BERNARD CORNWELL

Copyright

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.

Published by HarperCollinsPublishers Ltd

1 London Bridge Street

London SE1 9GF

www.harpercollins.co.uk

First published by HarperCollinsPublishers 2012

Copyright © Bernard Cornwell 2012

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

Maps © John Gilkes 2012

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

FIRST EDITION

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Source ISBN: 9780007331840

Ebook Edition © September 2012 ISBN: 9780007331888

Version: 2019-01-02

is for my grandson,

Oscar Cornwell,

with love.

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

Warning sent in fourteenth-century France, quoted inA Fool and His Money by Ann Wroe

Contents

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

Two Chronicles of Poitiers

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. Brother 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.

Two

The Count of Labrouillade was eager to leave Villon and gain the safety of his own fortress, which, because it possessed a moat and drawbridge, was safe from le Bâtard’s method of opening gates with gunpowder, and the count needed to be safe because le Bâtard, he was certain, would soon have a quarrel with him. And so he had left the bishop’s men to hold the newly captured castle at Villon while he and his force, sixty men-at-arms and forty-three crossbowmen, hurried home to Labrouillade.

His journey, though, was slowed by his captives. He had contemplated beating Bertille in Villon, and had even ordered one of his servants to bring a whip from the castle stables, but then had delayed the punishment to hasten his return home. Yet he wanted to humiliate her, and to that end he had brought a cart from Labrouillade. The cart had been in the stables for as long as he could remember, and on its bed was a cage big enough to hold a dancing bear or a fighting bull, and that was probably why it had been made. Or perhaps one of his ancestors had used the cart for prisoners, or for transporting the savage mastiffs used to hunt boars, but whatever its original function, the heavy cart was now a cage for his wife. The Count of Villon, bloody and weak, was being transported in another cart. If the man lived the count planned to chain him naked in his courtyard as an object for men’s laughter and as a pissing post for dogs, and that prospect cheered the count as he lumbered slowly southwards.

He had sent a dozen lightly armed horsemen eastwards. Their job was to trail le Bâtard’s mercenaries and return with a report if the Englishman pursued him. Yet that now seemed unlikely, for the count’s chaplain had good news. ‘I suspect he has been summoned by his liege, sire,’ the chaplain told the count.

‘Who is his liege?’

‘The Earl of Northampton, sire.’

‘In England?’

‘The monk had travelled from there, sire,’ the chaplain said, ‘and reckoned le Bâtard is ordered to join the Prince of Wales. He said the message was urgent.’

‘I hope you are right.’

‘It is the best explanation, sire.’

‘And if you are right then le Bâtard will be gone to Bordeaux, eh? Gone!’

‘Though he might return, sire,’ Father Vincent warned the count.

‘In time, maybe, in time,’ Labrouillade said carelessly. He was unconcerned, for if le Bâtard did go to Gascony then the count would have time to raise more men and strengthen his fortress. He slowed his horse, letting the carts catch up so he could stare down at his naked and bloody enemy. The count was pleased. Villon was in agony, and Bertille could expect an adulteress’s punishment. Life, he decided, was good.

His wife wept. The sun rose higher, warming the day. Peasants knelt as the count passed. The road climbed into the hills that separated the lands of Villon and Labrouillade, and, though there had been death in the first, there would be rejoicing in the second because the count was revenged.

Paville was only two hours’ ride west of the fallen castle. It had once been a prosperous town, famed for its monastery and for the excellence of its wine, but now there were only thirty-two monks left, and fewer than two hundred folk lived in the small town. The pestilence had come, and half the townsfolk were buried in the fields beside the river. The town walls were crumbling, and the monastery’s vineyards choked with weeds.

The Hellequin gathered in the marketplace outside the monastery where they carried their wounded into the infirmary. Tired horses were walked and arrows repaired. Brother Michael wanted to find something to eat, but le Bâtard approached him. ‘Six of my men are dying in there,’ he jerked his head at the monastery, ‘and another four might not live. Sam tells me you worked in an infirmary?’

‘I did,’ the monk said, ‘but I also have a written message for you.’

‘From whom?’

‘The Earl of Northampton, lord.’

‘Don’t call me that. What does Billy want?’ Le Bâtard waited for an answer, then scowled when none came. ‘Don’t tell me you didn’t read the letter! What does he want?’

‘I didn’t read it!’ Brother Michael protested.

‘An honest monk? The world sees a miracle.’ Le Bâtard ignored the proffered message. ‘Go and tend to my wounded men. I’ll read the letter later.’

Brother Michael worked for an hour, helping two other monks wash and bind wounds, and when he had finished he went back to the sunlight to see two men counting a vast pile of shoddy-looking coins. ‘The agreement,’ le Bâtard was saying to the abbot, ‘was that the payment should be in genoins.’

The abbot looked worried. ‘The count insisted on replacing the coins,’ he said.

‘And you permitted that?’ le Bâtard asked. The abbot shrugged. ‘He cheated us,’ le Bâtard said, ‘and you allowed it to happen!’

‘He sent men-at-arms, lord,’ the abbot said unhappily. Labrouillade had agreed to pay le Bâtard’s fee in genoins, which were good golden coins, trusted everywhere, but since le Bâtard’s men had first checked the payment the count had sent men to take away the genoins and replace them with a mixture of obols, écus, agnos, florins, deniers and sacks of pence, none of them gold and most of them debased or clipped, and, though the face value of the coins was for the agreed amount, their worth was less than half. ‘His men assured me the value is the same, lord,’ the abbot added.

‘And you believed them?’ le Bâtard asked sourly.

‘I protested,’ the abbot declared, concerned that he would not receive the customary fee for holding the cash.

‘I’m sure you did,’ le Bâtard said in a tone suggesting the opposite. He was still in his black armour, but had taken off his bascinet to reveal black hair cut short. ‘Labrouillade’s a fool, isn’t he?’

‘A greedy fool,’ the abbot agreed eagerly. ‘His father was worse. The fief of Labrouillade once encompassed all the land from here to the sea, but his father gambled away most of the southern part. The son is more careful with his money. He’s rich, of course, very rich, but not a generous man.’ The abbot’s voice trailed away as he gazed at the piles of shoddy, misshapen and bent coins. ‘What will you do?’ he asked nervously.

‘Do?’ Le Bâtard seemed to think about it, then shrugged. ‘I have the money,’ he finally said, ‘such as it is.’ He paused. ‘It is a matter for lawyers,’ he finally decided.

‘For lawyers, yes.’ The abbot, worried that he would be blamed for the substitution of the coins, could not hide his relief.

‘But not in the count’s own courts,’ le Bâtard said.

‘It might be argued in the bishop’s court?’ the abbot suggested.

Le Bâtard nodded, then scowled at the abbot. ‘I shall depend on your testimony.’

‘Of course, lord.’

‘And pay well for it,’le Bâtard added.

‘You may depend on my support,’ the abbot said.

Le Bâtard tossed one of the coins up and down in a hand that was misshapen, as though the fingers had been mangled by a great weight. ‘So we shall leave it to the lawyers,’ he announced, then ordered his men to pay the abbot with whatever good coin they could find among the dross. ‘I have no quarrel with you,’ he added to the relieved churchman, and turned to Brother Michael, who had taken the parchment from his pouch and was trying to deliver it. ‘In a moment, brother,’ le Bâtard said.

A woman and child were approaching. Brother Michael had not noticed them till this moment, for they had been travelling with the other women who followed the Hellequin and who had waited outside Villon as the castle was assaulted. But the young monk noticed her now, noticed her and trembled. He had been haunted all day by the memory of Bertille, but this woman was just as beautiful, though it was a very different kind of beauty. Bertille had been dark, soft and gentle, while this woman was fair, hard and striking. She was tall, almost as tall as le Bâtard, and her pale gold hair seemed to shine in the early winter sun. She had clever eyes, a wide mouth and a long nose, while her slim body was dressed in a coat of mail that had been scrubbed with wire, sand and vinegar so that it appeared to be made of silver. Dear God, the monk thought, but flowers should blossom in her footsteps. The child, a boy who looked to be about seven or eight years old, had her face but hair as black as le Bâtard’s.

‘My wife Genevieve,’ le Bâtard introduced the woman, ‘and my son, Hugh. This is Brother …’ He paused, not knowing the monk’s name.

‘Brother Michael,’ the monk said, unable to take his eyes from Genevieve.

‘He brought me a message,’ le Bâtard said to his wife, and gestured that the monk should give Genevieve the battered fold of parchment on which the earl’s seal was now dried, cracked and chipped.

‘Sir Thomas Hookton,’ Genevieve read the name written across the folded parchment.

‘I’m le Bâtard,’ Thomas said. He had been christened Thomas and for most of his life had called himself Thomas of Hookton, though he could call himself more if he wished, for the Earl of Northampton had knighted him seven years before and, though bastard born, Thomas had a claim to a county in eastern Gascony. But he preferred to be known as le Bâtard. It put the fear of the devil into enemies, and a frightened enemy was already half beaten. He took the missive from his wife, put a fingernail under the seal, then decided he would wait before reading the letter and so, instead, he tucked it under his sword belt and clapped his hands to get the attention of his men. ‘We’re riding west in a few minutes! Get ready!’ He turned and offered a bow to the abbot. ‘My thanks,’ he said courteously, ‘and the lawyers will doubtless come to talk with you.’

‘They shall receive heaven’s assistance,’ the abbot said eagerly.

‘And this,’ Thomas added more money, ‘is for my wounded men. You will tend them and, for those who die, bury them and have masses said.’

‘Of course, lord.’

‘And I shall return to see they were properly treated.’

‘I shall anticipate your return with joy, sire,’ the abbot lied.

The Hellequin mounted and the bad coins were scooped into leather bags that were loaded onto packhorses as Thomas said his farewells to the men in the infirmary. Then, when the sun was still low in the east, they rode west. Brother Michael rode a borrowed horse alongside Sam who, despite his young face, was evidently one of the archers’ leaders. ‘Does le Bâtard often use lawyers?’ the monk asked.

‘He hates lawyers,’ Sam said. ‘If he had his way he’d bury every last bloody lawyer in the deepest pit of hell and let the devil shit on them,’

‘Yet he uses them?’

‘Uses them?’ Sam laughed. ‘He told that to the abbot, didn’t he?’ He jerked his head eastwards. ‘Back there, brother, there’s a half-dozen men following us. They ain’t very clever, ’cos we spotted them, and by now they’ll be talking to the abbot. Then they’ll go back to their master and say they saw us go west and that his fat lordship is to expect a visit from a man of law. Only he won’t get that. He’s going to get these instead.’ He patted the goose feathers of the arrows in his bag. Some of those feathers were speckled with dried blood from the fight at Villon.

‘You mean we’re going to fight him?’ Brother Michael said, and did not notice that he had used the word ‘we’, any more than he had thought about why he was still with the Hellequin instead of walking on towards Montpellier.

‘Of course we’re bloody going to fight him,’ Sam said scornfully. ‘The bloody count cheated us, didn’t he? So we’ll cut south and east as soon as those dozy bastards have finished chatting with the abbot. ’Cos they won’t follow us to make sure we’ve gone west. They’re the sort of dozy bastards who don’t think beyond their next pot of ale, but Thomas does, Thomas is a two-pot thinker, he is.’

Thomas heard the compliment and twisted in his saddle. ‘Only two pots, Sam?’

‘As many pots as you like,’ Sam said.

‘It all depends,’ Thomas let Brother Michael catch up with him, ‘on whether the Count of Labrouillade stays in that castle we gave him. I suspect he won’t. He doesn’t feel safe there, and he’s a man who likes his comfort, so I reckon he’ll head south.’

‘And you’ll ride to meet him?’

‘Ride to ambush him,’ Thomas said. He glanced back at the sun to judge the time. ‘With God’s help, brother, we’ll bar his road this afternoon.’ He took the parchment from under his belt. ‘You didn’t read this?’

