Harlequin

by Bernard Cornwell

  'I shall take servants.'

  'You would be better with soldiers. There are bandits everywhere.'

  'I do not fear my own countrymen, Sir Simon.'

  'Then you should,' he said tartly. 'How many servants?'

  'Two.'

  Sir Simon told the clerk to note two companions on the pass, then looked back to Jeanette. 'You really would be much safer with soldiers as escort.'

  'God will preserve me,' Jeanette said.

  Sir Simon watched as the ink on the pass was sanded dry and a blob of hot wax was dropped onto the parchment. He pressed a seal into the wax, then held the document to Jeanette. 'Maybe I should come with you, madame?'

  'I would rather not travel at all,' Jeanette said, refusing to take the pass.

  'Then I shall relinquish my duties to God,' Sir Simon said.

  Jeanette took the pass, forced herself to thank him, then fled. She half expected that Sir Simon would follow her, but he let her go unmolested. She felt dirty, but also triumphant because the trap was baited now. Well and truly baited.

  She did not go straight home, but went instead to the house of the lawyer, Belas, who was still eating a breakfast of blood sausage and bread. The aroma of the sausage put an edge to Jeanette's hunger, but she refused his offer of a plate. She was a countess and he was a mere lawyer and she would not demean herself by eating with him.

  Belas straightened his robe, apologized that the parlour was cold, and asked whether she had at last decided to sell the house. 'It is the sensible thing to do, madame. Your debts mount.'

  'I shall let you know my decision,' she said, 'but I have come on other business.'

  Belas opened the parlour shutters. 'Business costs money, madame, and your debts, forgive me, are mounting.'

  'It is Duke Charles's business,' Jeanette said. 'Do you still write to his men of business?'

  'From time to time,' Belas said guardedly.

  'How do you reach them?' Jeanette demanded.

  Belas was suspicious of the question, but finally saw no harm in giving an answer. 'The messages go by boat to Paimpol,' he said, 'then overland to Guingamp.'

  'How long does it take?'

  'Two days? Three? It depends if the English are riding the country between Paimpol and Guingamp.'

  'Then write to the Duke,' Jeanette said, 'and tell him from me that the English will attack Lannion at the end of this week. They are making ladders to scale the wall.' She had decided to send the message through Belas, for her own couriers were two fishermen who only came to sell their wares in La Roche-Derrien on a Thursday, and any message sent through them must arrive too late. Belas's couriers, on the other hand, could reach Guingamp in good time to thwart the English plans.

  Belas dabbed egg from his thin beard. 'You are sure, madame?'

  'Of course I'm sure!' She told him about Jacques and the ladders and about the indiscreet English supervisor, and how Sir Simon had forced her to wait a week before venturing near Lannion on her expedition to the shrine at Louannec.

  'The Duke,' Belas said as he ushered Jeanette to the house door, 'will be grateful.'

  Belas sent the message that day, though he did not say it came from the Countess, but instead claimed all the credit for himself. He gave the letter to a shipmaster who sailed that same afternoon, and next morning a horseman rode south from Paimpol. There were no hellequin in the wasted country between the port and the Duke's capital so the message arrived safely. And in Guingamp, which was Duke Charles's headquarters, the farriers checked the war horses' shoes, the cross-bowmen greased their weapons, squires scrubbed mail till it shone and a thousand swords were sharpened. The English raid on Lannion had been betrayed.

  —«»—«»—«»—

  Jeanette's unlikely alliance with Thomas had soothed the hostility in her house. Skeat's men now used the river as their lavatory instead of the courtyard, and Jeanette allowed them into the kitchen, which proved useful, for they brought their rations with them and so her household ate better than it had since the town had fallen, though she still could not bring herself to try the smoked herrings with their bright red, mould-covered skins. Best of all was the treatment given to two importunate merchants who arrived demanding payment from Jeanette and were so badly manhandled by a score of archers that both men left hatless, limping, unpaid and bloody.

  'I will pay them when I can,' she told Thomas.

  'Sir Simon's likely to have money on him,' he told her.

  'He is?'

  'Only a fool leaves cash where a servant can find it,' he said.

