The Ill-Made Knight

by Christian Cameron

  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.

  Most of the archpriest’s men were routiers like me, and the Count of Tancraville replied, with stunning honesty, that he didn’t care if the archpriest’s whole command was killed.

  I wasn’t there for any of this. I agree that my account isn’t the same as that rascal Villani’s, or others you may have heard, but by the Virgin, messieurs, I knew a thousand men who were there, and neither of those fellows was within a hundred miles of the spot. I wasn’t there, because I was with Seguin de Badefol and John Hawkwood, riding like the devil.

  We went south, again, in the darkness, along the left side of the same great ridge that had been on our right the day before. We were all well-mounted, and we’d left all the riff-raff – even our own riff-raff – behind.

  Perhaps the greatest jest of Brignais is that the peasants helped us. Never forget the Jacques, friends. French peasants hate their masters, who screw them for silver the way a laundress twists cloth. Someday, mark my words, Messieurs, some day the Jaques will have their way. Their hate can suffocate you, though. So great that they would help us – the routiers – defeat their own aristocrats, who claimed to be their defenders. Twenty local men led us south and then east over the next ridge. At midnight, with no moon, we were climbing the ridge with our reins in our hands, on foot, our spurs clanking with every step. But first light found us coming upon Brignais from the south, and if the French knew we were there, they didn’t give a hint of it.

  We came up about the time a man eats his bread and drinks his small beer after his first prayers. We dismounted again and stood by our horse’s heads in a deep fold in the ground, and we couldn’t see a thing.

  John Thornbury came by and ordered us, on pain of death, not to enter the woods in front of us to look at the enemy.

  An hour later, when we could clearly hear fighting, Sir John Hawkwood came in person. In my small battle – Seguin de Badefol’s division – we had 600 men-at-arms. There were four of these divisions.

  Petit Mechin had all the archers, crossbowmen and spearmen.

  Sir John reined in two horse lengths from where I sat. Harness is heavy, so most of us were sitting in the wet grass.

  ‘Messieurs!’ he called. Some dozen men were already mounting – there’s always some excited bastard who moves before he’s ready. It was their horses that pay the toll.

  ‘Mechin has beaten the archpriest – held the ridge and driven de Cervole down the hill with heavy loss.’ He held his hand for silence. ‘Twice. Now the Count de Tancraville’s banners are moving forward.’ He grinned. ‘By the time I’m done speaking, Tancraville will be past our position and well up the ridge.’ He looked back and forth. ‘In two hours, we will all be very rich, or very dead. It’s at the points of your lances, messieurs. Fight hard, and France is ours.’ His smile didn’t crack when he said, ‘Fail, and we’ll all hang like criminals.’

  I think that’s when I realized that we had no priests among us. Listen, friends, no man likes to imagine himself to be the villain, eh? But we were all excommunicate, by the Pope himself, and we didn’t even say prayers as we formed. That got me in the gut. It made my insides roil.

  Perhaps for comfort, I dismounted, reached into my purse, took out Emile’s favour and pinned it to my aventail. I knelt in the wet grass and thought of being the lowliest man-at-arms following the Three Kings.

  We mounted, and filed off from the right, passing in long files through the wood to our front; the manoeuvre seemed to take for ever. In fact, it took longer than de Badefol intended, and the hammer of Tancraville’s attack fell fully on the spearmen and archers.

  And they held. That wasn’t the plan, and I know damn well from John Hughes that they were cursing us by then, thinking themselves abandoned, or that we had lost our way in the darkness. The plan was risky – too complex – and we were late.

  I remember emerging into the full light of a moist March day. The sky was full of water, and while it wasn’t raining, the cold wind that blew from the north was damp.

  The French host was laid out below us like a carpet of eastern stuff – all colours a
nd glitter, in patterns made by the more uniformed conroys of the great nobles. By the gentle Jesus, they looked like the mightiest host in the history of Christendom, with more banners than I’d seen at Poitiers, all in one great mass, pressing into our poor footmen.

  In once glance, I saw Tancraville’s banner. And pressed close behind it, Bourbon’s banner, and close to it, my friend the Count d’Herblay’s. And just downhill from that, the banner of the Marshal of Savoy.

