The Ill-Made Knight (52 page)

So we went north until the sun began to rise, and then, when we could see Arnaud de Cervole’s outriders, I led my men into a stream bed, and rode along it until I’d crossed most of the archpriest’s front. Twice we stopped and stood, knee deep in icy water, holding our horse’s heads, but they were terrible scouts and we really needn’t have worked so hard.

When we emerged from the stream, we were between the expanding crescent of his scouts and the main French army. We swept west, riding slowly and carefully from copse to copse, raising no dust. Four times that long late winter’s day, I came in sight of the main French host. I counted banners and whistled, then groaned. Jacques de Bourbon, Count of La Marche; Jean de Melun, Count of Tancraville; Jean de Noyers, Count of Joigny, and Gerard de Thurey, the Marshal of Burgundy, were all arms I knew and banners I could read. And, of course, there was the Count d’Herblay, in azur and or checky – I saw him immediately. I counted thirty-nine banners and had the whole of an apple down to the core while watching them from under a tree. I estimated they had more than 6,000 men-at-arms and another 4,000 armoured infantry.

This scout of mine is accounted one of my finest deeds of arms, but in all sober truth, I ran little risk. Cervole was a poor commander, and besides, Bourbon owed me his life, and if I’d been taken, I’d have made them release me, or so I told myself.

At dark, I slipped Cervole’s forward pickets and rode due west. I assumed that if the archpriest was marching towards a target, that target must be Petit Mechin. But I overestimated the archpriest’s scouting, and by dawn the next day, I still hadn’t found Petit Mechin, or even his outriders or foragers.

The sun was high in the sky when we turned back south, because we could see – well, John Hughes and I thought we could see – a smudge of dust on the far horizon.

Hughes and I sat just below the edge of a ridge line, so we couldn’t be seen silhouetted against the bright sky.

‘Should we just ride clear?’ I asked him.

Hughes had an apple, too. He chewed, groaned, then took another bite. ‘You’d know better than me,’ he said.

We moved fast, despite fatigue, fear and horses near done – that was a long day, and a hard one, with our goal moving almost as swiftly as we did ourselves, so that every time we descended a small ridge, we lost all sight of them and our spirits went lower than our horse’s bellies.

After nones we found foragers stripping a stone barn, and they were from Badefol’s company – that cheered me again, because despite the fact that he’d run off taking all our money the autumn before, he was a good leader and a brave man, and we were in a tight spot. In effect, he came out of retirement in Gascony when he heard how badly we’d fared.

At last light, I rode in among his company from the north, and his lieutenant John Amory took me to the great man himself, where he sat on a camp stool, listening to a man recite the Chanson of Alexander. De Badefol was an old-fashioned man, but he rose and grinned.

‘Looking for work?’ he asked.

‘I come from Sir John Creswell,’ I said. ‘And I’ve seen Bourbon’s army.’

Instantly, his banter went away. He took my shoulder. ‘Come, we must find Mechin,’ he said.

We walked up the hill a little further. I wanted a fire and some of the wine – I swear I could smell wine a mile away in those days – but we walked over the rocky ground to the great captain’s pavilion, set with his banner high on the hillside.

I had to explain everything that had happened for a week since we’d lost him in the hills.

Mechin, as you may have heard, was not a big man. He was quite small, and he had the temper we always pretend Frenchmen have. He burned like a torch, for all that his hair was grey and his beard as white as mine is now, but he shared with John Hawkwood the kind of intelligence that allows a man to think his way out of a trap, or through a contract, or into a great marriage alliance.

About the time that I said I’d taken Brignais, he bounced out of his seat.
‘Par dieu
!’ he said. ‘Then we have a crossing of the Rhône, yes?’

I had to demur. ‘Brignais doesn’t have its own bridge,’ I began.

‘We can put across a bridge of boats,’ he said.

‘Like Great Alexander!’ said Seguin de Badefol. He was obviously delighted to be emulating the great conqueror.

Mechin all but bounced up and down. ‘We will pass over the bridge and
pft –
we’re gone.’

I took a little while to describe the archpriest’s army. Forgive my digression – now I know that Tancraville was commander, but given my bias for professional men-at-arms, I took it for granted that Cervole, for all his failings, would have the command. More fool I!

