The Ill-Made Knight

by Christian Cameron

  I opened his faceplate.

  He glared at me. ‘Bah!’ he said. ‘God is against me. I am taken.’

  ‘Are you worth anything?’ I asked.

  It is hard to shrug while an armoured man sits on you, especially when you are in a swamp. But he wriggled. ‘Not a hundred florins,’ he said. ‘Perhaps fifty? I am du Guesclin. You know the name?’

  I didn’t, so I shook my head.

  ‘Would you do me the service of killing my horse?’ Du Guesclin said. ‘He was a fine horse. Christ only knows how I will replace him.’

  Richard appeared while I cut the horse’s throat – somewhat ineptly as I was splashed in blood. My harness was already a squire’s nightmare – bogs and armour are not friends, and my sabatons collected the most remarkable amount of stinking mud.

  He laughed, and then he saw the French knight.

  ‘You lucky bastard!’ Richard said.

  ‘I’ll split the ransom with you,’ I said sportingly.

  Richard slapped me on the back. ‘I’ll do the same.’ He stripped his right gauntlet and held out his hand to the Frenchman. ‘Richard Musard,’ he said.

  ‘Bertrand du Guesclin,’ said the Frenchman.

  Richard looked at me and shook his head. ‘I think we’re supposed to hang him,’ he said. ‘He’s the French brigand Sir Robert is hunting.’

  ‘Is that Sir Robert Knolles?’ Du Guesclin asked. He laughed. ‘That rapist is calling me a brigand? I live here. This is my country.’

  Sam appeared out of the darkness. The sky was almost light, and he looked at the French knight and shrugged.

  ‘That’s him, right enough.’ He looked at me. ‘What do you plan to do, my lord?’

  I don’t think Sam Bibbo had ever called me ‘my lord’ before.

  ‘If you gentlemen will release me, I’ll pay my ransom wherever you want it sent,’ du Guesclin said.

  ‘If you don’t inform Sir John . . .’ Sam made a face. ‘He’ll know. Sooner or later.’

  I sent Richard to find Sir John. I moved my prisoner across the meadow, hobbled Goldie and ate a sausage. I shared half with du Guesclin, and gave him some wine. He was my King John. He was a real knight, and I waited on him the way I thought he deserved. This was the chivalry for which I yearned.

  He handed me back the leather bottle of wine. ‘You are a cut above the routiers,’ he said. ‘Could I try one more time to entice you to let me go? I will pay – and I’m not worth any more. Your Sir John will kill me.’

  I shook my head. ‘No he won’t,’ I said confidently.

  Half an hour passed, and then a party of horsemen came into my meadow from the north. Richard dismounted to cross the brook, and Sir John and three of his men-at-arms rode around the perimeter.

  He dismounted and bowed. ‘Messire du Guesclin. I have long wanted to meet you.’

  Du Guesclin smiled bravely. ‘Sir John Hawkwood. I cannot say I feel the same about you, messire.’ Nonetheless, he took Sir John’s hand.

  Sir John turned to me. ‘You took him?’

  I nodded.

  Sir John nodded. ‘William, you have just made your reputation.’ He looked at me – not old man to young, but man to man. ‘What do you intend?’ he asked.

  Everyone was quiet. I felt very much out of place. The sand was back behind my eyes. I was aware, in some dark part of my head, that I hadn’t taken this man fairly – it was simply that his horse had stumbled in the dark.

  ‘He’s offered a hundred florins ransom and I’ve accepted. I intended to let him go. Saving your Grace.’

  Sir John laughed. ‘Christ, I have Galahad serving in my convoy. But yes, William. You have my grace.’ He nodded to me. He turned back to du Guesclin. ‘Yesterday, I’d have strung you up from the nearest tree, messire. But . . . things change. May I take you aside and whisper in your ear?’

  Du Guesclin tensed – I think he expected to be taken aside and killed – but his sense of his own dignity overcame his desire to live, and he bowed. ‘I put my trust in you, sir,’ he said.

  I put a gauntleted hand on Sir John’s steel-clad arm. ‘I’d take it amiss if he was to die here,’ I said.

  Sir John gave me a cold glance. ‘Galahad,’ he spat, and beckoned to du Guesclin, who followed Sir John into the woods.

