The bell continued to ring.
I rode to the tower.
Richard reined in, and then started to back his bay. ‘Are you mad?’ he asked. I want no more of this. They look like they could rise in the dance macabre!’
‘I want a look from the tower,’ I said.
The truth is that the sights of that town are with me yet, but I needed some sense of where I was, and I knew I’d get that in the tower.
I dismounted at the church door and left Goldie with Richard. I’d never seen him so jumpy.
I assumed that the wind was ringing the bell.
Wrong.
It was a young man. At least, I guess he had been a man. Someone had flayed all the skin from one side of his face, very neatly, and it had scabbed over, while the other side of his face sagged.
I think I gave a shout. I may even have shrieked like a maiden.
He put his hands over his head. He had no thumbs. They’d been severed and healed.
He had one eye.
I think you lads are getting the message.
It took me twenty breaths to get over the shock. I’ve never seen a man so disfigured and yet alive, and the wonder of it was that he was so terrifying – he, who could not have hurt a small child. The wreck of a man – why is the wreckage so full of fear? Is it just that we all of us fear death? Christ, I fear that death – unmanned. Made hideous. The Lord be with him.
I was tempted to kill him. Yes, I was.
Instead, I walked around him, as if he might do me harm, and climbed the bell tower.
In the room above the bell pulls, I found a corpse. Not so old. Bloated. A woman. And the thing below me began to bellow like a bull.
I was paying a high price for a look from a church tower, I can tell you. There’s more wounds than those you take from swords. The dead woman – his mother? His sister? – and the monster himself – they people my dreams, some nights.
Who was he?
Who was she?
I climbed.
In the belfry were half a dozen men, strung up in the rafters like sausages being kept for winter.
Richard says I roared my war cry. Bless him, I think he lies. I think I burst into tears, but I truly don’t remember.
I do remember looking out from between the rotting legs of one poor bastard and seeing Paris, and in another direction, the Seine, clear as the shoe’d foot that had fallen away from the corpse by the eastern arch.
I fled. I’d like to say I cut the men down and saw them buried, but I fled. I almost fell down one of the ladders, and I tried not to look at the bloated corpse of the woman, and would have passed the wreck of a man, but he was on his knees.
‘Kill me,’ he said. His lips were ruined and it was difficult to understand him, but he was obvious enough. ‘Why not kill me? Why leave me alive? Kill me!’
I backed away from him.
‘Kill me!’ he shrieked. ‘Was I not good enough to be killed?’
I fled.
I vaulted onto my horse, and Richard and I rode through the streets so fast our horses’ hooves threw sparks, and we didn’t stop until we were in our little rock fall camp.
‘Sam’s awake!’ John called. ‘St Michael, you two look like you’ve seen ghosts.’
We moved north cautiously. The bell was ringing again, but we avoided the town and came down out of the low hills onto the flat by the river. To the east, we could see men – perhaps thousands of men – on the road.
‘Who killed them?’ Richard asked. He was almost grey under his dark skin. ‘Who would do that?
I shrugged. We both knew that any of the bands hunting the Isle de France might have massacred a town – French, Gascon, English.
It had happened six months earlier.
We rode on.
Sam was off his head – awake, but raving, calling out to men who weren’t there – and in the mid-afternoon, John started puking his guts out.
Rob’s armpits had swelling in them. He had a high fever and he fell from his horse, which was the first I knew he was sick.
Christopher spat and backed his horse away from Rob, who was lying in the road where he’d fallen from his horse.
‘Plague,’ he said.
Peter – silent, morose Peter – turned his horse, threw his cloak over his head, and rode away. I could hear the sound of his hoof beats for a long time in the early summer evening. He galloped.
Christopher dismounted under a spreading oak tree that was a thousand years old. ‘I’ll find a camp site and I’ll make a fire, but I won’t tend him and I won’t breathe the same air. The miasma.’
I was already touching the boy. Besides, I’d spent a day with the corpses of my parents, and the Plague, which had hit London again and again, had never troubled me or my sister. We were hardened, like good steel. Or perhaps just pickled.
