The Deadliest Sin (7 page)

The usual few hands rose, with queries about the food and provisions for the march, but all issues were soon resolved and a basic plan agreed.

‘So, off we go again.’ Barda grunted. ‘Always us at the foreground. The army likes us to be the bleeding spearpoint, doesn’t it? And when we’re blunted, other
bastards can claim the sodding glory.’

‘We’ll be fine,’ Janyn said as they made their way back to their men.

‘You know what I think? I reckon the King knows he can replace any number of men over here. So many English would be glad to come and join in the sack of Calais that he will never lack for
men. And after Calais, well, it’ll be easier to launch an attack with a town already colonised, won’t it? He doesn’t care about you and me, Jan. He thinks he’s got the
country by the short hairs as it is.’

‘Perhaps.’

‘No “perhaps” about it, old son. Take my oath on it. We are the dispensable vanguard. He can lose any or all of us. Right now, we’re the most experienced of his soldiers,
but he’ll throw us at the enemy, like a lure to the French hawk. We can be discarded – just so long as we hold them back for a little while, until the King’s host is ready to
receive them.’

‘You’re too cynical,’ Janyn said.

‘You think so? You’re too trusting, man. You’re gambling, but you’re gambling with your life,’ Barda said harshly. ‘And ours, too.’

It was a thought that would return to haunt Janyn later.

The vintaine was packed and ready in short order. Janyn looked about him and assessed their strength, studying each man and his weapons.

Although they had marched hundreds of miles to get here, and then endured the winter over the long months, they did not have the appearance of men worn out by their journeys and privations.
Still, there was the usual grumbling and complaining. Will of Whitchurch, a scrawny, ill-favoured malcontent with the look and sound of a whining cur, muttered loudly as he packed about:
‘These gits. Why don’t they send in the Welshies, eh? Just about done, me. Nay, but they’ll send us all in until we’re all jiggered. They can’t risk the Prince’s
little darlings, can they, oh, no. But us, they can throw us into every battle.’

‘You should be honoured, Will,’ Janyn said.

‘Honoured, Jan? Just why should I be that?’

‘You’ve done so much, they think you can win the battle all on your own, man. We’re only here to guard you so you can fight and hold them all back.’

‘Oh, ah. Yes, I can see that. I’ll bloody have to, because we’re all going to die, but I’ll tell you this: you’ll go before me, man! I’m not getting my throat
cut by a Genoese quarrel-chucker! Not me!’

‘I doubt you will,’ Janyn said, and meant it. There was something about the wiry little fellow that inspired confidence in his ability to survive any number of disasters. They had
already come through a series of battles on the way here, and not many of the original team were still alive.

It was only when the men were mostly packed and had already begun to wander off to the muster that Janyn realised Pelagia was standing silent. She looked like a statue. Her hands were balled at
her side, and she held her body tense, unbending. Her face was stiff, and Janyn thought her jaw looked like a clenched fist, the muscles were so taut. He was about to go to her when he saw Bill and
Walter. Bill wandered to her, his head low, glaring at the world from surly eyes.

‘Maid, what will you do?’ he asked.

She looked at him, then gave a long, slow stare about the rest of the English camp. ‘If I stay here, how long can I survive?’

Janyn made a quick decision and crossed to them.

‘We can introduce you to some of the other men,’ he said. He could take her to some of the other marching wives, let them help her. It would take no time for her to find a new
‘husband’. But the brothers stared at him. They both knew what would happen to her there. They didn’t – she didn’t – want that, and neither did he. He remembered
the day he had given her half his loaf. He had admired her even then. With Janyn’s vintaine she had not been forced to pay the marriage debt. She had made no vows to bind her to any of them,
and her time with the men had been one of armed neutrality. She held no feelings for Janyn or the others, and while he had no need to protect her, yet he felt some affection for her. To discard her
would be like throwing a chicken in the midst of a pack of dogs. They would squabble and bicker over her until the strongest consumed her.