  They were gone for far longer than I expected or liked. I was walking across the meadow, my thighs burning with fatigue and my head swimming, when I saw the sun dazzle off Sir John’s steel arms.

  Du Guesclin was with him, and not face down in the forest.

  When they emerged, du Guesclin nodded to Sir John.

  Richard bowed. He ordered John Brampton to dismount and share Christopher’s horse, and gave the boy’s horse to the French knight.

  Du Guesclin embraced us both. ‘I thank God I was taken by two such gentle knights,’ he said.

  ‘Two such great fools,’ Sam muttered.

  ‘The Inn of the Three Foxes,’ Richard said. ‘At Bordeaux.’

  Du Guesclin mounted, got the feel of the little horse and smiled. ‘I’ll pay by the end of the day,’ he promised us.

  And he trotted his horse away.

  Sir John rode with me on the long road back to his keep. ‘You have become a canny man-at-arms,’ he said. ‘But that might have gone badly for all of us. It might have been better if you’d put your whittle into his eye, eh?’ He looked at me. ‘You heard Sir Robert say we were to kill him.’

  ‘I didn’t hear you agree,’ I said. ‘And to the best of my knowledge, my lord, we are not at war with France. Indeed, Master Hoo is carrying the word of the truce far and wide, is he not?’

  Hawkwood looked at me, as if seeing me for the first time. ‘So, there is something inside that head besides empty chivalry. You know that, eh? Do you know what else Master Hoo is saying?’ he asked.

  I shook my head.

  ‘Thank God, then. Listen, my young friend. Things change. Kings change. Their policy changes. Kings are the most inconstant creatures – more so than young maidens.’ He laughed.

  ‘But you are a routier – you serve your own ends, and not the King’s,’ I said.

  Sir John stroked his beard. We rode on a ways, and he played with the length of his stirrup for a while. He spoke to one of his scouts. I assumed we were done when he turned to me.

  ‘I serve the King as surely as if I wore his livery and served under his banner,’ Sir John said. ‘Routier, my arse.’

  It is odd what can sting a man.

  That night, I dined with Sir John and his men-at-arms in the great hall of his keep. Master Hoo was there, and young Chaucer waited on the table. I worried he might piss in my wine.

  I was pleased to be allowed to dine with the knights. Richard and I sat quietly. Nothing was said of the capture of du Guesclin. Nor of peace.

  In fact, they were all planning to march on Paris. It sounds absurd, but a few hundred Englishmen were planning to take Paris. Hawkwood was in on the enterprise, and so was Sir Robert Knolles and Sir James Pipe – all the King’s officers in Normandy, in fact.

  I found myself sitting by Master Hoo late in the evening. I leaned over, emboldened by wine. ‘How can they attack Paris?’ I asked. ‘We’ve made peace with France?’

  Master Hoo looked at me over his nose and grunted.

  He was almost too drunk to talk.

  I admit I was shocked.

  Chaucer leaned over, sloshed wine into his master’s cup and sneered at me. ‘Paris isn’t currently held by the King of France or his son, either,’ he said. ‘Paris has declared itself . . .’ he seemed at a loss for words.

  ‘Communes,’ Master Hoo enunciated clearly. ‘Paris and Amiens and the northern cities.’ He nodded gravely. It would have been more impressive if his cap hadn’t slipped further down his head at every nod.

  ‘So Sir John and the other bandits plan to plunder the Isle de France while no one can protect it,’ Chaucer said. ‘King John will return to find he is king of a graveyard full of corpses.’

 
‘Which will suit our master perfectly,’ Master Hoo allowed.

  Lads, until that moment, I had imagined there were two kingdoms, France and England. I had thought that in France, a bad king ruled a hard nobility who abused hordes of ignorant peasants, while in England, a good king and a fine parliament ruled benignly over good men and true. Laugh all you like. I thought that our king went to make war in France by right, and to protect England from the deprivations of France. And did so openly and honestly, making war justly.

  Following Sir John and listening to Master Hoo was undermining these assumptions as surely as a good engineer undermines the walls of a town.

  So I turned to Sir John – full of indignation as only a young man can be – and I couldn’t contain myself.

  ‘You are destroying France?’ I asked. ‘For the King?’

