The Ill-Made Knight

by Christian Cameron

  Hawkwood nodded. ‘Twenty to three is more the Bourc’s speed. Can you take him?’

  I nodded.

  Hawkwood nodded back. ‘I think so, too. If I can arrange it, I’ll send word. It would do great things for your renown. And I’d like to see him wiped away, like a stain on the earth.’

  ‘I should be back in a day or two,’ I said.

  Hawkwood embraced me and we were away.

  Meaux is a mighty town, with the fortress of Marche on the opposite bank, and walls as high as ten men. It rises straight out of an island in the river, and has two bridges with wicket gates on each.

  I thought – indeed, we all thought – that the rebellion was broken. So Sam and I rode along roads peopled only by the dead – mostly men cut down from behind as they fled, by the flower of French chivalry.

  We passed south of Clermont, and the bodies dwindled away to none, then we came across a party of tired knights. They were all local men, knights of the Beauvais, and they saluted us as we passed.

  ‘We had a sharp fight this morning, messires,’ one called out. ‘The curs are not yet beaten.’

  I wanted no part of them, so I rode on.

  But as we saw Meaux rising out of the valley in the distance – you can see it from eight miles away – we began to see the size of the army laying siege to it.

  An army the size of the one we’d just faced, or larger.

  I had the wildest notion – what if every peasant in the world had risen against their lords? What if this was the end of the world? I’ve heard that in monasteries during the Plague, men died believing the whole of the human race had been destroyed, and looking at the host gathered against the walls of Meaux, I wondered the same.

  We turned our weary horses north. I changed from my riding horse to Goldie and loosened my sword in its scabbard.

  ‘We should go back,’ Sam said.

  That meant riding half the night, in the dark, on narrow, unmarked French lanes.

  ‘No,’ I said. We rode on down to the river Marne.

  ‘We’ll be killed,’ Sam said. ‘I’ll offer odds on it.’

  ‘I’ll take that wager,’ I said.

  The ferry was open.

  I’ll not belabour the point, but imagine what the ferryman was like. He cared nothing for death or rebellion. He’d never heard of Guillaulme Cale. He demanded an exorbitant fee, then he took us over the river to the north bank. The peasant army was on the south.

  I felt vindicated and Sam laughed. ‘I’ll be happy to pay,’ he said.

  At nightfall, we approached the royal castle of Marche from the north. We were challenged by a party of horsemen in sight of the gate, and when I said I was a messenger for the Lieutenant of Gascony, one of the men-at-arms approached.

  ‘What’s your name, sir?’ he asked. I knew him immediately.

  He was Jean de Grailly, the Captal de Buch. I’d seen him lead the charge at Poitiers.

  I raised my visor. ‘William Gold,’ I said. ‘I was at Poitiers, my lord.’

  I was embraced and taken home to the castle, to dinner.

  The Dauphin wasn’t at Marche. He was away in Burgundy, raising an army to fight Charles of Navarre. As it proved, he needn’t have bothered, but when he went, he had no way of knowing.

  In the meantime, Etienne Marcel had sent an army of Parisian militia to snatch the Dauphin at his headquarters, at Meaux. And the Mayor of the town opened the gates to the Parisians.

  The Parisians joined hands with the Jacques.

  Wait, lads. I know you want to hear about the battles, but there’s a delicious irony to all this. Charles of Navarre was making himself a hero to the nobility of France in crushing the Jacques. The Dauphin was ruining his standing as the ‘first noble’ by ignoring the rising.

  But – at least wherever I was – the Jacques were allied with Marcel’s communal troops, and they were acting for the King of Navarre. God knows, the attempt to seize the Dauphin at Meaux was all for King Charles.

  I’ve known a lot of treason and seen many men change sides – benidictee, in Italy it was our daily bread – but Charles of Navarre was the only King I ever saw abandon a winning cause, and betray it to the enemy, when he had been leading it. I won’t say the Jacques thought they were fighting for King Charles.

  They were just poor fools led by the nose.

  Which didn’t make them any the less dangerous. They had thousands of men packed around Meaux, and inside the town – a rich town. They held the walls and the citadel, and they were building engines to batter at Marche. They were desperate – all the survivors of Mello fled to them, so they knew what was coming. They were determined to take Marche and use the Dauphin – or at least his wife and children – as hostages.

