The Ill-Made Knight (17 page)

And that was the Battle of Poitiers.

Paris 1357–59

Paris? Paris was . . . astonishing. Horrible. And damned confusing. When the French tried to rid themselves of their King. Oh, I was there.

After Poitiers, nothing went as we expected. I spent enough time with the Earl of Oxford and the Prince after the battle to know what
they
expected, and I was present – carving meat – when Sir Neil Loring came to Bordeaux from King Edward of England. He told us that all we had to do was hold the King of France and wait for all France to fall in our laps like ripe fruit.

But it didn’t happen.

What happened was much worse – for France and for us.

First, Paris declared itself to be the government. Ah,
mes frères
, that’s purest crap, but it’s true nonetheless. Before Poitiers, there were quite a few Frenchmen – nobles, merchants, peasants and churchmen – who thought King Jean was anything but ‘the good’, and after the battle, such voices were loudest, and instead of ransoming him, they as much as declared they could govern better without him.

Truth be told, he’d failed them. He’d never beat us in the field, and now he’d failed, lost and been captured. With him went, well, the government, eh? Dead or captured. His cowardly son, the Dauphin, slipped away and tried to govern, but Paris wasn’t having it, and when the parliament was summoned, they voted no money for ransoming the King of France and damned little for war.

Perhaps you remember, messieurs? Or do they tell a different story in Hainault? I’m damned sure the French tell a nicer story now. Not one about how they ate each other while we nibbled at the edges.

Paris ended in the hands of a mercer, who made himself the tyrant. He was named Etienne Marcel and, after a lot of blood and words, he emerged as the leader of a party. Charles of Navarre – you must know that name. I’m no follower of his, by the Virgin. Navarre was the son-in-law of the King of France and, despite that, the most treacherous, conniving bastard France ever produced. He was also the head of a party, even when in prison for treason, where King John had put him. He was put there because he and his brother gave us, the English, much of Normandy. When King John was taken at Poitiers, Charles of Navarre – still in prison, mind you – began to talk, and people began to listen.

I had a friend, a French knight – you’ll hear more about him – who used to say that Charles of Navarre was so poisonous he left a trail of slime wherever he crawled. Ha! Be your own judge.

Navarre’s brother, Philippe, wasn’t in prison, and he signed a treaty with King Edward, and the war moved out of Gascony and up north to Brittany and Normandy. Navarre handed over the keys to Normandy, will he, nil he, and every free companion – every man not bound by a feudal oath or retinue pay – picked up his harness, borrowed money from the Italians and headed north, where the ransoms were rich.

I was in love with being a gentleman, which I was, of sorts. In the big, rambling, tumbledown archbishop’s palace in Bordeaux, the Prince kept great state, and I was one of many squires who attended on him personally. I was loosely attached to the Earl of Oxford, who, himself, went back and forth between England and Gascony freely. No one provided me wages, so I had to scrounge in a distinctly ungentlemanly way to maintain myself in a tiny garret room under the eaves of a private house. But it was dry and warm.

Bordeaux became a rich town overnight, both as the Prince’s seat of government in Gascony, as the entrepôt for the sale of all that loot, as the banking centre handling the ransoms of half of France’s nobility and, of course, as the centre of the English wine trade. There was a great deal of money moving about the town, and it was annoying to be poor. At the same time, the town was full of refugees and peasants, displaced from their homes by the war, and they were fleeced like sheep, and sometimes bought and sold like them, too.

Well, I can make a thousand excuses.

It started innocently enough – my landlord raised the rent of my tiny room, and I was in the street with too much armour and too little cash. Then and there I considered following Sir John to Normandy. He was taking his leave of the Earl of Oxford to go with Seguin de Badefol and Petit Mechin to see what ransoms they could gain in the north. But it was autumn, and I had released my own capture on parole to collect the gold for his ransom: 450 ducats. A Genoese offered me 100 ducats flat on the ransom – in cash. I was sorely tempted, as I wasn’t eating very often or well, and the high point of my week was waiting on the Prince’s table after Mass on Sundays and feast days, because with the other squires I could eat the pickings, which were richer than most food I could buy. I am not ashamed to say that sometimes I would fill a leather bag with food – roast peacock, roast beef, messes of rice with saffron – anything that the cooks would let me take.