I told my story, and my count of banners, and Mechin winced. ‘By God, gentles,’ he said, ‘we do not want to face these armies together.’

Badefol had scouted the army of Marshal Audreham to the south, and he reported fifty-four banners and two marshals of France. Now it was my turn to wince. Three to one – perhaps as much as five to one.

We faced three armies: Audreham, the archpriest and Tancraville. Each of them was larger and better armed than our own. Worst of all, they took us seriously, and they moved with minimum baggage and no women, so that they moved faster than our ‘nation of thieves’.

‘Where’s Hawkwood?’ Mechin asked.

I laid out the world around us as best I could: beans for the castles, grains of barley for our forces and peas for the enemy. I put in Lyons and Brignais and everything I could remember.

Badefol slapped my shoulder. ‘You discourse about war like a priest talks theology’ he said. ‘Better, because you aren’t full of shit!’

Well, you have to take flattery where you get it, I suppose.

Mechin looked at my little illustration and nodded, fingering his moustache. ‘Let us turn further south,’ he said. ‘Let us turn towards the good Marshal Audreham.’

Badefol nodded, satisfied. I was many years and social levels their junior, but I was temporarily one of them, and I dared greatly and asked, ‘Why?’

Petit Mechin grinned. ‘You have a head on your shoulders and no mistake, young man, and your illustration on the table does me as much good as a painting of Christ does a poor sinner. So listen to me. If you have to fight two men in an alley, what do you do?’

I stammered. ‘Run?’ I murmured.

Mechin laughed. He had a woman’s laugh, high and wild, but genuine and happy, not mad like Camus. I liked him immensely for such short acquaintance.

‘No, young man. Or rather, certainly, but if your back is to the wall and you must fight them both?’

Sometimes, being questioned freezes the head – you just stare at your interrogator and wonder. This was not my finest hour.

Badefol got it. ‘You feint a thrust at one to buy a moment’s peace and run the other bastard through,’ he said.

‘I can see you’ve fought in some alleys,’ Mechin said.

I was humbled. But they laughed and slapped my back, and someone finally put a cup of wine into my hands.

The next day we marched south along a high ridge line. I took my six lances and we rode out far ahead of the army with most of Badefol’s company, and after nones we came in sight of Audreham’s advance guard.

We had our orders.

We attacked. We had sixty lances all told, and they had twice as many, and we met them in a ford, and drove them from it. We had about twenty English and Flemish long bow men, and they dismounted and ran to the streamside and began to loose shaft after shaft into the southerners. I saw a dozen enemy lances head upstream.

‘Follow me!’ I called, and led my men: Grice and Courtney, Perkin Smallwood and Robert Grandice, de la Motte – he’d just rejoined me – and a few others. Ah, messieurs, I should remember their names and styles, for they were good men of arms, every one, and that was a feat of arms for any book. We rode west through broken country for a quarter of a league or less and there they were, breasting the stream.

Our opponents chose a terrible crossing, took a risk and paid. We caught them in the water and gaffed them like spawning fish with our spears. I captured a young knight – I was disappointed when he proved too small for his beautiful new harness to fit me. It fit Perkin, though, and he took it and wore it. I sent the young man home on parole to get me a thousand Florins, a price he named himself.

An afternoon’s fighting, I didn’t lose a man and I made a thousand florins. It’s a tale of its own how I came to be paid, but
par dieu
, gentlemen. With a dozen men-at-arms and ten archers, I held a mile of streamside against 300 knights.

Another thing, the horse I’d stolen from the priest was magnificently trained. Every day I rode him, I learned another trick he could do – there were hand commands, knee commands and spur commands. I would discover them by mistake, but after three weeks on this magnificent animal, I spent time with him, riding around a field and trying different combinations. I suspected he had voice commands – he was a very intelligent animal, for a horse – and he fought brilliantly at the ford, backing under me and changing direction as soon as he felt a shift in my weight.

As soon was we’d beaten them and seen their backs, we rode back north to find de Badefol, who sat twirling his moustache like Satan’s lieutenant – he was an evil-looking man, and no mistake. He grinned and nodded when he saw our prisoners and haul of armour.

‘If you weren’t such a giant, you’d be easier to arm!’ he called.