Bill’s head dropped, and Janyn could see the man’s despair. They all knew what would happen if they left her. But marching to a battle was a matter of hard effort. They had no time
to concern themselves over the woman. And in a fight, Janyn didn’t want his men worrying about the woman left behind with the camp. He had seen that all too often before: men fighting while
half their minds were fixed on a woman. All too often it led to the man being killed.

‘Vintener, we can’t leave her,’ Walter said firmly.

Horns were blowing to signal the march. Janyn made a quick decision. ‘If you bring her, she’s your responsibility,’ he said.

‘Aye,’ Bill said quickly.

Janyn could see how Bill’s mind was working. The thought of leaving her here filled him with horror. If she was left to the mercies of the English army, she would be ravished and probably
dead inside a day. It had taken Bill and his brother to rescue her from three drunken men before now. She could do nothing to protect herself if she were left alone.

Janyn could almost see these thoughts chase themselves across his face.

‘Will you come with us, then?’ Bill demanded gruffly.

‘What else can I do?’ she said.

They did not journey far. They marched on horseback with full packs and the spare arrows and bowstaves packed carefully on their carts, one to each vintaine, and the few women and children
trudged along behind.

Looking back along the lines of troops and women, Janyn was hit by a feeling of happiness.

‘Glad to be rid of the place for a while?’ Barda asked, riding at his side.

‘It’s the stench of the latrines – I never could abide that,’ Janyn said, but it wasn’t only that. It was the feeling of grim, relentless misery that encompassed
the area about the town, and more than anything else, the unremitting boredom of daily duty in the army.

‘Aye,’ Barda said, breathing deeply. ‘It’s good to be on a horse again, and to be riding, even if we will be riding into danger.’

Behind them, kneeling on the bed of the cart, he could see her: Pelagia. Beside her, as though guarding her on the way to her wedding, were Bill and Walter, flanking her on their ponies. Janyn
was quite tempted to bellow at them to leave her and join the main column that straggled its way along the road, but there was no point.

He could see why they kept near her. She looked lovely.

‘What?’ Barda asked, seeing the direction of his gaze.

‘Should I do something about them? Look at them: drooling over her like a pair of dogs after a bitch,’ Janyn said.

‘What, are you jealous? Jan, get a grip!’ Barda chuckled to himself. ‘You met her, you allowed her into our vintaine, and you stopped the arsehole Henry from raping her –
what more do you want? Are you jealous of the lads?’

‘Of course I’m not.’

‘But she does look beautiful, doesn’t she?’ Barda said. ‘She gives the brothers something to fight for. No Frenchman will get to her without knocking them down
first.’

‘I’m worried about Bill. She never gives him a look, but I’ll bet he’s never stopped thinking about her.’

‘I think Walter is smitten as badly, and yet she gives them no affection, no sign of any desire to be with them, only a cold, distant demeanour.’

‘I don’t think Walter hoped for anything from her. When she first came to the camp, he just sought to protect her from the other men.’

‘Is this all about them – or is it you, Jan?’ Barda asked.

‘Me?’

‘When Henry came to us, it wasn’t Bill or Walter who stood before him, it was you. Is that the problem?’

‘No!’

It wasn’t because he wanted her. If he’d wanted a woman, he could have found himself one. Any of the Winchester Geese who followed the army would be good for a quick release. They
were able, willing, and quick, generally, just like the whores of the Bishop of Winchester’s stews from whom they took their name.

Pelagia was not like them. She was a mystery. Other women demanded attention and craved companionship, but Pelagia just seemed to exist. She desired nothing from any of the men in the vintaine,
and only showed a calculated disdain when any tried to get too close to her. The rest of the time, she remained with their group as though she was sister to their whole unit. There was no offer of
sex or even friendship, only a firm independence.

She was not like other women. He didn’t get the sense that there would be any pleasure in pursuing her like a sensualist determined to gain another notch on his bedpost. Other men talked
of the thrill of the chase of a fresh woman, but Janyn had never been interested in that kind of exercise. He was content to concentrate on his work. One day, perhaps, he would go to England and
seek a wife, but not here, not in this godforsaken land of burned crops and slaughtered animals. This was no place to think of settling, it was only a country to be tamed, and that profitably.