  He laughed. ‘Destroy? France is ten times the size of England.’ He shrugged. ‘But France will never threaten England again, that I can guarantee you.’ He grabbed my shoulder suddenly. He was a little drunk and very strong. ‘Come!’ he said, and he started to climb the tower’s stairs, which coiled like a worm up one flank of the keep. Up and up we climbed, the stairs turning so tightly that a misstep could send an unwary man crashing to the bottom.

  My calves were burning by the time we emerged on the castle’s roof. There were four men on duty – Sir John was very a careful captain. He led me to the edge of the roof and pointed east, towards Paris.

  As far as the eye could see, there was fire.

  All the way up the Seine valley, towns and hamlets burned.

  ‘Do you not think the silken girdle that binds all of France is parted this night?’ he said and laughed. ‘Listen, virgin. Every man of blood in England is here this autumn. We’ll take ten thousand ransoms, we’ll burn their fields, we’ll throw down their churches, we’ll unbind peasant from lord. There’s no one to stop us. By the time King John returns from his tournaments and festivals in England, he’ll have a merry time finding his own ransom.’

  It was . . . horrifying, and yet so bold. So much fire. Like the twinkling of all the stars in the heavens.

  ‘But surely the King is against this—’

  ‘Judas,’ Hawkwood smiled. ‘William, the King, ordered this.’

  At last I understood, or thought I did. ‘Ah!’ I said. ‘And Master Hoo has come to order it to end.’

  Hawkwood shook his head. ‘I’m drunk, or I wouldn’t say so much,’ he said. He looked at me from under his brows. ‘But I want you to understand, lad. Master Hoo has come to order us to work faster. And to turn over the towns we take to his officers, and not those of the King of Navarre, as per the treaty.’ He shrugged. ‘That’s why I sent the letter to you.’ He sat with his back against the wall. ‘That, and it seemed a pity that you waste your youth in Bordeaux when there’s a fortune to be made here.’

  ‘The Prince is paying me double wage for guarding Master Hoo,’ I said.

  ‘How’s the Three Foxes?’ he asked.

  I smiled. ‘It does very well.’

  Sir John nodded out over the ruins of France. ‘Imagine, then, that there was another inn that rivalled yours – indeed, that it was ten times the size and the girls were more beautiful, more skilled at love, the inn was better, the rooms cleaner. And imagine how many men they could employ to harass your inn. Imagine that you came to blows; imagine that by good fortune, you won a fight with the other inn. Would you walk away, letting bygones be bygones?’

  I frowned. ‘As soon as they rally, they’ll come and burn me out,’ I said.

  Sir John nodded. ‘And so, once you have them backing away, you stay at it. Until the other inn is burned to the ground and yours is the only one standing. Eh?’

  Two days later, I declined Hawkwood’s offer of employment. I was a retinued man-at-arms, and I couldn’t be forsworn.

  He embraced me. ‘When you want to be rich, come and fight with me,’ he said.

  And we rode away.

  Sam set us on the road for Rennes, and we rode about three hours, then Master Hoo came alongside me.

  ‘Now that we are free of Sir John’s spies,’ he said, ‘I’d like you to turn our party toward Paris.’

  ‘Paris?’ I said, dumbfounded.

  ‘Paris,’ said the notary.

  We made good time up the Seine. Sam was alert all the time, and he put us on our guard. We ran across an English band on the second day, but they passed us as soon as we hailed them in English.

  The fourth day, and we were riding hard. We were just west of Maule, and suddenly Sam pointed, and we saw smoke and movement across the valley, and the sparkle of the autumn sun on armour.

  We made what preparations we could. We had letters of passage from both sides, but the routiers were seldom interested in letters, so we put arrows to bows, loosened our swords in their scabbards and donned our helmets.

  Sam tried to take us around whatever was happening in the valley, but there were no road signs and no directions, so we rode along the edge of the valley for almost a mile, only to run into a web of hedges and stiles. Sam dismounted and crossed a hedge, and came back.

  ‘No way through,’ he said. ‘Perhaps we should wait for darkness?’

  In four weeks of travelling, it was the hardest decision I’d had to make yet. I looked at Richard.

  Richard nodded. ‘Darkness might be good,’ he opined.