‘No!’ Brother Michael insisted, and spoke truly. He watched as le Bâtard cracked the seal apart and unfolded the stiff parchment, then he gazed at Genevieve who rode a grey horse on le Bâtard’s far side. Thomas saw the monk’s yearning gaze and was amused. ‘Didn’t you see last night, brother, what happens to a man who takes another man’s wife?’

Michael blushed. ‘I …’ he began, but found he had nothing to say.

‘And besides,’ Thomas went on, ‘my wife is a heretic. She was excommunicated from the church and consigned to hell. As was I. Doesn’t that worry you?’

Brother Michael still had nothing to say.

‘And why are you still here?’ Thomas asked.

‘Here?’ The young monk was confused.

‘Aren’t you under orders?’

‘I am supposed to go to Montpellier,’ Brother Michael confessed.

‘It’s that way, brother,’ Thomas said, pointing south.

‘We’re going south,’ Genevieve said drily, ‘and I think Brother Michael would like our company.’

‘You would?’ Thomas asked.

‘I would be glad of it,’ Brother Michael said, and wondered why he had spoken so eagerly.

‘Then welcome,’ Thomas said, ‘to the devil’s lost souls.’

Who now turned south and east to teach a fat and greedy count a lesson.

The Count of Labrouillade made slow progress. The horses were tired, the day grew warmer, most of his men were suffering from the wine they had drunk in the captured city, and the carts lumbered awkwardly on the rough road. Yet it did not matter, for shortly after midday the men he had sent to spy on le Bâtard returned with the news Labrouillade wanted.

The Englishman had ridden west. ‘You’re sure?’ the count snapped.

‘We watched him, my lord.’

‘You watched him do what?’ the count asked suspiciously.

‘He counted the money, lord, his men stripped off their armour, then they rode westwards. All of them. And he told the abbot he would send lawyers to demand payment.’

‘Lawyers!’ The count laughed.

‘The abbot said so, and he promised your lordship that he would speak for you in any proceedings.’

‘Lawyers!’ The count laughed again. ‘Then the quarrel won’t be settled in our lifetime!’ He was safe now and the slowness of his journey did not matter. He stopped in a miserable village and demanded wine, bread and cheese, none of which he paid for, but the peasants’ reward was to be in his presence and that, he sincerely believed, was recompense enough. After the meal he rattled the gelding knife on the bars of his wife’s cage. ‘You want it as a keepsake, Bertille?’ he asked.

Bertille said nothing. Her throat was raw from sobbing; her eyes were red and fixed on the rusted blade.

‘I shall shave your hair off, madame,’ the count promised her, ‘and make you go on your knees to the altar to beg for forgiveness. And God may forgive you, madame, but I shall not, and you’ll go to a convent when I’ve done with you. You will scrub their floors, madame, and wash their habits until your sins have been cleansed, and then you can live in regret for the rest of your miserable days.’

She still said nothing, and the count, bored that he could not provoke her to protest, called for his men to heave him into the saddle. He had discarded his armour now and was wearing a light surcoat blazoned with his badge, while his men’s armour was piled on packhorses along with their shields and lances. They rode carelessly, unthreatened, and the crossbowmen walked behind packhorses that were laden with sacks of plunder.

They followed a road that wound into the hills between chestnut trees. Pigs rooted between the trunks, and the count ordered a couple of them killed because he liked pork. The carcasses were thrown on top of the countess’s cage so that the blood dripped down onto her tattered dress.

By mid afternoon they were approaching the pass that would lead them into the count’s own land. It was a high place of scrawny pines and massive rocks, and legend said a force of Saracens had fought and died in the pass many years before. The country people went there to cast curses, a practice officially disapproved of by both the count and by the church, though when Bertille had first run off with her lover the count had gone to the Saracen’s Pass and buried a coin, struck the high rock at the top of the hill three times, and so put a curse on Villon. It had worked, he thought, and Villon was now a gelded lump of bleeding misery chained to the bed of a dung cart.

The light was fading. The sun was low over the western hills, but there was an hour of daylight left and that should be sufficient to see the tired soldiers over the pass, and from there the road ran straight downhill to Labrouillade. The bells of the castle would ring for the count’s victory, filling the new darkness with jubilation.

And just then the first arrow flew.

Le Bâtard had led thirty archers and twenty-two men-at-arms southwards while the rest of his force was continuing westwards with those wounded who could still ride. Le Bâtard’s horses were tired, but they kept a steady pace, following paths they had reconnoitred in the long days as they waited for the attack on Villon.

Thomas read the Earl of Northampton’s message as he rode. He read it once, then again, and his face betrayed nothing. His men watched him, suspecting the message might affect their future, but Thomas just folded the parchment and pushed it into a pouch hanging from his sword belt. ‘Has he summoned us?’ Sam finally asked.

‘No,’ Thomas said. ‘And why would he summon us? What use are you to the earl, Sam?’

‘None at all!’ Sam said cheerfully. He was pleased that the Earl had not called Thomas back to England or, more likely, to Gascony. The Earl of Northampton was Thomas’s liege lord, his master, but the earl was happy to let Thomas and his men serve as mercenaries. He shared the profits, and those profits were lavish.

‘He says we must be ready to join the prince’s army in the summer,’ Thomas said.

‘Prince Edward won’t need us,’ Sam replied.

‘He might if the King of France decides to play games,’ Thomas said. He knew the Prince of Wales was ravaging southern France and that King Jean was doing nothing to stop him, but he would surely march if the prince conducted another chevauchée. And that must be tempting, Thomas thought, because France was weak. The King of Scotland, France’s ally, was a prisoner in the Tower of London, and there were Englishmen in Normandy, Brittany and Aquitaine. France was like a great stag being mauled by hounds.

‘And that’s all the message says?’ Sam asked.

‘No,’ Thomas said, ‘but the rest of it is none of your business, Sam.’ Thomas spurred his horse ahead and beckoned Genevieve to follow him. They went into the trees, seeking privacy. Hugh, their son who was mounted on a small gelding, had followed his mother, and Thomas nodded to show the boy he was allowed closer. ‘You remember that Black Friar who came to Castillon?’ Thomas asked Genevieve.

‘The one you threw out of the town?’

‘He was preaching nonsense,’ Thomas said sourly.

‘What was his nonsense called?’

‘La Malice,’ Thomas said, ‘a magic sword, another Excalibur.’ He spat.

‘Why do you remember him now?’

Thomas sighed. ‘Because Billy has heard of the goddamned thing.’ ‘Billy’ was Thomas’s lord, William Bohun, Earl of Northampton. Thomas handed Genevieve the letter. ‘It seems another Black Friar preached in Carlisle and spouted the same nonsense. A treasure of the Seven Lords.’

‘And the earl knows …’ Genevieve began uncertainly, then checked.

‘That I’m one of the seven lords.’ Some people had called them the Seven Dark Lords of hell, and all were dead, but their descendants lived. Thomas was one. ‘So Billy wants us to find the treasure.’ He sneered as he said the last three words. ‘And when we find it we’re to deliver it to the Prince of Wales.’

Genevieve frowned over the letter. It was, of course, written in French, the language of England’s aristocracy. ‘The Seven Dark Lords possessed it,’ she read aloud, ‘and they are cursed. He who must rule us will find it, and he shall be blessed.’

‘The same nonsense,’ Thomas said. ‘It seems the Black Friars have got excited. They’re spreading the tale everywhere.’

‘So where do you look?’

Thomas wanted to say nowhere, that the nonsense was not worth a moment of their time, but the Abbé Planchard, the best man he had ever known, a Christian who was truly Christ-like and also a descendant of one of the Dark Lords, had an elder brother. ‘There’s a place called Mouthoumet,’ Thomas said, ‘in Armagnac. I can think of nowhere else to look.’

‘“Do not fail us in this,”’ Genevieve read the letter’s last line aloud.

‘Billy’s caught the madness,’ Thomas said, amused.

‘But we go to Armagnac?’

‘Once we’re finished here,’ Thomas said.

Because before the treasure could be sought the Count of Labrouillade must be taught that greed has a price.

So le Bâtard set up the ambush.

It was raining in Paris. A steady rain that diluted the filth in the gutters and spread its stink through the narrow streets. Beggars crouched under the overhanging houses, holding out skinny hands to the horsemen who threaded through the city gate. There were two hundred men-at-arms, all big men on big horses, and the riders were shrouded in woollen cloaks with their heads protected from the rain by steel helmets. They looked about them as they rode through the rain, plainly astonished by such a great city, and the Parisians sheltering beneath the jutting storeys noted that these men looked wild and strange, like warriors from a nightmare. Many were bearded and all had faces roughened by weather and scarred by war. Real soldiers, these, not the followers of a great lord who spent half their time quarrelling in castle precincts, but men who carried their weapons through snow and wind and sun, and men who rode battle-scarred horses and carried battered shields. Men who would kill for the price of a button. A standard bearer rode with the men-at-arms and his rain-soaked flag showed a great red heart.

Behind the two hundred men-at-arms came packhorses, over three hundred of them, loaded with bags, lances and armour. The squires and servants who led the packhorses wore blankets, or so it seemed to the onlookers. The garments, little more than matted and grubby rags, were thrown over a shoulder then wrapped and belted at the waist, and the servants wore no breeches, though no one laughed at them because their belts carried weapons, either crude long swords with plain hilts, or chipped axes, or skinning knives. They were country weapons, but weapons that looked as though they had received much use. There were women with the servants and they were dressed in the same barbaric manner, with their bare legs muddied and red. They wore their hair loose, but no Parisian would dare mock them, for these ragged women were armed like their men and looked just as dangerous.

The horsemen and their servants stopped beside the river at the city’s centre and there they divided into small groups, each going to find their own lodgings, but one group of half a dozen men, attended by servants better dressed than the others, crossed the bridge to an island in the Seine. They twisted down narrow alleys until they came to a gilded gatehouse where liveried spearmen stood guard. Inside was a courtyard, stables, a chapel and stairways leading into the royal palace, and the half-dozen horsemen were greeted with bows, their horses were taken away and they were led up stairs and down corridors to their quarters.

William, Lord of Douglas and leader of the two hundred men-at-arms, was given a chamber facing the river. Sheets of horn covered the windows, but he knocked them out to let the damp air into the room, where a great fire burned in a hearth carved with the French royal coat of arms. The Lord of Douglas stood by the fire as servants brought in bedding, wine, food and three women. ‘You may take your choice, my lord,’ the steward said.

‘I’ll take all three,’ Douglas said.

‘A wise choice, my lord,’ the steward replied, bowing, ‘and is there anything else your lordship desires?’

‘Is my nephew here?’

‘He is, my lord.’

‘Then I want him.’

‘He shall be sent,’ the steward said, ‘and His Majesty will receive you for supper.’

‘Tell him I am filled with happiness at the prospect,’ Douglas said flatly. William, Lord of Douglas, was twenty-eight years old and looked forty. He had a clipped brown beard, a face scarred from a dozen skirmishes, and eyes as cold as the winter sky. He spoke perfect French because he had spent much of his boyhood in France, learning the ways of French knights and perfecting his skills with sword and lance, but for ten years now he had been home in Scotland where he had become the leader of the Douglas clan and a magnate in the Scottish council. He had opposed the truce with England, but the rest of the council had insisted, and so the Lord of Douglas had brought his fiercest warriors to France. If they could not fight the English at home then he would unleash them on the old enemy in France.

‘Take off your clothes,’ he told the three girls. For a heartbeat they looked astonished, but the expression on Douglas’s grim face persuaded them to obey. A good-looking man, all three thought, tall and well muscled, but he had a warrior’s face, hard as a blade and with no pity. It promised to be a long night. The three were naked by the time Douglas’s nephew arrived. He was not much younger than his uncle, had a broad, cheerful face, and was wearing a velvet jerkin trimmed with gold embroidery above sky-blue skin-tight leggings that were tucked into soft leather boots tasselled with gold thread. ‘What the hell are you wearing?’ Douglas asked.

