grace and go to heaven.’

‘I pray I shall,’ the dying man said.

‘Look at the bird,’ the priest commanded.

The Count of Mouthoumet looked up at the hawk. He had heard of such birds, calades, which could foretell a man’s death or life. If the bird looked directly into a sick person’s eyes then that person would recover, but if not, they would die. ‘A bird that knows eternity?’ the count asked.

‘Look at him,’ the priest said, ‘and tell me, do you know where la Malice is hidden?’

‘No,’ the old man whispered.

The hawk seemed to be gazing at the wall. It shuffled on the old man’s breast, its talons gripping the threadbare blanket. No one spoke. The bird was very still, but then, suddenly, it darted its head down and the count screamed.

‘Quiet,’ the priest snarled.

The hawk had sliced its hooked beak into the dying man’s left eye, pulping it, leaving a trail of bloodied jelly on his unshaven cheek. The count was whimpering. The hawk’s beak made a clattering noise as the priest moved the bird back down the bed.

‘The calade tells me you lied,’ the priest said, ‘and now, if you wish to keep your right eye, you will tell me the truth. Where is la Malice?’

‘I don’t know,’ the old man sobbed.

The priest was silent for a while. The fire crackled and the wind blew smoke into the room. ‘You lie,’ he said. ‘The calade tells me you lie. You spit in the face of God and of His angels.’

‘No!’ the old man protested.

‘Where is la Malice?’

‘I don’t know!’

‘Your family name is Planchard,’ the priest said accusingly, ‘and the Planchards were ever heretics.’

‘No!’ the count protested, and then, sounding weaker, ‘Who are you?’

‘You may call me Father Calade,’ the priest said, ‘and I am the man who decides whether you go to hell or go to heaven.’

‘Then shrive me,’ the old man pleaded.

‘I would rather suck on the devil’s arse,’ Father Calade said.

An hour later, when the count was blinded and weeping, the priest was at last convinced that the old man did not know where la Malice was hidden. He coaxed the hawk onto his wrist and placed the hood back on its head, then he nodded to one of the mailed men. ‘Send this old fool to his master.’

‘To his master?’ the man-at-arms asked, puzzled.

‘To Satan,’ the priest said.

‘For God’s sake,’ the Count of Mouthoumet pleaded, then jerked helplessly as the man-at-arms thrust a fleece-stuffed pillow over his face. The old man took a surprisingly long time to die.

‘We three go back to Avignon,’ the priest told his companions, ‘but the rest stay here. Tell them to search this place. Pull it down! Stone by stone.’

The priest rode east towards Avignon. Later that day some snow fell, soft and thin, whitening the pale olive trees in the valley beneath the dead man’s tower.

Next morning the snow had gone, and a week later the English came.

PART ONE

Avignon

One

The message arrived in the town after midnight, carried by a young monk who had travelled all the way from England. He had left Carlisle in August with two other brethren, all three ordered to the great Cistercian house at Montpellier where Brother Michael, the youngest, was to learn medicine and the others were to study at the famous school of theology. The three had walked the length of England, sailed from Southampton to Bordeaux and then walked inland, and, like any travellers committed to a long journey, they had been entrusted with messages. There was one for the abbot at Puys, where Brother Vincent had died of the flux, then Michael and his companion had walked on to Toulouse, where Brother Peter had fallen sick and been committed to the hospital where, as far as Michael knew, he still lay. So the young monk was alone now and he had just one message left, a battered scrap of parchment, and he had been told that he might miss the man to whom it was addressed if he did not travel that same night. ‘Le Bâtard,’ the abbot at Paville had told him, ‘moves swiftly. He was here two days ago, now he is at Villon, but tomorrow?’

‘Le Bâtard?’

‘That is his name in these parts,’ the abbot had said, making the sign of the cross, which somehow suggested that the young English monk would be lucky to survive his encounter with the man named le Bâtard.