Richard dismounted. ‘I thought it was that town,’ he said. ‘I’ve had trouble breathing. All. Day.’
Then I became afraid. Plague isn’t an enemy you can fight, and who it touches, it kills. Not five in a hundred walk away.
In a way, I was lucky, because there was so much to do.
Christopher was as good as his word. He found a camp site 200 paces off the road, where four oaks made a clearing by the stream that ran down to the Seine. He got the tents up, saving one for himself, which he set at the top of a small rise, about fifty feet away.
We set to gathering firewood. We only had one axe, but with the peasants cleared out of the surrounding country, there was a staggering amount of good oak just lying on the ground. We collected ten armloads or so, and broke it up in a forked tree – quicker than using an axe. I put our two pots on, full of water.
‘I’ll get some food,’ Christopher said. ‘Listen, cap’n – I want to help. I just don’t want to die.’
I managed a leaderly smile. ‘You didn’t just ride off, and that’s something.’
He nodded at Sam, who was muttering in a tent. ‘He’s got it, too. Bet ya.’
I hadn’t even considered that.
Christopher rode off to forage, and left me alone with three very sick men. I hoped he’d come back. Richard struggled against the sickness for a few hours, then suddenly he was in the heart of it, silent, sweating, with swellings on his groin and armpits as big as eggs. Bibbo was slower, but he was raving. He thrashed, and I considered tying him down. But I got a tisane of herbs into both of them.
I could do nothing with Rob. He was burning hot, dry as a bone, and had trouble swallowing, and before Christopher returned, Rob was dead. I wrapped him in his cloak and carried him a hundred paces or so into the woods.
Believe it or don’t, but tending them was so hard on me that burying Rob was like a rest. I dug – the soil was good, even in the trees. France is so rich – why can’t they govern themselves?
Heh. Mayhap we help with that.
I didn’t put him deep, but I was a good three hours at it. When I came back from the woods, Christopher was kneeling by the fire. He had four hares, each on a separate green stick, and a pot of warmed wine. It was a hot day.
‘The boy’s dead?’ he asked.
‘I buried him,’ I said. With those words, I realized that Richard, Sam, and John were doomed as well.
‘Let’s eat,’ he said. ‘Roads are full of French. No cavalry. I almost got caught – had to lie up.’ He shook his head. ‘This is all fucked up, you know that, right?’ His voice cracked a little.
‘We’ll make it,’ I said.
He looked at me. He was older than me, and for all his carping, he was a steady man. But just then, he needed me to tell him that everything was going to be all right.
‘We have food. There’s two of us, so we can keep watch. We can’t be more than a day from the English garrison at Poissy. Tomorrow I’ll send you—’
He just shook his head. ‘I’m not going back out there alone,’ he said. ‘The roads are covered in men and women. Peasants. Everywhere. I lay up in a little wood a mile north of here, list
ened to a man give a speech.’ He looked at me. ‘It’s a rebellion. They’re going to kill all the English and all the gentry.’ He shrugged. ‘I think they got Peter. I think they strung him up and opened his guts by the road. But I didn’t stop to be sure.’
‘We’ll need to take turns on watch,’ I said.
‘Why?’ He asked. ‘I mean, you and me, we can take what, five of the bastards? Better to die.’ He shook his head. ‘Like the end of the world. Maybe it is. Mayhap—’
I reached over and flicked the end of his nose.
‘Eh!’ he bridled. ‘No call for that!’
‘We’re not dead yet. Nor are our companions. Let’s do our best.’ Christ, I sounded pompous, even to me.
That was a long night. Christopher made his apologies and withdrew to his little fortress on the hill.
I sat by the fire with de Charny’s dagger and some tow, some lard and some powdered pumice. I meant to get the stain out of the blade. I knew I’d be up all night, and my head was doing some strange things.
Richard fouled himself and had to be cleaned. I suppose I could have left him. In fact, I thought about leaving him in his own dung. By the Virgin, I even thought of getting Goldie and riding away.
