“The country will have been picked clean already,” said O Neill, ever the optimist, “do you know what they will call us, Page?”
I replied that I did not. “Latecomers,” he said, “the Tard-Venus. Captains like Seguin de Badefol and the Archpriest have been plundering the country west of Paris for years. I know those greedy bastards. They will have milked it dry.”
Others scoffed at his gloomy predictions, and said that the land had greatly recovered in recent years, and ripe to be plundered all over again. As was my habit, I sat and listened, trying to make sense of all the unfamiliar names and complex politics. I had only heard of the English captain-generals, men like Robert Knowles and Hugh Calveley, and the likes of Seguin de Badefol and the intriguingly-named Archpriest were new to me. Other captains were mentioned, many others, but the blizzard of names meant little to me then.
The Company struck out south from Calais in pretty good order, led by Calveley and Uriens. Our men-at-arms rode behind them, in full war-harness since we would be riding through dangerous country. The squires and hobelars came next, with two of the mounted archers riding ahead of the column as scouts.
Bringing up the rear were our trio of rascals, Snatcher, vinegar-faced Thierry and the drunken, swollen-bellied Julien, mounted on palfreys. A wagon pulled by six plodding oxen creaked along in the rear, laden with supplies, spare weapons and equipment, guarded by four hobelars. The driver was another broken-down Frenchman, distinguished by his surly manner and smashed wine-sodden face, and such a nonentity I never bothered to learn his name.
Something Cheyne had mentioned before his almost-fight with O Neill had been high in my mind for weeks, but I didn’t care to mention it to any of the sarcastic characters among the men-at-arms. Instead I asked one of my fellow squires, a fair-haired Gascon with the tongue-twisting name of Enguerrard de Courcy. He was a few years older than me, full of bounce and cheerful lies about his noble ancestry, and seemed to know everything.
“Courcy,” I asked, since I had given up trying to pronounce his first name, “who is the Raven?”
Courcy smiled. “A beautiful and notorious whore,” he replied in his heavily-accented English, “from Italy or Spain, I’m not sure which. There are all sorts of rumours and stories about her. My favourite is that her mother was a witch who bedded with the Devil.”
“Why do they call her the Raven?” I asked, all agog, and he laughed at my eagerness.
“Why, because her hair is black as a raven’s wing, because she flaps from bed to bed, and because she’ll peck your eye out if you don’t treat her with respect.”
“And because she tends to turn up after battles and start picking at the corpses,” said Peter Angreton, who was riding just behind us, “you don’t want to get involved with the Raven, Page. She’s death on two shapely brown legs.”
Courcy patted my shoulder in mock assurance. “She only consorts with great men, lords and knights and captain-generals and the like. Dream about her if you must, Page, but slake your needs on other women. There will be enough of them, I promise.”
I shrugged, feigning indifference, and never mentioned her again in their presence. Privately, I grew obsessed with the Raven, and her phantom stalked my dreams at night. I was desperate for a woman, for Calveley had forbidden us the fleshpots of Calais on pain of being ejected from the Company, and the mystery surrounding the Raven only made her all the more enticing.
Hindsight is splendidly useless, and if had possessed any sense I would have taken Courcy’s advice and forgotten all about her. Then I might have a few less scars to plague me in my old age.
9.
The Company of the Calf suffered a casualty before seeing any action. The unfortunate man was Richard Kelleshull, who made the mistake of breaking one of Calveley’s iron rules.
For all his foppish airs, Calveley was a strict disciplinarian, and unlike other mercenary captains actively forbade his men from plundering or whoring without his permission. He wished to found his reputation on a perfectly disciplined body of soldiers, in stark contrast to the unrestrained brigandage and drunkenness that made other Companies notorious. Poor, lack-witted Richard was fatally slow to appreciate this.
We were riding through the district of Champagne-Ardennes when it happened, being careful to give the French-held city of Rheims a wide berth. It is a beautiful country in high summer, a paradise of vineyards and rolling green hills, but we were mired in the depths of a foul winter, and the spirits of the men were flagging with each passing mile.