Now, after a day’s walking, Brother Michael stared across the valley at the town of Villon. It had been easy to find because, as night fell, the sky was lit with flames that served as a beacon. Fugitives passing him on the road told him that Villon was burning, and so Brother Michael merely walked towards the bright fire so that he could find le Bâtard and thus deliver his message. He crossed the valley nervously, seeing fire twist above the town walls to fill the night with a churning smoke that was touched livid red where it reflected the flames. The young monk thought this was what Satan’s sky must look like. Fugitives were still escaping the town and they told Brother Michael to turn around and flee because the devils of hell were loose in Villon, and he was tempted, oh so tempted, but another part of his young soul was curious. He had never seen a battle. He had never seen what men did when they unleashed themselves to violence, and so he walked on, putting his faith in God and in the stout pilgrim’s staff he had carried all the way from Carlisle.

The fires were concentrated around the western gate, and their flames lit the bulk of the castle that crowned the hill to the east. It was the Lord of Villon’s castle, that was what the abbot at Paville had told him, and the Lord of Villon was being besieged by an army led by the Bishop of Lavence and by the Count of Labrouillade, who together had hired the band of mercenaries led by le Bâtard.

‘Their quarrel?’ Brother Michael had asked the abbot.

‘They have two quarrels,’ the abbot had answered, pausing to let a servant pour him wine. ‘The Lord of Villon confiscated a wagon of hides belonging to the bishop. Or so the bishop says.’ He grimaced, for the wine was new and raw. ‘In truth Villon is a godless rogue, and the bishop would like a new neighbour.’ He shrugged, as if to admit that the cause of the fighting was trivial.

‘And the second quarrel?’

The abbot had paused. ‘Villon took the Count of Labrouillade’s wife,’ he finally admitted.

‘Ah.’ Brother Michael had not known what else to say.

‘Men are quarrelsome,’ the abbot had said, ‘but women always make them worse. Look at Troy! All those men killed for one pretty face!’ He looked sternly at the young English monk. ‘Women brought sin into this world, brother, and they have never ceased to bring it. Be grateful that you are a monk and sworn to celibacy.’

‘Thanks be to God,’ Brother Michael had said, though without much conviction.

Now the town of Villon was filled with burning houses and dead people, all because of a woman, her lover, and a cartload of hides. Brother Michael approached the town along the valley road, crossed a stone bridge and so came to Villon’s western entrance, where he paused because the gates had been torn from the arch’s stonework by a force so massive that he could not imagine what might do such a thing. The hinges were forged from iron, and each had been attached to its gate by brackets longer than a bishop’s crozier, broader than a man’s hand and thick as a thumb, yet the two leaves of the gate now hung askew, their scorched timbers shattered and their massive hinges wrenched into grotesque curls. It was as though the devil himself had plunged his monstrous fist through the arch to rip a path into the city. Brother Michael made the sign of the cross.

He edged past the fire-blackened gate and stopped again because, just beyond the arch, a house was burning and in the door opposite was the body of a young woman, face down, quite naked, her pale skin laced with rivulets of blood that appeared black in the firelight. The monk gazed at her, frowning slightly, wondering why the shape of a woman’s back was so arousing, and then he was ashamed that he had thought such a thing. He crossed himself again. The devil, he thought, was everywhere this night, but especially here in this burning city beneath the fire-touched clouds of hell.

Two men, one in a ragged mail coat and the other in a loose leather jerkin and both holding long knives, stepped over the dead woman. They were alarmed by the sight of the monk and turned fast, eyes wide, ready to strike, but then recognised the grubby white robe and saw the wooden cross about Brother Michael’s neck and ran off in search of richer victims. A third soldier vomited into the gutter. A rafter collapsed in the burning house, venting a blast of hot air and whirling sparks.

Brother Michael climbed the street, keeping his distance from the corpses, then saw a man sitting by a rain barrel where he was trying to staunch the bleeding from a wound in his belly. The young monk had been an assistant in his monastery’s infirmary, and so he approached the wounded soldier. ‘I can bind that up,’ he said, kneeling, but the wounded man snarled at him and lashed out with a knife, which Brother Michael only avoided by toppling sideways. He scrambled to his feet and backed away.

‘Take off your robe,’ the wounded man said, trying to follow the monk, but Brother Michael ran uphill. The man collapsed again, spitting curses. ‘Come back,’ he shouted, ‘come back!’ Over his leather jerkin he wore a jupon that showed a golden merlin against a red field and Brother Michael, dazedly trying to make sense of the chaos about him, realised that the golden bird was the symbol of the town’s defenders, and that the wounded man had wanted to escape by stealing his monk’s robe and using it as a disguise, but instead the man was trapped by two soldiers in green and white colours who cut his throat.

