Son of the Morning (45 page)

‘George,’ he spoke to his squire, ‘no point hanging around here. We’re to meet our archers and the rest of our men at Diksmuide. Let’s get our horses out and be on our way.’

‘Very good, my lord.’

It was only a day’s ride to Ypres – a walled town where it would have been good to spend the night. It wasn’t big enough for the English army, though, and the inhabitants of the town would not open their gates to allow them in – fearful of what two hundred men-at-arms facing death within the week might do if their leaders failed to control them. The town dwellers preferred to send their own men to array before the walls. Montagu was unimpressed by this and immediately had his sergeants try to drill some organisation into the rabble. The Flemings had a good reputation as foot soldiers but this lot were no more than weavers with makeshift weapons. One man only had a bargepole – what would he do against a fully armoured knight?

Montagu met the stout Earl of Suffolk in some pretty pastures before the town. The sun was setting behind smoky clouds.

‘Is that what I think it is, Suffolk?’ Montagu gestured to the sky.

‘The country’s burning for miles around. Hainault’s got into Aubenton and I think he’s taken some plunder there.

‘That’s a way off Tournai.’

Suffolk shrugged. ‘We’ll have to hope he gets there – eventually.’

‘How are our chances, do you think?’

‘If the French army can pin us down, very poor,’ he said, ‘but they’re not full strength yet, so we have a chance to hit and run.’

‘How long before they reach full strength?’

‘My spies say they’re planning to achieve full muster by the eighteenth of May.’

‘Sixty thousand?’

‘Nearer ten. Only twice our size.’

‘And under Philip?’

‘Under John.’

Montagu laughed. ‘Well then, send these Flanders mares back to their fields and we’ll take on the ten thousand, you and I on our own. The best news I’ve heard in a while.’

His men around him caught the laughter and the Earl’s words were soon being passed among the men-at-arms. Montagu knew how to do his bit for morale.

Montagu ate roast pork by a fire by his tent as night fell. It tasted very sweet and good, seasoned with honey and mint. For the first time in an age, he felt relaxed and happy – or at least that he knew what he was doing. Isabella was still an ache in the pit of his stomach, his wife another. Well, the swords of the enemy were soon about to focus his mind on the present.

All around the men were talking quickly and with passion. Smiths used the last of the light to straighten swords and fix rings in mail. The sergeants were barking instructions at the men of Ypres in their dog’s French, telling them they were lucky to be fighting under England’s greatest soldier, that Earl Montagu had never been known to lose a battle and wasn’t about to start. Not true, thought Montagu – the siege of Dunbar had been abandoned and Black Agnes left to go back to berating her husband. Not a loss but not a victory either.

The sergeants were shouting at the tops of their voices: ‘Stick together, fight together, listen to your captains!’ ‘Trust to the men-at-arms to repel the horsemen. They will repel the horsemen! That way you survive and come home with the English shilling.’ ‘Run and die under the hooves of the Valois alliance’s knights!’ The smoke of the fires smelled wonderful on the cold air, a hum of purpose, nervousness and excitement filled the camp.

‘You’re smiling, lord.’ It was George.

‘I’m no wool collector, Baron Despenser. Nights like these are what a man craves.’

‘And days like tomorrow!’

‘Indeed. Time to crack a few Valois heads, boy!’

‘Do they outnumber us by many?’

‘Thank the Lord, yes,’ said Montagu. ‘God save us from easy victories! They’ll be singing our names the length and breadth of the country when we pull this one off, George!’

‘And the angels?’

Montagu pointed to the smoky horizon. ‘Not doing them a lot of good at the moment.’

In two days’ march he would be north of Lille. News of his army’s movement was bound to tie up the garrison there and stop it coming to the aid of Tournai. He could stop at the church of St Denis, though it would involve a risky diversion close to the city walls. He could press on and hope Bardi’s men found him, but he wanted to know what had been found out as soon as possible. A quick raid to the church, burn it – to anger the French angels and do a little to weaken their attachment to Philip – and then back and on to Tournai. He grinned at the thought. Thirty men would be enough.

