Bernard Cornwell - The Grail Quest 1 - Harlequin

My name is Sir Simon Jekyll."

English?"

I was."

The two horses stood beside each other. The stranger threw down his lance and hung the shield from his pommel. He had a sallow face with a thin black moustache, clever eyes and a broken nose. He was a young man, not a boy, but a year or two older than Sir Simon.

What do you want?" he asked Sir Simon.

A chance to kill the Prince of Wales."

The man smiled. Is that all?"

Money, food, land, women," Sir Simon said.

The man gestured to the side of the pasture. There are great lords here, Sir Simon, who will offer you pay, food and girls. I can pay you too, but not so well; I can feed you, though it will be common stuf and the girls you must find for yourself. What I will promise you is that I shall equip you with a better horse, armour and weapons. I lead the best knights in this army and we are sworn to take captives who will make us rich. And none, I think, so rich as the King of England and his whelp. Not kill, mark you, but capture."

Sir Simon shrugged. I'll settle for capturing the bastard," he said.

And his father,“ the man said, I want his father too.” There was something vengeful in the man's voice that intrigued Sir Simon. Why?" he asked.

My family lived in England,“ the man said, but when this king took power we supported his mother.”

So you lost your land?" Sir Simon asked. He was too young to remember the turmoil of those times, when the King's mother had tried to keep power for herself and for her lover and the young Edward had struggled to break free. Young Edward had won and some of his old enemies had not forgotten.

We lost everything,“ the man said, but we shall get it back. Will you help?”

I told you so.

Then you had best employ me,“ Sir Simon said, with my man.” He nodded towards Henry Colley.

Good," the Harlequin said.

So Sir Simon had a new master and the King of France had gathered an army. The great lords: Alencon, John of Hainault, Aumale, the Count of Blois, who was brother to the aspiring Duke of Brittany, the Duke of Lorraine, the Count of Sancerre, all were in Rouen with their vast retinues of heavily armoured men. The army's numbers became so large that men could not count the ranks, but clerks reckoned there were at least eight thousand men-at-arms and five thousand crossbowmen in Rouen, and that meant that Philip of Valois's army already outnumbered Edward of Eng-land's forces, and still more men were coming. John, Count of Luxembourg and King of Bohemia, a friend of Philip of France, was bringing his formidable knights. The King of Majorca came with his famed lances, and the Duke of Normandy was ordered to aban-don the siege of an English fortress in the south and bring his army north. The priests blessed the soldiers and promised them that God would recognize the virtue of France's cause and crush the English mercilessly.

The army could not be fed in Rouen, so at last it crossed the bridge to the north bank of the Seine, leaving a formidable garrison behind to guard the river crossing. Once out of the city and on the long roads stretching through the newly harvested fields, men could dimly comprehend just how vast their army was. It stretched for miles in long columns of armed men, troops of horsemen, battalions of crossbowmen and, trailing behind, the innumerable host of infan-try armed with axes, billhooks and spears. This was the might of France, and France's friends had rallied to the cause. There was a troop of knights from Scotland, big, savage-looking men who nourished a rare hatred of the English. There were mercenaries from Germany and Italy, and there were knights whose names had become famous in Christendom's tournaments, the elegant killers who had become rich in the sport of war. The French knights spoke not just of defeating Edward of England, but of carrying the war to his kingdom, foreseeing earldoms in Essex and dukedoms in Devonshire. The Bishop of Meaux encouraged his cook to think of a recipe for archers" fingers, a daube perhaps, seasoned with thyme? He would, the bishop insisted, force the dish down Edward of Eng-land's throat. Sir Simon rode a seven-year-old destrier now, a fine grey that must have cost the Harlequin close to a hundred pounds. He wore a hauberk of close-ringed mail covered with a surcoat that bore the white cross. His horse had a chanfron of boiled leather and a black trapper, while at Sir Simon's waist hung a sword made in Poitiers. Henry Colley was almost as well equipped, though in place of a sword he carried a four-foot-long shaft of oak topped with a spiked metal ball.

They're a solemn bunch,“ he complained to Sir Simon about the other men who followed the Harlequin. Like bloody monks.” They can fight," Sir Simon said, though he himself was also daunted by the grim dedication of the Harlequin's men. The men were all confident, but none took the English as lightly as the rest of the army, which had convinced itself that any battle would be won by numbers alone. The Harlequin quizzed Sir Simon and Henry Colley about the English way of fighting, and his ques-tions were shrewd enough to force both men to drop their bombast and think.

They'll fight on foot,“ Sir Simon concluded. He, like all knights, dreamed of a battle conducted on horseback, of swirling men and couched lances, but the English had learned their business in the wars against the Scots and knew that men on foot defended territory much more effectively than horsemen. Even the knights will fight on foot,” Sir Simon forecast, and for every man-at-arms they'll have two or three archers. Those are the bastards to watch.“ The Harlequin nodded. But how do we defeat the archers?” Let them run out of arrows," Sir Simon said. They must, eventu-ally. So let every hothead in the army attack, then wait till the arrow bags are empty. Then you'll get your revenge.

It is more than revenge I want,“ the Harlequin said quietly. What?”

The Harlequin, a handsome man, smiled at Sir Simon, though there was no warmth in the smile. Power,“ he answered very calmly With power, Sir Simon, comes privilege and with privilege, wealth. What are kings,” he asked, but men who have risen high? So we shall rise too, and use the defeat of kings as the rungs of our ladder."

Such talk impressed Sir Simon, though he did not wholly under-stand it. It seemed to him that the Harlequin was a man of high fancies, but that did not matter because he was also unswervingly dedicated to the defeat of men who were Sir Simon's enemies. Sir Simon daydreamed of the battle; he saw the English prince's frightened face, heard his scream and revelled in the thought of taking the insolent whelp prisoner. Jeanette too. The Harlequin could be as secretive and subtle as he wished so long as he led Sir Simon to those simple desires.

And so the French army marched, and still it grew as men came from the outlying parts of the kingdom and from the vassal states beyond France's frontiers. It marched to seal off the Seine and so trap the English, and its confidence soared when it was learned that the King had made his pilgrimage to the Abbey of Saint Denis to fetch the oriflamme. It was France's most sacred symbol, a scarlet banner kept by the Benedictines in the abbey where the Kings of France lay entombed, and every man knew that when the on-flamme was unfurled no quarter would be given. It was said to have been carried by Charlemagne himself and its silk was red as blood, promising carnage to the enemies of France. The English had come to fight, the oriflamme had been released and the dance of the armies had begun.

Sir Guillaume gave Thomas a linen shirt, a good mail coat, a leather-lined helmet and a sword. It's old, but good,“ he said of the sword, a cutter rather than a piercer.” He provided Thomas with a horse, a saddle, a bridle and gave him money. Thomas tried to refuse the last gift, but Sir Guillaume brushed his protest aside. You've taken what you wanted from me, I might as well give you the rest.“ Taken?” Thomas was puzzled, even hurt, by the accusation. Eleanor."