Some men wore a badge showing a yellow bishop’s staff surrounded by four black cross-crosslets, and Brother Michael decided they had to be the bishop’s soldiers, while the troops who wore the green horse on the white field must serve the Count of Labrouillade. Most of the dead displayed the golden merlin, and the monk noted how many of those corpses were spitted by long English arrows that had blood-speckled white feathers. The fighting had passed through this part of the town, leaving it burning. Fire leaped from thatched roof to thatched roof, while in the places where the fire had not reached a horde of drunken, undisciplined soldiers plundered and raped amidst the smoke. A baby cried, a woman shrieked, then a blinded man, his eyes nothing but blood-weeping pits, staggered from an alley to collide with the monk. The man shrank away, whimpering, holding up his hands to ward off the expected blow.

‘I won’t hurt you,’ Brother Michael said in French, a language he had learned as a novice so he would be fitted to finish his education at Montpellier, but the blinded man ignored him and stumbled down the street. Somewhere, incongruous in the blood and smoke and shouting, a choir sang, and the monk wondered if he was dreaming, yet the voices were real, as real as the screaming women and sobbing children and barking dogs.

He went cautiously now, for the alleys were dark and the soldiers wild. He passed a tanner’s shop where a fire burned and he saw a man had been drowned in a vat of the urine used to cure the hides. He came into a small square, decorated with a stone cross, and there he was attacked from behind by a bearded brute wearing the bishop’s livery. The monk was pushed to the ground and the man bent to cut away the pouch hanging from his rope belt. ‘Get away! Get away!’ Brother Michael, panicking, forgot where he was and shouted in English. The man grinned and moved the knife to threaten the monk’s eyes, then he opened his own eyes wide, looked horrified and the flame-lit night went dark with a spray of blood as the man slowly toppled over. Brother Michael was spattered with the blood and saw that his assailant had an arrow through his neck. The man was choking, clawing at the arrow, then began to shudder as blood pulsed from his open mouth.

‘You’re English, brother?’ an English voice asked, and Michael looked up to see a man wearing a black livery on which a white badge was slashed with the diagonal bar of bastardy. ‘You’re English?’ the man asked again.

‘I’m English,’ Brother Michael managed to speak.

‘You should have clouted him,’ the man said, picking up Brother Michael’s staff, then hauling the monk to his feet. ‘Clouted him hard and he’d have toppled over. Bastards are all drunk.’

‘I’m English,’ Brother Michael said again. He was shaking. The fresh blood felt warm on his skin. He shivered.

‘And you’re a long bloody way from home, brother,’ the man said. He had a great war bow strung across his muscled shoulders. He stooped to the monk’s assailant, drew a knife and cut the arrow out of the man’s throat, killing him in the process. ‘Arrows are hard to come by,’ he explained, ‘so we try to rescue them. If you see any, pick them up.’

Michael brushed down his white robe, then looked at the brutal badge on his rescuer’s jupon. It showed a strange animal holding a cup in its claws. ‘You serve …’ he began.

‘The Bastard,’ the man interrupted. ‘We’re the Hellequin, brother.’

‘The Hellequin?’

‘The devil’s souls,’ the man said with a grin, ‘and what the hell are you doing here?’

‘I’ve a message for your master, le Bâtard.’

‘Then let’s find him. My name’s Sam.’

The name suited the archer, who had a boyish, cheerful face and a quick grin. He led the monk past a church that he and two other Hellequin had been guarding because it was a refuge for some of the townsfolk. ‘The Bastard doesn’t approve of rape,’ he explained.

‘Nor should he,’ Michael responded dutifully.

‘He might as well disapprove of rain,’ Sam said cheerfully, leading the way into a larger square where a half-dozen horsemen waited with drawn swords. They were in mail and helmets, and all wore the bishop’s livery, and behind them was the choir, a score of boys chanting a psalm. ‘Domine eduxisti,’ they sang, ‘de inferno animam meam vivificasti me ne descenderem in lacum.’

