A second champion challenged Sir Simon and was startled by the fury which confronted him. He called out that the combat was not to the death, but merely a demonstration of swordplay, but Sir Simon gritted his teeth and hacked with the sword so savagely that the champion spurred and wheeled his horse away rather than risk injury. Sir Simon turned his horse in the pasture's centre, daring another man to face him, but instead a squire trotted a mare to the field's centre and wordlessly offered the Englishman a lance.
'Who sent it?' Sir Simon demanded.
'My lord.'
'Who is?'
'There,' the squire said, pointing to the pasture's end where a tall man in black armour and riding a black horse waited with his lance.
Sir Simon sheathed his sword and took the lance. It was heavy and not well balanced, and he had no lance rest in his armour that would cradle the long butt to help keep the point raised, but he was a strong man and an angry one, and he reckoned he could manage the cumbersome weapon long enough to break the stranger's confidence.
No other men fought on the field now. They just watched. Wagers were being made and all of them favoured the man in black. Most of the onlookers had seen him fight before, and his horse, his armour and his weapons were all plainly superior. He wore plate mail and his horse stood at least a hand's breadth taller than Sir Simon's sorry mount. His visor was down, so Sir Simon could not see the man's face, while Sir Simon himself had no faceplate, merely an old, cheap helmet like those worn by England's archers. Only Henry Colley laid a bet on Sir Simon, though he had difficulty in doing it for his French was rudimentary, but the money was at last taken.
The stranger's shield was black and decorated with a simple white cross, a device unknown to Sir Simon, while his horse had a black trapper that swept the pasture as the beast began to walk. That was the only signal the stranger gave and Sir Simon responded by lowering the lance and kicking his own horse forward. They were a hundred paces apart and both men moved swiftly into the canter. Sir Simon watched his opponent's lance, judging how firmly it was held. The man was good, for the lance tip scarcely wavered despite the horse's uneven motion. The shield was covering his trunk, as it should be.
If this had been a battle, if the man with the strange shield had not offered Sir Simon a chance of advancement, he might have lowered his own lance to strike his opponent's horse. Or, a more difficult strike, thrust the weapon's tip into the high pommel of his saddle. Sir Simon had seen a lance go clean through the wood and leather of a saddle to gouge into a man's groin, and it was ever a killing blow. But today he was required to show the skill of a knight, to strike clean and hard, and at the same time defend himself from the oncoming lance. The skill of that was to deflect the thrust which, having the weight of a horse behind it, could break a man's back by throwing him against the high cantle. The shock of two heavy horsemen meeting, and with all their weight concentrated into lance points, was like being hit by a cannon's stone.
Sir Simon was not thinking about any of this. He was watching the oncoming lance, glancing at the white cross on the shield where his own lance was aimed, and guiding his horse with pressure from his knees. He had trained to this from the time he could first sit on a pony. He had spent hours tilting at a quintain in his father's yard, and more hours schooling stallions to endure the noise and chaos of battle. He moved his horse slightly to the left like a man wanting to widen the angle at which the lances would strike and so deflect some of their force, and he noted that the stranger did not follow the move to straighten the line, but seemed happy to accept the lesser risk. Then both men rowelled back their spurs and the destriers went into the gallop. Sir Simon touched the horse's right side and straightened the line himself, driving hard at the stranger now, and leaning slightly forward to ready himself for the blow. His opponent was trying to swing towards him, but it was too late. Sir Simon's lance cracked against the black and white shield with a thump that hurled Sir Simon back, but the stranger's lance was not centred and banged against Sir Simon's plain shield and glanced off.
Sir Simon's lance broke into three pieces and he let it fall as he pressed his knee to turn the horse. His opponent's lance was across his body now and was encumbering the black-armoured knight. Sir Simon drew his sword and, while the other man was still trying to rid himself of the lance, gave a backswing that struck his opponent like a hammer blow.
The field was still. Henry Colley held out a hand for his winnings. The man pretended not to understand his crude French, but he understood the knife that the yellow-eyed Englishman suddenly produced and the coins, just as suddenly, appeared.
The knight in the black armour did not continue the fight, but instead curbed his horse and pushed up his visor. 'Who are you?'
'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 stuff; 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?'
Sir Simon hesitated, wondering whether he would not do better with a wealthier lord, but he was intrigued by the man's calmness and by his determination to tear the heart out of England. 'Who are you?' he asked.
'I am sometimes called the Harlequin,' the man said.
The name meant nothing to Sir Simon. 'And you employ only the best?' he asked.
'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: Alençon, 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 cross-bowmen in Rouen, and that meant that Philip of Valois's army already outnumbered Edward of England'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 abandon 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 cou
ld 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 infantry 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 England'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 questions 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, eventually. 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 understand 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 St 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 oriflamme 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.'
'I've not taken her,' Thomas protested.
Sir Guillaume's ravaged face broke into a grin. 'You will, boy,' he said, 'you will.'