  Four days after the beating his face was still swollen and his lips black with blood clots. His rib hurt and his body was a mass of bruises, but he had insisted to Skeat that he was well enough to ride to Lannion. They would leave that afternoon. At midday Jeanette found him in St Renan's church.

  'Why are you praying?' she asked him.

  'I always do before a fight.'

  'There will be a fight today? I thought you were not riding till tomorrow?'

  'I love a well-kept secret,' Thomas said, amused. 'We're going a day early. Everything's ready, why wait?'

  'Going where?' Jeanette asked, though she already knew.

  'To wherever they take us,' Thomas said.

  Jeanette grimaced and prayed silently that her message had reached Duke Charles. 'Be careful,' she said to Thomas, not because she cared for him, but because he was her agent for taking revenge on Sir Simon Jekyll. 'Perhaps Sir Simon will be killed?' she suggested.

  'God will save him for me,' Thomas said.

  'Perhaps he won't follow me to Louannec?'

  'He'll follow you like a dog,' Thomas said, 'but it will be dangerous for you.'

  'I shall get the armour back,' Jeanette said, 'and that is all that matters. Are you praying to St Renan?'

  'To St Sebastian,' Thomas said, 'and to St Guinefort.'

  'I asked the priest about Guinefort,' Jeanette said accusingly, 'and he said he had never heard of him.'

  'He probably hasn't heard of St Wilgefortis either,' Thomas said.

  'Wilgefortis?' Jeanette stumbled over the unfamiliar name. 'Who is he?'

  'She,' Thomas said, 'and she was a very pious virgin who lived in Flanders and grew a long beard. She prayed every day that God would keep her ugly so that she could stay chaste.'

  Jeanette could not resist laughing. 'That isn't true!'

  'It is true, my lady,' Thomas assured her. 'My father was once offered a hair of her holy beard, but he refused to buy it.'

  'Then I shall pray to the bearded saint that you survive your raid,' Jeanette said, 'but only so you can help me against Sir Simon. Other than that I hope you all die.'

  —«»—«»—«»—

  The garrison at Guingamp had the same wish, and to make it come true they assembled a strong force of crossbowmen and men-at-arms to ambush the Englishmen on their way to Lannion, but they, like Jeanette, were convinced that La Roche-Derrien's garrison would make their sally on the Friday and so they did not leave till late on Thursday, by which time Totesham's force was already within five miles of Lannion. The shrunken garrison did not know the English were coming because Duke Charles's war captains, who commanded his forces in Guingamp while the Duke was in Paris, decided not to warn the town. If too many people knew that the English had been betrayed then the English themselves might hear of it, abandon their plans and so deny the Duke's men the chance of a rare and complete victory.

  The English expected victory themselves. It was a dry night and, near midnight, a full moon slid out from behind a silver-edged cloud to cast Lannion's walls in sharp relief. The raiders were hidden in woods from where they watched the few sentinels on the ramparts. Those sentinels grew sleepy and, after a time, went to the bastions where fires burned and so they did not see the six ladder parties creep across the night fields, nor the hundred archers following the ladders. And still they slept as the archers climbed the rungs and Totesham's main force erupted from the woods, ready to burst through
the eastern gate that the archers would open.

  The sentinels died. The first dogs awoke in the town, then a church bell began to ring and Lannion's garrison came awake, but too late for the gate was open and Totesham's mail-clad soldiers were crying havoc in the dark alleys while still more men-at-arms and archers were pouring through the narrow gate.

  Skeat's men were the rearguard and so waited outside the town as the sack began. Church bells were clanging wildly as the town's parishes woke to nightmare, but gradually the clangour ceased.

  Will Skeat stared at the moon-glossed fields south of Lannion. 'I hear it was Sir Simon Jekyll who improved your looks,' he said to Thomas.

  'It was.'

  'Because you told him to boil his arse?' Skeat grinned. 'You can't blame him for thumping you,' Skeat said, 'but he should have talked to me first.'

  'What would you have done?'

  'Made sure he didn't thump you too much, of course,' Skeat said, his gaze moving steadily across the landscape. Thomas had acquired the same habit of watchfulness but all the land beyond the town was still. A mist rose from the low ground. 'So what do you plan to do about it?' Skeat asked.