‘He’d know what that meant,’ Sam said, tapping his badge and evidently meaning le Bâtard.

‘It means God has brought our souls out of hell,’ Brother Michael said, ‘and given us life and will keep us from the pit.’

‘That’s very nice of God,’ Sam said. He gave a perfunctory bow to the horsemen and touched his hand to his helmet. ‘That’s the bishop,’ he explained, and Brother Michael saw a tall man, his dark face framed by a steel helmet, sitting on his horse beneath a banner showing the crozier and the crosses. ‘He’s waiting,’ Sam explained, ‘for us to do the fighting. They all do that. Come and fight with us, they say, then they all get pissing drunk while we do all the killing. Still, it’s what we’re paid for. Careful here, brother, it gets dangerous.’ He took the bow from his shoulder, led the monk down an alley, then checked at the corner. He peered around. ‘Bloody dangerous,’ he added.

Brother Michael, fascinated and repelled by the carnage all about him, leaned past Sam and discovered they had reached the top of the town and were at the edge of a big open space, a marketplace perhaps, and on its far side was a road cut through black rock to the castle gate. The gatehouse, lit by the flames in the lower town, was hung with great banners. Some enjoined the help of the saints, while others showed the badge of the golden merlin. A crossbow bolt struck the wall near the priest then skittered down the cobbled alley. ‘If we capture the castle by sundown tomorrow,’ Sam said, putting an arrow on his string, ‘our money is doubled.’

‘Doubled? Why?’

‘Because tomorrow is Saint Bertille’s day,’ Sam said, ‘and our employer’s wife is called Bertille, so the fall of the castle will prove that God is on our side and not on hers.’

Brother Michael thought that was dubious theology, but he did not argue the point. ‘She’s the wife who ran away?’

‘Can’t blame her. He’s a pig, the count, a bloody pig, but marriage is marriage, ain’t it? And it’ll be a chill day in hell that a woman can choose a husband. Still, I do feel sorry for her, married to that pig.’ He half drew the bow, stepped around the corner, looked for a target, saw none and stepped back. ‘So the poor girl’s in there,’ he went on, ‘and the pig is paying us to fetch her out double fast.’

Brother Michael peered around the corner, then twitched back as a pair of crossbow bolts caught the firelight. The bolts banged into the wall close to him, then ricocheted on down the alley. ‘Lucky, aren’t you?’ Sam said cheerfully. ‘Bastards saw me, took aim, then you showed yourself. You could be in heaven by now if the bastards could shoot straight.’

‘You’ll never get the lady out of that place,’ Brother Michael opined.

‘We won’t?’

‘It’s too strong!’

‘We’re the Hellequin,’ Sam said, ‘which means the poor lass has got about an hour left with her lover boy. I hope he’s giving her a good one to remember him by.’

Michael, unseen, blushed. He was troubled by women. For most of his life that temptation had not mattered because, closed away in the Cistercian house, he rarely saw any women, but the journey from Carlisle had strewn a thousand devil’s snares across his path. In Toulouse a whore had grabbed him from behind, fondled him, and he had torn himself free, shaking with embarrassment, and fallen to his knees. The memory of her laughter was like a whip on his soul, as were the memories of all the girls he had seen, stared at, and wondered about, and he remembered the white naked skin of the girl at the town gate and he knew the devil was tempting him again, and he was about to say a prayer for strength when he was distracted by a whirring sound and saw a shower of crossbow bolts slashing down to the marketplace. Some, striking the cobbles, gave off bright sparks, and Brother Michael wondered why the defenders were shooting, then became aware that dark-cloaked men were running from every alleyway to line the open space. They were archers, who began loosing arrows at the high battlements. Flights of arrows; not the short, leather-fledged, metal bolts of crossbowmen, but English arrows, white-feathered and long, speeding silently up to the wall’s top, propelled by the great yew war bows with their hempen strings that gave a harp’s sharp note for every missile shot. The arrows trembled as they left the string, then their feathers caught the air and they streaked up, white flashes in the dark, the firelight glistening from their steel points, and the monk noted how the defenders’ bolts, so thick a moment ago, were suddenly sparse. The archers were drenching the castle’s defenders with arrows, forcing the crossbowmen to duck behind the wall’s parapet, while other bowmen shot at the slits in the flanking towers. The sound of the steel heads striking the castle walls was like hail on cobbles. One archer fell back, a bolt in his chest, but that was the only casualty the monk saw, and then he heard the wheels.

