Bernard Cornwell - 1356 (Special Edition)

‘So why would the French want you?’

‘Cardinal Bessières wants me,’ Thomas said. ‘I killed his brother.’ This was not the time to talk of la Malice , and the killing of the cardinal’s brother was explanation enough.

‘His brother?’

‘An arrow. Bastard deserved it too.’

‘He was a churchman?’

‘God no, a rogue.’

Sir Reginald chuckled. ‘Then my advice, Sir Thomas, is to ride away from here if the truce is declared.’

‘And how will I know?’ Thomas asked.

‘Seven trumpet calls. Long blasts, seven of them. That means there’ll be no battle, just humiliation.’

Thomas thought about the last word. ‘Why?’ he finally asked.

He sensed that Sir Reginald shrugged. ‘If we fight,’ the older man said, ‘we’d probably lose. We think they might have ten thousand men, so we’re badly outnumbered, we’re exhausted, there’s no food and the damned French have plenty of everything. So if we fight we condemn a lot of good Englishmen and loyal Gascons to death, and the prince doesn’t want that on his conscience. He’s a good man. Too easily distracted by ladies, perhaps, but who’d blame a man for that?’

Thomas smiled. ‘I knew one of his ladies.’

‘You did?’ Sir Reginald sounded surprised. ‘Which one? God knows there are enough.’

‘She was called Jeanette. The Countess of Armorica.’

‘You knew her?’ The surprise was still there.

‘I often wonder what happened to her.’

‘She died, God rest her soul,’ Sir Reginald said bleakly, ‘she and her son both. The pestilence.’

‘Dear God,’ Thomas said, and made the sign of the cross.

‘How did you know her?’

‘I helped her,’ Thomas said vaguely.

‘I remember now! There was talk that she escaped Brittany with an English archer. That was you?’

‘Long time ago now,’ Thomas said evasively.

‘She was a beauty,’ Sir Reginald said wistfully. He was silent for a moment and when he spoke again his voice was brusque. ‘One of two things will happen tomorrow, Sir Thomas. One, you hear seven blasts on the trumpet and if you’ve any sense you mount up and ride like hell to escape the cardinal. And two? The French decide they win more by fighting us, which means they’ll attack. And if that happens I want the baggage over the river. The damned French usually take hours to ready for a battle so we’ve a chance to slip away before they know it. And to escape we need this ford. You’ll have help if there’s going to be fighting, but you know as well as I do that nothing goes to plan in a battle.’

‘We’ll hold the ford,’ Thomas said.

‘And I’ll ask Father Richard to come here before dawn,’ Sir Reginald said, going back to his horse.

‘Father Richard?’

There was the creak of leather as Sir Reginald climbed back into the saddle. ‘He’s one of the Earl of Warwick’s chaplains. You’ll want to hear mass, won’t you?’

‘If there’s a fight, yes,’ Thomas said, then helped Sir Reginald find his stirrups. ‘What do you think will happen in the morning?’

Sir Reginald’s horse stamped on the track. The rider was a dark shadow against a dark sky. ‘I think we’ll surrender,’ Sir Reginald said bleakly. ‘God help me, but that’s what I think.’ He turned the horse and rode towards the hill.

‘You can see your way, Sir Reginald?’ Thomas called.

‘The horse can. One of us must have some sense.’ He clicked his tongue and the horse’s pace quickened.

It seemed the night would never end. Darkness was complete, and with it came the sense of doom that darkness brings. The river ran loud over the shallow ford. ‘You should try to sleep,’ Genevieve said, surprising Thomas. She had waded the ford to join him on the northern bank.

‘You too.’

‘I brought you this,’ she said.

Thomas held out his hand and felt the familiar heft of his bow. A yew bow, tall as a man, the stave thick in the centre and straight as an arrow. It felt smooth. ‘You waxed it?’ he asked.

‘Sam gave me the last of his wool fat.’

Thomas ran his hand up the stave. At its thick centre, where the arrow rested before the cord sent it on death’s mission, he could feel the little silver plate. It was incised with a yale holding a cup, the badge of the disgraced Vexille family, his family. Would God punish him for casting the Grail into the cold sea? ‘You must be frozen,’ he said.

‘I pulled up my skirts,’ she said, ‘and the ford isn’t deep.’ She sat beside him and rested her head on his shoulder. For a time neither spoke, but just stared into the night. ‘So what happens tomorrow?’ she asked.

‘It’s today,’ Thomas said bleakly. ‘And it depends on the French. Either they accept the church’s terms or they decide they can do better by beating us. And if they do accept, we ride south.’ He did not tell her that his name was on a list of men who must be surrendered as hostages. ‘I want you to make certain the horses are saddled. Keane will help you. They have to be ready before dawn. And if you hear seven trumpet calls then we go. We go fast.’

He felt her head nod. ‘And if the trumpet doesn’t call?’ she asked.

‘Then the French will come to kill us.’

‘How many are there?’

Thomas shrugged. ‘Sir Reginald thinks they have about ten thousand men? No one really knows. Maybe more, maybe fewer. A lot.’

‘And we have?’

‘Two thousand archers and four thousand men-at-arms.’

Genevieve was silent and he supposed she was thinking about the disparity in numbers. ‘Bertille is praying,’ she said.

‘I suppose lots of people are praying.’

‘She’s kneeling by the cross,’ Genevieve said.

‘Cross?’

‘Beyond the cottage, at the crossroads, there’s a crucifix. She says she’ll stay all night and pray for her husband’s death. Do you think God listens to prayers like that?’

‘What do you think?’

‘I think God is weary of us.’

‘Labrouillade won’t fight in the front rank,’ Thomas said. ‘He’ll make sure other men are in front of him. And if things go badly he’ll just surrender. He’s too rich to kill.’ He stroked her face, feeling the leather patch she wore across her injured eye. She was blind in that eye, and it had gone milky white. He told her it did not disfigure her and he believed that, but she did not. He hugged her close.

‘I wish you were too rich to kill,’ she said.

‘I am,’ Thomas said with a smile. ‘They could ransom me for a fortune, but they won’t.’

‘The cardinal?’

‘He doesn’t forgive or forget. He wants to burn me alive.’

Genevieve wanted to tell him to be careful, but that was as much a waste of words as Bertille’s prayers at the roadside cross. ‘What do you think will happen?’ she asked instead.

‘I think we’ll hear the trumpet sound seven times,’ Thomas said.

And then he would ride south as if all the fiends of hell were at his heels.

King Jean and his two sons knelt to receive the wafer that was Christ’s body. ‘ In nomine Patris, et Filii, et Spiritus Sancti ,’ the Bishop of Châlons intoned. ‘And may Saint Denis guard you and keep you and bring you to the victory that God wills.’

‘Amen,’ the king grunted.

Prince Charles, the dauphin, stood and went to a window. He pulled open a shutter. ‘It’s still dark,’ he said.

‘Not for long,’ the Earl of Douglas said, ‘I hear the first birds.’

‘Let me go back to the prince.’ Cardinal Talleyrand spoke from the room’s edge.

‘To what purpose?’ King Jean asked, annoyed that the cardinal had not called him ‘sire’ or ‘Your Majesty’.

‘To offer them a truce while the terms are clarified.’