Thomas stared after his cousin. He was ashamed because one small part of him, one small and treacherous part, had been tempted to take the offer. Join his cousin, be back in a family, look for the Grail and harness its power. The shame was sour, like the shame of the gratitude he had felt towards de Taillebourg when the torture ceased. 'Bastard!' he yelled uselessly. 'Bastard.'
'Bastard!' It was Sir Guillaume's voice that cut across Thomas's. Sir Guillaume, with his two men-at-arms, was prodding a prisoner in the back with a sword. The captive wore plate armour and the sword scraped on it with every prod. 'Bastard!' Sir Guillaume bawled again, then saw Thomas. 'It's Coutances! Coutances!' He pulled off his prisoner's helmet. 'Look at him!'
The Count of Coutances was a melancholy-looking man, bald as an egg, who was doing his best to appear dignified. Sir Guillaume poked him again. 'I tell you, Thomas' –
he spoke in French – 'that this bastard's wife and daughters will have to whore themselves to raise this ransom! They'll be swiving every man in Normandy to buy this gutless bastard back!' He jabbed the Count of Coutances again. 'I'm going to squeeze you witless!' Sir Guillaume roared and then, exultant, marched his prisoner onwards. The woman screamed again.
There had been many women screaming that night, but something about this sound cut through Thomas's awareness and he turned, alarmed. The scream sounded a third time and Thomas began to run. 'Robbie!' he shouted. 'To me!'
Thomas ran across the remnants of a burning tent, his boots throwing up sparks and embers. He swerved round a smoking brazier, almost tripped on a wounded man who was vomiting into an upturned helmet, ran down an alley between armourers' huts where anvils, bellows, hammers, tongs and barrels full of rivets and mail rings were spilt on the grass. A man in a farrier's apron with blood streaming from a head wound staggered into his path and Thomas shoved him aside to run towards the black and yellow standard that still flew outside the Lord of Roncelets's burning tent. 'Jeanette!' he called. 'Jeanette!'
But Jeanette was a prisoner. She was being held by a huge man who had pressed her spine against the windlass of the trebuchet called Stonewhip that stood just beyond the Lord of Roncelets's tent. The man heard Thomas shouting and looked round, grinning. It was Beggar, all beard and rotted teeth, and he shoved Jeanette hard as she struggled to escape him.
'Hold her, Beggar!' Sir Geoffrey Carr shouted. 'Hold the bitch!'
'The pretty ain't going anywhere,' Beggar said, 'going nowhere, darling,' and he tried to haul up her coat of mail, but it was too heavy and awkward and Jeanette was struggling too frantically. The Lord of Roncelets, still without his sword, was sitting on Stonewhip's frame. He had a red mark on his face, suggesting he had been struck, and Sir Geoffrey Carr with five other men-at-arms was standing over him. The Scarecrow stared defiantly at Thomas. 'He's my prisoner!' he insisted.
'He belongs to us,' Thomas said, 'we took him.'
'Listen, boy,' the Scarecrow said, his voice still slurred by drink, 'I am a knight and you are a turd. You under-stand me?' He staggered slightly as he stepped towards Thomas. 'I am a knight,' he said again, louder, 'and you are nothing!' His red face, made lurid by the flames, was twisted in derision. 'You are nothing!' he shouted again, then whipped round to make sure that his men were guarding the Lord of Roncelets. Such a wealthy captive would solve all Sir Geoffrey's problems and he was determined to hold onto him and take the ransom for himself. 'She can't take a captive,' he said, pointing his sword at Jeanette, 'because she's got tits, and you can't take him because you're a turd. But I'm a knight! A knight!' He spat the word at Thomas who, goaded by the insults, drew his bow. The new string was slightly too long and he could feel the lack of power in the black stave because of it, but he reckoned there was enough strength for his purpose. 'Beggar!'
the Scarecrow shouted, 'if he looses that bow, kill the bitch.'
'Kill the pretty,' Beggar said. He was drooling spittle, which ran down his big beard as he stroked the mail rings above Jeanette's breasts. She still fought, but he had her bent painfully back across the windlass and she could hardly move. Thomas kept the bow drawn. The trebuchet's long beam, he saw, had been winched down to the ground though the engineers must have been interrupted be-fore they could load a stone because the great leather sling was empty. A heap of stones stood off to the right and a sudden movement there made Thomas see there was a wounded man leaning against the boulders. The man was trying to stand, but could not. There was blood on his face. 'Will?' Thomas asked.
'Tom!' Will Skeat tried to push himself upright again. 'It's you, Tom!'
'What happened?' Thomas asked.
'Not what I was, Torn,' Skeat said. The two townsmen who had been helping to guard the Lord of Roncelets were dead at Skeat's feet, and Skeat himself seemed to be dying. He was white-faced, feeble and every breath was a struggle. There were tears on his face.
'I tried to fight,' he said pitiably, 'I did try, but I'm not what I was.'
'Who attacked you?' Thomas asked, but Skeat seemed unable to answer.