The young man plucked the embroidered hem of the jerkin. ‘It’s what everyone wears in Paris.’

‘Good Christ, Robbie, you look like an Edinburgh whore. What do you think of those three?’

Sir Robert Douglas turned and inspected the three girls. ‘I like the one in the middle,’ he said.

‘Jesus Christ, she’s so skinny you could use her as a needle. I like girls with meat on the bone. So what has the king decided?’

‘To wait on events.’

‘Jesus Christ,’ Douglas said again, and went to the window where he stared at the river, which was being dappled by rain. The stench of sewage seeped from the slow swirling water. ‘Does he know what’s looming?’

‘I have told him,’ Robbie said. He had been sent to Paris to negotiate terms with King Jean, and he had arranged for his uncle’s men to be paid and armoured by the French king, and now the men had come and the Lord of Douglas was eager for them to be unleashed. There were English forces in Flanders, in Brittany and in Gascony, and the Prince of Wales was raping southern France, and Douglas wanted a chance to kill some of the bastards. He hated the English.

‘He knows the boy Edward will likely strike north next year?’ Douglas asked. The boy Edward was the Prince of Wales.

‘I have told him.’

‘And he’s havering?’

‘He’s havering,’ Robbie confirmed. ‘He likes feasts and music and entertainment. He’s not fond of soldiering.’

‘Then we’ll have to put some backbone into the bloody man, won’t we?’

Scotland had known little but disaster in the last few years. The pestilence had come and emptied the valleys of souls, but almost ten years before, at Durham, a Scottish army had been defeated and the King of Scotland had been taken prisoner by the hated English. King David was now a prisoner in London’s Tower, and the Scots, to get him back, were expected to pay a ransom so vast that it would impoverish the kingdom for years.

But the Lord of Douglas reckoned the king could be restored in a different way, a soldier’s way, and that was the main reason he had brought his men to France. In the spring the Prince of Wales would probably lead another army out of Gascony, and that army would do what English armies always did, rape and burn and pillage and destroy, and the purpose of that chevauchée was to force the French to bring an army against them, and then the dreaded English archers would go to work and France would suffer another defeat. Its great men would be taken prisoner and England would get even wealthier on their ransoms.

But the Lord of Douglas knew how to defeat archers, and that was the gift he brought to France, and if he could persuade the French king to oppose the boy Edward then he saw the chance of a great victory, and in that victory he planned to capture the prince. He would hold the prince to ransom, a ransom equal to that of the King of Scotland. It could be done, he thought, if only the King of France would fight.

‘And you, Robbie? You’ll fight?’

Robbie coloured. ‘I took an oath.’

‘Damn your bloody oath!’

‘I took an oath,’ Robbie persisted. He had been a prisoner of the English, but he had been released and his ransom paid on a promise not to fight the English ever again. The promise had been extracted and the ransom had been paid by his friend, Thomas of Hookton, and for eight years Robbie had kept the promise, but now his uncle was pushing him to break the oath.

‘What money do you have, boy?’

‘Your money, uncle.’

‘And do you have any left?’ Douglas waited, saw his nephew’s sheepishness. ‘So you’ve gambled it away?’

‘Yes.’

‘In debt?’

Robbie nodded.

‘If you want more, boy, you fight. You strip off that whore’s jacket and put on mail. For Christ’s sake, Robbie, you’re a good fighter! I want you! Have you no pride?’

‘I took an oath,’ Robbie repeated stubbornly.

‘Then you can untake the bloody thing. Or become a pauper. See if I care. Now take that skinny bitch and prove you’re a man, and I’ll see you at supper.’

When the Lord of Douglas would try to make the King of France into a man.

The archers lined the woods. Their horses were picketed a hundred yards away, guarded by two men, but the bowmen hurried to the edge of the trees and, when the leading horsemen of the Count of Labrouillade’s straggling column were less than one hundred yards away, they loosed their arrows.

The Hellequin had become rich on two things. The first was their leader, Thomas of Hookton, who was a good soldier, a supple thinker, and clever in battle, but there were plenty of men in southern France who could match le Bâtard’s cleverness. What they could not do was deploy the Hellequin’s second advantage, the English war bow, and it was that which had made Thomas and his men wealthy.

It was a simple thing. A stave of yew, a little longer than the height of a man and preferably cut from one of the lands close to the Mediterranean. The bowyer would take the stave and shape it, keeping the dense heartwood on one side and the springy sapwood on the other, and he would paint it to keep the moisture trapped in the stave, then nock it with two tips of horn that held the cord, which was woven from fibres of hemp. Some archers liked to add strands of their woman’s hair to the cord, claiming that it stopped the strings from breaking, but Thomas, in twelve years of fighting, had found no difference. The cord was whipped where the arrow rested on the string, and that was the war bow. A peasant’s weapon of yew, hemp and horn, shooting an arrow made from ash, hornbeam or birch, tipped with a steel point and fledged with feathers taken from the wing of a goose, and always taken from the same wing so that the feathers curved in the same direction.

The war bow was cheap and it was lethal. Brother Michael was not a weak man, but he could not draw a bow’s cord more than a hand’s breadth, but Thomas’s archers hauled the string back to their ears and did it sixteen or seventeen times a minute. They had muscles like steel, humps of muscle on their backs, broad chests, thick arms, and the bow was useless without the muscles. Any man could shoot a crossbow, and a good crossbow outranged the yew bow, but it cost a hundred times as much to manufacture and it took five times longer to reload, and, while the crossbowman was winding the ratchet to haul back his cord, the English archer would close the range and shoot a half-dozen points. It was the English and the Welsh archers who had the muscle, and they began training as children, just as Hugh, Thomas’s son, was training now. He had a small bow and his father expected him to shoot three hundred arrows a day. He must shoot and shoot and shoot until he no longer had to think about where the arrow would go, but would simply loose in the knowledge that the arrow would speed where he intended, and every day the muscle grew until, in ten years’ time, Hugh would be ready to stand in the archers’ line and loose goose-feathered death from a great war bow.

Thomas had thirty archers at the edge of the wood and in the first half-minute they launched more than one hundred and fifty arrows, and it was not war, but massacre. An arrow could pierce chain mail at two hundred paces, but none of the Count of Labrouillade’s men were wearing armour or carrying shields, all of which they had loaded onto packhorses. Some of the men had leather coats, but all had taken off their heavy plate or mail, and so the arrows slashed into them, wounding men and horses, driving them to instant chaos. The crossbowmen were on foot and a long way behind the count’s horsemen, and anyway they were cumbered with their sacks of plunder. It would take minutes for them to ready for battle, and Thomas did not give them the minutes. Instead, as the arrows plunged into the screaming horses and fallen riders, Thomas led his twenty-two men-at-arms out of the woods onto the count’s flank.

Thomas’s men were mounted on destriers, the great stallions that could carry the weight of man, armour and weapons. They had not brought lances, for those weapons were heavy and would have slowed their march; instead they drew their swords or wielded axes and maces. Many carried a shield on which the black-barred badge of le Bâtard was painted, and Thomas, once they were out of the trees, turned the line to face the enemy and swung his sword blade down as a signal to advance.

They trotted forward, knee to knee. Rocks studded the high grassland and the line would divide around them, then rejoin. The men were in mail. Some had added pieces of plate armour, a breastplate or perhaps an espalier to protect the shoulders, and all wore bascinets, the simple open-faced helmet that let a man see in battle. The arrows continued to fall. Some of the count’s horsemen were trying to escape, wrenching their reins to ride back northwards, but the thrashing of the wounded horses obstructed them and they could see the black line of Hellequin men-at-arms coming from the side, and some, in desperation, hauled out their swords. A handful broke clear and raced back towards the northern woods where the crossbowmen might be found, while another handful gathered around their lord, the count, who had one arrow in his thigh despite Thomas’s orders that the count was not to be killed. ‘A dead man can’t pay his debts,’ Thomas had said, ‘so shoot anyone else, but make certain Labrouillade lives.’ Now the count was trying to turn his horse, but his weight was too great and the horse was wounded, and he could not turn, and then the Hellequin spurred into the canter, the swords were lowered to the lunge position, and the arrows stopped.

The archers stopped for fear of hitting their own horsemen, then discarded their bows and pulled out swords and ran to join the killing as the men-at-arms struck.

The sound of the charge striking home was like butchers’ cleavers hitting carcasses. Men screamed. Some threw down swords and held their hands out in mute surrender. Thomas, not as comfortable on horseback as he was with a bow, had his lunge deflected by a sword. He crashed past the man, backswung his blade that hammered harmlessly against leather, then swept it forward into a man’s red hair. That man went down, spilling from his saddle, and the Hellequin were turning, coming back to finish the enemy. A rider wearing a black hat plumed with long white feathers lunged a sword at Thomas’s belly. The blade slid off his mail, and Thomas brought his sword back in a wild swing that sliced into the man’s face just as Arnaldus, one of the Gascons in the Hellequin, speared the man’s spine with another sword. The count’s rider was making a high-pitched keening sound, shaking uncontrollably, blood pouring from his shattered face. He let his sword drop, and Arnaldus speared him again. He fell slowly sideways. An archer seized the reins of the man’s horse. The dying man was the last to offer any resistance. The count’s men had been taken by surprise, they had fought an unequal skirmish against men in armour whose lives were spent fighting, and the struggle was over in seconds. A dozen of the count’s men escaped, the rest were dead or prisoners, and the count himself was captured. ‘Archers!’ Thomas shouted. ‘Bows!’ Their job would be to watch the northern woods in case the crossbowmen had fight in them, though Thomas doubted any would want to fight after their lord was captured. A dozen archers collected arrows, cutting them out of dead and wounded horses, picking them from the ground and filling their arrow bags. The prisoners were herded to one side and made to yield their weapons as Thomas walked his horse to where the wounded count lay on the turf. ‘My lord,’ he greeted him, ‘you owe me money.’

‘You were paid!’ the count blustered.

‘Sam,’ Thomas called to the archer, ‘if his lordship argues with me you can fill him with arrows.’ He spoke in French, which Sam understood, and the bowman put an arrow on his string and offered the count a happy grin.

‘My lord,’ Thomas said again, ‘you owe me money.’

‘You could have pleaded your case,’ Labrouillade said.

‘Pleaded? Argued? Wrangled? Delayed? Why should I let your lawyers weave spells?’ Thomas shook his head. ‘Where are the genoins you took from Paville?’

The count thought of claiming that the coins were still at Villon’s castle, but the archer had his string half drawn and le Bâtard’s face was implacable, and so the count reluctantly told the truth. ‘They are in Labrouillade.’

‘Then you will send one of your men-at-arms to Labrouillade,’ Thomas said courteously, ‘with orders that the money is to be brought here. And when it is, my lord, we shall let you go.’

‘Let me go?’ The count was surprised.

‘What use are you to me?’ Thomas asked. ‘It would take months to raise your ransom, my lord, and in those years you’d consume a greater value than the ransom in food. No, I shall let you go. And now, my lord, when you have sent for the coins you might permit my men to take that arrow from your thigh?’

A man-at-arms was summoned from the prisoners, given a captured horse and sent south with his message. Thomas then called Brother Michael. ‘You know how to take arrows out of flesh?’

The young monk looked alarmed. ‘No, sir.’

‘Then watch as Sam does it. You can learn.’

‘I don’t want to learn,’ Brother Michael blurted out, then looked abashed.

‘You don’t want to learn?’

‘I don’t like medicine,’ the monk confessed, ‘but my abbot insisted.’

‘What do you want?’ Thomas asked.

Michael looked confused. ‘To serve God?’ he suggested.

‘Then serve him by learning how to extract arrows,’ Thomas said.

‘You’d better hope it’s a bodkin,’ Sam told the count cheerfully. ‘It’s going to hurt either way, but I can get a bodkin out in an eyeblink. If it’s a flesh arrow I’ll have to cut the bastard out. Are you ready?’

‘Bodkin?’ the count asked faintly. Sam had spoken in English, but the count had half understood.

