Bernard Cornwell - 1356 (Special Edition)

‘They may have been impudent,’ Genevieve said, ‘but they were never Moors. They were Christians.’

‘My lady!’ Roland protested.

‘Don’t be absurd,’ she said. ‘Have you ever been to Roncesvalles?’

‘No, madame.’

‘I have! My father was a juggler and fire-eater. We went from town to town collecting pennies and we listened to the stories, always the stories, and in Roncesvalles they know it was the Basques, Christians to a man, who ambushed Roland. They killed him too. You just pretend it was the Moors because you can’t abide thinking that your hero was killed by peasant rebels. And how glorious a death is it? To blow a horn and fall down?’

‘Roland is a hero as great as Arthur!’

‘Who had more sense than to kill himself by blowing a horn. And speaking of horns, why do you serve the Count of Labrouillade?’

‘To do right, lady.’

‘Right! By returning that poor girl to her pig of a husband?’

‘To her lawful husband.’

‘Who rapes his tenants’ wives and daughters,’ she said, ‘so why aren’t you punishing him for adultery?’ Roland had no answer except to frown at Hugh, distressed that such a subject should be aired in front of a small boy. Genevieve laughed. ‘Oh, Hugh can listen,’ she said. ‘I want him to be a decent man like his father, so I’m educating him. I don’t want him to be a fool like you.’

‘Madame!’ Roland protested again.

Genevieve spat. ‘Seven years ago, when Bertille was twelve years old, she was carried to Labrouillade and married to him. He was thirty-two then and he wanted her dowry. What choice did she have? She was twelve!’

‘She is lawfully married, before God.’

‘To a disgusting creature whom God would spit on.’

‘She is his wife,’ Roland insisted, yet he felt exquisitely uncomfortable. He wished he had never taken this quest, but he had, and honour demanded it must be seen through to its end and so they rode northwards. They stayed at a tavern in the marketplace of Gignac, and Roland insisted on sleeping just outside the chamber where Genevieve slept. His squire shared the vigil. Roland’s squire was a clever fourteen-year-old, Michel, whom Roland was training in the ways of chivalry. ‘I don’t trust the Count of Labrouillade’s men,’ Roland told the boy, ‘especially not Jacques, so we sleep here with our swords.’ The count’s man had been eyeing the fair-haired Genevieve all day, and Roland had heard the laughter behind him and suspected the men-at-arms were discussing his captive, but they made no attempt to get past Roland during the night, and next morning they rode northwards and joined the high road heading towards Limoges while Genevieve tormented Roland by suggesting that her husband would have escaped Montpellier.

‘He’s difficult to capture,’ she said, ‘and terrible in revenge.’

‘I do not fear fighting him,’ Roland said.

‘Then you’re a fool. You think your sword will protect you? Do you call it Durandal?’ She laughed when he reddened, for he obviously did. ‘But Thomas has a span of dark-painted yew,’ she said, ‘and a cord of hemp with arrows of peeled white ash. Have you ever faced an English archer?’

‘He will fight courteously.’

‘Don’t be such a fool! He’ll cheat you and trick you and deceive you, and at the end of the fight you’ll be as stuck full of arrows as a brush has bristles. He might already be ahead of you! Maybe the archers are waiting on the road? You won’t see them. The first you’ll know is the strike of the arrows, then the screams of horses and the death of your men.’

‘She’s right,’ Jacques Sollière put in.

Roland smiled bravely. ‘They will not shoot, lady, for fear of hitting you.’

‘You know nothing! At two hundred paces they can pick the snot out of your nose with an arrow. They’ll shoot.’ She wondered where Thomas was. She feared that the church would seize her again. She feared for her son.

The next night was spent in a monastery’s guest house, and again Roland guarded her threshold. There was no other way from the room, no escape. On the road, before they reached the monastery, they had passed a group of merchants with armed guards, and Genevieve had called out to them, saying she had been captured against her will. The men had looked worried until Roland, with his calm courtesy, had said she was his sister and moon-touched. He said the same thing whenever Genevieve appealed to passers-by. ‘I take her to a place where she might be treated by holy nuns,’ he said, and the merchants had believed him and passed on.

‘So you’re not above telling lies,’ she had mocked him.

‘A lie in God’s service is no lie.’

‘And this is God’s service?’

‘Marriage is a sacrament. My life is dedicated to God’s service.’

‘Is that why you’re a virgin?’

He blushed at that, then frowned, but still answered the question seriously. ‘It was revealed to me that my strength in battle rests on purity.’ He paused to glance at her. ‘It was the Virgin Mary who spoke to me.’

Genevieve had been mocking him, but something in his tone checked her scorn. ‘What did she say?’

‘She was beautiful,’ Roland said wistfully.

‘And she spoke to you?’

‘She came down from the chapel ceiling,’ he said, ‘and told me I must live a chaste life until I marry. That God would bless me. That I was chosen. I was only a boy then, but I was chosen.’

‘You had a dream.’ Genevieve sounded dismissive.

‘A vision,’ he corrected her.

‘A boy dreams of a beautiful woman,’ Genevieve said, the scorn back in her voice, ‘that’s no vision.’

‘And she touched me and told me I must stay pure.’

‘Tell that to the arrow that kills you,’ she had said, and Roland had fallen silent.

Now, on the third day of travel, he constantly searched the road ahead for any sign of the Hellequin. There were plenty enough travellers; merchants, pilgrims, drovers, or folk going to market, but none reported seeing armed men. Roland was becoming ever more cautious and had sent two of the count’s men-at-arms a quarter-mile ahead to scout the road, but as the day passed they reported nothing threatening. He worried that their progress was so slow, suspecting that Genevieve was deliberately causing delay, yet he could not prove it and his courtesy demanded that he respect every request she made for privacy. Were women’s bladders really that small? Yet in two days more, Roland thought, he would reach Labrouillade and could send a message to the Hellequin demanding Bertille’s return in exchange for the safety of Thomas’s wife and child, and so he tried to reassure himself that the quest was almost finished. ‘We must find a place to spend the night,’ he said to Genevieve as the sun sank on the their third day of travel.

Then he saw his scouts hurrying from the north. One of them was gesturing wildly.

‘He’s seen something,’ Roland said, more to himself than to any of his companions.

‘Jesus,’ one of the men-at-arms said, because now they could see what had alarmed the scouts. The evening was drawing in and the sun cast long shadows across the countryside, but on the northern skyline, suddenly bright in that fading sunlight, were men. Men and steel, men and iron, and men and horses. The light glinted off armour and off weapons, from helmets and from the finial of a banner, though the flag was too far off to be seen clearly. Roland tried to count them, but the distant horsemen were moving around. Twelve? Fifteen?

‘Maybe you won’t live to see the night,’ Genevieve said.

‘They can’t have got in front of us,’ Jacques said, though without much conviction.

Panic made Roland hesitate. He rarely felt panic. In a tournament, even in a wild melee, he was calm amidst the chaos. He felt, in those moments, as if an angel guarded him, warned him of danger, and showed opportunity. He was fast, so that even in the most disastrous turmoil, it seemed to him as if other men moved slowly. Yet now he felt real fear. There were no rules here, no marshals to stop the fighting, just danger.