‘Stand back,’ Sam warned him, and the priest stepped into the alley as a cart thundered past him. It was a small cart, light enough for six men to push, but it had been made heavier because ten great pavises, man-sized shields designed to protect a crossbowman as he reloaded his clumsy weapon, had been nailed to the front and sides to protect the men who pushed the cart, which was loaded with small wooden barrels.

‘Much less than an hour,’ Sam said, stepping into the street when the cart had passed. He drew the big bow and sent an arrow towards the castle’s gate.

It was all strangely silent. Bother Michael had expected battle to be noise, he had expected to hear men calling to God for the sake of their souls, to hear voices raised in fear or pain, but the only sounds were the shrieks of the women in the lower town, the crackle of the flames, the harp-notes of the bows, the sound of the cart’s wheels on the cobbles, and the rattle of bolts and arrows clattering on stone. Michael stared in awe as Sam kept shooting, not seeming to aim, but just whipping shaft after shaft at the castle’s battlements.

‘Good thing we can see,’ Sam said, releasing another arrow.

‘The flames, you mean?’

‘That’s why we set fire to the houses,’ Sam said, ‘to light up the bastards.’ He loosed another shaft, seemingly without effort; when Brother Michael had once tried to draw a yew bow he had not been able to pull the string more than a hand’s breadth.

The cart had reached the castle’s gate now. It stopped there, a black shadow inside the dark archway, and Brother Michael saw a flicker of light spring up in that darkness, fade, revive, then steady to a dull glow as the six men who had pushed the cart ran back towards the archers. One of them fell, evidently struck by a crossbow bolt. Two of the others snatched his arms and dragged him back, and it was then that the monk caught his first sight of le Bâtard.

‘That’s him,’ Sam said fondly, ‘our bloody bastard.’ Brother Michael saw a tall man dressed in a belted haubergeon of chain mail that had been painted black. He had high boots, a black sword scabbard and his helmet was a simple bascinet that was black like his mail. His sword was drawn and he used it to wave a dozen men-at-arms forward, forming them in a line, shields overlapping, in the open space. He glanced towards Brother Michael, who saw le Bâtard’s nose was broken and his cheek scarred, but he also saw a force in the face, a savagery, and he understood why the abbot at Paville had spoken of this man with awe. Brother Michael had expected le Bâtard to be an older man, and was surprised that the black-armoured soldier looked so young. Then le Bâtard saw Sam. ‘I thought you were guarding the church, Sam,’ he said.

‘Poxface and Johnny are still there,’ Sam said, ‘but I brought this fellow to see you.’ He jerked his head towards Brother Michael.

The monk took a step forward and felt the full force of le Bâtard’s gaze. He was suddenly nervous and his mouth went dry with fear. ‘I have a message for you,’ he stammered, ‘it’s from …’

‘Later,’ le Bâtard interrupted. A servant had brought him a shield that he looped onto his left arm, then turned to look at the castle.

Which suddenly gouted flame and smoke. The smoke was black and red, shot through with stabbing flames, and filling the night with a bursting thunder that made Brother Michael crouch in fear. Scraps of flaming wreckage seared through the night as the heated air punched past the alley’s mouth. Smoke shrouded the open space as the noise of the blast echoed and rolled back from the valley’s far side. Birds that had been nesting in crevices of the castle wall flapped into the smoky air, while one of the great banners, calling on the help of Saint Joseph, caught the fire and blazed bright against the battlements. ‘Gunpowder,’ Sam explained laconically.

‘Gunpowder?’

‘He’s a clever bastard, our bastard,’ Sam said. ‘Knocks down gates fast, don’t it? Mind you, it’s expensive. The wifeless pig had to pay double if he wanted us to use powder. He must want the bitch bad to pay that much! I hope she’s bloody worth it.’

Brother Michael saw small flames flickering in the archway’s thick smoke. He understood now why the town’s entrance looked as though it had been torn, blackened and wrenched apart by the devil’s fist. Le Bâtard had forced his way into the town with gunpowder, and he had repeated the trick to blow down the castle’s great wooden gates. Now he led his twenty men-at-arms towards the wreckage.

