Bernard Cornwell - 1356 (Special Edition)

‘Sweet Jesus,’ Thomas said.

‘You’ll smell more like Judas Iscariot when you’re done. I should jump on now, there’s no one watching.’

Thomas ran across the small square and pushed himself up onto the rearmost wagon. The smell was enough to fell a bear. The barrels were old, they leaked, or rather oozed, and the wagon’s bed was inch-deep in slime. He heard Keane chuckle, then took a deep breath and forced his way between two of the vast tubs. There was just space between the rows for a man to be concealed beneath the barrel’s bulging bellies. Something dripped on his head. Flies crawled on his face and neck. He tried to breathe

shallowly as he wriggled his way to the centre of the cart where he pulled the hood of his cloak over his head. The mail coat with its leather lining offered some protection from the slimy muck, but he could feel the filth seeping beneath the mail to soak his shirt and chill his skin.

He did not need to wait long. He heard voices, felt the wagon lurch as two men climbed up to perch on the foremost barrels, then the crack of a whip. The cart jerked forward, its single axle squealing. Every jolt banged Thomas’s head against the seeping side of a barrel. The journey seemed endless, but at least Keane had been right about the guards, who must have simply waved the three carts through the city’s gate with no attempt at an inspection because the wagon did not stop as it went from the shadows of the city to the sunlight of the countryside. Keane was walking just beside the oxen, chatting happily to the drivers, and then the cart gave an almighty lurch as it was driven down a bank. Liquid slopped in the barrels and some spilled over onto Thomas’s back. He cursed under his breath, then cursed again as the wagon juddered across some ruts. Keane was telling a long story about a dog that had stolen a leg of lamb from Saint Stephen’s monastery, but suddenly spoke in English, ‘Wriggle out now!’ The Irishman went on with his tale as Thomas inched backwards through fresh muck, every jolt of the cart driving the filth deeper into his clothes.

He threw himself off the back, landing on the grassy ridge between the track’s wheel ruts. The wagon, oblivious that it had held a passenger, rumbled on. Keane came back, grinning. ‘Jesus, you look just terrible.’

‘Thank you.’

‘I got you out of the city, didn’t I?’

‘You’re a living saint,’ Thomas said. ‘Now all we have to do is find horses, weapons, and a way to get ahead of Roland.’

He was in a sunken lane between two high banks beyond which were olive groves. The lane dropped to a riverbank where the first cart was tipping its barrels into the water. A brown stain drifted downstream. ‘And how do we find horses?’ Keane asked wistfully.

‘First things first,’ Thomas said. He slapped at a fly, then climbed the roadside bank and walked north through the olives.

‘So what’s first?’ Keane asked.

‘The river.’

Thomas walked till he was out of sight of the three carts, then stripped off his clothes and plunged into the water. It was cold. ‘Jesus, you’re scarred,’ Keane said.

‘If you want to stay beautiful,’ Thomas said, ‘don’t be a soldier. And throw me my clothes.’

Keane kicked the clothes into the river rather than touch them. Thomas kneaded them, trampled them, scrubbed at them with a rock till no more stain coloured the water, then he plunged the mail coat in and out of a pool, trying to rid the links and leather of the stink. He ducked his head a last time, ran fingers through his hair, and climbed onto the bank. He wrung out the clothes as best he could, then put them on still wet. He carried the mail coat. It would be another warm day and his shirt and hose would dry fast enough. ‘North,’ he said curtly. The first thing was to find the men-at-arms he had left at the ruined mill.

‘Horses and weapons, you said?’ Keane asked.

‘How much are they offering for me?’

‘The weight of your right hand in gold coins, I heard.’

‘My hand?’ Thomas asked, then understood. ‘Because I’m an archer.’

‘That’s just the beginning. The weight of your right hand in gold and the weight of your severed head in silver. They hate English archers.’

‘It’s a small fortune,’ Thomas said, ‘so I dare say the horses and weapons will find us.’

‘Find us?’

‘Soon enough folk will wonder if I escaped the city, so they’ll come looking. Till then we keep going north.’

Thomas thought of Genevieve as he walked. She had been terrified when he first met her, and why not? A pyre had been made outside her prison and she was supposed to have been burned as a heretic, and the prospect of that holy fire was a scar in her memory. It would be torturing her now. He assumed she and Hugh were safe for the moment, at least until Roland could find Bertille, but what then? The virgin knight was mocked for his rectitude, but he was famed for being incorruptible, so would he meekly exchange Genevieve and Hugh for Bertille? Or would he think it his sacred duty to give Genevieve to the church so it could finish the business it had started so long ago? Thomas desperately needed to reach Karyl and his other men-at-arms. He needed men, he needed weapons, he needed a horse.

They were following the river northwards. The sun rose higher and the olive trees gave way to vineyards. He could see five men and three women tilling between the terraces a mile or so away, but otherwise the countryside was empty. He kept to the low ground where he could, but always heading towards the hills. Roland, he thought, would be at least five leagues away from the city by now. ‘I should have killed him,’ he said.

‘Roland?’

‘I had an archer aiming at his fat head. I should have let him shoot.’

‘A hard man to kill, that one. He looks willowy, doesn’t he? But I saw him fight in Toulouse and, by Jesus, he’s fast! Quick as a snake.’

‘I need to get ahead of him,’ Thomas was talking more to himself than to Keane. But why Toulouse? ‘Because it’s safe,’ he said aloud.

‘Safe?’

‘Toulouse,’ Thomas said, ‘we can’t follow him into Toulouse. It belongs to the Count of Armagnac, and his men patrol the road north, but that means it’s a safe route for de Verrec.’ De Verrec needed to keep Genevieve unharmed till she was exchanged. Then the answer was tumbling in his head. ‘He’s not going to Toulouse, he’s taking the road through Gignac.’

Keane looked blank. ‘Gignac?’

‘There’s a road through Gignac, it joins the main road north from Toulouse. He’ll be safer on that route.’

‘You’re sure the man is going north?’

‘He’s going to Labrouillade!’ That was the obvious destination. Genevieve could be held there until Bertille was surrendered.

‘How far’s Labrouillade?’

‘Five or six days on horseback,’ Thomas said. ‘And we can go through the hills, it’s quicker.’ Or it would be quicker if he was sure that no coredor ambushed him on the way. He needed his men-at-arms. He needed his archers with their long war bows and goose-fledged arrows. He needed a miracle.

There were villages ahead. They had to be skirted. The countryside was coming alive as more men went to the fields or vineyards. Those labourers were all far away, but Thomas had grown up in the countryside and knew that such men missed nothing. Most of them would never travel more than a few miles from home in all their lives, but they knew every tree, bush and beast within that small area, and something as small as the flight of a bird could alert them to an intruder, and once they thought that the reward of gold equal to the weight of a man’s hand

was within their reach they would be implacable. Thomas felt despair. ‘If I were you,’ he said to Keane, ‘I’d go back to the city now.’