They rode next day, going eastwards in the wake of the English army that was now far off. News had come to Caen of burned towns, but no one knew where the enemy had gone and so Sir Guillaume planned to lead his twelve men-at-arms, his squire and his servant to Paris. 'Someone will know where the King is,' he said. 'And you, Thomas, what will you do?'
Thomas had been wondering the same ever since he woke to the light in Sir Guillaume's house, but now he must make the decision and, to his surprise, there was no conflict at all. 'I shall go to my king,' he said.
'And what of this Sir Simon? What if he hangs you again?'
'I have the Earl of Northampton's protection,' Thomas said, though he reflected it had not worked before.
'And what of Eleanor?' Sir Guillaume turned to look at his daughter who, to Thomas's surprise, had accompanied them. Her father had given her a small palfrey and, unused to riding, she sat its saddle awkwardly, clutching the high pommel. She did not know why her father had let her come, suggesting to Thomas that perhaps he wanted her to be his cook.
The question made Thomas blush. He knew he could not fight against his own friends, but nor did he want to leave Eleanor. 'I shall come looking for her,' he told Sir Guillaume.
'If you still live,' the Frenchman growled. 'Why don't you fight for me?'
'Because I'm English.'
Sir Guillaume sneered. 'You're Cathar, you're French, you're from Languedoc, who knows what you are? You're a priest's son, a mongrel bastard of heretic stock.'
'I'm English,' Thomas said.
'You're a Christian,' Sir Guillaume retorted, 'and God has given you and me a duty. How are you to fulfil that duty by joining Edward's army?'
Thomas did not answer at once. Had God given him a duty? If so he did not want to accept it, for acceptance meant believing in the legends of the Vexilles. Thomas, in the evening after he had met Brother Germain, had talked with Mordecai in Sir Guillaume's garden, asking the old man if he had ever read the book of Daniel.
Mordecai had sighed, as if he found the question wearisome. 'Years ago,' he'd said, 'many years ago. It is part of the Ketuvim, the writings that all Jewish youths must read. Why?'
'He's a prophet, yes? He tells the future.'
'Dear me,' Mordecai had said, sitting on the bench and dragging his thin fingers through his forked beard. 'You Christians,' he had said, 'insist that prophets tell the future, but that wasn't really what they did at all. They warned Israel. They told us that we would be visited by death, destruction and horror if we did not mend our ways. They were preachers, Thomas, just preachers, though, God knows, they were right about the death, destruction and horror. As for Daniel… He is very strange, very strange. He had a head filled with dreams and visions. He was drunk on God, that one.'
'But do you think,' Thomas had asked, 'that Daniel could foretell what is happening now?'
Mordecai had frowned. 'If God wished him to, yes, but why should G
od wish that? And I assume, Thomas, that you think Daniel might foretell what happens here and now in France, and what possible interest could that hold for the God of Israel? The Ketuvim are full of fancy, vision and mystery, and you Christians see more in them than we ever did. But would I make a decision because Daniel ate a bad oyster and had a vivid dream all those years ago? No, no, no.' He stood and held a jordan bottle high. 'Trust what is before your eyes, Thomas, what you can smell, hear, taste, touch and see. The rest is dangerous.'
Thomas now looked at Sir Guillaume. He had come to like the Frenchman whose battle-hardened exterior hid a wealth of kindness, and Thomas knew he was in love with the Frenchman's daughter, but, even so, he had a greater loyalty.
'I cannot fight against England,' he said, 'any more than you would carry a lance against King Philip.'
Sir Guillaume dismissed that with a shrug. 'Then fight against the Vexilles.'
But Thomas could not smell, hear, taste, touch or see the Vexilles. He did not believe the king of the south would send his daughter to the north. He did not believe the Holy Grail was hidden in some heretic's fastness. He believed in the strength of a yew bow, the tension of a hemp cord and the power of a white-feathered arrow to kill the King's enemies. To think of dark lords and of heresiarchs was to flirt with the madness that had harrowed his own father.
If I find the man who killed my father,' he evaded Sir Guillaume's demand, 'then I will kill him.'
'But you will not search for him?'
'Where do I look? Where do you look?' Thomas asked, then offered his own answer. 'If the Vexilles really still exist, if they truly want to destroy France, then where would they begin? In England's army. So I shall look for them there.' That answer was an evasion, but it half convinced Sir Guillaume, who grudgingly conceded that the Vexilles might indeed take their forces to Edward of England.
That night they sheltered in the scorched remains of a farm where they gathered about a small fire on which they roasted the hind legs of a boar that Thomas had shot. The men-at-arms treated Thomas warily. He was, after all, one of the hated English archers whose bows could pierce even plate mail. If he had not been Sir Guillaume's friend they would have wanted to slice off his string fingers in revenge for the pain that the white-fledged arrows had given to the horsemen of France, but instead they treated him with a distant curiosity. After the meal Sir Guillaume gestured to Eleanor and Thomas that they should both accompany him outside. His squire was keeping watch, and Sir Guillaume led them away from the young man, going to the bank of a stream where, with an odd formality, he looked at Thomas. 'So you will leave us,' he said, 'and fight for Edward of England.'