‘Archers!’ another man called, and the bowmen, including Sam, followed the men-at-arms towards the gate. They advanced in silence, and that too was terrifying. These men in their black and white livery, Brother Michael thought, had learned to live calmly and fight ruthlessly in the dark valley of death. None of them appeared to be drunk. They were disciplined, efficient and frightening.

Le Bâtard vanished in the smoke. There were shouts from the castle, but the monk could not see what was happening there, though it was plain the attackers were inside, for the archers were now streaming through the smoking gate-arch. More men were following, men wearing the badges of the bishop and the count, going to seek more plunder in the doomed fortress.

‘It could be dangerous,’ Sam warned the young monk.

‘God is with us,’ Brother Michael said, and wondered at the fierce excitement he felt, so fierce that he hefted the pilgrim’s staff as though it were a weapon.

The castle had looked big from the alleyway, but as he jostled through the scorched gate Brother Michael saw it was much smaller than it had appeared. It had no bailey and no great keep, but merely the gatehouse and one tall tower, which were separated by a small courtyard where a dozen crossbowmen in the red and gold livery lay dying. One man had been eviscerated by the explosion at the gate and, though his intestines had spilt across the yard’s stones, he still lived and moaned. The monk paused to offer the man some help, then sprang back as Sam, with an ease that was as casual as it seemed heartless, cut his throat. ‘You killed him!’ Brother Michael said in horror.

‘Of course I bloody killed him,’ Sam said cheerfully. ‘What did you expect me to do? Kiss him? I hope someone does the same for me if I’m in that state.’ He wiped the blood from his short knife. A defender screamed as he fell from the gatehouse parapet, while another man staggered down the tower steps to collapse at the foot.

There was a door at the top of the steps, but it had not been defended, or else the defenders’ courage had evaporated when the main gate exploded inwards, and so le Bâtard’s men were streaming into the tower. Brother Michael followed, then turned as a trumpet sounded. A cavalcade of horsemen, all in green and white, were forcing their way through the castle gate where they used swords to drive their own men from their path. At the centre of the horsemen, where he was protected by their weapons, was a monstrously fat man clad in mail and plate and mounted on a huge horse. The cavalcade stopped at the foot of the steps and it took four men to ease the fat one out of his saddle and steady him on his feet. ‘His piggy lordship,’ Sam said sardonically.

‘The Count of Labrouillade?’

‘One of our employers,’ Sam said, ‘and here’s the other one.’ The bishop and his men had followed the count through the gate, and Sam and Michael went onto their knees as the two leaders mounted the steps and went into the tower.

Sam and Brother Michael followed the bishop’s men into the entrance chamber, up a flight of shallow stairs and into a great hall that was a high, pillared space lit by a dozen smoking torches and hung with tapestries showing the golden merlin on its red background. There were at least sixty men already in the hall and they now shuffled to the edges, allowing the Count of Labrouillade and the Bishop of Lavence to walk slowly towards the dais where two of le Bâtard’s men were holding the defeated lord on his knees. Behind them, tall and black in his armour, was le Bâtard himself, his face expressionless, while beside him, unrestrained, was a young woman in a red dress. ‘That’s Bertille?’ Brother Michael asked.

‘Must be,’ Sam said appreciatively. ‘And a nice little mare she is too!’

Brother Michael held his breath, stared, and, for an heretical moment, he regretted ever taking holy orders. Bertille, the faithless Countess of Labrouillade, was more than a nice little mare, she was a beauty. She could not have been a day over twenty and had a sweet face, unmarked by scars or disease, with full lips and dark eyes. Her hair was black and curly, her eyes wide, and despite the obvious terror on her face she was so lovely that Brother Michael, who was only twenty-two himself, trembled. He thought he had never seen a creature so beautiful, and then he breathed again, made the sign of the cross, and uttered a silent prayer that the Virgin and Saint Michael would keep him from temptation. ‘She’s worth the price of the gunpowder, I’d say,’ Sam commented cheerfully.