  'Talk to you.'

  'I don't fight your goddamn battles, boy,' Skeat growled. 'What do you plan to do about it?'

  'Ask you to lend me Jake and Sam on Saturday. And I want three crossbows.'

  'Crossbows, eh?' Skeat asked flatly. He saw that the rest of Totesham's force had now entered the town so he put two fingers to his lips and sounded a piercing whistle to signal that his own men could follow. 'Onto the walls!' he shouted as the hellequin rode forward. 'Onto the walls!' That was the rearguard's job: to man the fallen town's defences. 'Half the bloody bastards will still get drunk,' Skeat growled, 'so you stay with me, Tom.'

  Most of Skeat's men did their duty and climbed the stone steps to the town's ramparts, but a few slipped away in search of plunder and drink, so Skeat, Thomas and a half-dozen archers scoured the town to find those laggards and drive them back to the walls. A score of Totesham's men-at-arms were doing much the same -dragging men out of taverns and setting them to loading the many wagons that had been stored in the town to keep them from the hellequin. Totesham particularly wanted food for his garrison, and his more reliable men-at-arms did their best to keep the English soldiers from drink, women or anything else that would slow the plunder.

  The town's garrison, woken and surprised, had done their best to fight back, but they had responded much too late, and their bodies now lay in the moonlit streets. But in the western part of the town, close to the quays which fronted the River Leguer, the battle still went on, and Skeat was drawn to the sound. Most men were ignoring it, too intent on kicking down house doors and ransacking warehouses, but Skeat reckoned no one in town was safe until all the defenders were dead.

  Thomas followed him to find a group of Totesham's men-at-arms who had just retreated from a narrow street. 'There's a mad bastard down there,' one of them told Skeat, 'and he's got a dozen crossbowmen.'

  The mad bastard and his crossbowmen had already killed their share of Englishmen, for the red-crossed bodies lay where the street bent sharply towards the river.

  'Burn them out,' one of the men-at-arms suggested.

  'Not before we've searched the buildings,' Skeat said, then sent two of his archers to fetch one of the ladders that had been used to scale the ramparts. Once the ladder was fetched he propped it against the nearest house and looked at Thomas, who grinned, climbed the rungs and then clambered up the steep thatch. His broken rib hurt, but he gained the ridge and there took the bow from his shoulder and fitted an arrow onto the cord. He walked along the rooftop, his mooncast shadow long on the sloping straw. The roof ended just above the place where the enemy waited and so, before reaching the ridge's peak, he drew the bow to its full extent, then took two steps forward.

  The enemy saw him and a dozen crossbows jerked up, but so did the unhelmeted face of a fair-haired man who had a long sword in his hand. Thomas recognized him. It was Sir Geoffrey de Pont Blanc, and Thomas hesitated because he admired the man. But then the first bolt whipped so close to his face that he felt the wind of its passing on his cheek and so he loosed, and he knew the arrow would go straight into the open mouth of Sir Geoffrey's upturned face. He did not see it strike, though, for he had stepped back as the other crossbows twanged and their bolts seared up towards the moon.

  'He's dead!' Thomas shouted.

  There was a tramp of feet as the men-at-arms charged before the crossbowmen could reload their clumsy weapons. Thomas stepped back to the ridge's end and saw the swords and axes rise and fall. He saw the blood splash up onto the plastered house fronts. Saw the men hacking at Sir Geoffrey's corpse just to make certain he was really dead. A woman shrieked in the house that Sir Geoffrey had been defending.

  Thomas slithered down the thatch and jumped into the street where Sir Geoffrey had died and there he picked up three of the crossbows and a bag of bolts that he carried back to Will Skeat.

  The Yorkshireman grinned. 'Crossbows, eh? That means you'll be pretending to be the enemy, and you can't do that in La Roche-Derrien, so you're waylaying Sir Simon somewhere outside the town. Am I right?'

  'Something like that.'

  'I could read you like a bloody book, boy, if I could read, which I can't on account of having too much sense.' Skeat walked on towards the river where three ships were being plundered and another two, their holds already emptied, were burning fiercely. 'But how do you get the bastard out of town?' Skeat asked. 'He's not a complete fool.'