  I had ridden into this trap like a fool – I had lorded it over Sam when we crossed at the ferry.

  When he saw what we had at Marche – a party of military pilgrims returning from fighting in Prussia, led by the Captal and the famous Count of Foix, and the lord of the castle, the Sieur de Hangst and his conroy – we had perhaps sixty knights. Sam Bibbo was a fifth of all the English archers – the rest were in the Captal’s tail – and we had another twenty crossbowmen, and when he saw what we’d joined, he looked at me and laughed.

  ‘I may not pay you yet,’ he said.

  Perhaps a hundred armed men, plus twenty male servants. The Princess had thirty women – all the daughters and wives of great nobles of France – and another fifty female servants, as well as a small horde of noble children. As I say, when Sam saw what we’d ridden into, he laughed in my face.

  ‘All safe now, eh, sir?’ he asked.

  ‘Who nursed you when you were sick?’ I asked. ‘Who rescued you when you fell from your horse and hit your head?’

  ‘And why was I there in the first place, I wonder?’ he asked.

  ‘We’re not dead yet,’ I said.

  ‘Not for lack of trying,’ he insisted.

  The trouble was, we weren’t provisioned to stand a siege. The other problem was, we had too many hot-headed young knights and too many noble girls.

  Women complicate everything.

  I hadn’t been in that castle an hour when a pair of young women, wearing, may I add, clothes more daring than anything my girls in Bordeaux ever wore, confronted me on the stairs.

  ‘What is your name and style, messire?’ asked the taller of the two. She wore a flowered silk gown that clung to her hips and bound under her breasts. Her hair was down – a style I’d hardly ever seen, because women in military camps keep their hair under caps for all sorts of reasons.

  I noted that her surcoat – also silk – had buttons on the side, under her arms, and that the gown was so tight the cloth puckered at the buttons and left gaps between.

  Where you could see flesh.

  Gentles, I don’t think I’d seen a woman who was alive and hearty in a month. That noble sprig was perhaps seventeen – my own age – and her womanliness burned like fire from between those close-bound buttons, so that I almost felt I could smell her, like a stallion smells a mare.

  I was abashed. I don’t think I’d ever had cause to speak to a noble girl. On the other hand, I had learned the knack that women were, for the most part, women, and much the same as men. So, with about the same effort it took me to force a smile at the Bourc, I pushed one across my teeth at this apparition of Venus. ‘William Gold,’ I said.

  ‘Hmm,’ she said. ‘Never heard of you. Nonetheless, should you not be in your armour, messire? Perhaps doing some deed of arms, and not here in the castle, safe with the women? Eh?’

  Had I been thirty years of age and a little more experienced, I’d have made an elegant answer – mentioned my prowess in riding to their rescue across half of France, for example.

  Instead, I blushed, and stammered something about fatigue.

  ‘Fie! Sir Knight, we are a castle of maidens against an army of dogs. Get to the walls! And let us hear no more of your being tired.’ She and her companion, a pert,
blonde thing a foot shorter in royal-blue wool with silken flowers in her hair and sleeves so long they trailed on the steps, pushed past me and vanished down the stairs.

  ‘You get to that,’ Sam said. ‘I’ll have a nap.’

  In fact, the castle was full to bursting with beautiful women. The nuns were beautiful, the Dauphine herself was beautiful, and she surrounded herself with the prettiest – and richest – women in France.

  I had no armour against them, and nor did any other man. Even grown knights who should have known better, like Jean de Grailly and the Count of Foix – a subtle bastard if every there was one – were unable to stop them from directing our defence. Young knights armed themselves, mounted their chargers and rode out across the fortified bridges, looking for a deed of arms.

  Several were killed, dragged down and hacked to death, and the only thing that saved the rest of us was that we wanted our deeds of arms to be visible to the audience on the tall towers, and most of the peasants and Parisian militia were too quick-witted to linger under our walls.

