Son of the Morning (47 page)

The knights picked the narrowest street between the most intact houses. Here the mass of the French numbers would count for the least. Montagu stood at one end, Suffolk at the other, both with their great swords held like spears to thrust with. Those who still had lances or spears went behind. The bowmen stood in the middle, to fire over their heads. The French would be wanting to capture them. Montagu’s men would be aiming to kill. That at least was an advantage.

The onslaught didn’t take long to arrive. The footmen had lost their fear once the English knights had dismounted, and came charging in. Montagu thrust with his sword, arrows snicked over his head, far too close for his comfort but men died in front of him. They died at his side too. Charles Bruce stumbled and fell, a spear clean through him, other men tumbled behind him. There was always a chance that, if the French were commanded by a merchant or civil servant, they might stand off and simply let the crossbowmen pick them off. But he had seen the colours of many noble houses among the knights. They would want the honour – and the ransom – of taking their enemy alive if they could.

He feared for a moment that the French would try to burn the houses that made up the street that protected them again. The walls, though, were good stone – this was clearly a prosperous village. They should be safe from being burned out of the alley at least.

Montagu was quite resigned to dying now. He would not surrender and it would be impossible to defeat these odds. The attacks became more sporadic. Where were the English reinforcements? He stabbed and he kicked, headbutted and kneed. His hands grew tired and blistered on the sword, bodies fell about him, friend and foe. He screamed the name of his saints, of his house, of his wife and once, when sore pressed, of Isabella. Did George even know what had happened to them? Half the time he used his sword reversed, the cross piece making a fine pick to punch through mail and helmets. Hour after hour went by, the attacks fading back, resting, coming again.

As night fell the press of men became irresistible. The men in the alley were assailed from the front and the rear, forced to step back on their fallen comrades.

‘Surrender, Earl Salisbury, I have a hog on the roast and good beer waiting for you!’ A voice in French. Du Fay.

‘Not to a commoner like you, Du Fay. It’s awfully inconvenient, but I’m afraid you’re going to have to kill me.’

More men were piling in now, slipping on the bodies at his feet but their numbers were overwhelming. He stabbed forward with his sword but a knight deflected it with a red and gold quartered shield and leapt upon him. Montagu hefted up with his sword but another man had grabbed the blade.

Yet another was on him. Montagu’s hands were rubbed raw and all feeling had left them, they had no strength to hold the sword and he dropped it, grabbing for his misericord.

‘Hold on, Will!’ Suffolk hacked a man away. Suffolk! My God, the two ends of their defence had met, all other men between fallen.

French knights were scrambling in. Montagu had two men on either arm, another on his foot. He lifted his free leg to kick out but that leg too was caught and five knights lifted him bodily off the floor. Suffolk too was overpowered.

He was dragged from the alley, D’Aubrequin screaming defiance behind him but he knew the game was up. Montagu didn’t know if he would live or die, though he was so exhausted after fighting so long that he ceased to really care. They were stripping his mail from him, his boots, his gloves. The letter!

‘Leave the lord before he’s naked!’ Du Fay was there. Montagu still had his gambeson on but he was down to his braies and his hose.

The men stopped stripping him but still held him firmly.

‘Glad to make your acquaintance, lord – Godemar du Fay, your servant.’ A tall knight in a green and white checked surplice spoke.

‘Don’t you bow when you greet a superior?’ said Montagu, ‘I’m an earl, for God’s sake, man.’

‘Sorry. Forgot the niceties in the heat of battle.’ The knight bowed.

‘More like it,’ said Montagu. ‘Form is everything in life, Du Fay – it’s what separates us from the savages.’

‘That and the love of God.’

‘Indeed, indeed.’

Suffolk and D’Aubrequin were manhandled alongside Montagu. Suffolk bore a huge wound to his cheek and the front of his basinet had been knocked clean off. He was down to his braes. Montagu got a glimpse of the dead. There must have been fifty bodies on the ground but it didn’t seem to affect Du Fay’s mood. Suffolk was clearly thinking the same thing.

‘How many of you dead?’

‘I think forty, another twenty-five so badly injured they are unlikely to live. Forty wounded above that.’