Sam produced two arrows from his bag. One had a long slender head without barbs. ‘A bodkin, my lord, made for slipping through armour.’ He tapped it with the second arrow that had a barbed triangular head. ‘A flesh arrow,’ he said. He drew a short knife from his belt. ‘Won’t take a moment. Are you ready?’

‘My own physician will treat me!’ the count shouted at Thomas.

‘If you wish, my lord,’ Thomas said. ‘Sam? Cut the shaft off, bind him up.’

The count yelped as the arrow was cut. Thomas rode away, going to where the Lord of Villon lay in his cart. The man was curled up, naked and bloody. Thomas dismounted, tied his horse to the shafts and called Villon’s name. The count did not move and Thomas clambered into the wagon, turned the man over, and saw he had died. There was enough congealed blood in the cart to fill a pair of buckets, and Thomas grimaced as he jumped down, then wiped his boots on the pale grass before going to the caged cart where the Countess Bertille watched him with wide eyes. ‘The Lord of Villon is dead,’ Thomas said.

‘Why didn’t you kill the Lord of Labrouillade?’ she asked, jerking her head towards her husband.

‘I don’t kill a man for owing me money,’ Thomas said, ‘but only for refusing to pay it.’ He drew his sword and used it to snap the feeble lock of the cage door, then held out his hand to help the countess down to the grass. ‘Your husband,’ he said, ‘will be free to go soon. You also, my lady.’

‘I’m not going with him!’ she said defiantly. She stalked to where the count lay on the grass. ‘He can sleep with the pigs,’ she said, pointing to the two carcasses on top of the cage, ‘he won’t know the difference.’

The count tried to get to his feet to slap his wife, but Sam was binding his wound with a strip of linen torn from a corpse’s shirt and he yanked the linen tightly so that the count yelped with pain again. ‘Sorry, my lord,’ Sam said. ‘Just stay still, sire, won’t be but a moment.’

The countess spat at him and walked away.

‘Bring the bitch here!’ the count shouted.

The countess kept walking, clutching her torn dress to her breasts. Genevieve touched her shoulder, said something, then approached Thomas. ‘What will you do with her?’

‘She’s not mine to do anything with,’ Thomas said, ‘but she can’t come with us.’

‘Why not?’ Genevieve asked.

‘When we leave here,’ Thomas said, ‘we have to go to Mouthoumet. We might have to fight our way there. We can’t take useless mouths that will slow us down.’

Genevieve smiled briefly, then gazed at the crossbowmen who were sitting at the edge of the northern woods. None of them had a weapon, instead they just watched their lord’s humiliation. ‘Your soul has hardened, Thomas,’ she said softly.

‘I’m a soldier.’

‘You were a soldier when I met you,’ Genevieve said, ‘and I was a prisoner, accused of heresy, excommunicated, condemned to death, but you took me away. What was I but a useless mouth?’

‘She’s trouble,’ Thomas said irritably.

‘And I wasn’t?’

‘But what will we do with her?’ he asked.

‘Take her away.’

‘From what?’

‘From that hog of a husband,’ Genevieve said, ‘from a future in a convent? From being clawed by dried-up nuns who hate her beauty? She must do what I did. Find her future.’

‘Her future,’ Thomas said, ‘is to cause dissension among the men.’

‘Good,’ Genevieve said, ‘because men cause enough trouble for women. I’ll protect her.’

‘Dear God,’ Thomas said in exasperation, then turned to look at Bertille. She was, he thought, a rare beauty. His men were staring at her with undisguised longing, and he could not blame them. Men would die for a woman who looked like Bertille. Brother Michael had found a cloak rolled up behind the cantle of the count’s saddle and he shook it out, carried it to her and offered it as a covering for her torn dress. She said something to him and the young monk blushed as scarlet as the western clouds. ‘It looks,’ Thomas said, ‘as though she already has a protector.’

‘I will do a better job,’ Genevieve said, and she walked to the count’s horse and reached for the blood-stained gelding knife that hung by a loop from the saddle’s pommel. She crossed to the count, who flinched at the sight of the blade. He glowered at the silver-mailed woman who looked down at him with disdain. ‘Your wife will ride with us,’ Genevieve told him, ‘and if you make any attempt to take her back then I will cut you myself. I will cut you slowly and make you squeal like the pig you are.’ She spat at him and walked away.

Another enemy, Thomas thought.

The genoins came as dusk shaded into night. The coins were loaded on two packhorses and, once Thomas was satisfied that all the coins were there, he went back to the count. ‘I shall keep all the coins, my lord, the bad and the good. You’ve paid me twice, the second payment for the trouble you caused me today.’

‘I’ll kill you,’ the count said.

‘It was our pleasure to serve you, my lord,’ Thomas said. He mounted, then led his men and all the captured horses westwards. The first stars pricked the darkening sky. It was cold suddenly because a northern wind had blown up, bringing a hint of winter.

And in the spring that followed, Thomas thought, there would be another war. But first he must go to Armagnac.

And so the Hellequin rode north.

Three

It would have been easy enough for Fra Ferdinand to steal a horse. The Prince of Wales’s army had left their horses outside Carcassonne, and the few men guarding the animals were bored and tired. The destriers, those big horses that the men-of-arms rode, were better guarded, but the mounts of the archers were in a paddock and the Black Friar could have taken a dozen, but a lone man on a horse is noticeable, a target for bandits, and Fra Ferdinand dared not risk the loss of la Malice, and so he preferred to walk.

It took him ten days to reach home. For a time he travelled with some merchants who had hired a dozen men-at-arms to guard their goods, but after four days they took the road south to Montpellier, and Fra Ferdinand continued northwards. One of the merchants had asked him why he carried la Malice, and the friar had shrugged the question away, ‘It’s just an old blade,’ he had said, ‘it might make a good hay knife?’

‘Doesn’t look like it could cut butter,’ the merchant had said, ‘you’d do better to melt it down.’

‘And maybe I will.’

He had heard news on the journey, though such travellers’ tales were always unreliable. It was said that the rampaging English army had burned Narbonne and Villefranche, others said Toulouse itself had fallen. The merchants had grumbled. The English chevauchée was a tactic to destroy a country’s power, to starve the lords of taxes, to burn their mills, uproot their vines, to demolish whole towns, and the only way such a destructive force could be stopped was by another army, yet the King of France was still in the north, far away, and the Prince of Wales was running riot in the south. ‘King Jean should come here,’ one of the merchants had said, ‘and kill the English princeling, or else there’ll be no France to rule.’

Fra Ferdinand had kept silent. The other travellers were nervous of him. He was gaunt, stern and mysterious, though his companions were grateful that he did not preach. The Black Friars were a preaching order, destined to wander the world in poverty and encourage it to godliness, and when the merchants turned southwards they gave him money, which Fra Ferdinand suspected was in gratitude for his silence. He accepted the charity, offered the donors a blessing, and walked north alone.

He kept to the wooded parts of the country to avoid strangers. He knew there were coredors, bandits, and routiers who would think nothing of robbing a friar. The world, he thought, had become evil, and he prayed for God’s protection and his prayers were answered because he saw no bandits and found no enemies, and late on a Tuesday evening he came to Agout, the village just south of the hills where the tower stood, and he went to the inn and there heard the news.

The Lord of Mouthoumet was dead. He had been visited by a priest accompanied by men-at-arms, and when the priest left the Sire of Mouthoumet was dead. He was buried now, and the men-at-arms had stayed at the tower until some Englishmen had come and there had been a fight and the Englishmen had killed three of the priest’s men and the rest had run away.

‘Are the English still there?’

‘They went away too.’

Fra Ferdinand went to the tower the next day where he found the Sire of Mouthoumet’s housekeeper, a garrulous woman who knelt for the friar’s blessing, but hardly ceased her chatter even as he gave it. She told how a priest had come, ‘He was rude!’, and then the priest had left and the men who remained behind had searched the tower and the village. ‘They were beasts,’ she said, ‘Frenchmen! But beasts! Then the English came.’ The English, she said, had worn a badge showing a strange animal holding a cup.

‘The Hellequin,’ Fra Ferdinand said.

‘Hellequin?’

‘It is a name they take pride in. Men should suffer for such pride.’

‘Amen.’

‘But the Hellequin did not kill the Sire of Mouthoumet?’ the friar asked.

‘He was buried by the time they arrived.’ She made the sign of the cross. ‘No, the Frenchmen killed him. They came from Avignon.’

‘Avignon!’

‘The priest came from there. He was called Father Calade.’ She made the sign of the cross. ‘He had green eyes and I did not like him. The sire was blinded! The priest gouged his eyes out!’

‘Dear God,’ Fra Ferdinand said quietly. ‘How do you know they came from Avignon?’

‘They said so! The men he left behind told us so! They said if we didn’t give them what they wanted then we would all be damned by the Holy Father himself.’ She paused just long enough to make the sign of the cross. ‘The English asked too. I didn’t like their leader. One of his hands was like the devil’s paw, like a claw. He was courteous,’ she said that grudgingly, ‘but he was hard. I could tell from his hand that he was evil!’

Fra Ferdinand knew how superstitious the old woman was. She was a good woman, but saw omens in clouds, in flowers, in dogs, in smoke, in anything. ‘Did they ask about me?’

‘No.’

‘Good.’ The friar had found a refuge in Mouthoumet. He was becoming too old to walk the roads of France and rely on the kindness of strangers to provide a bed and food, and a year earlier he had come to the tower and the old man had invited him to stay. They had talked together, eaten together, played chess together, and the count had told Fra Ferdinand all the ancient stories of the Dark Lords. ‘The English will come back, I think,’ the friar said now, ‘and perhaps the French too.’

‘Why?’

‘They search for something,’ he said.

‘They searched! They dug up the new graves even, but they found nothing. The English went to Avignon.’

‘You know that?’

‘That’s what they said. That they would follow Father Calade to Avignon.’ She crossed herself again. ‘What would a priest from Avignon want here? Why would the English come to Mouthoumet?’

‘Because of this,’ Fra Ferdinand said, showing her the old blade.

‘If that’s all they want,’ she said scornfully, ‘then give it to them!’

The Count of Mouthoumet, fearing that the rampaging English would plunder the graves of Carcassonne, had begged the friar to rescue la Malice. Fra Ferdinand suspected that the old man really wanted to touch the blade himself, to see this miraculous thing that his ancestors had protected, a relic of such power that possession of it might take a man’s soul directly to heaven, and such was the old man’s desperate pleading that Fra Ferdinand had agreed. He had rescued la Malice, but his fellow friars were preaching that the sword was the key to paradise, and all across Christendom men were lusting after the blade. Why would they preach that? He suspected that he was to blame himself. After the count had told him the legend of la Malice, the friar had dutifully walked to Avignon and recounted the story to the master general of his order and the master general, a good man, had smiled, then said that a thousand such tales were told each year and that none had ever held the truth. ‘Do you remember ten years ago?’ the master general had asked, ‘when the pestilence came? And how all Christendom believed the Grail had been seen? And before that, what was it? Ah, the lance of Saint George! And that was a nonsense too, but I thank you, brother, for telling me.’ He had sent Fra Ferdinand away with a blessing, but maybe the master general had told others of the relic? And now, thanks to the Black Friars, the rumour had infested all Europe. ‘“He who must rule us will find it, and he shall be blessed,’’’ the friar said.

‘What does that mean?’ the old woman asked.

‘It means that some men go mad in search of God,’ Fra Ferdinand explained, ‘it means that every man who wants power seeks a sign from God.’

The old woman frowned, not understanding, but she believed Fra Ferdinand was strange anyway. ‘The world is mad,’ she said, picking on that one word. ‘They say the English devils have burned half of France! Where is the king?’

‘When the English come,’ Fra Ferdinand said, ‘or anyone else, tell them I have gone to the south.’

‘You’re leaving?’

‘It’s not safe for me here. Perhaps I will return when the madness is over, but for now I am going to the high hills by Spain. I shall hide there.’

