Harlequin

by Bernard Cornwell

  A new trap was set, an even deadlier one, for the English were now penned in a land that had been stripped of food. Edward's army at last reached the Somme, but found it was blocked just as the Seine had been barred. Bridges were destroyed or guarded by grim forts with heavy garrisons that would take weeks to dislodge, and the English did not have weeks. They were weakening daily. They had marched from Normandy to the edge of Paris, then they had crossed the Seine and left a path of destruction to the Somme's southern bank and the long journey had abraded the army. Hundreds of men were now barefoot while others hobbled on disintegrating shoes. They had horses enough, but few spare horseshoes or nails, and so men led their animals to save their hooves.

  There was grass to feed horses, but little grain for men, and so the foraging parties had to travel long distances to find villages where the peasants might have hidden some of the harvest. The French were becoming bolder now and there were frequent skirmishes at the edges of the army as the French sensed the English vulnerability. Men ate unripe fruit that soured their bellies and loosened their bowels. Some reckoned they had no choice but to march all the way back to Normandy, but others knew the army would fall apart long before they reached the safety of the Norman harbours. The only course was to cross the Somme and march to the English strongholds in Flanders, but the bridges were gone or garrisoned, and when the army crossed desolate marshlands to find fords they discovered the enemy ever waiting on the far bank. They twice tried to force a passage, but both times the French, secure on the higher dry land, were able to cut down the archers in the river by crowding the bank with Genoese crossbows. And so the English retreated and marched westwards, getting ever nearer to the river's mouth, and every step reduced the number of possible crossing places as the river grew wider and deeper. They marched for eight days between the rivers, eight days of increasing hunger and frustration.

  'Save your arrows,' a worried Will Skeat warned his men late one afternoon. They were making their camp by a small, deserted village which was as bare as every other place they had found since crossing the Seine. 'We'll need every arrow we've got for a battle,' Skeat went on, 'and Christ knows we've none to waste.'

  An hour later, when Thomas was searching a hedgerow for blackberries, a voice called from on high. 'Thomas! Get your evil bones up here!'

  Thomas turned to see Will Skeat on the small tower of the village church. He ran to the church, climbed the ladder, past a beam where a bell had hung till the villagers took it away to prevent the English from stealing it, then pulled himself through the hatch and onto the tower's flat roof where a half-dozen men were crowded, among them the Earl of Northampton, who gave Thomas a very wry look.

  'I heard you were hanged!'

  'I lived, my lord,' Thomas said grimly.

  The Earl hesitated, wondering whether to ask if Sir Simon Jekyll had been the hangman, but there was no point in continuing that feud. Sir Simon had fled and the Earl's agreement with him was void. He grimaced instead. 'No one can kill a devil's whelp, eh?' he said, then pointed eastwards, and Thomas stared through the twilight and saw an army on the march.

  It was a long way off, on the far northern bank of the river that here flowed between vast reedbeds, but Thomas could still see that the lines of horsemen, wagons, infantry and crossbowmen were filling every lane and track of that distant bank. The army was approaching a walled town, Abbeville, the Earl said, where a bridge crossed the river, and Thomas, gazing at the black lines twisting towards the bridge, felt as though the gates of hell had opened and spewed out a vast horde of lances, swords and crossbows. Then he remembered Sir Guillaume was there and he made the sign of the cross and mouthed a silent prayer that Eleanor's father would survive.

  'Sweet Christ,' Will Skeat said, mistaking Thomas's gesture for fear, 'but they want our souls bad.'

  'They know we're tired,' the Earl said, 'and they know the arrows must run out in the end, and they know they have more men than we do. Far more.' He turned westwards. 'And we can't run much further.' He pointed again and Thomas saw the flat sheen of the sea. 'They've caught us,' the Earl said. 'They'll cross at Abbeville and attack tomorrow.'

  'So we fight,' Will Skeat growled.