‘My God, we were slack today, William!’ said Suffolk, ‘That’s only three of them for every one of us.’

‘We have prepared a dinner for you. After that, we’ll set you on your way to Paris at dawn,’ said Du Fay, ‘where I know Philip intends to execute the traitor here,’ he jabbed a finger in D’Aubrequin’s direction, ‘and, I regret to say, may do the same for you.’

‘You’ll give Suffolk and me the head of the table?’ Montagu was tired, parched and thirsty – he had a great sore on his head where his basinet had rubbed after being dented deflecting a sword blow and, he noticed, he was bleeding from a wound on the thigh. The chance to clean and care for his wound, to sit down and take a cup of ale was very welcome. But rather than sit down-table from a man like Du Fay, he’d spend the night tied to a cart.

‘Of course, you are the great men here,’ said Du Fay.

‘Then it might be acceptable,’ said Montagu. ‘Send me a tailor too – I can’t go about dressed like this. And a barber to stitch Suffolk’s wounds.’

‘Of course. The people might be a little rough on your way in,’ said Du Fay, ‘but they have seen your army reduce the countryside to ashes, slaughter their sons and rape their daughters. I will offer you every protection and we should be fine by the time we reach the Great Hall.’

‘Lead on, then,’ said Montagu.

He was marched forward at the point of spear. He was weak, captured and, very likely, about to be executed. Worse than that, his army would never reach Tournai without his leadership; his king would lack his help. But two things stood in his favour. Bardi was moving against the Welshman – that would not change. In fact it might help Montagu’s case with the Almighty. How could he be responsible for the old king’s death while he was captured by the French? But above all, he still had the letter. He would find a way to deliver it, fulfilling the lady’s wish. He knew that his desire to please her, to honour the promise he had made, would sustain him. He would be free again and he would bring the letter to the king. ‘Isabella,’ he whispered to himself as they shoved him towards the jeers of the town.

8

Passing south, the pardoner began to believe he could be back in Hell. They travelled with the army as far as Lille then struck south for Lens. All around them the land was burned. The English army had been there, the French had recaptured it.

The fields were black, all buildings charred and smashed, every ditch containing a body or even a skeleton. The devastation had been so complete that there had been no one to bury the dead. Now, six months at least after Edward’s ravages, the land showed no signs of recovery. At Roeux he nearly wept. The town was entirely burned and a grim scaffold outside its walls showed the English had hanged everyone they had not killed by the sword. The bodies of fifty men swung from them – crow eaten, frost black. Everywhere itinerant families roamed the land, starving and riddled with disease.

Osbert awoke each morning and forced his face into a grin. Cheerfulness was a habit to him and he feared that if he ever let it slip, he would never get it back again. He had been shaking inside since his ordeal in Hell, though he had to confess he was prospering. He had seen things there that terrified him, scarred him and, were it not for a good draught of French wine each night he would never have slept.

He was convinced of one thing – he did not wish to spend eternity in the company of Hugh Despenser and Pole. His belly still hurt terribly from where he had been branded. He needed a magic circle to call the devils that were to kill the boy and had had some difficulty reproducing it. To remind him, Despenser had it branded on to his belly by a headless man with flaming fingers.

He remembered the spell in his head, ‘By the fifteen names of Satan, by Baal and Beelzebub and Asmodeus …’ and knew that he must complete it under the nose of the angel. He needed to present himself to Charles of Navarre when he got to court. The prince would be expecting him. All good.

So he needed to redeem himself, desperately. His understanding was that the devils were on the same side as the angels. This had come as some surprise to him, but it tallied with what the boy had said and the lady too – when he could understand her rather obscure comments.

Was she an angel? Well, Despenser had described her as such, as a
fallen
angel, and she was certainly an unearthly beauty.

He would dearly have wished to give Sariel a tumble, but long experience had taught him when a woman was out of his reach. No point thinking about her. Well, every point in thinking about her but none in letting it trouble him. He might as well wish to become pope.