They’d rattle the enemy, grab this man of Bardi’s and be out of there, hooves flying. He looked at his destrier by his pavilion, blinkered to avoid its spying any other stallions to fight. It would be good to take that for the fun of it, in case they met any opposition. Practicality, though, meant he should take one of his lighter hobbelars. No, he would take the destrier. The hobbelar was maybe the better horse for the job but Montagu was in a reckless mood and knew his knights could get among the enemy in open order in that country. A warhorse could cause some damage. They’d be moving quickly, perhaps facing mercenary crossbowmen. If they could draw a volley then a charge would be decisive, giving the crossbowmen no time to reload. Montagu actually found he was humming to himself.

He finished the pork.

‘George,’ he said, ‘convene the men of quality at dawn tomorrow. I have an adventure for them. Now I’ll sleep and I suggest you do too. There’s going to be some hard riding over the next few days and we all need to be ready for it.’

‘Yes, my lord.’

Montagu watched the young man walk off through the camp. A bit of a scrap was just what he needed to take his mind off his dead mother. There was no better place for George to be than at war in such a time of grief.

The next day went better than Montagu could have imagined. They forded the leafy Lys in a cold pink dawn and fell upon Armentières – a pretty little town on the river. It was defended only by a small number of Genoese crossbowmen and the walls were quickly stormed. Montagu led the attack himself – important to establish early on that he had what it took in battle. There was very little resistance – the day was cold for April, a hint of snow in the air, and his men fought hard for the warmth it brought. He had enough archers to keep the crossbowmen pinned on their walls until he got a ram into the gates. The biggest problem, in fact, was not to get shot by his own bowmen.

He was first through the gates – an old fashioned shield on his arm in case there were crossbowmen lurking behind it. He had been disappointed that no one had fired a single quarrel at him. Resistance had crumbled as soon as the gates went through.

They sacked the place and burned the church, but Montagu managed to avoid too large a butchery of the citizens – many of whom had fled to the countryside, anyway. It was ungodly to hack down women and children and, moreover, it undermined the opponent to have so many displaced people scouring the land for food. Better drive them away than kill them.

A scout came to him as he took dinner in the mayor’s house.

‘Lille is locking down for a siege. They’ve demolished the suburbs and the people have retreated inside the walls. Men are coming in from Tournai.’

Good. The commander there was a civil servant – Godemar Du Fay – a lousy bookman but an excellent soldier according to reports. Good to have a man like that run to earth, pulling in resources from the real target at Tournai.

Dawn the next day and they pulled out of the smashed town, riding on to the River Deûle around noon. Montagu made camp there, insisting that the men of Ypres dig trenches. They complained about it but – as Montagu pointed out – they’d complain a whole lot more if Du Fay came through their tents with two hundred knights at the charge.

It was a clear day and the sun was overhead. Did he have time? If he went to the church now then he could be back with the army before sunset.

He walked over to Suffolk’s tent. The stout knight was attending to his horse – a magnificent brown destrier that looked far too big for the little man to ride.

‘Fancy an adventure, Robert?’

‘What do you have in mind?’

‘There’s a spy I need to pick up near the church of St Denis.’

‘That’s close to the walls of Lille, isn’t it?’

‘Close enough to make it interesting. What says we give Du Fay a bit of a fright?’

‘Why not? I’m with you.’

‘No need for you to come yourself, old man. Just thought you might like to lend me a few of your more likely lads.’

‘If you’re going for a crack at the Valois I’m coming with you, dear boy. I have a French knight who’s come to our side, he can show the way.’

‘Very well. We’ll assemble beneath my banners at my tent in short order.’

‘As soon as my mail is on my back, I’m ready to go. Ten men do you?’

‘Taking twenty of my own so that’ll make a decent enough number. Yes, ten will be very good indeed.’

The party was guided by Perceval d’Aubrequin – a renegade French knight who knew the land well. Montagu had his best men with him, his own diamond pennants ruffling in the light breeze, a high cold sun in the sky, his reins holding back his destrier’s fury. It felt good.

Thirty men, among them George Despenser – God, the French must curse to see that family’s colours in their lands – Guy of Flanders, with his black lion on his surcoat pawing the air, Sir William Malmsbury with his three robins, Philip Lacy with that huge sword of his, John Bruce all in yellow. Five horse archers were with them too. He’d trust any of these men with his life, which was fortunate because that was exactly what he was about to do.

