The Ill-Made Knight (29 page)

Believe it or don’t, but tending them was so hard on me that burying Rob was like a rest. I dug – the soil was good, even in the trees. France is so rich – why can’t they govern themselves?

Heh. Mayhap we help with that.

I didn’t put him deep, but I was a good three hours at it. When I came back from the woods, Christopher was kneeling by the fire. He had four hares, each on a separate green stick, and a pot of warmed wine. It was a hot day.

‘The boy’s dead?’ he asked.

‘I buried him,’ I said. With those words, I realized that Richard, Sam, and John were doomed as well.

‘Let’s eat,’ he said. ‘Roads are full of French. No cavalry. I almost got caught – had to lie up.’ He shook his head. ‘This is all fucked up, you know that, right?’ His voice cracked a little.

‘We’ll make it,’ I said.

He looked at me. He was older than me, and for all his carping, he was a steady man. But just then, he needed me to tell him that everything was going to be all right.

‘We have food. There’s two of us, so we can keep watch. We can’t be more than a day from the English garrison at Poissy. Tomorrow I’ll send you—’

He just shook his head. ‘I’m not going back out there alone,’ he said. ‘The roads are covered in men and women. Peasants. Everywhere. I lay up in a little wood a mile north of here, listened to a man give a speech.’ He looked at me. ‘It’s a rebellion. They’re going to kill all the English and all the gentry.’ He shrugged. ‘I think they got Peter. I think they strung him up and opened his guts by the road. But I didn’t stop to be sure.’

‘We’ll need to take turns on watch,’ I said.

‘Why?’ He asked. ‘I mean, you and me, we can take what, five of the bastards? Better to die.’ He shook his head. ‘Like the end of the world. Maybe it is. Mayhap—’

I reached over and flicked the end of his nose.

‘Eh!’ he bridled. ‘No call for that!’

‘We’re not dead yet. Nor are our companions. Let’s do our best.’ Christ, I sounded pompous, even to me.

That was a long night. Christopher made his apologies and withdrew to his little fortress on the hill.

I sat by the fire with de Charny’s dagger and some tow, some lard and some powdered pumice. I meant to get the stain out of the blade. I knew I’d be up all night, and my head was doing some strange things.

Richard fouled himself and had to be cleaned. I suppose I could have left him. In fact, I thought about leaving him in his own dung. By the Virgin, I even thought of getting Goldie and riding away.

Instead, I cleaned him and dripped some warm rabbit broth into him.

John awoke and demanded food. He looked like a monster in the glow of the fire, his eyes wild, his long hair everywhere. I gave him a joint of hare and some broth – he vomited bile and sat suddenly, then rolled over and threw up everything he’d just eaten, before falling forward into it.

I cleaned him.

Sam sat up and looked at me. In a perfectly normal voice, he said, ‘I have the Plague, don’t I?’

I got up and went to him. Christopher had set the tents up like awnings, with one side lifted on poles, so the air could pass through easily and I could go from man to man. I could see them all from the fire. I went and knelt by him. ‘I think so,’ I admitted.

He shook his head. ‘I’s salted. Had it as a young’n. Ain’t right.’

That put the chill of pure fear into me.

‘You had a bad fall—’ I said.

But he was gone again, his eyes closed, his breathing coarse, like a man snoring.

John staggered to his feet – I assume with some notion of going somewhere to be sick – and vomited all over himself, then fell headlong across the fire. The burning coals galvanized him, and he leaped to his feet again before collapsing.

I poured water over him, but not until I’d found embers in the pitch darkness and put them together carefully, found bark and made up the fire again, adding twigs and small bits of oak.

Thank God it wasn’t raining. Thank
God.

I thought of Master Peter. Hiring me because I could start a fire.

‘What happened?’ asked Christopher out of the darkness.

‘John fell in the fire,’ I said.

Christopher came into the edge of the firelight. ‘Need . . . help?’ he asked.

‘John just threw up all over himself and then fell in the fire. Sam’s raving. Richard may be dead. I haven’t been to sleep—’ My voice was wild.

I tried to get control of myself.

Christopher grunted. ‘I’ll clean John,’ he said.

‘He has the Plague,’ I said.

Christopher came into the firelight and sat on his heels. ‘Maybe not,’ he said.

‘What do you mean?’ I asked.

He shrugged. ‘Sam doesn’t have a pustule on him, does he?’

I hadn’t checked in hours, but I looked – high and low, so to speak – while Christopher held a lit taper.

