Bernard Cornwell - 1356 (Special Edition)

‘And where’s Limoges?’ Thomas wondered. ‘Is Bourges to the east or the west of Limoges?’

‘I know it’s north of it,’ Sir Henri said, ‘but I have a mind it’s eastwards of it too? You could ask Father Levonne. He’s travelled a lot.’

Thomas was trying to make a picture of unknown territory and to fit within that vague idea an estimation of what the armies did. He knew the French were gathering forces, and that the men from southern France were assembling at Bourges while the northerners, under the king, would surely gather somewhere near Paris. But what of the Prince of Wales? He was making another chevauchée , a destructive march through the heart of France that left farms burned, mills destroyed, towns ruined, and livestock slaughtered. A chevauchée was brutal and cruel, but it left the enemy impoverished. Eventually, if the French wanted to stop the English, they had to come out from their castles and fortresses to fight, and that was when the arrows would fly. Hundreds upon thousands of goose-fledged arrows.

‘If I was you,’ Sir Henri said, ‘I’d go westwards. Limoges first, then up to Poitiers and keep going north from there towards Tours. You’re bound to come across the prince somewhere.’

‘Is Poitiers in Poitou?’

‘Of course.’

‘The man who tried to blind Genevieve might be there,’ Thomas said, and did not add that la Malice might be there too, but he was not sure he even believed in la Malice .

‘And what about Genny?’ Sir Henri asked. ‘Will she stay here?’

Thomas shook his head. ‘Saint Paul said wives should be submissive to their husbands, but no one bothered to tell Genny that.’

‘How is her eye?’

Thomas grimaced. Genevieve had made herself a leather eye-patch which she hated wearing, but she preferred it to the milky white of her ruined eyeball. ‘Brother Michael thinks she’ll keep it, but it’s blinded.’ He shrugged. ‘She thinks she’s ugly now.’

‘Genny couldn’t be ugly if she tried,’ Sir Henri said gallantly. ‘And what about Brother Michael? Will you take him?’

Thomas grinned. ‘He’s all yours. Give him a crossbow; he should manage to shoot one of those without killing himself.’

‘You don’t want him?’

‘And watch him despair over Bertille?’

Sir Henri chuckled. ‘God, he’s fast!’ He was watching the Sire Roland de Verrec, who was fighting two men at once, fending them off with his swift sword. He seemed to do it effortlessly, though the two men attacking him were plainly straining every muscle to get past his parries. ‘He’ll go north with you,’ Sir Henri said.

‘He wants to, yes.’

‘You know why? He doesn’t want to be the virgin knight any more.’

Thomas laughed. ‘That’s easily remedied. I’m amazed it isn’t already.’

Sir Henri watched Roland fight. ‘He’s extraordinary! How did he parry that thrust?’

‘Skill,’ Thomas said, ‘and practice.’

‘And purity,’ Sir Henri said. ‘He believes his skill lies in his purity.’

‘God, I must be such a weakling. Really?’

‘Which means he must make Bertille a widow before he can marry her, and he won’t lose his virginity until he is married.’

‘Dear God,’ Thomas said. ‘Truly?’

‘He says they’re betrothed. Can you be betrothed to a married woman? Anyway, he’s talked to Father Levonne, and reckons he can keep his purity by marrying, but to marry the countess she has to be a widow, so first he has to kill the husband.’

‘I hope Father Levonne explained that Labrouillade probably won’t die in battle.’

‘He won’t?’ Sir Henri asked.

‘Of course not. He’s too rich. He’s worth a fortune as a prisoner. If things go badly for him he’ll surrender, and no one will forgo a vast ransom to help Roland de Verrec lose his virginity.’

‘I don’t think our virgin knight has quite reckoned with that,’ Sir Henri said. ‘And what about Sir Robbie?’

‘He goes with me,’ Thomas said, his voice sounding grim.

Sir Henri nodded. ‘You don’t trust him?’

‘Let’s say I want him where I can see him.’

Sir Henri massaged his ankle. ‘His man went back north?’

Thomas nodded. Sculley had wanted to go back to the Lord of Douglas and so Thomas had thanked him, given him a purse and let him ride north. ‘The last thing he said to me was that he looked forward to killing me,’ Thomas said.

‘God, he was a horrible thing.’

‘Horrible,’ Thomas agreed.

‘You think he’ll make it to the French army?’

‘I think Sculley could ride through hell untouched,’ Thomas said.

‘Is that a Scottish name? Sculley?’

‘He told me his mother was English,’ Thomas said, ‘and he took her name because she didn’t know who his father was. She was captured from Northumberland by a Scottish raiding party and they evidently took turns on her.’

‘So he’s really an Englishman?’

‘Not according to him. I just hope I don’t have to fight the bastard.’

Then there were two days of preparation, days of rubbing bows with lanolin, of trimming the fledging on hundreds of arrows, of mending harness, of sharpening swords and axes, of looking at the future and wondering what it held. Thomas could not get the fight at Crécy out of his mind. Not that he remembered much outside the chaos of battle, the screams of horses and the screams of men, the whimpering of the dying and the stink of shit across a field of slaughtered soldiers. He did remember the noise of a thousand arrows leaping off their strings, and the Frenchman in a pig-snouted helmet that had been decorated with long red ribbons, and how those ribbons had swirled around so prettily as the man fell from his horse and died. He remembered the heavy thunder of the French drums driving their horsemen onto murderous blades, and the destriers breaking their legs in the pits dug to trap them; he remembered the proud banners in the mud, the weeping women, the dogs feasting on eviscerated soldiers, and the peasants creeping in the dark to plunder the corpses. He remembered all the glory of battle: the red ribbons of a dying man, the blood-laced corpses, and the lost child weeping inconsolably for his dead father.

And he knew the French were gathering an army.

And he was ordered to join the prince.

And so, as the first leaves turned yellow, he led the Hellequin north.

Jean de Grailly, Captal de Buch, sat his horse in the shadow of oak trees. Every time the courser moved its hooves there was the crunch of acorns. It was autumn already, but at least the driving rain that had defeated the army’s attempt to capture Tours had ended, and the ground had been dried by days of warm weather.

The captal was not wearing his bold colours this morning. The striped yellow and black made him conspicuous and so, like the thirty-two men he led today, he was wearing a plain brown cloak. The courser was brown too. In battle the captal would ride a great destrier, trained to fight, but for this kind of combat the courser was better. It was faster and had more stamina.

‘I see sixteen,’ a man said softly.

‘There are more of them in the trees,’ another said.

The captal said nothing. He was watching the French horsemen who had appeared at a tree line beyond a stretch of pasture. Beneath the brown cloak, the captal wore a sleeveless haubergeon of leather covered with mail. He wore a bascinet with no visor, and other than that he had no protection except the plain shield on his left arm. A sword hung at his left hip, while in his right hand was a lance. It had been shortened. A heavy lance, such as a man would carry in a tournament, was too clumsy for this work. The lance’s tip, which rested in the leaf mould, had a small triangular pennant showing the captal’s silver scallop shell on a field of black and yellow stripes. It was his one concession to the vanity of nobility.