  All packed into the bowl of open ground at my feet. There was nothing between us but a gentle slope of grassland that rolled from the edge of the forest all the way down to the castle of Brignais, a little more than two leagues away.

  De Badefol was tense, and even Sir John was nervous. It was plain as the nose on your face that we were late, and waiting for the next 300 men-at-arms to trickle out of the forest was killing us, the more especially as our surprise was over. As soon as we emerged, the game was up – the French commanders saw us and began to wheel the third battle to face us. Bourbon, with the Burgundian lords and the Savoyards.

  Christ, it was close.

  They were badly ordered, and had already been ordered forward into the slowly folding footmen at the top of the next hill.

  Our men were losing. Step by step, the foot were driven back. The shafts no longer flew fast from our archers, and any veteran of Poitiers could tell that our archers were too few.

  I was among the first of the men to emerge from the wood; the rest of our men-at-arms seemed to be picking their way with ludicrous slowness, so that I despaired.

  I watched the left flank spears – Gascons – fold. They had stout hearts, but more and more of the fresh French knights got into their ranks and cut them down. They didn’t run; they just seemed to collapse like a tent with its ropes cut.

  Now the enemy had their third division formed. They were eager to be at us, and so on they came.

  On the far flank, the archpriest rallied his mercenaries for one more charge into our archers. You’d think, the way the archpriest’s men been sacrificed, that they might have changed sides. But they didn’t. Damn them.

  Seguin de Badefol sat on his war horse, watching men emerge from the woods behind us. He watched us and watched the Bourbon division. I could read his mind. At some point, we would have to act – or retreat and abandon Mechin.

  That point was close.

  Sir John Hawkwood had all his men in line. They were mounted, lances up, ready to ride. He trotted over to me.

  ‘William, if this goes like a sow’s belly, follow me out. We’ll get clear or surrender to someone I know.’ He gave me a friendly nod. ‘There’s better pickings than this in Lombardy.’

  I nodded, but I had already pretty much settled on dying. A ransom would break me. I had nothing.

  In fact, I was tired to death. I had spent everything – my soul, if you like – the last few weeks. To see it all lost . . .

  Men were shifting.

  When the field is lost, and all about you quail, that is where you find out who you are.

  I rode out ahead of my section of the line and pushed up my visor.

  ‘Par dieu, friends!’ I called. ‘We have nothing to worry about.’ I pointed my lance, one-handed, at the French chivalry. ‘There’s enough ransoms there for every man here! Stop squabbling.’

  When I returned to my rank, John Thornbury slapped me on the back, and other men grinned.

  Seguin made his decision. He raised his lance, held it over his head – no mean feat – and called out.

  ‘To hell!’ he shouted.

  In terms of pre-battle speeches, it was the best I’ve ever heard. We knew we were beaten. We knew where we were going. He didn’t pour honey on it.

  We had about 2,000 men-at-arms when we started down the long hill at a walk. The wet wind had become a rain. I was to the right of the centre and had become aware that d’Herblay was opposite me. My last conscious thought was not about strategy or tactics, honour or chivalry, or even ransoms and wealth, but whether Emile would thank me for making her a widow.

  I shouted with the rest, and we fell down the hill like an avalanche of steel and horse flesh.

  I aimed my priest’s horse at d’Herblay.

  We came together at the speed of two galloping horses. It had taken two days to get to this point, and then the battle ran faster and faster – like a runaway cart on a downslope, suddenly there was no controlling it. No predicting its course.

  I don’t remember the moment of impact. I remember the long charge – the rain, the sound of 2,000 horses rumbling down a hill. The feeling of a wonderful horse under me. The knowledge that, for once, my lance-point was on target, steady and easy.

  It was . . . beautiful.

  And then I was through their line, my lance shattered in my hand, and I was drawing my sword while a pair of coustilliers – lesser men – tried to pound me from the saddle with spears.

  I couldn’t see any of my men – Perkin generally stayed at my shoulder, but the only man I could see was Seguin de Badefol, and he was surrounded.

  I cut my way to him. He must have had ten knights on him.

  Here’s what happened.

  One man was in Burgundian colours; he was closest to me. I came on him from behind, and in one swing of my war sword I dropped him – concussed, dead, or merely smart enough to drop the ground, he was out of my fight. The next fellow in green and gold whirled in his saddle, but he had to stretch across his body to reach me, and I spiked him in the armpit with my point two handed, and he was gone. So was his squire, who tried to reach me. I killed his horse as mine danced under me – forward, back, a half-rear, a lashing forefoot. Why a country priest had been riding a prince’s war horse was beyond me.