‘None,’ I said. ‘And he said he was salted.’

‘There you go, then.’ He looked at John. ‘John’s got something bad, but it’s in his guts.’

‘Rob died of Plague,’ I said. ‘I know what Plague looks like.’

He shrugged. ‘I’ll take my chance,’ he said.

There are many forms of courage.

When the sun rose, Christopher was on a pallet of ferns. He was hot all over and had swellings in his armpits. He lay there, saying ‘fuck’ over and over, then he was silent.

The shattering work came to an end. I made them as clean as I could. I burned what they had been wearing.

About noon, a dozen armed peasants came. I heard them, but I didn’t have the energy to get into my harness, so I walked to my bedroll – still roped tight – picked up my beautiful longsword and drew it.

They came down the forest trail. The leader had a good brigantine and a fine helmet. In fact, he had Peter’s helmet.

The men behind him had a wide variety of arms and equipment, but the last fellow wore the red and blue hood of the Paris Commune.

‘Stop where you are,’ I said. In French, of course.

The leader paused.

‘We have Plague,’ I said.

They all froze.

‘Fucking Englishman is just saying that,’ spat the third man in the line.

‘Want to come look?’ I said. I think my voice and my fatigue must have carried conviction.

‘May you all die of it,’ said the leader.

Then they walked away – quickly.

I drank the rest of the broth and ate the cold rabbit. Then I went to my bedroll and took out the cheese and sausage I had there and ate it all. I didn’t feel sick, which was a miracle.

Then I drank the wine I had. It wasn’t enough.

I cleaned them all and tried to give them a little white wine that Richard had.

Then I sat by the fire, polishing Sir Geoffrey’s dagger. When I couldn’t face that any more, I said my beads. The beads made a tiny, regular noise as I told them, almost like a weaver’s shuttle moving against the loom.

I prayed a long time. I lost myself in it.

I came out because Sam was asking for water. I had filled all the leather bottles, so I took him one and he drank deep. ‘Fever broke,’ he whispered. ‘Sweet saviour, I’m weak.’ His eyes met mine. ‘I want to make my confession,’ he whispered.

‘I’m no priest,’ I said.

A tiny smile flickered around his eyes. ‘Just go and fetch one for me, sir?’ he said.

I heard his confession. Like most of us, he’d gone through the commandments pretty thoroughly.

That’s between him and God.

The thing that did me a world of good is that as he spoke, his voice got stronger. I left him for a few minutes to hold Richard’s hand, and when I came back, he was up on one elbow.

‘Master William, I think I may stay in the vale of sin,’ he announced.

I wanted to kiss him.

In the morning, he was able to move around. He helped clean John and Christopher.

About noon, Christopher died.

I just sat by the fire for a while. ‘Is it the Plague? What the hell is this?’ I asked.

Sam just shook his head. ‘Soldiers get sick,’ he said. ‘I didn’t have the Plague, but Chris did. Look at him.’

He stank.

I carried him, wrapped in his cloak, and buried him by Rob. Something had tried to dig Rob up, but failed.

I spent time putting Chris just as deep.

You know how long it takes to dig a hole for a man?

I stopped twice to go back and check on the others. Sam was better each time, and by the third evening he was boiling water, setting out tapers and cleaning the camp.

On the third morning, Richard was better. John ate and didn’t throw it up.

We were two more days there.

I hadn’t lost a man in months of campaigning, and in four days I lost Peter, Rob and Chris.

We were thin when we rode on. Goldie had lost weight, but we now had enough horses – sad, but brutally necessary.

We rode along the Seine, riding as hard as my recuperating men could handle, and came to Poissy by evening. They made a long chalk of letting us in the gates, but in the end we satisfied them that we weren’t carrying Plague and that we were English. I put Richard and John into the charge of the nuns, and rode off with a potboy from the hospital as my page, and Sam, armed to the teeth, to find Charles of Navarre. The garrison was petrified by the peasants’ attacks – easy pillage had turned into hard duty. They weren’t even looking over the walls.

We crossed the river and rode north and east. Charles wasn’t hard to find – he was stringing up every peasant he found on the roads – and the trees laden with rotten fruit, sometimes fifty or a hundred in a row, are another of the beautiful memories I carry of that summer.

