The Ill-Made Knight (45 page)

My Prince had never spoken to me so long, or so fairly, and I was almost unable to move.

‘And Monsieur de Chatillon and Monsieur de Guesclin are your
ardent
admirers.’ The Prince leaned a little closer. Not for nothing was he called the black Prince. He was at the edge of anger, and his scowl was dark. The Captal cleared his throat. ‘Your Grace,’ he said chidingly.

‘John, I cannot have him,’ the Prince said very distinctly.

I flushed.

‘Sir John did not let go my hand. ‘Your Grace,’ he began.

‘I detest to be made to appear ungracious to my vassals.’ He took my hand. ‘Master Gold, you deserve better by me, but while you hold the determined dislike of a peer of France, I cannot have you by my side in a tournament that has enough political difficulties to start a new war.’ His brow clouded over as fast as an April day in London. ‘John – enough. Master Gold, whatever passed between you and a Princess of the royal house of France, the rumour that sticks to you precludes your direct employment by the crown of England. And you have the reputation of a brigand and a routier.’

I stood perfectly still, trying to make the words go away.

‘Perhaps in a year or two, something can be done. In the meantime, I imagine that Sir John will provide you with work.’ He inclined his head.

I bowed. Should I have barked? Spat? Damned him for an ungrateful Prince?

Perhaps I should have asked, ‘Who gives us our orders?’

But I bowed deeply and withdrew.

The Captal clamped my arm in his and pulled me, literally, through a curtain. I knew where I was – this was the side-table where the squires and cooks prepared meats for table.

The Captal looked at me – that look, again; the one that said he was sorry for the injustice of it – but he was going about his business.

Sir John Chandos put a hand on my shoulder. ‘I’m sorry, lad. I thought, after du Guesclin spoke up for you, that you were made.’ He gave a little sniff. ‘I’ll send you word. You’d best go.’

Tom appeared from the torchlight and took my arm.

I found it hard to see.

I was crying.

I was living in a tent – I couldn’t afford an inn in Calais. I went to my tent, and Perkin, who had already heard the news through the endless network of servants, handed me a cup of wine.

Before I could be drunk, du Guesclin appeared. He came straight in through the flap and caught me sobbing.

Monsieur, have you ever been offered all you want? And then had it taken away?

When I left Emile, it was to fight in the lists as a gentleman beside my Prince, wearing her favour. Win or lose, I would have been made. If the Prince didn’t place me in his retinue, with steady, honorable pay, then some great lord would have done so. Perhaps even Oxford or Lancaster.

In an hour, because of an ugly rumour started by a man whose life I once saved, that was gone. And yet, while I wallowed in it, I also saw that like Sir Gawain, I was the author of my own failure. I lay with Emile, and earned the pettish hatred of this man, who in that hour, I hated more than I hated the Bourc.

Du Guesclin came into my tent. Perkin poured him wine.

‘I’m sorry, my lord. I am unmanned.’ I was helpless to talk.

Du Guesclin shrugged. ‘They are all much alike, Princes,’ he said, and drank some wine. ‘Mine thinks I’m a routier, too.’

In the end, we played chess. I’d like to say we spoke of love, or chivalry, but instead, he offered to sell me a good horse at a reasonable price.

I was moving a piece, and my glance fell on Emile’s ring.

‘Would you take a letter – to a friend?’ I asked.

Du Guesclin’s eyes went to my ring. ‘You ask a great deal,’ he said, and grinned.
‘Par dieu
, monsieur, if it were not for the great love I bear you, I might try to know your sweet friend the better myself.’ He leaned back. ‘I will take you her letter. And any other you send me.’

I leaped to my feet. ‘By Christ, monsieur, you are a true friend.’

Du Guesclin shook his head. ‘For an English routier, you are a good man.’

I warmed my hands on the brazier and wrote Emile a note.

Madame
,

The writer of this missive wishes you every felicity, every comfort in your delivery and every hope for
. . . I paused. Women – young women – died like flowers in childbirth. What I wanted to wish her was
life
. I stared at my small square of parchment – where did Perkin find these things? . . .
every hope for a speedy recovery for mother and child
.

A sudden chill prevents the writer from paying his devotions in person. Be assured, my sweet friend, that the writer will think of no other until
. . .

Until what? Until I earned so much notoriety that I was just another routier? A hired killer? A collector of
patis
? What other endgame was there?