  Master Hoo shook his head. ‘Time is of the essence,’ he said. ‘I’ve been too long on the road already.’

  He turned his horse’s head and began to ride back the way we’d come, forcing our hands.

  An hour later we were spotted by a pair of brigands, and we saw them run around a barn and up a slope, calling as they went.

  ‘That tears it,’ said Sam.

  We began to trot. I led the way, and we dashed along the valley floor, the Seine sparkling on our left hand. The road cut in, away from the river, and we cantered along it.

  There was a village on fire to the south, and another just to the west on a stream, and a religious house at the bottom of the stream’s valley. I could see that the road crossed the stream at a ford below the religious house.

  And I saw armed men mounting horses in the religious house’s yard.

  Even as I watched, armed men emerged from the abbey’s gate, riding to cut us off from the ford.

  ‘Ride for it!’ Sam called.

  We went to the gallop. I didn’t like the way Master Chaucer rode – he seemed to bounce like a sack of turnips – so I turned to shout to him, and there was the Bourc Camus, fifty feet behind Chaucer and riding a jet-black horse like a fiend of hell. He yelled and Chaucer turned to look, but the horse interpreted his change of weight as indecision and threw him.

  Just for a moment, I thought of leaving him.

  But I was on retainer to the Prince to protect him, so I pulled up, turned Goldie’s head, and readied my lance.

  I had no idea if the Bourc Camus was a fine jouster, but I knew damned well that I was not. I was a better rider than I had been the last time I’d had to fight on horseback, but the tiltyard hadn’t been a big part of my training.

  I decided to kill his horse. It’s not done, in jousting, but this seemed different.

  Camus flipped his visor down and brought his lance into line about ten strides out.

  My lance wasn’t a heavy one, but I misjudged my strike. My lance came down, and instead of hitting his horse, my lance struck his lance – perhaps he raised it to guard himself – and both spear points went down into the earth. We both had to let go our spears or we’d have unhorsed ourselves.

  Master Chaucer flung himself out from under our hooves.

  Goldie spun under me, and Camus was struggling to draw his sword. I got mine out first and I cut at his arm.

  ‘Merde!’ he shouted.

  I cocked my arm and cut again.

  It’s very hard to hurt a fully armoured man with a sword, even a heavy longsword.

  There’s a way to do it. I j
ust didn’t know how yet.

  Camus got his blade free and cut at me.

  I ducked and cut, blind, even as more of his men-at-arms came down the road. He hit me in the head and his blow twisted the basinet on my head, making everything harder. I cut again, desperation and panic fuelling my blows, as his second blow hit my helmet.

  My blow caught something soft and cut through it.

  There was a pause in the rain of blows, and I managed to get my visor up and my hand on the beak of my helmet, then with one tug I reseated the helmet on my head.

  Richard, bless him, had blown through Camus’s retainers at full gallop, unhorsing one with his lance – he was clearly a better jouster than I – and riding clear.

  Camus was fifty paces away, trying to control his war horse with only his legs. I’d cut his reins and his hands.

  Richard waved at me.

  I got Goldie under me, backed him a few steps, and found Chaucer cowering by the stone wall to my left. I extended my left hand, and he took it like a drowning man – I hauled him up behind me.

  Richard crashed into the men-at-arms again, but they didn’t have much armour and weren’t eager for a second encounter. Even as he closed, a single arrow from across the ford buzzed by like a huge wasp and buried itself in one horse’s withers, and that was the end of the fight. Richard came out of the dust, sword high – I turned and followed him, and we trotted across the ford in a fine spray of water.

  Sam and John Hughes had their bows in their hands on the far side. Master Hoo was farther up the bank with Christopher and Peter. Rob had caught Chaucer’s horse and was ludicrously proud of himself.

  Camus got control of his horse and rode down to the ford as we got Chaucer mounted.

  ‘Shoot him?’ John asked me.

  ‘Only if he tries to cross,’ Richard said.

  Camus had his visor up. Visored basinets weren’t all that common back then, but all the Gascons had them. I think they spread them.

  ‘Ah,’ he yelled at me. ‘The Butt Boy.’

  ‘You ride beautifully,’ I called. ‘Is it a Gascon style?’