'Will was just trying to protect me,' Jeanette shouted, then she screamed as Beggar thrust her back so hard that at last she was forced onto the top of the windlass and Beggar could push her mail skirts up. He gabbled excitedly just as Sir Geoffrey roared in anger.
'It's the Douglas bastard!'
Thomas loosed the cord. With a new bowcord he liked to shoot a couple of arrows to discover how the new hemp would behave, but he had no time for such niceties now, he just loosed the arrow and it sliced through the tangles of Beggar's beard to cut his throat, the broad arrow head slitting his gullet as cleanly as a butcher's knife, and Jeanette screamed as the blood spurted across her jupon and face. The Scarecrow bellowed in rage and ran at Thomas who rammed the horn-tipped howstave into the red face then let the weapon fall as he drew his sword. Robbie ran past him and thrust his uncle's sword at the Scarecrow's belly, but even drunk Sir Geoffrey was quick and he managed to parry the blow and strike back. Two of his men-at-arms were running to help – the others were guarding the Lord of Roncelets – and Thomas saw the two men coming. He went to his left, hoping to put the big frame of Stonewhip between himself and the men wearing Sir Geoffrey's badge of the black axe, but Sir Geoffrey almost cut him off and Thomas gave a desperate back-swing with his newly drawn sword that slammed against the Scarecrow's blade with a force that numbed Thomas's arm. The blow rocked the Scarecrow back, then he recovered and leaped forward and Thomas was desperately defending himself as the Scarecrow rained blows down on him. Thomas was no swordsman and he was being beaten down to his knees and Robbie could not help him because he was fending off Sir Geoffrey's two followers, and then there was an almighty crash, a bang that sounded as though the gates of hell had just opened, and the ground shook as the Scarecrow screamed in utter agony. His howl, trailing blood, seared into the sky. Jeanette had pulled the lever that released the long beam. Ten tons of counterweight had thumped to the ground and the thick metal pin that held the sling had jerked up between Sir Geoffrey's legs and torn a bloody hole from his crotch to his belly. He should have been hurled halfway to the town by the trebuchet's beam, but instead the pin had been trapped in his entrails and he was caught on the beam's end where he writhed in agony, his blood pouring down to the ground.
His men, seeing their master dying, stepped back. Why fight for a man who could offer no reward? Robbie gaped up as the Scarecrow twisted and jerked, and somehow the dying man managed to tear himself free of the great iron stake and he fell, trailing intestines and spraying blood. He hit the ground with a thump, bounced bloodily, yet still he lived. His eyes were twitching and his mouth was drawn back in a snarl. 'Goddamn Douglas,' he managed to gasp before Robbie stepped to him, lifted his uncle's sword, and rammed it down once, straight between the Scarecrow's eyes.
The Lord of Roncelets had watched it all happen with disbelief. Now Jeanette was holding a sword to his face, daring him to run away, and he dumbly shook his head to show that he had no intention of risking hi
s life among the drunken, screaming, savage men who had come out of the night to destroy the greatest army the duchy of Brittany had ever raised.
Thomas crossed to Sir William Skeat, but his old friend was dead. He had been wounded in the neck and he had bled to death on the stone pile. He looked strangely peaceful. A first shaft of the new day's sun cut across the world's edge to light the bright blood at the top of Stonewhip's beam as Thomas closed his mentor's eyes. 'Who killed Will Skeat?' Thomas demanded of Sir Geoffrey's men and Dickon, the young one, pointed at the wreckage of mail, flesh, entrails and bone that had been the Scarecrow. Thomas inspected the dents in his sword. He must learn to use one, he thought, or else he would die by the sword, then he looked up at Sir Geoffrey's men. 'Go and help the attack on the next fort,' he told them. They stared at him. 'Go!' he snapped and, startled, they ran westwards.
Thomas pointed his sword at the Lord of Roncelets. 'Take him back to town,' he told Robbie, 'and guard him well.'
'What about you?' Robbie asked.
'I'm going to bury Will,' Thomas said. 'He was a friend.' He thought he must shed some tears for Will Skeat, but there were none. Not now, anyway. He sheathed the sword, then smiled at Robbie. 'You can go home, Robbie.'
'I can?' Robbie seemed puzzled.
'De Taillebourg's dead. Roncelets will pay your ran-som to Lord Outhwaite. You can go to Eskdale, go home, go back to killing Englishmen.'
Robbie shook his head. 'Guy Vexille lives.'
'He's mine to kill.'
'And mine,' Robbie said. 'You forget he killed my brother. I'm staying till he's dead.'
'If you can ever find him,' Jeanette said softly.
The sun was lighting the smoke of the burning encampments and casting long shadows across the ground where the last of Charles's army abandoned their earthworks and fled towards Rennes. They had come in their great splendour and now they scuttled away in abject defeat.