The same evening that Sir John offered to take me to Normandy as a man-at-arms, he invited me to dinner at an inn called the Three Foxes. It’s still there.

I loved that place – my first castle. It was built where two streets emptied into a square, and the inn itself was laid out in a triangle, which narrowed as the two streets converged. It had some glass windows in brilliantly mullioned panels, and beautifully carved woodwork – carved, I’m given to understand, by an artist who could not pay his tab.

I had no duties that day, so after a contemplative walk across the river, where spitting over the edge of the bridge was considered a proper gentlemanly pursuit, I assure you, I searched my empty purse – a habit – and was properly amazed to find a half a silver bit wedged under the rivet that held the strap on the outside of the flap. I stood there like a fool, staring at the value of a night’s lodging.

A girl of perhaps my own age, if one is generous, approached along the bridge, dragging her sister, who was a year younger. Both were pretty, in a plain, wholesome French way, and dressed in smocks that did them no justice.

‘Suck your cock, messire?’ said the older girl. She smiled prettily. In fact, for a prostitute, she was the most cheerful creature I’d met with. ‘My sister’s a virgin. You can have her for. . .’ She paused, my little merchant. ‘A gold ecu.’ She looked at me expectantly.

I must pause to mention that apparently I looked like a lord. I confess that I spent my loot – and I had some – from Poitiers on clothes and whores and their clothes – and some wine. I did not, for example, travel home to see my sister, or send her money. I thought I’d send her money when the ransom came in. I agonized about it, and as the weeks dragged on, I grew despondent. And despondent
men sin
. When you feel you are bad – well then.

‘An ecu for your sister’s ecu?’ I asked. I thought I was quite witty.
Par dieu
, possibly that’s the only reason I still remember this episode,
mes amis
.

She shrugged, unimpressed. ‘Well?’ she asked.

‘If I had any silver at all, I would buy the both of you dinner,’ I said. It was my turn to shrug. I held up my half of a silver penny. ‘This is all the cash I have, sister.’

She grinned. ‘It would buy all three of us dinner,’ she allowed.

‘I have a dinner engagement with some gentlemen,’ I admitted.

She frowned.

While we were flirting over money, there was an altercation at the south end of the bridge. I thought it was merely traffic, as the narrow streets of Bordeaux were never built for the traffic the English brought, but it was worse. It was a crowd. A mob.

Mobs formed quickly. The war and the Black Death had robbed us all of any pretence of common morality. We fornicated, and God did not care much. We killed each other – you know, eh? The two go wonderfully well together. Sin and sin. Murder and fornication. If you wish to understand my peers, know this: we were killers because of the Black Death.

The mob was made up of poor men, and they had a Jew. And some sort of African – black as pitch.

I’ll be honest, I want to tell the truth, messires. Had it just been a Jew, I might have let him die. I’d like to think I might have tried to save him, because Our Lady was a Jew, and Jews, despite what the Dominicans say, are people just like you or me, and if you deny it, I will cheerfully prove my assertion on your body with that sword right there. No takers? The ecumenical conference is over, gentles.

But the black man – I’d seen him at the palace. He was a big, pleasant fellow called Richard Musard, and men called him ‘The Black Squire’. Like me, he lived in the half-world, neither lord nor peasant. Men said he’d been a slave.

Either way, he was one of mine – whatever mine were.

The two men were tied to heavy wooden boards. I assume they were to be burned.

The two girls froze.

‘Get behind me,’ I said as kindly as I could. See, I went to hell from kindness!

Bah, don’t believe it.

At any rate, I handed the older girl my silver penny. ‘Run and eat,’ I said. ‘Meet me at the Three Foxes after evensong and you can work off the meal.’

She smiled. ‘Pleasant enough, messire.’ She took her sister by the hand, kirtled up her skirts and ran.

The crowd started up the span of the bridge.

I drew my sword. It’s worth noting that I wore my beautiful longsword all the time. And as a squire in royal service – even unpaid – I had every right to wear it. All the time.

When I drew it, I put myself above the crowd.