  'On this ground, Will?' the Earl asked. The land was flat, ideal for cavalry, and with few hedgerows or coppices to protect archers. 'And against so many?' he added. He stared at the distant enemy. 'They outnumber us. Will, they outnumber us. By God, they outnumber us.' He shrugged. 'Time to move on.'

  'Move on where?' Skeat asked. 'Why not find our ground and stand?'

  'South?' The Earl sounded unsure. 'Maybe we can cross the Seine again and take ships home from Normandy? God knows we can't cross the Somme.' He shaded his eyes as he stared at the river. 'Christ,' he blasphemed, but why the hell isn't there a ford? We could have raced the bastards back to our fortresses in Flanders and left Philip stranded like the damned fool he is.'

  'Not fight him?' Thomas asked, sounding shocked.

  The Earl shook his head. 'We've hurt him. We've robbed him blind. We've marched through his kingdom and left it smouldering, so why fight him? He's spent a fortune on hiring knights and crossbowmen, so why not let him waste that money? Then we come back next year and do it again.' He shrugged. 'Unless we can't escape him.' With those grim words he backed down through the hatch and his entourage followed, leaving Skeat and Thomas alone.

  'The real reason they don't want to fight,' Skeat said sourly when the Earl was safe out of earshot, 'is that they're scared of being taken prisoner. A ransom can wipe out a family's fortune in the blink of an eye.' He spat over the tower parapet, then drew Thomas to its northern edge. 'But the real reason I brought you up here, Tom, is because your eyes are better than mine. Can you see a village over there?' He pointed northwards.

  It took Thomas a while, but eventually he spotted a group of low roofs amidst the reeds. 'Bloody poor village,' he said sourly.

  'But it's still a place we haven't searched for food,' Skeat said, 'and being on a marsh they might have some smoked eels. I like a smoked eel, I do. Better than sour apples and nettle soup. You can go and have a look.'

  'Tonight?'

  'Why not next week?' Skeat said, going to the roof hatch, 'or next year? Of course I mean tonight, you toad. Hurry yourself.'

  Thomas took twenty archers. None of them wanted to go, for it was late in the day and they feared that French patrols might be waiting on the track that twisted endlessly through the dunes and reedbeds that stretched towards the Somme. It was a desolate country. Birds flew from the reeds as the horses picked their way along a track that was so low-lying that in places there were battens of elm to give footing, and all about them the water gurgled and sucked between banks of green-scummed mud.

  'Tide's going out,' Jake commented.

  Thomas could smell the salt water. They were near enough to the sea for the tides to flow and ebb through this tangle of reeds and marshgrass, though in places the road found a firmer footing on great drifted banks of sand where stiff pale grasses grew. In winter, Thomas thought, this would be a godforsaken place with the cold winds driving the spume across the frozen marsh.

  It was very nearly dark when they reached the village, which proved to be a miserable settlement of just a dozen reed-thatched cottages, which were deserted. The folk must have left just before Thomas's archers arrived, for there were still fires in the small rock hearths.

  'Look for food,' Thomas said, 'especially smoked eels.'

  'Be quicker to catch the bloody eels and smoke them ourselves,' Jake said.

  'Get on with it,' Thomas said, then took himself to the end of the village where there was a small wooden church which had been pushed by the wind into a permanently lopsided stance. The church was little more than a shed — maybe it was a shrine to some saint of this misbegotten marshland — but Thomas reckoned the wooden structure would just about bear his weight so he scrambled off the horse onto the moss-thick thatch and then crawled up to the ridge where he clung to the naile
d cross that decorated one gable.

  He saw no movement in the marshes, though he could see the smear of smoke coming from the French camp-fires that misted the fading light north of Abbeville. Tomorrow, he thought, the French would cross the bridge and file through the town's gates to confront the English army whose fires burned to the south, and the size of the smoke plumes witnessed how much larger the French army was than the English.

  Jake appeared from a nearby cottage with a sack in his hand. 'What is it?' Thomas called.