Sometimes he thought he saw something in her face. Perhaps a flash of sadness, or a look of quick despair, but it was so fleeting, he could not swear to it. Perhaps it was just his mind trying
to make sense of her, of her feelings and of what drove her on.

He didn’t care, anyway. Whatever it was that she wanted, he wanted none of it.

‘How was the battle?’ Laurence asked. The other pilgrims were hushed by the tale as Janyn paused and topped up his drink from a jug.

‘The French did not have enough men. Nothing like enough. By that time, I suppose our King had some thirty thousand men under arms. It certainly looked it, with men all about the town
itself, and more arriving every day. But the French had gathered together a scant twenty thousand.’

He nodded to himself pensively. ‘Even if they could synchronise their attack with a sortie from the men in the town, they wouldn’t have had enough. Their army was demoralised
before they saw the English. Who wouldn’t have been, after the shattering defeat of Crécy? And while they may have hoped for a diversion from Calais itself, the people in the town were
already enfeebled by the siege. Hunger and despair tore at them, and those who still had strength enough to wield a sword would still never have reached the lines of archers ringing the
town.

‘So I say it again, they didn’t have enough. But from where we were, it looked like they had enough to trample us into the mud.’

The French King had to make a display, if only for his honour’s sake. So he marched his men up the road to the town. And the only thing stopping him at that moment was
Sir John de Sully’s little force.

The old warrior was then in his sixties or so. His scarred and worn face displayed no fear that Janyn could see, only a boyish excitement. ‘We’ll stop them there,’ he said,
pointing to a narrowing in the roadway.

The road leading to the higher ground outside the town had to pass through a wood before passing a small quarry. Beyond the quarry a hamlet had stood, but now the single stone building, the
church, was the only one remaining. All the others had been burned, and even the church itself stood blackened and ravaged, like a sole surviving tree after a forest fire. The tower remained, but
the building itself was a husk.

‘An ambush?’ Janyn asked.

‘Yes, Hussett. We’ll have our archers here at the front, and as they enter the quarry, we’ll loose the arrows. It’ll blunt their ardour, eh? The front ranks will run to
cover in the quarry, and we can keep aiming arrows at the men coming. They will be pushed on by the press of men behind them, and we can kill many of them as they keep coming.’

Janyn nodded. It was the way the English fought. The archers stood their ground while their enemies ebbed under their withering assault. He moved off to prepare his men.

The two brothers were still there, and now he saw that when Pelagia went to speak with either, it was to Bill that she naturally turned. Walter was left sullenly glowering nearby while she spoke
with his brother, her hand resting naturally on his forearm.

Janyn turned away. It was none of his business, but he disliked the idea that she might be breaking the close bond between the two lads.

The first that Janyn knew of the attack was a shrill scream in the night that jerked him from his slumbers.

They were all settled by early evening, his vintaine taking a patch of turf close to the wall of the old quarry. Their cart was nearby, and their weapons all laid close to hand. Bow-staves lay
on the ground beside many of the archers, the strings held about their throats or kept in their purses, against the threat of the dew dampening them. As Janyn lay back, his head on his pack, he
could see the men. Wisp and Barda stared into the flames from their campfires as they lay wrapped in blankets, and Bill and Walter were a little further off, their faces lost in the glare of the
nearer fire. Janyn had dozed off staring at the coals and glittering sparks.

It was foolish to be so arrogant. A few successes against the French and all believed that they were secure, even here, lying out in the open. They should have known that even a cowed enemy
would not hesitate to attack a force much smaller, and yet no one had thought to post a guard. All were asleep as the first cry came.

As soon as he heard the first high, piercing shriek, Janyn was up, flinging aside his blanket and bellowing at the other men to gather their weapons and follow him as he sprang forward.

The roadway was already a scene of confusion. Half-asleep archers were milling in the near darkness, while some few blundered around gripping blazing torches in their fists, rubbing the sleep
from their eyes.

Janyn hurried to the line nearer the French army, but there was no sign of fighting there. All was peaceful, so far as he could see. A small group of French peasants lay hacked and bloody in a
heap near the front line of the English, and two sentries were dead.