In truth, after that skirmish I was the worst-armed man in our band, and it rankled. We were fighting in winter and had no servants – everything I owned was brown and orange, and my clothes were all besmottered with rust.

And yet, 1,000 gold Florins, even in expectation, seemed to cure all my woes. And I was proud of my feat, and prouder still that I’d behaved with steady courtesy to the young knight I’d taken. I hadn’t had to despoil a peasant or burn a house in weeks.

As soon as we were sure we’d driven them from the field, we turned tail and ran ourselves, all the way back to Mechin, who was waiting six miles up the valley with the rest of the Great Company, at the crossroads to Lyon.

He already knew from our outriders, and before we reached him, the army was marching north. By chance, I was the first officer to reach the little man, and he hugged me. ‘The ill-made knight triumphs!’ he said, and other men laughed.

Well, I hated the name, but when you are a mass of rusty brown, you know what you’re being teased for.

We marched north. At the edge of night, there was a stir at the front of the column and I was afraid we were fighting. I assumed that the archpriest had stolen a march and surprised us.

I had my gauntlets on, and Perkin was slipping my helmet over my head when John Thornbury reined in by my horse.

‘Not an attack, then,’ I said.

He shook his head. ‘We burned the castle at Rive-de-Gier and ran,’ he said. ‘The whole royal army of France appeared from over the river. Brignais is under siege.’

I thought of my beans and peas and barley. Brignais under siege threatened everything. ‘Does Mechin know?’ I asked.

Thornbury nodded. ‘I’m to fetch de Badefol. Sir John’s with the little Frenchman now.’

I followed him. No one asked me, and I certainly didn’t have enough lances to count as a captain, but he didn’t say me nay. I’m glad I went.

When I came in with Thornbury and de Badefol, Sir John Hawkwood was sitting across a two-board table from Petit Mechin in the ruins of an abbey hall. The army was halted outside on the road, and the word was we were moving all night. A pair of whores were satisfying a line of clients outside the burned-out hall, and a small boy was collecting coins from the men in the line.

Life in the field. I want you to see this – the best soldiers in France were planning their battle to the accompaniment of the grunts of twenty customers.

Very well. You want Brignais. The end of the companies. The death of the Nation of Thieves.

Mechin was picking his teeth when I came in. He had both Albret’s at the table, Camus, of course, Sir John Hawkwood, Leslie, Birkhead, Naudin de Bagerin and another half a dozen captains. He looked at me and smiled.

‘Heh,’ he laughed. ‘You all know the news?’

I think we all nodded.

‘Worse than Poitiers, and no mistake,’ Sir John said.

Mechin smiled. ‘I didn’t come out so well at Poitiers,’ he said. ‘And you did, you dog of an Englishman.’

Sir John smiled.

‘Listen,’ Mechin went on. ‘Creswell is in Brignais with half a thousand men. Even if we could leave him, our ill-made knight and his friends have all too efficiently fixed Marshal Audreham in place astride the road south. The archpriest has the north road to Lyons.’ He shrugged. ‘We have no choice. We are trapped like a badger in his earth.’

‘Fight?’ asked de Badefol.

‘Fight,’ said Sir John, with professional distaste.

‘Fight,’ said Mechin, and his eyes sparkled.

We marched all night.

Mechin made the plan, and it was a good plan. He divided the army into two parts. All the lesser men-at-arms – the brigands and the routiers and the men with bad horses – went with Mechin himself. They marched straight at Brignais. Two hours before dawn, they dismounted, formed in close order and marched to the top of the high ridge that towers over the castle of Brignais and emerged into the open, spear tips sparkling. Then Mechin sent a herald, as if he was the King of France himself, to the Count of Tancraville, inviting him to try the issue in combat. Listen, I’m not proud of what I did as a routier at times. I was just learning what it might mean to be a knight, to have honour, to be just. But I’m proud of that moment – an army of little men and squires challenging France’s very best men-at-arms. With a certain joy.

The Count of Tancraville accepted Mechin’s challenge to battle. He took the time to arm his men, and he knighted his son and a dozen other rich young men. He formed his army in three great battles – the first led by the archpriest, the second he led in person, and the third led by Jacques de Bourbon.

The archpriest begged Tancraville to wait until the sun burned off the morning mist. And he insisted that attacking Mechin up the hill would lose him knights he didn’t need to lose.