  Seguin and I ought to have died right there, but I fought better than I’d ever fought before, and my nameless, stolen horse powered me from opponent to opponent.

  So instead . . .

  John Thornbury erupted from the back of the mêlée and slammed into the man-at-arms, hammering Seguin with a mace. Blood flew like the rain, and the man seemed to jump off his horse.

  The Burgundians melted away. It was shocking how fast they vanished, and I was slow to react. I was, in fact, so sure we were all about to be killed that I was hunching my shoulders, breathing like a bull, ready to fight to my very last ounce of strength.

  Then I saw one of Camus’ black and white villains grab the reins of a knight in Bourbon’s arms, and I realized that we were not losing. When routiers take the time to take ransoms, it means we’re winning.

  Companions, it was like the sun bursting into full flower over the battlefield. I was a dead man . . .

  . . . and then I was not.

  I stood in my stirrups and had a look. I had time – no one near me was fighting. To my left, up the ridge, there were still men fighting against Mechin and our footmen. But in front of us, the northern levies of the King of France were melting like snow in the desert, or throwing themselves off their horses and begging to be ransomed.

  To my right, I saw Jacques de Bourbon. I’d saved his life once, and I determined to have him. He had two sons by him, and either of them was worth a fortune. But in the time it took me to ride ten horse lengths, they were already ringed with men like me, so I carried on, angling my horse to my right, downhill.

  I caught a knight’s reins without having to try – he cut himself free from the rear of the crush and there I was. I took his reins and he begged my aid. He opened his visor and gave me a gauntlet.

  ‘Ride with me, monsieur, and I will protect you,’ I said.

  Twenty horse lengths further on, I found myself among Hawkwood’s men. We were all intermixed, but I was watching for Savoyards, and there they were. Sir John took the Marshal of Savoy under my nose.

  There was still a knot of men fighting. One had green and black arms, and I cantered at him. At lance-length, I rose in my stirrups – he was hammering Sir Robert Birkhead – dropped my sword and leaped at him, right out of my stir
rups, arms spread. I hit him, wrapped him in my arms and carried him out of his saddle to the ground.

  We hit hard. He broke his arm and I wrenched my left shoulder.

  Nonetheless, he tried to rise. I put a hand on his elbow, opened my visor and said, ‘Yield, brother.’

  Broken arm and all, he barked a laugh.

  We were lying under a tangle of horse’s legs and hooves, and it seemed comfortable to be out of the fight. He was in pain, but he grabbed my hand. ‘Christ,’ he said. ‘I never thought we’d lose. Milady is in the camp.’

  Rape and murder. That camp was about to become hell on earth.

  ‘Save her, William,’ he begged, and passed out. Damn him.

  Men made their fortunes in the fight. Mercenaries retired from arms and went to live on rich manors.

  The French army, on the brink of victory – or past it, if you ask me – suddenly collapsed. Mechin’s desperate footmen held past all expectation, then surged forward down the hill to complete the rout. Within an hour, we were in their camp.

  I had taken two more knights, so that I appeared to be leading my own conroy. I had lost Perkin and Robert and de la Motte, but I wasn’t worried. They’d find me. I had one goal in mind from the moment Richard spoke. I rode into the Savoyard camp and rode my war horse up and down the tented streets, calling, ‘Milady! Janet!’

  The rout of their army was behind me and all around me, and archers and Gascon spearmen were pouring down the hill. The more able women were already running, and a few had horses.

  ‘Milady!’ I screamed.

  It was an odd moment, for me. I was trying to save someone. It was suddenly very, very important to me.

  ‘Milady!’ I roared. I turned to the knights I’d captured. ‘Gentlemen, will you support me in an attempt to save a lady?’

  The Burgundian knight flushed. ‘But of course, monsieur!’

  The other Savoyard didn’t answer.

  We spread out. The edge of the wave of murder was just washing against the tents at the southern edge of the camp, and the screams had begun. Why hadn’t the other women run? They had children; they had things they valued too much; they wanted to wait for their men. Or they couldn’t believe they’d lost.