  It was a great time of vows, in my youth, and men would make vows without a thought. Amazing vows. I made a few myself, and suffered with some eye patches and the like. It was the vows that killed us in the castle of Marche – the vows and the lack of supplies. It was a great fortress, but the peasants had caught it unprepared. So while the young men swore not to bathe until they’d killed ten peasants, and other such pretty things, we had two days’ fodder for the horses and four days’ food at half rations. And 100 men against 10,000.

  And a small army of nubile beauties determined to see us act out the chansons de geste under the walls.

  War is never what you expect it to be. Sometimes, it is like theatre – like a passion play. Sometimes it is like the Black Plague – all death and horror.

  Sometimes it has an element of humour.

  I rose late the second morning. I think, now, that I had a touch of fever, and I was only just recovering. I’d been riding and fighting, and I’d missed a great deal of sleep. So my first morning at Marche, Sam let me stay abed – in a real bed, raised off the floor, in a small solar. I remember it had crude armorial frescoes on the walls and I thought it was a palace.

  I awoke when Perkin, my English potboy from Poissy, brought me hippocras. He’d arranged for my two shirts to be washed, and all my caps, and they were dry and crisply ironed.

  I felt like hugging him. That made me think of Rob, dead and buried in the damp soil of the Seine Valley.

  Younger than me.

  ‘A party of gentlemen has just gone out to fight,’ he said. ‘Some of the older knights tried to stop them.’ He shrugged.

  He brought me a basin of clean, hot water, and he’d borrowed me a razor. Considering I’d barely talked to him, he was bidding fair to be the best servant I’d ever had. Rob struggled to curry my horse, bless the boy, whereas Perkin seemed at home with the whole routine.

  ‘Whose razor?” I asked.

  ‘Milord de Grailly,’ he said proudly. ‘Eh, sir, mind the steel – it’ll rust if you look at it.’ This from a wizened lump of twelve years, half my size.

  ‘You sound like a Londoner, imp.’ I grinned.

  ‘So do you, sir.’ He produced a clean, dry linen towel. ‘Sit on the stool, sir, and I’ll make you trim for the ladies. Of whom there are a great many, and like the flowers of the fucking field. Begging your pardon.’

  I laughed.

  ‘Don’t laugh, sir, or I’ll nick you – just when I have your shirt clean.’ He tried the razor on me and clucked like a hen. ‘Sit tight.’

  Suddenly he vanished. There was some talk, and he came in followed by a man of twenty in a fine pair of boots and a stained leather jupon. Perkin had a strop in his hand.

  ‘I’m not letting it out of my sight,’ said the young man, then he stopped. ‘Pardon, my lord.’

  ‘Think nothing of it. Come in and share my hippocras.’ I motioned to the other stool. My solar was the size of a lady’s closet, you have to imagine.

  He was my own age – smaller, but his hands looked as hard as mine. ‘Squire?’ I asked.

  He grinned. ‘To Milord de Grailly,’ he said. ‘One of six,’ he added. ‘My da is one of his great friends.’ He grinned. ‘Tom Folville.’

  I considered that this was exactly the kind of sprig of nobility who had tormented me during my first campaign. On the other hand . . .

  Perkin touched up the razor and handed the squire the strop. ‘Nice kit,’ he said.

  ‘You know how to use that thing,’ the squire said. ‘By the saints, Perkin, will you teach me?’

  ‘Mayhap after the peasants kill us all,’ Perkin nodded, ‘I’ll have time.’ He grinned.

  If you haven’t guessed that Perkin was as great a find as Sam, well, think again. He had that gift of making people like him. Lords and commons, men and women. He wasn’t big or handsome. He was brave enough in a pinch, but he was not a doughty man.

  Well, you’ll hear more of him.

  He shaved me, all the while telling me the state of the food in the castle and how little fodder was left for the horses. He didn’t tell it like gossip – he noted where he’d heard each titbit and what validity he attributed to the teller.

  I hadn’t been shaved neatly in so long I’d become used to looking like some wild hermit in the tales of Arthur. It felt odd to have most of my beard gone. He put beeswax into my moustache.

  ‘Ladies about,’ he said with a twinkle.

  ‘How’d you come to be a potboy in Poissy?’ I asked.

  He shrugged. ‘My knight died,’ he said. ‘You came along, eh? And you needed me.’ He smiled.