‘To Spain! They have devils there!’

‘I shall go to the hills,’ Fra Ferdinand reassured her, ‘close to the angels,’ and next morning he walked southwards and only when he was well out of sight of the village and sure that no one watched him did he turn north. He had a long journey to make and a treasure to protect.

He would return la Malice to her rightful owner. He would go to Poitou.

A small man, dark-faced and scowling, with a paint-spattered shock of black hair, was perched on a high trestle and using a brush to touch brown pigment onto an arched ceiling. He said something in a language Thomas did not understand.

‘You speak French?’ Thomas asked.

‘We all have to speak French here,’ the painter said, changing to that language, which he spoke with an execrable accent, ‘of course we damned well speak French. Have you come to give me advice?’

‘On what?’

‘On the fresco, of course, you damned fool. You don’t like the colour of the clouds? The Virgin’s thighs are too big? The angels’ heads are too small? That’s what they told me yesterday,’ he pointed his paintbrush across the ceiling to where flying angels played trumpets in the Virgin’s honour, ‘their heads are too small, they said, but where were they looking from? From up one of my ladders! From the floor they look perfect. Of course they’re perfect. I painted them. I painted the Virgin’s toes too,’ he dabbed the brush angrily at the ceiling, ‘and the goddamned Dominicans told me that was heresy. Heresy! To show the Virgin’s toes? Sweet holy Christ, I painted her with naked tits in Siena, but no one threatened to burn me there.’ He dabbed with the brush, then leaned back. ‘I’m sorry, ma chérie,’ he spoke to the image of Mary that he was painting onto the ceiling, ‘you’re not allowed to have tits and now you’ve lost your toes, but they’ll come back.’

‘They will?’ Thomas asked.

‘The plaster’s dry,’ the painter snarled as though the answer was obvious, ‘and if you paint over a fresco when it’s dry then that paint will peel off like a whore’s scabs. It will take a few years, but her heretical toes will reappear, but the Dominicans don’t know that because they are damned fools.’ He switched into his native Italian and screamed insults at his two assistants, who were using a giant pestle to mix fresh plaster in a barrel. ‘They are also fools,’ he added to Thomas.

‘You have to paint on wet plaster?’ Thomas asked.

‘You came here to have a lesson in how to paint? You damned well pay me. Who are you?’

‘My name is d’Evecque,’ Thomas said. He had no wish to be known by his real name in Avignon. He had enemies enough in the church, and Avignon was the home of the Pope, which meant the town was packed with priests, monks and friars. He had come here because the disagreeable woman in Mouthoumet had assured him that the mysterious Father Calade had come to Avignon, but Thomas now had a sinking feeling that his time was being wasted. He had enquired of a dozen priests if they knew of a Father Calade, and none had recognised the name, but equally no one had recognised Thomas either or knew he had been excommunicated. He was a heretic now, outside the church’s grace, a man to be hunted and burned, yet he could not resist visiting the great fortress-palace of the Papacy. There was a Pope in Rome too, because of the schism in the church, but Avignon held the power, and Thomas was astonished by the riches displayed in the vast building.

‘From your voice,’ the painter said, ‘I’d guess you’re a Norman? Or perhaps an Englishman, eh?’

‘A Norman,’ Thomas said.

‘So what is a Norman doing so far from home?’

‘I wish to see the Holy Father.’

‘Of course you damned well do. But what are you doing here? In the Salle des Herses?’

The Salle des Herses was a room that opened from the great audience chamber of the Papal palace, and it had once contained the mechanism that lowered the portcullis in the palace gate, though that winch and pulley system had long been taken out so that, evidently, the room could become another chapel. Thomas hesitated before answering, then told the truth. ‘I wanted somewhere to piss.’

‘That corner,’ the painter gestured with his brush, ‘in that hole beneath the picture of Saint Joseph. It’s where the rats get in, so do me a favour and drown some of the bastards. So what do you want of the Holy Father? Sins remitted? A free pass to heaven? One of the choirboys?’

‘Just a blessing,’ Thomas said.

‘You ask for so little, Norman. Ask for much, then you might get a little. Or you might get nothing. This Holy Father is not susceptible to bribes.’ The painter scrambled down from the scaffold, grimaced at his new work, then went to a table covered with small pots of precious pigments. ‘It’s a good thing you’re not English! The Holy Father doesn’t like the English.’

Thomas buttoned up his breeches. ‘He doesn’t?’

‘He does not,’ the painter said, ‘and how do I know? Because I know everything. I paint and they ignore me because they can’t see me! I am Giacomo on the scaffold and they are talking beneath me. Not in here,’ he spat, as if the chamber he decorated was not worth the effort, ‘but I am also painting over the angels’ naked tits in the Conclave Chamber, and that’s where they talk. Chatter, chatter, chatter! They’re like birds, their heads together, twittering, and Giacomo is busy hiding tits on the scaffold above and so they forget I am up there.’

‘So what does the Holy Father say about the English?’

‘You want my knowledge? You pay.’

‘You want me to throw paint on your ceiling?’

Giacomo laughed. ‘I hear, Norman, that the Holy Father wants the French to defeat the English. There are three French cardinals here now, all yammering in his ear, but he doesn’t need their encouragement. He’s told Burgundy to fight alongside France. He has sent messages to Toulouse, to Provence, to the Dauphiné, even to Gascony, telling men it is their duty to resist England. The Holy Father is a Frenchman, remember. He wants France strong again, strong enough to pay the church its proper taxes. The English are not popular here,’ he paused to give Thomas a sly look, ‘so it is good you’re not an Englishman, eh?’

‘It is good,’ Thomas said.

‘The Holy Father might curse an Englishman,’ Giacomo chuckled. He climbed the scaffolding again, talking as he went. ‘The Scots have sent men to fight for France and the Holy Father is pleased! He says the Scots are faithful sons of the church, but he wants the English,’ he paused to make a brush-stroke, ‘punished. So you came all this way just for a blessing?’

Thomas had walked to the chamber’s end where an old painting faded on the wall. ‘For a blessing,’ he said, ‘and to look for a man.’

‘Ah! Who?’

‘Father Calade?’

‘Calade!’ Giacomo shook his head. ‘I know of a Father Callait, but not Calade.’

‘You’re from Italy?’ Thomas asked.

‘By the Grace of God I come from Corbola, which is a Venetian city,’ Giacomo said, then nimbly descended the scaffolding and went to the table where he wiped his hands on a rag. ‘Of course I come from Italy! If you want something painted, you ask an Italian. If you want something daubed, smeared or splattered, you ask a Frenchman. Or you ask those two fools,’ he gestured at his assistants, ‘idiots! Keep stirring the plaster! They might be Italians, but they have the brains of Frenchmen. Nothing but spinach between their ears!’ He picked up a leather quirt as if to strike one of his assistants, then abruptly fell to one knee. The two assistants also knelt, and then Thomas saw who had entered the room and he also snatched off his hat and knelt.

The Holy Father had come into the chamber, accompanied by four cardinals and a dozen other priests. Pope Innocent smiled absently at the painter, then stared up at the newly painted frescoes.

Thomas raised his head to look at the Pope. Innocent VI, Pope now for three years, was an old man with wispy hair, a drawn face, and hands that shook. He wore a red cloak, edged with white fur, and he was slightly bent as if his spine was crippled. He dragged his left foot as he walked, but his voice was strong enough. ‘You’re doing good work, my son,’ he said to the Italian, ‘most excellent work! Why, those clouds look more real than real clouds!’

‘All for the glory of God,’ Giacomo muttered, ‘and your own renown, Holy Father.’

‘And for your own glory, my son,’ the Pope said, and sketched a vague blessing towards the two assistants. ‘And are you a painter too, my son?’ he asked Thomas.

‘I am a soldier, Holy Father,’ Thomas said.

‘From where?’

‘From Normandy, Holy Father.’

‘Ah!’ Innocent seemed delighted. ‘You have a name, my son?’

‘Guillaume d’Evecque, Holy Father.’

One of the cardinals, his red robe belted tightly about a glutton’s belly, turned fast from examining the ceiling and looked as if he was about to protest. Then he shut his mouth, but went on glaring at Thomas. ‘And tell me, my son,’ Innocent was oblivious of the cardinal’s reaction, ‘whether you have sworn fealty to the English?’

‘No, Holy Father.’

‘So many Normans have! But I don’t need to tell you that. I weep for France! Too many have died and it is time there was peace in Christendom. My blessing, Guillaume.’ He held out his hand and Thomas stood, walked to him, knelt again and kissed the fisherman’s ring that the Pope wore above his embroidered glove. ‘You have my blessing,’ Innocent said, laying a hand on Thomas’s bare head, ‘and my prayers.’

‘As I shall pray for you, Holy Father,’ Thomas said, wondering if he was the first excommunicate ever to be blessed by a pope. ‘I shall pray for your long life,’ he added the polite phrase.

The hand on his head quivered. ‘I am an old man, my son,’ the Pope said, ‘and my physician tells me I have many years left! But physicians lie, don’t they?’ He chuckled. ‘Father Marchant says his calade would tell me I have a long life yet, but I would rather trust my lying physicians.’

Thomas held his breath, conscious suddenly of his heartbeat. There seemed a chill in the room, then a quiver of the Pope’s hand made Thomas breathe again. ‘Calade, Holy Father?’ he asked.

‘A bird that tells the future,’ the Pope said, taking his hand from Thomas’s. ‘We do indeed live in an age of miracles when birds deliver prophecies! Isn’t that so, Father Marchant?’

A tall priest bowed to the Pope. ‘Your Holiness is miracle enough.’

‘Ah no! The miracle is in here! In the painting! It is superb. I congratulate you, my son,’ the Pope spoke to Giacomo.

Thomas stole a glance at Father Marchant, seeing a slim, dark-faced man with eyes that seemed to glitter; green eyes, forceful eyes, frightening eyes that suddenly looked straight at Thomas, who dropped his gaze to stare at the Pope’s slippers, which were embroidered with Saint Peter’s keys.

The Pope blessed Giacomo and then, pleased with the progress of the new frescoes, limped from the room. His entourage followed him, all but for the fat cardinal and the green-eyed priest, who stayed. Thomas was about to rise, but the cardinal placed a heavy hand on Thomas’s bare head and pressed him back down. ‘Say your name again,’ the cardinal demanded.

‘Guillaume d’Evecque, Your Eminence.’

‘And I am Cardinal Bessières,’ the red-robed man said, keeping his hand on Thomas’s head, ‘Cardinal Bessières, Cardinal Archbishop of Livorno, Papal Legate to King Jean of France, whom God bless above all earthly monarchs.’ He paused, plainly wanting Thomas to echo his last words.

‘May God bless His Majesty,’ Thomas said dutifully.

‘I heard Guillaume d’Evecque died,’ the cardinal said in a dangerous tone.

‘My cousin, Your Eminence.’

‘How did he die?’

‘The plague,’ Thomas said vaguely. Sire Guillaume d’Evecque had been Thomas’s enemy, then his friend, and he had died of the plague, but not before he had fought on Thomas’s side.

‘He fought for the English,’ the cardinal said.

‘I have heard as much, Your Eminence, and it is to our family’s shame. But I hardly knew my cousin.’

The cardinal withdrew his hand and Thomas stood. The priest with the green eyes was staring at the faded painting on the end wall. ‘Did you paint this?’ he demanded of Giacomo.

‘No, father,’ Giacomo answered, ‘it is a very old painting and very badly done, so it was probably daubed there by a Frenchman or perhaps a Burgundian? The Holy Father wants me to replace it.’

‘Make sure you do.’

The priest’s tone drew the attention of the cardinal who now stared at the old painting. He had been looking at Thomas, frowning as if he doubted the truth of what Thomas had said, but the sight of the painting distracted him. The faded picture showed Saint Peter, identifiable because in one hand he held two golden keys, offering a sword towards a kneeling monk. The two men were in a snow-covered field, though the patch of ground about the kneeling man had been cleared of snow. The monk was reaching for the sword, watched by a second monk who peered apprehensively through the half-opened shutter of a small snow-covered house. The cardinal gazed at it for a long time and looked surprised at first, but then shuddered in anger. ‘Who is the monk?’ he demanded of Giacomo.