Instead, I cleaned him and dripped some warm rabbit broth into him.
John awoke and demanded food. He looked like a monster in the glow of the fire, his eyes wild, his long hair everywhere. I gave him a joint of hare and some broth – he vomited bile and sat suddenly, then rolled over and threw up everything he’d just eaten, before falling forward into it.
I cleaned him.
Sam sat up and looked at me. In a perfectly normal voice, he said, ‘I have the Plague, don’t I?’
I got up and went to him. Christopher had set the tents up like awnings, with one side lifted on poles, so the air could pass through easily and I could go from man to man. I could see them all from the fire. I went and knelt by him. ‘I think so,’ I admitted.
He shook his head. ‘I’s salted. Had it as a young’n. Ain’t right.’
That put the chill of pure fear into me.
‘You had a bad fall—’ I said.
But he was gone again, his eyes closed, his breathing coarse, like a man snoring.
John staggered to his feet – I assume with some notion of going somewhere to be sick – and vomited all over himself, then fell headlong across the fire. The burning coals galvanized him, and he leaped to his feet again before collapsing.
I poured water over him, but not until I’d found embers in the pitch darkness and put them together carefully, found bark and made up the fire again, adding twigs and small bits of oak.
Thank God it wasn’t raining. Thank God.
I thought of Master Peter. Hiring me because I could start a fire.
‘What happened?’ asked Christopher out of the darkness.
‘John fell in the fire,’ I said.
Christopher came into the edge of the firelight. ‘Need . . . help?’ he asked.
‘John just threw up all over himself and then fell in the fire. Sam’s raving. Richard may be dead. I haven’t been to sleep—’ My voice was wild.
I tried to get control of myself.
Christopher grunted. ‘I’ll clean John,’ he said.
‘He has the Plague,’ I said.
Christopher came into the firelight and sat on his heels. ‘Maybe not,’ he said.
‘What do you mean?’ I asked.
He shrugged. ‘Sam doesn’t have a pustule on him, does he?’
I hadn’t checked in hours, but I looked – high and low, so to speak – while Christopher held a lit taper.
‘None,’ I said. ‘And he said he was salted.’
‘There you go, then.’ He looked at John. ‘John’s got something bad, but it’s in his guts.’
‘Rob died of Plague,’ I said. ‘I know what Plague looks like.’
He shrugged. ‘I’ll take my chance,’ he said.
There are many forms of courage.
When the sun rose, Christopher was on a pallet of ferns. He was hot all over and had swellings in his armpits. He lay there, saying ‘fuck’ over and over, then he was silent.
The shattering work came to an end. I made them as clean as I could. I burned what they had been wearing.
About noon, a dozen armed peasants came. I heard them, but I didn’t have the energy to get into my harness, so I walked to my bedroll – still roped tight – picked up my beautiful longsword and drew it.
They came down the forest trail. The leader had a good brigantine and a fine helmet. In fact, he had Peter’s helmet.
The men behind him had a wide variety of arms and equipment, but the last fellow wore the red and blue hood of the Paris Commune.
‘Stop where you are,’ I said. In French, of course.
The leader paused.
‘We have Plague,’ I said.
They all froze.
‘Fucking Englishman is just saying that,’ spat the third man in the line.
‘Want to come look?’ I said. I think my voice and my fatigue must have carried conviction.
‘May you all die of it,’ said the leader.
Then they walked away – quickly.
I drank the rest of the broth and ate the cold rabbit. Then I went to my bedroll and took out the cheese and sausage I had there and ate it all. I didn’t feel sick, which was a miracle.
Then I drank the wine I had. It wasn’t enough.
I cleaned them all and tried to give them a little white wine that Richard had.
Then I sat by the fire, polishing Sir Geoffrey’s dagger. When I couldn’t face that any more, I said my beads. The beads made a tiny, regular noise as I told them, almost like a weaver’s shuttle moving against the loom.