There had been little in the way of plunder. The villages we passed were deserted, burned-out ruins, their people either fled or slaughtered, and anything of value long since picked clean by the human vultures that had been before us. We passed a few towns, fortified places with strong walls and firmly closed gates, but lacked the numbers to try and storm them. I remember the watery autumn sun reflecting off the helmets of the sentries on the battlements as they watched us go by, and imagined the populace huddled inside, in terror of yet another band of routiers threatening their lives and property.
The garrisons of some of the larger towns might easily have sallied out and attacked us, for we were only a handful of men, but in those days the French still thought the English invincible and avoided open battle whenever they could.
Unsurprisingly, the men grew discontented, and there was much grumbling around the supper fires at night. John Heym was one of the most vociferous, and forever trying to cajole us into mutiny or desertion.
“Calveley’s an old woman,” he said one night in a conspiratorial whisper, his pale eyes looking directly into mine, “we should take a few chances, try and take a town by escalade under cover of darkness. It worked at Somerton.”
“Somerton Hall was defended by servants and kitchen maids,” I replied, glancing around nervously to check if Calveley or Uriens were in earshot, “and the door was opened for us. These French towns are stuffed with armed men. We would be massacred.”
He sneered at my caution, and tried to persuade Ralph and Richard instead. My brother would have none of it, for he had always distrusted John, but Richard was easily seduced by weasel words. I warned the big man not to listen and to abide by Calveley’s rules, but when I went to my bedroll the two were still sat around the dying embers of the campfire, their heads close together as John talked and Richard listened.
The next day we rode past yet another derelict village. It nestled inside the dip of a valley, and had once been a peaceful, obscure spot, a picture of countryside tranquility. That was before the routiers came and turned it into a charred desolation, murdering or enslaving the people, driving off the livestock and firing the thatched roofs of the cottages.
“Like wolves,” I said as I reined in to look down the valley at the shattered village, “we are like wolves, preying on sheep.”
“True enough,” remarked Courcy, “but the wolves have missed a lamb or two. Look.”
He pointed, and I saw a faint wisp of smoke rising from the middle of the village, close to the pretty little stone church.
“Survivors, maybe?” I suggested.
“Silly, frightened peasants,” said Courcy, who regarded the lower orders as semi-human, “I expect they didn’t know what else to do except crawl home once the Companies had moved on.”
Others noticed the smoke, but Calveley barred any attempt to investigate, not thinking it worth the effort. There were a few muttered complaints, and I noticed John Heym looking back with covetous eyes.
We spent the night in a wood, and John volunteered to take the first watch. I suspected what he had in mind, and kept a close eye on Richard during the evening meal. The big man was quiet as ever, spooning up his gruel and listening to the others talk with little sign of interest or comprehension, before lumbering off to his tent. I lost interest and allowed myself to get embroiled in a fractious game of dice with O Neill and Angreton.
I stumbled into bed half-drunk and several francs poorer, and woke with a mild heada
che and a bitter taste in my mouth. Cursing the cheap, sour white wine we had brought with us from Calais, I struggled out of my tent and found a tree to piss against.
The early morning peace of our encampment was shattered by excited shouts from the trees to the north, accompanied by the thump of hoof beats and rustle of harness. Hurriedly finishing my business, I ran to see what was happening as men tumbled from their tents and bedrolls, strapping on swords and daggers and blearily demanding to know what the hell was going on. Calveley was up already, striding in his night-shirt towards the source of the noise with his sword naked in his hand.
Four horsemen emerged from the woods. At first I thought it was an ambush, but then recognised their rough faces as belonging to William Clayton and Nicholas Pasmore, Thomas Haddeston and Alan Sheppe. Clayton and Pasmore were the veterans Calveley had assigned Richard to as squire, while Haddeston and Sheppe had been lumbered with John Heym.