‘I don’t know, Your Eminence,’ the Italian answered.

The cardinal glanced quizzically at the green-eyed priest, who merely answered with a shrug. The cardinal glowered. ‘Why haven’t you covered it over already?’ he demanded of the painter.

‘Because the Holy Father ordered the ceiling painted before the walls, Your Eminence.’

‘Then cover it now!’ the Cardinal snarled. ‘Cover it before you finish the ceiling.’ He snatched a glance at Thomas. ‘Why are you here?’ he demanded.

‘To receive the Holy Father’s blessing, Your Eminence.’

Cardinal Bessières frowned. He was plainly suspicious of the name Thomas had given, but the existence of the old painting seemed to trouble him even more. ‘Just cover it!’ he ordered Giacomo again, then looked back to Thomas. ‘Where do you lodge?’ he asked.

‘By Saint Bénézet’s church, Your Eminence,’ Thomas lied. In truth he had left Genevieve, Hugh and a score of his men in a tavern beyond the great bridge, far from Saint Bénézet’s church. He lied because the last thing he wanted was Cardinal Bessières to take a sudden interest in Guillaume d’Evecque. Thomas had killed the cardinal’s brother, and if Bessières knew who Thomas really was then the fires of heresy would be lit in the great square beneath the Papal palace.

‘I am curious,’ the cardinal said, ‘about the state of affairs in Normandy. I shall send for you after the None prayers. Father Marchant will fetch you.’

‘I shall indeed,’ the priest said, and made the words sound like a threat.

‘I shall be most honoured to assist Your Eminence,’ Thomas said, keeping his head bowed.

‘Get rid of that painting,’ the cardinal said to Giacomo and then led his green-eyed companion from the room.

The Italian, still on his knees, let out a long breath. ‘He didn’t like you.’

‘Does he like anyone?’ Thomas asked.

Giacomo stood and screamed at his assistants. ‘The plaster will set hard if they don’t stir it!’ he explained his anger to Thomas. ‘They have porridge for brains. They are Milanese, yes? So they are fools. But Cardinal Bessières is no fool, he would be a dangerous enemy, my friend.’ Giacomo did not know it, but the cardinal was already Thomas’s enemy, though fortunately Bessières had never met Thomas and had no idea that the Englishman was even in Avignon. Giacomo went to the table where his pigments were in small clay pots. ‘And Cardinal Bessières,’ he went on, ‘has hopes of being the next Pope. Innocent is frail, Bessières is not. We may have another Holy Father soon.’

‘Why doesn’t he like this painting?’ Thomas asked, pointing to the end wall.

‘Perhaps he has good taste? Or perhaps because it looks as if it was painted by a dog holding a brush stuck up its arsehole?’

Thomas stared at the old picture. The cardinal had wanted to know what story it told, and neither Giacomo nor the green-eyed priest could answer him, but plainly he wanted the painting destroyed so no one else could find the answer. And the picture did tell a story. Saint Peter was handing his sword to a monk in the snow, and the monk must have a name, but who was he? ‘You really don’t know what the picture means?’ Thomas asked Giacomo.

‘A legend?’ the Italian guessed carelessly.

‘But what legend?’

‘Saint Peter had a sword,’ Giacomo said, ‘and I suppose he’s handing it to the church? He should have used it to cut off the painter’s hand and saved us from having to look at his horrible daubs.’

‘But usually the sword is painted in Gethsemane,’ Thomas said. He had seen many church walls painted with the scene before Christ’s arrest when Peter had drawn a sword and cut off the ear of the high priest’s servant, but he had never seen Peter placed in a snowstorm.

‘So the fool who painted this didn’t know his stories,’ Giacomo said.

Yet everything in pictures had a meaning. If a man held a saw then he was Saint Simon, because Simon had been sawn to pieces at his martyrdom. A bunch of grapes reminded folk of the eucharist, King David carried a harp, Saint Thaddeus a club or a carpenter’s rule, Saint George faced a dragon, Saint Denis was always painted holding his own severed head: everything had a meaning, yet Thomas had no idea what this old picture meant. ‘Aren’t you painters supposed to know all these symbols?’

‘What symbols?’

‘The sword, the keys, the snow, the man in the window!’

‘The sword is Peter’s sword, the keys are the keys of heaven! You need teaching how to suck at your mother’s tit?’

‘And the snow?’

Giacomo scowled, plainly uncomfortable with the question.‘The idiot couldn’t paint grass,’ he finally decided, ‘so he slapped on some cheap limewash! It has no meaning! Tomorrow we chip it off and put something pretty there.’

Yet whoever had painted the scene had taken the trouble to clear that patch of snow from around the kneeling man, and he had painted the grass cleverly enough, scattering it with small yellow and blue flowers. So the cleared snow had a meaning, as did the presence of the second monk looking fearfully from the cottage window. ‘Do you have charcoal?’ Thomas asked.

‘Of course I have charcoal!’ Giacomo gestured to the table where his pigments stood.

Thomas went to the door and looked out into the great audience chamber. There was no sign of Cardinal Bessières or of the green-eyed priest, and so he picked up a lump of charcoal and went to the strange painting. He wrote on it.

‘What are you doing?’ Giacomo asked.

‘I want the cardinal to see that,’ Thomas said.

He had scrawled Calix Meus Inebrians in great black letters across the snow. ‘My cup makes me drunk?’ Giacomo asked, puzzled.

‘It’s from a psalm of David,’ Thomas said.

‘But what does it mean?’

‘The cardinal will know,’ Thomas said.

Giacomo frowned. ‘Sweet Christ,’ he said, ‘but you play dangerously.’

‘Thanks for letting me piss here,’ Thomas said. The painter was right, this was dangerous, but if he could not track down Father Calade in this city of his enemies, then he would invite Father Calade to follow him, and Thomas suspected that Father Calade would turn out to be the priest with very green eyes.

And the priest with the green eyes was interested in an old, badly painted picture of two monks and Saint Peter, but the centre of the painting had not been the kneeling monk, nor even the gowned figure of Saint Peter himself, but the sword.

And Thomas, though he could not be certain, was suddenly convinced that the sword had a name: la Malice.

And that day, long before the None prayers, and before anyone could find him and put him to the church’s torture, Thomas and his company left Avignon.

The warm weather came. It was campaigning weather, and all across France men sharpened weapons, exercised horses and waited for the summons to serve the king. The English were sending reinforcements to Brittany and to Gascony and men thought that surely King Jean would raise a great army to crush them, but instead he took a smaller army to the edges of Navarre, to the castle of Breteuil, and there, facing the stronghold’s gaunt walls, his men constructed a siege tower.

It was a monstrous thing, taller than a church’s spire, a scaffold of three floors perched on two iron axles joined to four massive wheels of solid elm. The front and sides of the tower were sheathed in oak planks to prevent the castle’s garrison from riddling the platforms with crossbow bolts, and now, in a cold dawn, men were nailing stiff leather hides to that wooden armour. They worked a mere four hundred paces from the castle and once in a while a defender would shoot a crossbow bolt, but the range was too long and the bolts always fell short. Four flags flew from the tower’s summit, two with the French fleur-de-lys and two showing an axe, the symbol of France’s patron saint, the martyred Saint Denis. The flags stretched and twisted in the wind. There had been a gale in the night and the wind still blew strong from the west.

‘One shower of rain,’ the Lord of Douglas said, ‘and this damn thing will be useless. They’ll never move it! It’ll bog down in mud.’

‘God is on our side,’ his young companion said placidly.

‘God,’ the Lord of Douglas said disgustedly.

‘Watches over us,’ the young man said. He was tall and slender, scarce more than twenty or twenty-one years old, with a strikingly handsome face. He had fair hair that was brushed back from a high forehead, blue eyes that were calm, and a mouth that seemed constantly hovering on the edge of a smile. He was from Gascony, where he owned a fief that had been sequestered by the English, leaving him without the income of his lands, which loss should have rendered him poor, but the Sire Roland de Verrec was renowned as the greatest of France’s tournament fighters. Some had claimed that Joscelyn of Berat was the better man, but at Auxerre, Roland had defeated Joscelyn three times, then tormented the brutal champion, Walther of Siegenthaler, with quicksilver swordplay. At Limoges he had been the only man standing at the end of a vicious melee, while in Paris the women had sighed as he destroyed two hardened knights who had twice his years and many times his experience. Roland de Verrec earned the fees of a champion because he was lethal.

And a virgin.

His black shield bore the symbol of the white rose, the rose without thorns, the flower of the Virgin Mary and a proud display of his own purity. The men he so constantly defeated in the lists thought he was mad, the women who watched him thought he was wasted, but Roland de Verrec had devoted his life to chivalry, to sanctity and to goodness. He was famous for his virginity; he was also mocked for it, though never to his face and never within reach of his quick sword. He was also admired for his purity, even envied, because it was said that he had been commanded to a life of sanctity by a vision of the Virgin Mary herself. She had appeared to him when he was just fourteen, she had touched him and she had told him he would be blessed above all men if he kept himself chaste as she was chaste. ‘You will marry,’ she had told him, ‘but till then you are mine.’ And so he was.

Men might mock Roland, but women sighed over him. One woman had been driven to tell Roland de Verrec that he was beautiful. She had reached out and touched his cheek, ‘All that fighting and not one scar!’ she had said, and he had drawn back from her as if her finger burned, then said that all beauty was but a reflection of God’s grace. ‘If I believed otherwise,’ he had told her, ‘I would be tempted to vanity,’ and perhaps he did suffer from that temptation because he dressed with inordinate care and always wore his armour blanched: scrubbed with sand, vinegar and wire until it reflected the sun with dazzling brilliance. Though not on this day because the sky above Breteuil was low, grey and dark.

‘It’s going to rain,’ the Lord of Douglas growled, ‘and this damned tower will go nowhere.’

‘It will bring us victory,’ Roland de Verrec said, sounding quietly confident. ‘The Bishop of Châlons blessed it last night; it will not fail.’

‘It shouldn’t even be here,’ Douglas snarled. The Scottish knights had been summoned by King Jean to join this attack on Breteuil, but the defenders were not Englishmen, they were other Frenchmen. ‘I didn’t come here to kill Frenchmen,’ Douglas said, ‘I came here to kill the English.’

‘They’re Navarrese,’ Roland de Verrec said, ‘the enemies of France, and our king wants them defeated.’

‘Breteuil is a goddamned pimple!’ the Lord of Douglas protested. ‘For Christ’s sake, what importance does it have? There are no bloody Englishmen inside!’

Roland smiled. ‘Whoever is inside, my lord,’ he said quietly, ‘I do my king’s bidding.’

The King of France, ignoring the Englishmen in Calais, in Gascony and in Brittany, had instead chosen to march against the Kingdom of Navarre on the edge of Normandy. The quarrel was obscure and the campaign a waste of scarce resources, for Navarre could not threaten France, yet King Jean had chosen to fight. It was evidently a family quarrel, one the Lord of Douglas did not comprehend. ‘Let them rot here,’ he said, ‘while we march against England. We should be chasing the boy Edward and instead we’re pissing on a spark at the edge of Normandy.’

‘The king wants Breteuil,’ Roland said.

‘He doesn’t want to face Englishmen,’ the Lord of Douglas said, and he knew he was right. Ever since the Scottish knights had come to France, the king had hesitated. Jean had chosen to go south one day, west the next, and to stay put on the third. Now, finally, he had marched against Navarre. Navarre! And the English had erupted from their strongholds in Gascony and were ravaging inland again. Another army was gathered on England’s south coast, doubtless to be landed in Normandy or Brittany, and King Jean was at Breteuil! The Lord of Douglas could weep at the thought. Go south, he had urged the French king, go south and crush the puppy Edward, capture the bastard, trample his men’s guts into the mud, and then imprison the prince as a bargaining piece for Scotland’s captured king. Instead they were besieging Breteuil.