Brother Michael watched as Bertille’s husband, who had taken off his helmet to reveal a head of greasy grey hair and a heavy, porcine face, waddled towards her. The count’s breath was short because of the effort of walking in his heavy armour. He stopped a few paces from the dais and stared at the breast of his wife’s dress, which was blazoned with the golden merlin, the symbol of her defeated lover. ‘It seems to me, madame,’ the count said, ‘that you show poor taste in clothing.’

The countess dropped to her knees and held her clasped hands towards her husband. She wanted to speak, but the only sound she made was a whimpering sob. Tears on her cheeks reflected the flames of the torches. Brother Michael reminded himself that she was an adulteress, a sinner, a fornicator lost to grace, and Sam glanced at the young monk and thought that one day a woman would cause trouble in his life.

‘Take that badge off her,’ the count ordered two of his men-at-arms, gesturing at the golden merlin embroidered on his wife’s dress, and the two men, their chain mail clinking and plated boots heavy on the flagstones, climbed the dais and seized the countess. She tried to resist them, shrieked once, but then surrendered as one man held her arms behind her back and the other drew a short knife from his belt.

Brother Michael instinctively moved as though to help her, but Sam checked him with his one hand. ‘She’s the count’s wife, brother,’ the archer said softly, ‘which means she’s his property. He can do with her whatever he wants, and if you interfere he’ll slit your belly open.’

‘I was not …’ Brother Michael began, then fell silent rather than tell a lie, for he had been moved to intervene, or at least protest, but now he just watched as the man-at-arms slashed at the precious fabric, ripping the golden threads away from the scarlet, tearing the bodice down to the countess’s waist and finally pulling the embroidered merlin free and throwing it at the feet of his master. The countess, released from the second man’s grip, crouched and clutched the remnants of the dress to her breasts.

‘Villon!’ the count commanded. ‘Look at me!’

The man held by le Bâtard’s two soldiers reluctantly looked up at his enemy. He was a young man, handsome as a hawk, and, till an hour before, he had been ruler of this place, lord of its lands and owner of its peasants, but now he was nothing. He was in mail, with a breastplate and leg plates, and a smear of blood in his dark hair showed that he had fought the besiegers, but now he was in their grasp and he was forced to watch as the fat count fumbled to drag up the skirt of his chain mail. No one in the hall moved or spoke, they just watched as the count wrenched leather and steel aside and then, with a smile on his face, pissed on the merlin torn from his wife’s dress. He had the bladder of an ox and the urine splashed for a long time. Somewhere in the castle a man screamed and the scream went on and on, until at last, blessedly, it stopped.

The count finished at the same time, then held out a hand to his squire, who gave him a small knife with a wickedly curved blade. ‘See this, Villon?’ The count held the knife up so its blade caught the light. ‘Know what it is?’

Villon, held by the two men-at-arms, said nothing.

‘It’s for you,’ the count said. ‘She,’ he pointed the knife at his wife, ‘will go back to Labrouillade, and so will you, but only after we’ve cut you.’

The men in green and white livery grinned, anticipating the pain and pleasure to come. The knife, its blade rusted and its handle a worn sliver of wood, was a castrator’s knife, used to geld rams or calves or the small boys destined for the choirs of great churches. ‘Strip him,’ the count ordered his men.

‘Oh, God,’ Brother Michael murmured.

‘No stomach for it, brother?’ Sam asked.

‘He fought well,’ a new voice intervened, and the monk saw that le Bâtard had stepped to the edge of the dais. ‘He fought bravely and he deserves to die like a man.’

Some of the count’s men put their hands on their sword hilts, but the bishop waved them down. ‘He has offended the laws of man and God,’ the bishop told le Bâtard, ‘and placed himself beyond the boundaries of chivalry.’

‘The quarrel is mine,’ the count snarled at le Bâtard, ‘not yours.’

‘He is my prisoner,’ le Bâtard said.

‘When we hired you,’ the bishop said, ‘it was agreed that all prisoners would belong to the count and myself, regardless of who captured them. Do you deny that?’

Le Bâtard hesitated, but it was clear the bishop had spoken the truth. The tall, black-armoured man glanced about the room, but his men were far outnumbered by the forces of the bishop and count. ‘Then I appeal to you,’ he said to the bishop, ‘to let him go to his God like a man.’