  'He is when it comes to the Countess.'

  'Ah!' Skeat grinned. 'And the Countess, she's suddenly being nice to us all. So it's you and her, is it?'

  'It is not her and me, no.'

  'Soon will be, though, won't it?' Skeat said.

  'I doubt it.'

  'Why? Because she's a countess? Still a woman, boy. But I'd be careful of her.'

  'Careful?'

  'Hard bitch, that one. Looks lovely on the outside, but it's all flint inside. She'll break your heart, boy.'

  Skeat had stopped on the wide stone quays where men were emptying warehouses of leather, grain, smoked fish, wine and bolts of cloth. Sir Simon was among them, shouting at his men to commandeer more wagons. The town was yielding a vast fortune. It was a much bigger place than La Roche-Derrien and, because it had successfully fought off the Earl of Northampton's winter siege, it had been reckoned a safe place for Bretons to store their valuables. Now it was being gutted. A man staggered past Thomas with an armload of silver plate, another man was dragging a half-naked woman by the shreds of her nightdress. One group of archers had broken open a vat and were dipping their faces to drink the wine.

  'It was easy enough getting in here,' Skeat said, 'but it'll be the devil's own job to get these sodden bastards back out again.'

  Sir Simon beat his sword on the backs of two drunks who were getting in the way of his men emptying a storehouse of its bolts of cloth. He saw Thomas and looked surprised, but he was too wary of Will Skeat to say anything. He just turned away.

  'Bastard must have paid off his debts by now,' Skeat said, still staring at Sir Simon's back. 'War's a good way to get rich, so long as you ain't taken prisoner and ransomed. Not that they'd ransom you or me, boy. Slit our bellies and prick our eyes out, more like. Have you ever shot a crossbow?'

  'No.'

  'Ain't quite as easy as it looks. Not as hard as shooting a real bow, of course, but it still takes practice. Goddamn things can pitch a bit high if you're not used to them. Do Jake and Sam want to help you?'

  'They say so.'

  'Of course they do, evil bastards that they are.' Skeat still stared at Sir Simon, who was wearing his new, shining armour. 'I reckon the bastard will carry his cash with him.'

  'I would think so, yes.'

  'Half mine, Tom, and I'll ask no questions come Saturday.'

  Thanks, Will'

  'But do it proper, Tom,' Skeat said savagely, '
do it proper. I don't want to watch you hang. I don't mind watching most fools doing the rope dance with the piss running down their legs, but it'd be a shame to watch you twitching your way to the devil.'

  They went back to the walls. Neither man had collected any plunder, but they had already taken more than enough from their raids on the north Breton farms and it was now the turn of Totesham's men to gorge themselves on a captured town.

  One by one the houses were searched and the tavern barrels were drained. Richard Totesham wanted his force to leave Lannion at dawn, but there were too many captured carts waiting to get through the narrow eastern gate and not nearly enough horses to pull the carts, so men were harnessing themselves the shafts rather than leave their pickings behind. Other men were drunk and senseless, and Totesham's men-at-arms scoured the town to find them, but it was fire that drove most of the drunks from their refuges. The townsfolk fled south as the English set the thatched roofs alight.

  The smoke thickened into a vast dirty pillar that drifted south on the small sea wind. The pillar glowed a lurid red on its underside, and it must have been that sight which first told the approaching force from Guingamp that they had arrived too late to save the town. They had marched through the night, expecting to find some place where they could lay an ambush for Totesham's men, but the damage was already done. Lannion was burning and its wealth was piled on carts that were still being manhandled through the gate. But if the hated English could not be ambushed on their way to the town, then they could be surprised as they left and so the enemy commanders swung their forces eastwards towards the road which led back to La Roche-Derrien.

  Cross-eyed Jake saw the enemy first. He was gazing south through the pearly mist that lay over the flat land and he saw the shadows in the vapour. At first he thought it was a herd of cows, then he decided it had to be refugees from the town. But then he saw a banner and a lance and the dull grey of a mail coat, and he shouted to Skeat that there were horsemen in sight.

  Skeat peered over the ramparts. 'Can you see anything, Tom?'