I prayed a long time. I lost myself in it.
I came out because Sam was asking for water. I had filled all the leather bottles, so I took him one and he drank deep. ‘Fever broke,’ he whispered. ‘Sweet saviour, I’m weak.’ His eyes met mine. ‘I want to make my confession,’ he whispered.
‘I’m no priest,’ I said.
A tiny smile flickered around his eyes. ‘Just go and fetch one for me, sir?’ he said.
I heard his confession. Like most of us, he’d gone through the commandments pretty thoroughly.
That’s between him and God.
The thing that did me a world of good is that as he spoke, his voice got stronger. I left him for a few minutes to hold Richard’s hand, and when I came back, he was up on one elbow.
‘Master William, I think I may stay in the vale of sin,’ he announced.
I wanted to kiss him.
In the morning, he was able to move around. He helped clean John and Christopher.
About noon, Christopher died.
I just sat by the fire for a while. ‘Is it the Plague? What the hell is this?’ I asked.
Sam just shook his head. ‘Soldiers get sick,’ he said. ‘I didn’t have the Plague, but Chris did. Look at him.’
He stank.
I carried him, wrapped in his cloak, and buried him by Rob. Something had tried to dig Rob up, but failed.
I spent time putting Chris just as deep.
You know how long it takes to dig a hole for a man?
I stopped twice to go back and check on the others. Sam was better each time, and by the third evening he was boiling water, setting out tapers and cleaning the camp.
On the third morning, Richard was better. John ate and didn’t throw it up.
We were two more days there.
I hadn’t lost a man in months of campaigning, and in four days I lost Peter, Rob and Chris.
We were thin when we rode on. Goldie had lost weight, but we now had enough horses – sad, but brutally necessary.
We rode along the Seine, riding as hard as my recuperating men could handle, and came to Poissy by evening. They made a long chalk of letting us in the gates, but in the end we satisfied them that we weren’t carrying Plague and that we wer
e English. I put Richard and John into the charge of the nuns, and rode off with a potboy from the hospital as my page, and Sam, armed to the teeth, to find Charles of Navarre. The garrison was petrified by the peasants’ attacks – easy pillage had turned into hard duty. They weren’t even looking over the walls.
We crossed the river and rode north and east. Charles wasn’t hard to find – he was stringing up every peasant he found on the roads – and the trees laden with rotten fruit, sometimes fifty or a hundred in a row, are another of the beautiful memories I carry of that summer.
The second day, we found his army. Almost the first banner I saw was du Guesclin’s; near it was Sir John Hawkwood’s, and some other unlikely comrades – a Bourbon, a minor Ribercourt, a Scottish mercenary called Sir Robert Scot and Sir James Pipe. I didn’t know most of the knights, but their arms were all French, although I saw the black and white eagles of the Bourc Camus and gave his tents a wide birth.
Navarre’s army was just settling for the day. They were very well-organized – as they should have been, with a thousand professional soldiers from both sides as the core of the force. Navarre had almost the whole chivalry of the north under his banner. The Jacquerie had terrified the first estate, and the men of war were not amused.
Sir John Hawkwood received me like a prodigal son – the more so when I told him of my errand for Sir John Cheverston.
He smiled his thin-lipped smile and raised a silver cup, almost certainly the spoil of a church. ‘Here’s to a fine feat of arms, young William. I knew you had the makings of a knight.’
I shrugged and possibly even blushed. This praise was delivered in public, in front of forty men.
‘It was nothing – we took them by surprise.’ I shrugged.
Du Guesclin pushed through the crowd to me. ‘Were they armed? Awake?’ he asked.
I grinned. ‘Very much so, Sir Knight.’
He laughed. ‘Then the contest was fair. And before the eyes of half a thousand English knights, a fair deed of arms.’
He warmed my blood. I dismounted, gave my horse to my potboy and embraced du Guesclin. ‘What brings you here, messire? I have seen the trail of slime – or rather, the human fruit in the trees.’
The Ill-Made Knight Page 22