Besides, she had a strange effect on him. The past came flooding in on him when he spoke to her and he remembered how far he had fallen. His father had been a yeoman, a villein who had worked his land and done his deals well enough to become wealthier than the local knights and he had bought his freedom. He’d been proud to send his son to Oxford. Osbert had drunk and whored his way through university, securing his degree only by dint of his father’s bribe. Osbert had no desire to work when he left and eventually he had quarrelled with his father and his allowance had been removed. It was then he’d been forced into holy orders as an alternative to starving. Faced by Sariel, Osbert remembered all this and, for the first time, felt it from his father’s point of view. Of course he could understand why the old man had been angry. But, with Sariel beside him, he wanted to go back to his father, say sorry and promise to be a good son.

The Florentine seemed to accept Sariel’s unearthly nature, and had taken on himself the role of her guardian. Orsino shot him dark looks whenever Osbert spoke to Sariel. Clearly sweet on her, clearly jealous. He’d even bought her a horse at Ypres so she wouldn’t have to walk.

Osbert looked at the boy. He was sixteen years old and of a good strong form – not tall for his age but tough and wiry. He carried a sword, and knew how to use it. The pardoner had mixed feelings towards Dow. The boy had released him from the circle but only to send him to Hell. Dow had clearly been under the sway of that mad priest, a man as wedded to unreason as any he’d ever met. That wouldn’t stop Osbert doing what needed to be done, though. The boy was a heretic, an enemy of God. Heaven awaited his killer or, at least, not Hell. But was Osbert up to being an assassin? Should he go through with it? Was he doing God’s work? Yes. Anything to avoid returning to Hell. He’d seen that boy’s tongue, seen the little ympe that clung to him. A demon, no doubt, who would also have to die.

It was in a black and burned land that the army swept over them – Flemings of Gaunt commanded by the merchant Van Artevelde under their strutting white lion. There was little strutting from the men. The pardoner discovered that the siege of Tournai had failed. Earl Montagu of Salisbury had been captured, William of Hainault was nowhere to be seen.

Two thousand men passed by, their steps hurried, their carts abandoned in the rush to get back home. The bulk of the men were on the road and Orsino directed his group out into the wasted and overgrown fields to let them pass. The men saw them and Osbert knew he and his companions were easy targets for robbery but the army hardly broke stride. They were running north, in fear of their lives.

‘We’re going towards what they’re running from?’ said Osbert.

‘Paris is south unless they’ve moved it,’ said Orsino.

‘The army is a big one,’ said Osbert, ‘I wonder what’s pursuing them.’

‘I think we’ll discover that in about a day –’ said Orsino, ‘– the French army, I should guess.’

‘What are we going to do when we encounter it?’

‘I have my letters,’ said Orsino. ‘Let’s hope we can survive for long enough to present them.’

‘Bonjour, mes amis, j’ai les lettres par Charles of Navarre. Or is it “de Charles of Navarre”? Oh, God.’

‘How well can you speak French?’ said Orsino.

‘I get a lot better when under threat. Or drunk,’ said the pardoner. He took a bottle of wine from his pack, opened it and guzzled at it.

‘You won’t need that,’ said Orsino, ‘because I’ll beat your brains out if you make a mistake. Is that threat enough for you? We must try to surrender to a nobleman. The letters will be no good if the people we meet can’t read.’

‘Il y a beaucoup d’argent pour l’homme qui m’encontre le Prince Charles of Navarre. Il me voudrait!’ shouted the pardoner.

‘What’s that?’ said Dow.

‘An offer of money,’ said the pardoner, ‘works a lot quicker than appealing to men’s better natures, I can tell you.’

‘Well,’ said Orsino, ‘you’re going to get the chance to test that theory.’

He nodded ahead. In the charred distance on the wide ridge of the hill that determined the horizon, the pardoner saw what he at first thought were trees, shadows against the smoky sun. But shadows did not move like that.

Horses, lines and lines of horses, came sweeping down the hill, bursting into colour as they rode out of the silhouetting sunset like things grown from fire.

There was fire too. Osbert could smell it on the air. The French army had been burning as they came forward and Dow felt sorry for the poor. The knights and the nobles who fell to the invader would be well treated, fed and given food. The ordinary people would fall to the sword.

At the front of the column rode a splendid tall knight on a black destrier, a boy trotting along at his side on a white pony. There must have been ten thousand men behind them, pouring down the hill, their banners swarming.