The two men were standing on the topmost platform of the tower. Roland de Verrec had volunteered to lead the attack. The siege tower would be trundled forward, pushed by dozens of men, some of whom must fall to crossbow bolts, but others would replace them, and eventually the whole tower would crash against the castle wall and Roland’s men would slash through the ropes holding the drawbridge that protected the front of the upper platform. The drawbridge would fall, making a wide bridge to Breteuil’s battlements, and then the attackers would stream across, screaming their war cry, and those first men, the men most likely to die, must hold the captured battlement long enough to let hundreds of the King of France’s troops climb the tower’s ladders. They had to climb those ladders while cumbered by mail, by plate armour, by shields, and by weapons. It would take time, and the first men across the drawbridge had to buy that time with their lives. There was great honour in being among those first attackers, honour earned by the risk of death, and Roland de Verrec had gone on his knees to the King of France and begged to be granted that privilege.

‘Why?’ the king had asked Roland, and Roland had explained that he loved France and would serve his king, and that he had never been in battle, he had only fought in tournaments, and that it was time his talents as a fighter were put to a noble cause, and all that had been true. Yet the real reason Roland de Verrec wished to lead the assault was because he yearned for a great deed, for a quest, for some challenge that would be worthy of his purity. The king had graciously given Roland permission to lead the attack, and then granted the same honour to a second man, the Lord of Douglas’s nephew, Robbie.

‘You want to die,’ the Lord of Douglas had grumbled at Robbie the night before.

‘I want to feast in that castle’s hall tomorrow night,’ Robbie had answered.

‘For what?’ the Lord of Douglas demanded. ‘For what goddamned purpose?’

‘Talk to him,’ the Lord of Douglas now appealed to Roland de Verrec. That was why Douglas had come to the tower, to persuade Roland de Verrec, reputed to be the greatest fool and most chivalrous knight in all France, to urge Robbie to his duty. ‘Robbie respects you,’ he told Roland, ‘he admires you, he wants to be like you, so tell him it’s his Christian obligation to fight the English and not die in this miserable place.’

‘He took an oath,’ Roland de Verrec said, ‘an oath not to fight against the English, and that oath was taken freely and piously. I cannot advise him to break it, my lord.’

‘Damn his oath! Talk to him!’

‘A man cannot break an oath and keep his soul,’ Roland said calmly, ‘and your nephew will win great renown by fighting here.’

‘Bugger renown,’ the Lord of Douglas said.

‘My lord,’ Roland turned to the Scotsman, ‘if I could persuade your nephew to fight the English, I would. I am flattered you think he would listen to me, but in all Christian conscience I cannot advise him to break a solemn oath. It would be unchivalrous.’

‘And bugger chivalry too,’ the Lord of Douglas said, ‘and bugger Breteuil and bugger the bloody lot of you.’ He went down the ladders and scowled at Robbie, who waited with the forty other men-at-arms who would lead the assault across the tower’s drawbridge. ‘You’re a damned fool!’ he shouted angrily.

It was an hour before the hides were finally nailed into place and had been soaked with water, and by then a small cold rain had began to spit from the west. The men-at-arms filed into the tower, the bravest climbing the ladders to the topmost platform so they would be first across the drawbridge. Robbie Douglas was one. He had armoured himself in leather and mail, but had decided against wearing any plate except for greaves to cover his shins and a vambrace on his right forearm. His left arm was protected by his shield, which bore the red heart of Douglas.

His sword was an old one, old but good, with a plain wooden hilt in which was concealed a fingernail of Saint Andrew, Scotland’s patron. The sword had belonged to another uncle, Sir William Douglas, Knight of Liddesdale, but he had been murdered by the Lord of Douglas in a family quarrel. Robbie, afterwards, had been forced to kneel to the Lord of Douglas and swear allegiance. ‘You’re mine now,’ the Lord of Douglas had said, knowing Robbie had been fond of Sir William, ‘and if you’re not mine you’re no man’s, and if you’re no man’s then you’re an outlaw, and if you’re an outlaw I can kill you. So what are you?’

‘Yours,’ Robbie had said meekly, and knelt. Now, as he joined Roland de Verrec at the top of the tower, he wondered if he had chosen right. He could have ridden back to Thomas of Hookton’s friendship, but he had made his choice, sworn allegiance to his uncle, and now he would charge across a drawbridge to probable death on the wall of a fortress that meant nothing to him, nothing to Scotland, and little to anyone else. So why join the attack? Because, he thought, it was his gift to his family. A gesture to show the French the quality of Scottish fighting men. This was a battle he could fight with a clean conscience even if it meant his death.

It was an hour after dawn that the King of France ordered his crossbows forward. There were eight hundred of them, mostly from Genoa, but a few from Germany, and each crossbowman had an attendant carrying a great shield, a pavise, behind which the archer could shelter as he rewound the bow. The crossbowmen and their shield carriers made phalanxes at either side of the tower, which now had long poles thrust through its base so that men could push the vast contraption forward.

Behind the tower were two lines of men-at-arms, the men who would follow the first attackers up the ladders to flood Breteuil’s ramparts, and they gathered beneath the banners of their lords. The wind was still strong enough to spread the colourful flags; a flaunting of lions and crosses, harts and stars, stripes and gryphons, the barony of France gathered for the attack. Priests walked in front of the men, offering blessings, assuring them that God favoured France, that the Navarrese scum were doomed to hell, and that Christ would aid the assault. Then a new banner appeared, a blue banner blazoned with golden fleurs-de-lys, and the men-at-arms cheered as their king rode between their lines. He wore plate armour that had been polished to brilliance, and around his neck was a cloak of red velvet that lifted in the wind. His helmet glittered, and about it was a gold crown set with diamonds. His horse, a white destrier, lifted its feet high as Jean of France rode between his soldiers, looking neither right nor left, and then he reached the long poles waiting for the peasants who would thrust the tower forward, and there he turned. He curbed the horse and men thought he was about to say something and silence spread across the field, but the king merely raised his left hand as if offering a blessing, and the cheers began again. Some men knelt, others looked in awe at the king’s long, pale face, which was framed by his polished helmet. Jean the Good, he was called, not because he was good, but because he enjoyed the worldly pleasures that were a king’s prerogative. He was not a great warrior, and he had a famous temper, and he was reputed to be indecisive, yet at this moment the chivalry of France was ready to die for him.

‘Not much point in the man riding a bloody horse,’ the Lord of Douglas grumbled. He was waiting with a half-dozen of his Scotsmen behind the tower. He was dressed in a simple leather haubergeon, for he had no intention of joining the attack. He had brought his company to kill Englishmen, not swat a few Navarrese. ‘You can’t ride a bloody horse up stone walls.’

His men growled agreement, then stiffened as the king, followed by his courtiers, rode towards them. ‘Kneel, you bastards,’ Douglas ordered them.

King Jean curbed his horse close to Douglas. ‘Your nephew fights today?’ he asked.

‘He does, Your Majesty,’ Douglas said.

‘We are grateful to him,’ King Jean said.

‘You’d be more grateful if you led us south, sire,’ Douglas said, ‘south to kill that puppy Edward of Wales.’

The king blinked. Douglas, who alone among the Scotsmen had not gone down on one knee, was publicly reprimanding him, but the king smiled to show no offence had been taken. ‘We shall go south when this business is settled,’ the king said. He had a thin voice with a tone of petulance.

‘I’m glad of it, sire,’ the Lord of Douglas said fiercely.

‘Unless other business intrudes,’ the king qualified his first remark. He raised a hand in a gesture of vague benediction and rode on. The rain became more insistent.

‘Unless other business intrudes,’ the Lord of Douglas said savagely. ‘He’s got Englishmen harrowing his lands, and he thinks other business might intrude?’ He spat, then turned as a cheer from the waiting men-at-arms announced that the tower was at last being pushed towards the high walls. Trumpets blared. A great banner showing Saint Denis had been unfurled from the tower’s top. The flag displayed the martyred Denis holding his own severed head.

The great siege tower lurched as it was shoved forward, and Robbie needed to hold on to one of the stanchions that held the drawbridge in place. The long poles had been pushed clean through the tower’s base so they protruded on either side and scores of men were thrusting on them, encouraged by men with whips and by drummers who beat a steady rhythm on nakers, great goatskin tubs that boomed like cannon.

‘We should have had cannon,’ the Lord of Douglas grumbled.

‘Too expensive.’ Geoffrey de Charny, one of King Jean’s greatest warlords, had come to stand beside the Scottish lord. ‘Cannons cost money, my friend, and gunpowder costs money, and France has no money.’

‘It’s richer than Scotland.’

‘The taxes are not collected,’ Geoffrey said bleakly. ‘Who will pay these men?’ He gestured at the waiting soldiers.

‘Send them to collect the taxes.’

‘They would keep the taxes.’ Geoffrey made the sign of the cross. ‘Pray there is a pot of gold inside Breteuil.’

‘There’s nothing but a pack of bloody Navarese inside Breteuil. We should be marching south!’

‘I agree.’

‘Then why don’t we?’

‘Because the king has not ordered it.’ Geoffrey watched the tower. ‘But he will,’ he added softly.

‘He will?’

‘I think he will,’ Geoffrey said. ‘The Pope is pushing him to war, and he knows he can’t let the damned English run riot over half France again. So yes, he will.’

Douglas wished de Charny sounded more certain, but he said nothing more and followed the Frenchman to watch the tower sway and lurch across the turf. The crossbowmen advanced, keeping pace with the tower, and after fifty yards the first bolts came from the castle walls and the crossbowmen ran forward and shot back. Their job was simple: to keep the defenders crouched behind their battlements as the gaunt tower trundled on. The bolts hissed up, clattered on stone and shook the great banners hanging from the crenellations; bolt after bolt flew as the crossbowmen shot, then they ducked behind their pavises and turned the big handles that winched back the strings. The defenders shot back, their bolts thumping into the turf or banging into the pavises, and soon the first bolts hammered into the tower itself.

Robbie heard them. He saw the drawbridge shudder with the strikes, but the bridge, which was now hinged upright to form a wall at the front of the top platform, was made of thick oak covered with hides, and none of the Navarrese bolts penetrated the leather and timber. They just struck home, a constant banging, and beneath him the tower swayed and creaked and juddered forward. It was just possible to peer past the right-hand edge of the drawbridge, and he saw the castle was two hundred paces away. Great banners hung down the wall’s front, many of them pierced by crossbow bolts. The defenders’ bolts slammed into the tower, making its leading wall a pincushion of leather-fledged missiles. The drums were banging, and trumpets were calling and the tower rolled another few yards, sometimes dipping as the turf dropped, and a few crossbow bolts, shot from the walls to either side, slashed into the labouring peasants. More were brought up to replace the wounded or dead, and the men-at-arms shouted at them, whipped them, and they heaved on the poles and the great tower trundled on, going faster now, so fast that Robbie drew his sword and looked up at one of the twisted ropes that held the drawbridge in place. There were two hemp ropes, one on either side, and when the tower was close enough they had to be cut to send the great bridge crashing down onto the battlements. Not long now, he thought, and he kissed the hilt of his sword where the relic of Saint Andrew was hidden.

‘Your uncle,’ Roland de Verrec said, ‘is angry with you.’ The Frenchman looked absolutely calm as the tower thundered slowly forward and as the defenders’ bolts thumped harder into the drawbridge.

‘He’s always angry,’ Robbie said. He was nervous of Roland de Verrec. The young Frenchman was too composed, too certain of his own certainty and Robbie felt inadequate. He was certain of nothing.

‘I told him you could not break your oath,’ Roland said. ‘It was not forced on you?’

‘No.’

‘What was in your heart as you made it?’ the Frenchman asked.

Robbie thought. ‘Gratitude,’ he said after a while.

‘Gratitude?’

‘A friend tended me through the pestilence. I should have died, but didn’t. He saved my life.’