I almost cried out when I saw Richard, stumbling behind them with his wrists tied together via a rope fixed at the other end to the cantle of Pasmore’s saddle. His face, never his loveliest feature, was bleeding and battered, one eye closed up and horribly swollen, and his helmet, sword and dagger were missing.
“What’s all this?” demanded Calveley as the horsemen clattered to a halt in front of him.
“What do you think?” replied Pasmore, a blunt career soldier who despised Calveley and made no secret of it, “last night we spied this one and his mate, that John Heym, creeping out of camp after everyone had gone to bed. We followed them back to the village we passed yesterday.”
“And what did you see there?”
Calveley was barking out the questions, snapping off the end of words as though he meant to bite out his tongue. I had never seen him so furious, and his one eye gleamed with menace as he glared at Richard. The prisoner stood with his head bowed, swaying and whimpering under his breath.
“As we thought, there were people in the village,” said Pasmore, “a peasant woman and a boy. We lost our quarry in the darkness, and by the time we caught up with them the damage was done. The woman was dead, though Heym had raped her first, and they were torturing the boy to make him tell them where his money was hidden. Stupid bastards couldn’t understand why he spoke no English, or that he wasn’t worth robbing.”
Tap-tap went Calveley’s long, pale forefinger on the pommel of his sword. “Where is Heym?”
Pasmore looked embarrassed, and Clayton answered for him. “The little bastard shot into the woods like a ferret as soon as he saw us coming. We went after him, but he got away.”
That only served to make Calveley angrier. “String the fat man up,” he snapped.
Ralph was by my side, and before I could stop him he was running towards Calveley. Mercifully, he didn’t draw the dagger at his belt, but went down on his knees and started to beg for Richard’s life.
“Flog him,” snarled Calveley, though he barely even glanced at Ralph, “by God, I will have discipline in my Company, if I have to punish every man!”
I watched, powerless, as a spare rope was thrown across the stoutest branch of a nearby tree, and as my brother was dragged off by three archers to be given a set of stripes across his back.
Part of me wasn’t inclined to intervene. To my mind, which you might say is a cold and calculating one, Richard had committed a great wrong and Ralph had behaved like a fool. I had tried, albeit not very hard, to save Richard, but his conscience was his own. He was a brute, and had broken the rules.
The sight of a man about to be hanged brought my own recent brush with death flooding back to mind, and my scarred throat throbbed abominably as I watched the rope being looped about Richard’s brawny neck.
He offered no resistance, and didn’t seem to understand what was happening as four men shuffled him into position under the tree. This was in stark contrast to my brother, who had to be wrestled away by the archers, roaring and struggling to break free.
I remained King Log, seeing all and doing nothing.
It took six men to haul Richard into the air and hold him there while his legs kicked and the rope slowly squeezed and choked the life from him. His bowels loosened, and a dreadful stench arose as he died.
When it was done, the men holding the rope released it with groans of relief, allowing Richard’s huge body to flop down into the mud. I glanced at Calveley, who had watched the hanging without a trace of emotion on his long, pale face.
“Burn that thing, or throw it into the bushes,” he said, holding his nose against the awful smell, “and no-one is to ever mention his name again in my presence.”
“What about Heym?” asked Pasmore, who had acted as one of the six hangmen, “he’s still at large in the woods somewhere.”
“We don’t have a hope of catching him,” said Clayton, “not unless we scour the forest for days. Waste of time. Let him go, I say.”
Calveley ignored him. “No-one is to mention his name again in my presence, either! I took them for men, raw clay to be fashioned into soldiers, but they turned out to be excrement. I shall not make the same mistake again.”
He turned on his heel and stalked away. Silence fell over the camp, broken only by the distant crack of a whip and my brother’s cries as he endured his flogging.
And still I did nothing.
Richard’s hanging left me and my brother as the only survivors of Warwick, and we were not popular. Some of the older men started to regard us as a bad omen, and blamed our presence for the Company’s profitless expedition so far. They spat and made the sign of the cross when we passed, and refused to speak to us.