He had thought to leave the letter in his camp. It seemed treacherous to his wife to carry Isabella’s sleeve into battle with him. The letter, though, was a token of hers that would cause no anguish to Catherine should it be found on his body. He put it into a wallet and slid it under his gambeson.

‘Ready?’

‘Ready!’ said Suffolk.

The camp had turned out to wave them off and Montagu led them out at the canter. The chapel was in the village of Marquette – essentially a suburb of Lille.

It was an hour and a half’s ride away and d’Aubrequin led the way, across a leafy ford on the Deûle. Here, Montagu could smell the burning. This wasn’t the destruction of the English, though – the French had burned their own suburbs to deny the English the use of the houses. He set George and two bowmen to keep a watch on the ford. He could sense the young man’s disappointment but he had to learn that not all soldiering was glamorous. It was hugely important that their way out was covered. The bowmen could delay an enemy for long enough for George to fetch him. Or, if the force was too great, they could ride back to camp to gather reinforcements.

‘You think this spy of yours will still be there?’ said Suffolk, his horse shaking the water from itself alongside Montagu’s.

‘Only one way to find out,’ said Montagu.

‘If he’s not, it’ll be good to have a look at the walls,’ said Suffolk. ‘If we’re lucky they might see us and attack.’

Montagu knew this was bravado. Suffolk loved a fight as much as anyone but he knew that Du Fay might be able to sortie with up to five hundred men-at-arms. They couldn’t win against those numbers. It didn’t matter. He could get to the church, do what he had to do and get away. And if he was caught? Visibility was good, the smoke aside. He didn’t anticipate that happening.

He spurred his horse on, towards the smoke, towards the ashes, towards the flames.

6

Dow and his companions had stuck with Montagu as far as Ypres. The Earl had a good party of men-at-arms with him and that made the going much safer. There was an attempt to press the men into the army at Bruges but Montagu himself intervened.

‘You are Bardi’s man, Florentine?’ he asked Orsino.

‘Yes.’

‘I’ve seen you at Windsor. I vouch for this man; he can travel beside us unmolested,’ said the Earl to the recruiter. He strode off, calling to his men to be careful unloading his horses.

‘Friends in high places?’ said the pardoner, who had obtained a pie from a seller at the quayside.

‘And in low,’ said Orsino, his eyes on the dribbling pastry.

‘A bonus,’ said the pardoner, brandishing the pie. ‘I sold a soldier a part of Christ’s robe! By Mary’s curly placket, I love a war!’ Dow marvelled at the pardoner’s resilience. He had spent quite a while in Hell and yet here he was, stuffing himself, drinking and cozening people as if nothing had happened.

‘Good thing,’ said Orsino, ‘because between here and Paris I reckon it’s ten days minimum. And we’ll be going through one.’

Dow tapped his foot on the ground of Flanders. It felt like English soil, though he had half expected it to feel different. The people were certainly odd. They wore wide collars, the women big skirts, the men floppy big hats without plume or badge. Dow found them almost comical to look at.

Their language was strange too and it conjured up old feelings, those when he first came to London and couldn’t understand too much of what was said in that odd accent. He glanced at Orsino. The man was now joking with the English sergeant who had tried to force him into service, saying something about how the English didn’t need a Florentine to tell them how to beat the French.

Dow owed Orsino a great deal. In the three years he had been with him the Florentine had turned Dow from a boy into a young man. He could fight, he could dress a wound, he could mend and sew and he could talk English. Orsino was a gentle enough soul underneath, a man who wanted simple things. Dow understood that he had not held any personal malice against him when he had abducted him. He had been working for the banker. Yet that did not excuse him. He should have refused to commit such cruelties on Bardi’s behalf. His hypocrisy was expected, for Orsino was a man of Christ. Dow touched the hilt of the old sword Orsino had given him. If Orsino would not convert he would have to kill him, to save the world from the atrocities Bardi might have him perform. It would be hard now, very hard. But it would be right.

They moved through the flat country towards Ypres and camped with Montagu outside the walls. The pardoner was making a fortune, his trade increased by his fine clothes. Men believed him to be a merchant not a vagabond. Still, Osbert was generous with his money and even offered to send a whore on to Dow and Orsino once he’d finished with her.