  'Grain!' Jake hefted the sack. 'Bloody damp. Sprouting.'

  'No eels?'

  'Of course there are no bloody eels,' Jake grumbled. 'Bloody eels got more sense than to live in a hovel like this.'

  Thomas grinned and looked off to the sea that lay like a blood-reddened swordblade to the west. There was one distant sail, a speck of white, on the clouded horizon. Gulls wheeled and soared above the river that here was a great wide channel, broken by reeds and banks, sliding towards the sea. It was hard to distinguish between river and marsh, so tangled was the landscape. Then Thomas wondered why the gulls were screaming and diving. He stared at them and saw what at first looked like a dozen cattle on the riverbank. He opened his mouth to call that news to Jake, then he saw that there were men with the cattle. Men and women, perhaps a score of them? He frowned, staring, realizing that the folk must have come from this village. They had presumably seen the English archers approaching and they had fled with their livestock, but to where? The marsh? That was sensible, for the wetlands probably had a score of secret paths where folk could hide, but why had they risked going onto the sand ridge where Thomas could see them? Then he saw that they were not trying to hide, but to escape, for the villagers were now wading across the wide waters towards the northern bank.

  Sweet Jesus, he thought, but there was a ford! He stared, not daring to believe his own eyes, but the folk were forging steadily across the river and dragging their cows with them. It was a deep ford, and he guessed it could only be crossed at low tide, but it was there. 'Jake!' he shouted. 'Jake!'

  Jake ran across to the church and Thomas leaned far down and hauled him onto the rotting thatch. The building swayed perilously under their weight as Jake scrambled to the ridge, took hold of the sun-bleached wooden cross and looked where Thomas was pointing.

  'God's arse,' he said, 'there's a bloody ford!'

  'And there are bloody Frenchmen,' Thomas said, for on the river's far bank where firmer land rose from the tangle of marsh and water there were now men in grey mail. They were newly arrived, or else Thomas would have seen them earlier, and their first cooking fires pricked the dark stand of trees where they camped. Their presence showed that the French knew of the ford's existence and wanted to stop the English crossing, but that was none of Thomas's business. His only duty was to let the army know that there was a ford; a possible way out of the trap.

  Thomas slid down the church's thatch and jumped to the ground. 'You go back to Will,' he told Jake, 'and tell him there's a ford. And tell him I'll burn the cottages one at a time to serve as a beacon.' It would be dark soon and without a light to guide them no one would be able to find the village.

  Jake took six men and rode back to the south. Thomas waited. Every now and then he climbed back to the church roof and stared across the ford and each time he thought he saw more fires among the trees. The French, he reckoned, had placed a formidable force there, and no wonder, for it was the last escape route and they were blocking it. But Thomas still fired the cottages one by one to show the English where that escape might lie.

  The flames roared into the night, scattering sparks across the marshes. The archers had found some dried fish concealed in a hut wall and that, with brackish water, was their supper. They were disconsolate, and no wonder.

  'We should have stayed in Brittany,' one man said.

  'They're going to corner us,' another suggested. He had made a flute from a dried reed and had been playing a melancholy air.

  'We've got arrows,' a third man said.

  'Enough to kill all those bastards?'

  'Have to be enough.'

  The flute player blew some faint notes, then became bored and tossed the instrument into the closest fire. Thomas, the night dragging hard on his patience, strolled back to the church, but instead of climbing onto the roof he pushed open the ramshackle door and then opened the one window's shutters to let in the firelight. Then he saw it was not a proper church, but a fishermen's shrine. There was an altar made from sea-whitened planks balanced on two broken barrels, and on the altar was a crude doll-like figure draped with strips of white cloth and crowned with a band of dried seaweed. The fishermen at Hookton had sometimes made such places, especially if a boat was lost at sea, and Thomas's father had always hated them. He had burned one to the ground, calling it a place of idols, but Thomas reckoned fishermen needed the shrines. The sea was a cruel place and the doll, he thought it was female, perhaps represented some saint of the area. Women whose men were long gone to sea could come to pray to the saint, begging that the ship would come home.