The second day, we found his army. Almost the first banner I saw was du Guesclin’s; near it was Sir John Hawkwood’s, and some other unlikely comrades – a Bourbon, a minor Ribercourt, a Scottish mercenary called Sir Robert Scot and Sir James Pipe. I didn’t know most of the knights, but their arms were all French, although I saw the black and white eagles of the Bourc Camus and gave his tents a wide birth.

Navarre’s army was just settling for the day. They were very well-organized – as they should have been, with a thousand professional soldiers from both sides as the core of the force. Navarre had almost the whole chivalry of the north under his banner. The Jacquerie had terrified the first estate, and the men of war were not amused.

Sir John Hawkwood received me like a prodigal son – the more so when I told him of my errand for Sir John Cheverston.

He smiled his thin-lipped smile and raised a silver cup, almost certainly the spoil of a church. ‘Here’s to a fine feat of arms, young William. I knew you had the makings of a knight.’

I shrugged and possibly even blushed. This praise was delivered in public, in front of forty men.

‘It was nothing – we took them by surprise.’ I shrugged.

Du Guesclin pushed through the crowd to me. ‘Were they armed? Awake?’ he asked.

I grinned. ‘Very much so, Sir Knight.’

He laughed. ‘Then the contest was fair. And before the eyes of half a thousand English knights, a fair deed of arms.’

He warmed my blood. I dismounted, gave my horse to my potboy and embraced du Guesclin. ‘What brings you here, messire? I have seen the trail of slime – or rather, the human fruit in the trees.’

Du Guesclin shrugged. ‘The
canaille
make war on us all – rape maidens, kill nobly born children. They are the common enemy, and my lord the Dauphin,’ he shrugged, ‘is not in the field.’

‘The Dauphin has found it more politic to leave us to fight the Jacques while he cowers in his mighty fortress.’ Hawkwood’s contempt was absolute.

‘I saw them on the way here. They wiped out an English garrison on the south of the river – burned two men alive on crosses.’ I shrugged. ‘I’ve seen our men do as much to them.’

Hawkwood nodded. ‘As have I. But if we let them feel their power – they’ll overturn the world order.’

Du Guesclin spat. ‘You have brought this on us, messire. So many good knights are dead—’

Hawkwood laughed. ‘Ah, messire, you are better born than I – a mere English yeoman. You should know better than that. The Jacques are out for your blood because you have failed to defend them. I heard a tale a month back – pardon me, it does no credit to a French knight. A deputation of wealthy peasants came to a lord not far from here. My men had just burned their barns. They went to their lord and asked him if he would go and fight – with my men.’ Hawkwood smiled a grim smile. ‘He explained that he stood no chance at all of defeating a hundred Englishmen with just he and his son.’

Du Guesclin, his friend de Carriere and a dozen other French knights all nodded along.

‘And the leader of the peasants said, “We don’t care whether you win or lose, my lord. As we owe you our tillage whether it rains or the sun shines, so you owe us your very best effort in our defence, whether you win or lose. For this is the obligation of
l’homme armé
to the men who till the soil.’ Hawkwood looked around.

The French knights were silent.

‘And the lord said, “But we will fail. And die.”’ Hawkwood laughed. ‘And the leader of the peasants said, “Then go die, my lord. That is all we ask.”’

Du Guesclin was angry. His shoulders were tense under his blue jupon and I could see the muscles in his neck. ‘This does not justify the wholesale murder of my class,’ he said.

Hawkwood shrugged. ‘To the Jacques, it does. You have failed them.’

Du Guesclin turned on his heel. ‘We do not need to stay and listen to this.’ He walked away, taking a mass of Frenchmen with him. A few paces away, he whirled. ‘If you love them so much, why not fight for them? Eh? Why fight with us?’

‘You’re paying,’ Hawkwood laughed. ‘You’re paying me and a thousand other Englishmen to kill the peasants who pay the taxes that maintain you.’

Du Guesclin didn’t turn around. He walked away and his men followed him.

I winced.

‘That was impolitic,’ I hesitated. ‘I like him.’

Hawkwood grimaced as if he’d been hit. ‘Do you ever look at the blood, the dead peasants, the wrecked villages, the burned barns, and wonder what it’s all for?’ he asked.

I looked at the ground. ‘All the time,’ I admitted.

Hawkwood nodded. His jaw jutted slowly, as it did when he was moved by great emotion. ‘It’s our living, and never forget that. They are amateurs. They are not like us.’ He shook his head. ‘But sometimes . . . I think it is all worthwhile if we destroy them. As individuals, many are fine men, but as a whole . . .’ He shook his head.