A knight carries justice in his scabbard.

‘Halt,’ I yelled. My adolescent voice was against me. My shout was more like a squeak.

The sword was loud enough, though.

The men at the front shuffled to a stop, while the men behind pressed them forward.

‘Halt!’ I shouted again. I pointed at the black man. ‘That man is a royal squire, and you will all die if you do not let him go.’

There were seventy or eighty men, a handful of hags, and more people gathering every minute.

I doubt they heard me. When you confront a crowd, you need to act quickly and decisively, and you must speak the same way.

‘Fuck your royals and their fucking taxes,’ roared one emaciated farmer at the front. He was almost speechless with rage and something else – something a crowd brings to men.

I cut him down. I knew how to use my point to open a man’s guts, and I was too fast for him. He fell to his knees on the bridge, looking at his intestines.

And I put my sword’s point into the chest of the next man in the crowd. ‘Want to die?’ I asked.

The farmer whimpered once and died at my feet. I killed him to quiet the crowd. No other reason. Just so you understand.

The fellow pressing against my sword spat in my face, so I cut him in the neck, and he pitched forward, spouting blood.

Now
they flinched back from me.

I walked towards them. I had the upper hand and, like any other bully, I revelled in it. They backed away, crouching like the
canaille
they were, and then they began to run like whipped dogs.

I cut Musard off his log, and gave him my rondel in case they came again, then I cut the Jew free.

He hugged himself a few times, pulled his beard and, of all things, smiled.

Smiled.

He bowed. ‘Suleyman Bashid, at your service,’ he said, bowing, with a hand on his heart.

Good Christ – he lent money to the Prince. The crowd had been about to kill one of the Prince’s tax farmers and one of his servants.

Musard was as pale as old ashes, and he shook for a moment. Hell, I shook for a moment. Then he embraced me, and he was a big man.

‘By the lord our God, I thought this son of Israel and I were dead men, and that as barbarously as could be done.’ He was shaking.

‘Let’s get you away,’ I said.

‘Suleyman was due at the palace before vespers,’ Musard said.

I walked them back across the bridge, and right to the ruined brick gates to the palace courtyard, where a pair of belted knights sat in a shelter with fifteen men-at-arms day and night – the Prince’s guard, all in black with white ostrich plumes on their chests. I aspired to be one of them some day. Sir John derided them and said that real men-at-arms spent their days fighting, not watching the Prince eat.

Sir John Blankford received Musard and Bashid, paid me a thousand compliments and gave me a rag to wipe my sword clean. I still had it in my hand. I had rather hoped the Jew might reward me with something a little harder than his handshake, but I was to be disappointed. So I bowed to the knights and made my way back across the bridge, watching the corners and alleys carefully. I’d killed enough men by then to know that the two I’d just put in the mud had brothers, sons and cousins who might want me dead.

I made the Three Foxes in time, and Seguin de Badefol was sitting with Sir John, one of the younger Albrets, and Bertucat, known to everyone as the Bourc Camus.

Sir John rose to his feet and took my hand. The Gascons all grinned.

‘It’s the little cook,’ barked the Bourc. His eyes glittered. ‘What are you making for us tonight?’

When you are sixteen, such jibes seem to have real meaning, real intent to harm. In fact, with that mad bastard, I suspect he did intend harm, but I was too on edge.

I sat on a stool and sent the boy for a piece of tow and some oil.

Sir John ordered a pitcher of wine, a joint of beef and some bread and gravy. Two women, as hard in their way as the bread was in its way, came to serve our table. The Gascons fondled them – they appeared to appreciate the rough wooing with equal enthusiasm, which is to say none at all.

I felt uncomfortable.

They were all good men-at-arms, but I felt I was with criminals, not men of birth who sought glory and honour. I knew these men. I knew the Prince and his men.

I was no fool, messieurs. Sir John Chandos had the luxury of being courteous because he had manors and peasants to maintain him, and royal favour, and Sir John Hawkwood had his sword. It made them different men. But I aspired then, as I aspire now, to the status of knighthood, like de Charny.

Sir John waited until I’d eaten – I confess I ate a great deal – then leaned across the table. ‘Your health, my young friend.’