  The shrine's roof was low and it was more comfortable to kneel. Thomas said a prayer. Let me live, he prayed, let me live, and he found himself thinking of the lance, thinking of Brother Germain and Sir Guillaume and of their fears that a new evil, born of the dark lords, was brewing in the south. It is none of your business, he told himself. It is superstition. The Cathars are dead, burned in the church's fires and gone to hell. Beware of madmen, his father had told him, and who better than his father to know that truth? But was he a Vexille? He bowed his head and prayed that God would keep him from the madness.

  'And what are you praying for now?' a voice suddenly asked, startling Thomas, who turned to see Father Hobbe grinning from the low doorway. He had chatted with the priest during the last few days, but he had never been alone with him. Thomas was not even sure he wanted to be, for Father Hobbe's presence was a reminder of his conscience.

  'I'm praying for more arrows, father.'

  'Please God the prayer's answered,' Father Hobbe said, then settled on the church's earthen floor. 'I had the devil's own task finding my way across the swamp, but I had a mind to talk with you. I have this feeling you've been avoiding me.'

  'Father!' Thomas said chidingly.

  'So here you are, and with a beautiful girl as well! I tell you, Thomas, if they forced you to lick a leper's arse you'd taste nothing but sweetness. Charmed, you are. They can't even hang you!'

  'They can,' Thomas said, 'but not properly.'

  'Thank God for that,' the priest said, then smiled. 'So how is the penance going?'

  'I haven't found the lance,' Thomas answered curtly.

  'But have you even looked for it?' Father Hobbe asked, then drew a piece of bread from his pouch. He broke the small loaf and tossed half to Thomas. 'Don't ask where I got it, but I didn't steal it. Remember, Thomas, you can fail in a penance and still have absolution if you have made a sincere effort.'

  Thomas grimaced, not at Father Hobbe's words, but because he had bitten down on a scrap of millstone grit caught in the bread. He spat it out. 'My soul isn't so black as you make it sound, Father.'

  'How would you know? All our souls are black.'

  'I've made an effort,' Thomas said, then found himself telling the whole tale of how he had gone to Caen and sought out Sir Guillaume's house, and how he had been a guest there, and about Brother Germain and the Cathar Vexilles, and about the prophecy from Daniel and the advice of Mordecai.

  Father Hobbe made the sign of the cross when Thomas talked of Mordecai. 'You can't take the word of such a man,' the priest said sternly. 'He may or may not be a good doctor, but the Jews have ever been Christ's enemy. If he is on anyone's side it must be the devil's.'

  'He's a good man,' Thomas insisted.

  'Thomas! Thomas!' Father Hobbe said sadly, then frowned for a few heartbeats. 'I have heard,' he said after a while, 'that the Cathar heresy still lives.'

  'But
it can't challenge France and the Church!'

  'You would know?' Father Hobbe asked. 'It reached out across the sea to steal the lance from your father, and you say it reached across France to kill Sir Guillaume's wife. The devil works his business in the dark, Thomas.'

  'There's more,' Thomas said, and told the priest the story that the Cathars had the Grail. The light of the burning cottages flickered on the walls and gave the seaweed-crowned image on the altar a sinister cast. 'I don't think I believe any of it,' Thomas concluded.

  'And why not?'

  'Because if the story is true,' Thomas said, 'then I am not Thomas of Hookton, but Thomas Vexille. I'm not English, but some half-breed Frenchman. I'm not an archer, but noble born.'

  'It gets worse,' Father Hobbe said with a smile. 'It means that you have been given a task.'

  'They're just stories,' Thomas said scornfully. 'Give me another penance, Father. I'll make a pilgrimage for you, I'll go to Canterbury on my knees if that's what you want.'

  'I want nothing of you, Thomas, but God wants a lot from you.'

  'Then tell God to choose someone else.'