  That was that.

  ‘You are from London, though,’ I said.

  ‘Temple Bar,’ he said proudly. ‘Apprentice tailor.’ He shrugged.

  ‘I was to be a goldsmith,’ I said suddenly.

  He grinned. ‘Good,’ he said. ‘I aim to be a famous knight, meself.’

  Well, well.

  Groomed and clean, wearing clean clothes and with all the lice out of my arming coat, I went down into the hall. There were no women to be seen. I ate some bread and cheese, and walked across the hall to where the curtain wall steps rose into the smoky heights of the rafters. Since no one challenged me, I climbed the steps and walked out onto the wall.

  There I found twenty young women on the wall, watching a fight on the bridge.

  Most of them had their hands to their mouths.

  One had already fainted.

  I leaned out over the wall and saw why.

  A dozen young knights – on foot – were trying to hold the main bridge over the river. Two were down.

  ‘Where are the other knights?’ I snapped at the nearest girl. ‘Where is the Captal?’

  My pretty friend from the day before, still wearing her ‘gates of hell’, pointed down the north wall. ‘They have gone across country!’ she shouted.

  Sometimes, folly is so rampant it’s hard to credit. But the party from Prussia had elected to probe north and find food, and in the absence of any professional soldiers, a dozen young sprigs had vowed to hold the bridge all day.

  I watched for ten breaths.

  ‘Christ almighty,’ I said aloud.

  My pretty friend put her hand on my chest. A very, very affecting gesture.

  ‘Will you – save them?’ she asked me.

  Her eyes were a beautiful hazel-brown. She had a snub nose, and a dress that showed little glimpses of her naked flanks. She was tall, and better born than me, and she was, in effect, asking me to go die for her.

  ‘Yes,’ I said into her eyes.

  I armed as fast as I ever had in my life. I had Perkin to help, and Jean de Grailly’s squire. Tom Folville got my arms on me, laced them to my hauberk and stood back.

  ‘I could come with you,’ he said.

  I thought about it. To be honest, I thought that if he came with me, it might lessen the glory, but there were an awful lot of militia on the bridge, and onl
y the eight knights.

  ‘Will you run when I say run, and retreat when I say retreat?’ I asked.

  He nodded, his eyes huge.

  I wondered suddenly if he had been hoping that I would say no.

  ‘Ever fought before? For real?’ I asked.

  ‘Every day, in Prussia,’ he said.

  That was reassuring. I had my legs laced and Perkin was closing the straps. ‘Get in your harness,’ I said.

  He vanished. Perkin finished the buckles on my legs and got my breast and back – opened them on the hinges and closed them again and began buckling me in. ‘This doesn’t really fit you,’ he said.

  ‘What?’ I asked. I’d worn that harness for more than a year.

  ‘It’s too big. Too much play at the hips.’ He slapped my back and the backplate moved. ‘Made for a fatter man. Can’t be helped. Hold out your hands.’

  He put my gauntlets on, raised my helmet, slipped the aventail over my head and seated the cloth liner with two practiced jerks, one front, one back.

  I took my longsword and walked, clanking softly, down the hall and down the steps to the main hall, then out into the bright June sun. There were four crossbowman on the bridge gate. I turned and looked up at the battlement, and there they were: twenty beautiful women.

  Well.

  Tom came at a run – high boots, a good brigantine, plate arms, and an open-faced basinet. Let me remind you that most men wore them open-faced back then.

  ‘Stay with me and keep men off my back,’ I said. ‘You’re too lightly armed to step into them. Understand me?’

  He nodded soberly.

  Perkin appeared with a pottery cup of . . . water. ‘Drink,’ he said.

  Sam came across the courtyard in his shirtsleeves and hose. His hair was unbound, and he had his bow and a big quiver of arrows. He shook his head. ‘Lost your wits, lad?’ he asked.

  I raised my visor. ‘I won’t be long,’ I said.

  ‘By St George,’ he began, but a fluttering handkerchief caught his eye. ‘Good Christ,’ he said. ‘Women.’

  Perkin collected the cup, refilled it and handed it to Tom.

  Sam tossed his hair. ‘If I kill ten men, you think I’ll get one of they?’