Thomas went to the engineers' tents and found a pickaxe, a mattock and a shovel. He dug a grave beside Stonewhip and tipped Skeat into the damp soil and tried to say a prayer, but he could not think of one, and then he remembered the coin for the ferryman and so he went to the Lord of Roncelets's tent and pulled the charred canvas away from the chest and took a piece of gold and went back to the grave. He jumped down beside his friend and put the coin under Skeat's tongue. The ferryman would find it and know from the gold that Sir William Skeat was a special man. 'God bless you, Will,' Thomas said, then he scrambled out of the grave and he filled it in, though he kept pausing in hope that Will's eyes would open, but of course they did not and Thomas at last wept as he shovelled earth onto his friend's pale face. The sun was up by the time he finished and women and children were coming from the town to look for plunder. A kestrel flew high and Thomas sat on the chest of coins and waited for Robbie to return from the town. He would go south, he thought. Go to Astarac. Go and find his father's notebook and solve its mystery. The bells of La Roche-Derrien were ringing for the victory, a huge victory, and Thomas sat among the dead and knew he would have no peace until he had found his father's burden. Calix mens inebrians. Transfer calicem istem a me. Ego enim Bram pincerna regis.
Whether he wanted the job or not he was the King's cupbearer, and he would go south.
Historical Notes
The novel begins with the battle of Neville's Cross. The name of the battle is derived from the stone cross that Lord Neville erected to mark the victory, though it is possible there was another cross already on the site which Lord Neville's memorial replaced. The battle, fought by a large Scottish army against a small scratch force hastily assembled by the Archbishop of York and the northern lords, was a disaster for the Scots. Their King, David II, was captured as described in Vagabond, trapped under a bridge. He managed to knock out some of his captor's teeth, but then was subdued. He spent a long time at Bamburgh Castle recovering from his facial wound, then was taken to London and put into the Tower with most of the other Scottish aristocracy cap-tured that day, including Sir William Douglas, the Knight of Liddesdale. The two Scottish Earls who had previously sworn fealty to Edward were decapitated, then quartered. and the parts of their body displayed around the realm as a warning against treachery. Later that year Charles of Blois, nephew to the King of France and would-be Duke of Brittany, joined David II in the Tower of London. It was a remarkable double by the English who will, in another decade, add the King of France himself to the haul.
The Scots invaded England at the request of the French to whom they were allied, and it is probable that David II truly believed England's army was all in northern France. But England had foreseen just this kind of trouble and certain northern lords were charged with staying at home and being ready to raise forces if the Scots ever marched. The backbone of those forces was, of course, the archer, and this is the great age of English (and, to a lesser extent, Welsh) archery. The weapon used was the longbow (a name that was coined much later) which was a yew bow at least six feet in length with a draw weight of over a hundred pounds (more than double the weight of modern competition bows). It is a mystery why England alone could field armies of lethal archers who did, indeed, become kings of the European battlefield, but the likeliest answer is that mastery of the longbow was an English enthusiasm, practised as a sport in hundreds of villages. Eventually laws were passed making archery practice obligatory, presumably because the enthusiasm was fading. It was, certainly, an extraordinarily difficult weapon to use, requiring immense strength, and the French, though they tried to introduce the weapon into their ranks, never mastered the longbow. The Scots were accustomed to these archers and had learned never to attack them on horseback, but in truth there was no answer to the longbow until firearms were deployed on the battlefield. Prisoners were important. A great man like Sir William Douglas would only be released on payment of a vast ransom, though Sir William was given early parole to help negotiate the ransom of the King of Scotland and when he failed he dutifully returned to his imprisonment in the Tower of London. The ransoms for men like Charles of Blois and King David II were massive and might take years to negotiate and raise. In David's case the ransom was £66,000, a sum that has to be multiplied at least a hundred times to get even a rough approximation of its modern value. The Scots were allowed to pay it in ten instalments and twenty noble-men had to be surrendered as hostages for the payment before David was released in 1357 by which time, ironically, his sympathies had become entirely pro-English. Sir Thomas Dagworth was officially the captor of Charles of Blois and he sold him to Edward III for the much smaller sum of £3,500, but doubtless it was better to have that money in hand than wait while a larger ransom was collected in France and Brittany. King David's captor had been an Englishman called John Coupland who also sold his prisoner to Edward, in Coupland's case for a knighthood and land. Charles's defeat at La Roche-Derrien is one of the great unsung English triumphs of the period. Charles had faced archers before and had worked out, rightly as it happened, that the way to defeat them was to make them attack well-protected positions. What the archer could not see he could not kill. The tactic worked against Sir Thomas Dagworth's assault, but then came Richard Totesham's frenetic sortie from the town and, because Charles had insisted that the four parts of his army stay behind their protective earthworks, he was overwhelmed and the other parts of his army were then defeated in turn. His defeat and capture were an immense shock to his allies, the French, who were failing to relieve the siege of Calais. I must record my debt to Jonathan Sumption whose book, Trial by Battle, the first volume of his superb history of the Hundred Years War, was of particular use to me. The errors in the novel are entirely mine, of course, though in the interests of lightening my post bag may I gently point out that Durham Cathedral only possessed two towers in 1347 and that I placed the Hachaliah reference in the book of Esdras, instead of in Nehemiah, because I was using the Vulgate and not the King James Bible.
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The Grail Quest 2 - Vagabond tgq-2 Page 41