‘He is a fornicator and sinner,’ the bishop said, ‘and so I give him to the count to do with as he wishes. And I would remind you that your fee is contingent on obeying all our reasonable commands.’

‘This is not reasonable,’ le Bâtard insisted.

‘The command for you to step aside is reasonable,’ the bishop said, ‘and I give it to you.’

The count’s men-at-arms thumped their shields on the floor to show their agreement, and le Bâtard, knowing himself outnumbered and out-argued, shrugged and stepped away. Brother Michael saw a man-at-arms take the castrating knife and, unable to bear what was about to happen, he pushed his way out to the steps of the tower where he breathed the smoky night air. He wanted to get farther away, but some of the count’s men had found an ox in the castle’s stable and were torturing the beast, prodding it with spears and swords, skipping away when it lumbered around to face them, and he did not dare try to thread his way through the vicious game. Then the screaming began in the hall behind.

A hand touched his shoulder and he turned, raising the heavy staff, only to see it was a priest, an older man, who offered the monk a skin of wine. ‘It seems,’ the older man said, ‘that you do not approve of what the count does?’

‘You do?’

The priest shrugged. ‘Villon took the count’s wife, so what does he expect? And our church gave its blessing to the count’s revenge, and with reason. Villon is a despicable man.’

‘And the count is not?’ Brother Michael decided he hated the fat count, with his greasy hair and heavy jowls.

‘I am his chaplain and confessor,’ the older priest said, ‘so I know what he is.’ He sounded bleak. ‘And you,’ he asked the monk, ‘what brings you to this place?’

‘I bring a message for le Bâtard,’ Brother Michael said.

‘What message?’

The English monk shook his head. ‘I’ve not read it.’

‘You should always read messages,’ the older man said with a smile.

‘It’s sealed.’

‘A hot knife will solve that.’

Brother Michael frowned. ‘I was told not to read it.’

‘By whom?’

‘By the Earl of Northampton. He said it was urgent and private.’

‘Urgent?’

Brother Michael crossed himself. ‘It’s said that the Prince of Wales is gathering another army. I think le Bâtard is ordered to join it.’ He shrugged. ‘That would make sense, anyway.’

‘It would.’

The conversation had distracted Brother Michael from the terrible screams that sounded inside the hall. Those screams slowly subsided, became a pathetic whimpering, and only then did the count’s chaplain lead the monk back to the flamelight in the pillared chamber. Brother Michael did not look at the naked thing on the bloody floor. He stayed at the back of the hall, hidden from the gelded man by the crowd of mailed soldiers.

‘We are done,’ the Count of Labrouillade said to le Bâtard.

‘We are done, my lord,’ le Bâtard agreed, ‘except you owe us the money for capturing this place swiftly.’

‘I owe you the money,’ the count agreed, ‘and it waits for you at Paville.’

‘Then we shall go to Paville, my lord.’ Le Bâtard offered the count a bow, then clapped his hands to get his men’s attention. ‘You know what to do! Do it!’

Le Bâtard’s men had to collect their own wounded, pick up their dead, and retrieve the arrows shot in the fight, because English arrows were hard to find in Burgundy, Toulouse and Provence. It was dawn before le Bâtard’s men filed out of the city’s ravaged gate, crossed the bridge in the valley and turned eastwards. The wounded were carried in carts, but every other man rode, and Brother Michael, who had snatched a few hours’ sleep, could at last count le Bâtard’s company. He had learned that some of the Hellequin were still guarding the castle at Castillon that was their refuge, but le Bâtard still led a formidable force. There were just over sixty archers, all of them English or Welsh, and thirty-two men-at-arms, mostly from Gascony, but some from the Italian states, a handful from Burgundy, a dozen from England, and some from further away, all of them adventurers who sought money and had found it with le Bâtard. With their servants and squires, they formed a war band that could be hired by any lord who had the resources to afford the best, though any lord who wished to fight against the English or their Gascon allies had to look elsewhere because le Bâtard would not help. He liked to say that he helped England’s enemies kill one another, and those enemies paid him for that help. They were mercenaries and they called themselves the Hellequin, the devil’s beloved, and they boasted that they could not be defeated because their souls had already been sent to hell.

And Brother Michael, after witnessing his first fight, believed them.