‘God saved your life,’ Roland corrected him, ‘and he saved it for a special purpose. I envy you. You have been chosen.’

‘Chosen?’ Robbie asked, clinging to the stanchion as the tower rocked.

‘You were sick with the pestilence, yet you survived. God needs you for a reason. I salute you.’ Roland de Verrec lifted his drawn sword in salute. ‘I envy you,’ he said again.

‘Envy me?’ Robbie asked, surprised.

‘I search for a cause,’ Roland said.

And then the tower stopped.

It stopped dead with such a lurch that the men on board were thrown to one side. One wheel had dropped into a hole, a hole big enough to trap the vehicle, and no amount of shoving would drive the wheel up and out, instead the heaves only skewed the tower further to the left. ‘Stop,’ a man shouted, ‘stop!’

The defenders jeered. Crossbow bolts drove through the thin rain to slash into the peasants who had been pushing the tower. Blood coloured the turf and men screamed as the thick quarrels bored into flesh and shattered bones.

Geoffrey de Charny ran forward. He wore a mail coat and helmet, but carried no shield. ‘The levers,’ he shouted, ‘the levers!’ He had hoped this would not happen, but the French were ready for it, and a group of men equipped with stout oak poles ran to the trapped side of the tower where they placed anvil-like blocks of timber that would be used as fulcrums so that the levers could lift the left-hand side of the tower and allow it to be shoved on. Other men brought buckets of stones to fill the hole so that the rearward wheel could roll over it.

The crossbow bolts poured down from the walls. Two, three men were down, then Geoffrey bellowed at the nearest pavise holders to bring their shields to protect the men hauling on the levers, and it all took time, and the defenders, emboldened by the stalled tower, rained down more bolts. Some Navarrese defenders were hit by the French crossbow bolts, but only a few, as the garrison ducked behind their stone merlons to rewind their bows. Geoffrey de Charny seemed to have a charmed life because he was not protected by any shield and though the bolts seared close to him none struck as he organised the men who would thrust down on the great oak levers to free the tower. ‘Now!’ he called, and men tried to lift the monstrous tower with the long oak poles.

And the first fire arrow streaked from the castle.

It was a crossbow bolt, wrapped with kindling that was protected by a leather skirt, and the kindling was soaked in pitch that left a black wavering trail of smoke as the bolt streaked from the rampart and thumped into the lower part of the tower. The flame flickered briefly, then went out, but a dozen more fire arrows followed.

‘Water! Water!’ Roland de Verrec called. There were already some leather pails of water on the top platform, and the lurching tower had spilt much of it, but Roland’s men tipped what was left over the top of the drawbridge so that it cascaded down the tower’s front face to soak the already wet hides. More and more fire arrows were thumping home so that the front of the tower smoked in a score of places, but the smoke came only from burning arrows. So far the dampened hides were protecting the tower.

‘Heave!’ Geoffrey de Charny shouted, and the men on the levers hauled down, and the levers bent, and the tower creaked, then one of the levers snapped, sending a half-dozen men sprawling. ‘Bring another pole!’

It took five minutes for another pole to be fetched, then the men hauled down again and the peasants were told to shove forward at the same time, and some men-at-arms ran to help the peasants. Crossbow bolts came thick. More fire arrows were shot, this time at the right-hand side of the tower, and one struck under the edge of a hide and lodged in the oak sheathing. No one saw it. It burned there, the flames creeping up into the space between the hides and the planks, hidden by the leather, and though smoke seeped from beneath the stiff leather sheets, there was so much other smoke that it went undetected.

Then the Navarrese crossbowmen changed their tactics. Some kept shooting the fire arrows, and some, from the slits in the walls, aimed at the men clustered by the left side of the tower, while the rest aimed their crossbows high in the air so that the bolts screamed into the sky, hung there an instant, then plummeted down onto the tower’s open platform. Most of the bolts missed. Some struck the men waiting to heave on the poles, but a few crashed down onto the platform, and Roland, fearing that his men would be killed, ordered them to hold up their shields, but then they could not pour the water that had started to arrive in leather pails. The tower was jerking now as some men levered at the side and others shoved at the back. There was a smell of burning.

‘Pull it back!’ the Lord of Douglas advised Geoffrey de Charny. A crossbow bolt slammed down to bury itself in the turf at the Scotsman’s feet and he kicked it irritably. The drums were beating still, the trumpets were tangling their notes, the defenders were shouting at the French, who heaved again at the levers and shoved again at the tower that would not move, and it was now that the Navarrese defenders unveiled their last weapon.

It was a springald, an oversized crossbow, which had been mounted on the wall and was drawn back by four men cranking on metal handles. It shot a quarrel fully three feet long and as thick about as a man’s wrist, and the garrison had chosen to keep it hidden until the tower was just a hundred paces away, but the French disarray persuaded them to use it now. They pulled away the great timber screen that had sheltered the weapon and released its metal arrow.

The quarrel hammered into the face of the tower, rocking it back, and such was the force in the steel-reinforced bow yard, which was fully ten feet across, that the great iron head pierced leather and wood to stick halfway through the tower’s front. It sprayed sparks and buckled one of the hides, revealing the planks beneath, and three fire arrows thumped home into the bare wood as the springald was laboriously rewound.

‘Pull the damn thing back!’ the Lord of Douglas snarled. Maybe the tower could be backed out of the hole instead of being pushed through it, then the dip could be filled and the great contraption started forward again.

‘Ropes!’ Geoffrey de Charny shouted. ‘Fetch ropes!’

The watching men-at-arms were silent now. The tower was slightly canted and wreathed in gentle smoke, but it was not obvious what was wrong except to the men close by the stalled tower. The king, still mounted on his white horse, rode a few yards forward, then checked. ‘God is on our side?’ he enquired of a chaplain.

‘He can be on no other, sire.’

‘Then why …’ the king began the question and decided it was better not answered. Smoke was thickening on the right-hand side of the tower now, which shuddered as a second springald bolt crashed home. A man-at-arms limped away from the levers with a bolt through his thigh as squires ran with armfuls of rope, but it was too late.

Fire suddenly showed in the centre floor. For a moment there was just a great billow of smoke, then flames shot through the grey. The planks on the right side were alight and there was not enough water to douse the blaze. ‘God can be very fickle,’ the king said bitterly, and turned away. A man was waving a flag to and fro on the ramparts, revelling in the French defeat. The drums and the trumpets fell silent. Men were screaming in the tower; others were jumping to escape the inferno.

Roland was unaware of the fire until the smoke began churning up through the ladder’s hole. ‘Down!’ he shouted. ‘Down!’ The first men scrambled down the ladder, but one of their scabbards became entangled in the rungs, and then flame burst through the hole as the trapped man screamed. He was being roasted in his mail. Another man jumped past him and broke a leg when he fell. The burning man was sobbing now, and Roland ran to help him, beating out the flames with his bare hands. Robbie did nothing. He was cursed, he thought. Whatever he touched turned to ash. He had failed Thomas once, he failed his uncle now, he had married, but his wife had died in her first childbirth, and the child with her. Cursed, Robbie thought, and he still did not move as the smoke thickened and the flames licked at the platform beneath him, and then the whole tower lurched as a third springald bolt crashed home. There were three men left on the top platform with him and they urged him to try to escape, but he could not move. Roland was carrying a wounded man down the ladders, and God must have loved the virgin knight because a fierce swirl of wind blew the flames and smoke away from him as he descended the rungs. ‘Go!’ a man shouted at Robbie, but he was too dispirited to move.

‘You go,’ he told the men with him, ‘just go.’ He drew his sword, thinking at least he could die with a blade in his hand, and he watched as the three men tried to climb down the scaffold of timbers at the tower’s open back, but all were scorched by the fierceness of the flames and they jumped to save their lives. One was unharmed, his fall cushioned by men beneath, but the other two broke bones. One of the four flags topping the tower was burning now, the fleurs-de-lys turning into glowing cinders, and the whole tower collapsed. It fell slowly at first, creaking, throwing sparks, then the fall became faster as the great contraption keeled over like a proud ship foundering. Men scattered from its base, and still Robbie did not move. Roland had reached the ground, and Robbie was now alone and rode the burning tower down, clinging to the great stanchion, and the tower fell with a thump and an explosion of sparks and Robbie was thrown clear, rolling amidst small flames and thick smoke, and two Frenchmen saw him and ran into the smoke to pull him out. He had been knocked unconscious by the impact, but when men splashed his face with water and pulled off his mail coat they found him miraculously uninjured.

‘God saved you,’ one of the men said. The Navarrese on Breteuil’s wall were jeering. A crossbow bolt slapped into a timber of the fallen tower, which was now an inferno of blazing wood. ‘We must get away from here,’ Robbie’s rescuer said.

The second man brought Robbie his sword while the first helped him to his feet and guided him towards the French tents. ‘Roland,’ Robbie asked, ‘where’s Roland?’ A last crossbow quarrel pursued him, skidding uselessly in the mud. Robbie clutched his sword. He was alive, but why? He wanted to weep, but dared not because he was a soldier, but a soldier for whom? He was a Scot, but if he could not fight against the English then what use was he?

‘God saved you, my friend.’ Roland de Verrec, quite unharmed by the tower’s destruction, spoke to Robbie. The Frenchman held out his hand to help steady Robbie. ‘You have a holy destiny,’ he said.

‘Tournament!’ a second voice snarled.

Robbie, still dazed, saw his uncle, the Lord of Douglas, standing in the smoke of the burning tower. ‘Tournament?’ Robbie asked.

‘The king is going back to Paris and he wants a tournament! A tournament! The English are pissing all over his land and he wants to play games!’

‘I don’t understand,’ Robbie muttered.

‘Wasn’t there someone who played the lute while his city burned?’

‘Nero,’ Robbie said, ‘I think.’

‘We’re to play at tournaments while the English piss all over France. No, not piss, while they drop great stinking turds all over King Jean’s precious land, and does he give a rat’s fart for that? He wants a tournament! So get your horse, pack up, be ready to leave. Tournament! I should have stayed in Scotland!’

Robbie looked around for Roland. He was not sure why, except that he admired the young Frenchman and if anyone could explain God’s reason for inflicting this defeat then surely it was Roland, but Roland was deep in conversation with a man who wore a livery unfamiliar to Robbie. The man’s jupon displayed a rearing green horse on a white field, and Robbie had seen no other men in King Jean’s army wearing that badge. The man spoke softly and earnestly to Roland, who appeared to ask a few questions before shaking the stranger’s hand, and when Roland turned towards Robbie his face was suffused with happiness. The rest of the king’s army might be dejected because the hopes of France were now a burning mass of timber in a wet field, but Roland de Verrec fairly glowed with joy. ‘I have been given a quest,’ he told Robbie, ‘a quest!’

‘There’s going to be a tournament in Paris,’ Robbie said, ‘I’m sure you’ll be needed there.’

‘No,’ Roland said. ‘A maiden is in trouble! She has been snatched from her lawful husband, carried off by a villain, and I am charged with her rescue.’

Robbie just gaped at the virgin knight. Roland had said those words with utmost seriousness, as if he believed he truly was a knight in one of the romances that the troubadours sang.

‘You will be paid generously, sire,’ the knight in the green and white jupon said.

‘The honour of the quest is payment enough,’ Roland de Verrec said, but added hastily, ‘Though if your master the count should offer some small token of thanks then I will, of course, be grateful.’ He bowed to Robbie. ‘We shall meet again,’ he said, ‘and do not forget what I said. You have been saved for a great purpose. You are blessed. And so am I! A quest!’

The Lord of Douglas watched Roland de Verrec walk away. ‘Is he really a virgin?’ he asked in disbelief.

‘He swears so,’ Robbie said.

‘No wonder his right arm is so bloody strong,’ the Lord of Douglas said, ‘but he must be mad as a sack of bloody stoats.’ He spat.

Roland de Verrec had a quest, and Robbie was jealous.

PART TWO
Montpellier

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