Ralph became very circumspect after his flogging, cautious to the point of timidity, as if the whip had driven all the demons out of him. From this point on he was careful to stick close to my side, which made my ultimate failure to protect him all the more painful.
I learned much in the following days, as the Company continued south, following the Seine in the direction of Troyes. That city was also in the hands of the French, and we swung east and then south to avoid it. Calveley’s plan, so he told Uriens and Uriens told us, was to head to the district of Auxerre and then cross the Loire. West of the Loire the Companies under Knowles, Robert Birkhead and other English and Gascon captains were said to be rampaging unchecked around Bourges on the Yévre River and threatening to take the city.
“We shall be the latecomers again,” grunted O Neill, but I ignored him. The Company’s boredom and disappointment lessened as we edged further into unstable territory, replaced by a nervous tension. We often spotted drifting tendrils of smoke on the horizon to the south-west, and our scouts would gallop back in the evening to report towns and villages in flames. They also reported on seeing riders, small groups of horsemen armed for war and riding under banners unfurled.
“Most of them look like mercenaries,” one exhausted hobelar said as he wolfed his supper, “but I saw a troop of men-at-arms this morning riding under the banner of the Duke of Burgundy. They had come to chase off some raiders, I reckon, but were too late. A few of them chased after me, but their horses were blown.”
“Sounds like we’re heading into a nasty little war, boys,” remarked Uriens, looking happier than I had ever seen him, “we’ll have a double watch at night from now on, dig a ditch round the camp, and sleep in harness. The country we’re heading into will be crawling with bastards.”
The Welshman was a good soldier, but all his precautions were in vain. Despite our scouts and cautious progress, the Company was being hunted.
I have mentioned the French captain-general known as the Archpriest. At the time I knew little about him, save what I had gleaned from the men. His real name was Arnaud de Cervole, and he had once been a priest, but left the service of God for that of Mars and anyone who would pay him. He was said to be a superb commander with a dark reputation for indulging in pointlessly bloody massacres and (far worse) swindling his men out of their wages and share of the spoils. Our men spoke of him in low
voices, and fervently hoped never to meet him across a battlefield.
They were to be disappointed. Unknown to us, the Archpriest had recently taken service with Duke Philip of Burgundy, who had hired him to help clear his province of routiers. Royal troops had been given over to the Archpriest for the task, and a strong band of these, reinforced by the garrison of Auxerre, were shadowing our Company as we bypassed the city and approached the Loire.
The Archpriest knew his business, and kept his men on a tight rein, skillfully evading our scouts until our Company had reached the banks of the river. Calveley and Uriens chose to make camp beside a stretch of the Loire that was too deep and fast to cross safely. Along with the ditches we dug to surround our camp on the landward side, they thought the Company would be safe for the night behind a miniature fortress. It turned out to be a self-made trap.
The first we knew of any trouble was when the scouts failed to return at their usual time in the evening, and as the sun disappeared below the horizon Calveley changed his mind and insisted that we get across the river.
Uriens was normally respectful and subservient towards Calveley, but he stoutly opposed this decision. “We dare not try and cross, Captain-General,” he insisted. “You know the waters are too deep, and I don’t like the look of the current. Crossing in the dark would be folly. Our men on horses might make it, most of them, but what about the wagon? We should sit tight and wait for morning.”
Calveley swept him aside, and lost his head completely, running around and bawling at us to break camp. The more experienced men in the Company refused to budge a foot.
“I won’t be chivvied across the river like a bloody sheep,” said Clayton, folding his arms, “Uriens is right. We should stay here and make a stand. It’s better than drowning in the dark.”
Calveley swore horribly, cuffed Clayton with the back of his hand, and reached for his sword. Clayton seized his wrist before he could draw, and his mates, Pasmore, Cheyne and O Neill, drew their knives.
The Half-Hanged Man Page 5