By God, I was determined to find one.

. . . Until your devoted servant is able to come to your side
.

I finished it.

Du Guesclin held out his hand. ‘Let me see it before you seal it,’ he said gruffly. ‘If I’m to carry my death warrant—’

‘Is d’Herblay so dangerous?’ I asked.

‘He represents a certain . . . kind.’ Du Guesclin shrugged. ‘He has money, and the ear of the Dauphin.’

As I finished folding my note, I heard a stir. I had a moment of hope that it might be Sir John Chandos, coming to tell me that all was forgiven? At some level, I wondered that the Prince hadn’t even mentioned our original transgression, the Three Foxes. Forgotten? I put wax on it and jammed my seal into the wax.

As if summoned in a passion play, Master Chaucer poked his head into my tent.

‘Pax?’ he asked. He was parchment white – afraid of me, and little wonder. The beeswax candles and the oil lamps together couldn’t give him a ruddy glow, he was so pale.

‘Monsieur du Guesclin?’ I said with a bow. ‘Master Chaucer, an English squire. Who you may recall.’

The two men eyed each other warily.

Du Guesclin palmed my note, sealed and folded a dozen times. He bowed. ‘I must go prepare for the lists,’ he said. ‘I remain sorry that I will not face you there.’

‘Monsieur may be satisfied that in the fullness of time, we will meet on some field or other,’ I said.

We embraced. Chaucer watched us like a falcon, and when du Guesclin was gone, he shook his head.

‘But you’ll gut each other with poleaxes,’ he said.

‘Have you met Guillaume de Machaut?’ I asked.

Chaucer paused. ‘Yes,’ he admitted, as if I’d dragged it from him. For once in our relationship, I had him off guard.

‘I met him at Reims. He impressed me deeply. And I thought of you.’ I shrugged.

Chaucer was dressed to ride, in a short wool gown and tall boots. ‘Sir John Chandos is sending me to Hawkwood,’ he said. ‘He said that you would escort me.’

He turned to face me and our eyes met.

‘The Prince employs Hawkwood, then? Unofficially?’ I asked.

He looked away. ‘Not my damned business to answer.’

‘I’m just a routier?’ I put in again.

Chaucer bit his lip. ‘You know the score as well as I do.’ He turned away, his nerves showing. ‘Damn it, Gold! I didn’t rat you out to the Prince in the first place! In fact, I tried to make it better.’

I shrugged. ‘There’s a lot of dirty water under that particular bridge,’ I assured him. ‘I’ll escort him. I assume that Sir John Chandos expects me to take service with Hawkwood?’ I paused. ‘Even in peacetime?’

Chaucer set his face. ‘It’s a dirty business, Gold, and no mistake.’

My name was struck from the rolls of the lists at Calais. I collected my borrowed armour and the clothes my love had bought me, and I rode east, looking for Sir John Hawkwood. I had Chaucer at my side, and Perkin, and I picked up almost a dozen English archers in Calais. They knew which way the winds were blowing. The King was selling his garrisons in France to the King of France, and when that happened there’d be no employment for archers at all.

The end of the war was forcing change, and some of those changes were hard on the professional soldiers. The King of France had to hand over more than a hundred castles to the King of England, but the King of England had to hand another sixty to the King of France. The problem both men faced is that of these almost 200 castles, routiers and brigands held two-thirds of them. They sat in all the vital castles and towns, collecting
patis
and fighting each other, looting the countryside and taking what they wanted. Some of them flew the flag of France, some the flag of England, and some of Navarre. The treaty included them, but no one had asked their opinion.

Sir John Hawkwood had a company in his own name, operating from a pair of castles in the Auvergne country in the very centre of France. They flew the flag of Navarre, and they served no interest but their own.

Sir John welcomed me with open arms. He spoke for two hours with Master Chaucer, who rode away again. Then he inspected my English archers and embraced me as warmly as du Guesclin had.

‘About time, lad. I’ll make your fortune,’ he said.

And that was my new goal. A fortune. And the settlement of a certain dispute with the Comte d’Herblay.

Richard Musard returned to Sir John in late September. He’d gone to Avignon with an English knight on an official embassage – and returned to Calais to find that he, too, was officially repudiated by the Prince. The Captal told him where to find me, and despite our shared anger, we were delighted to be reunited. We drank a great deal and he admired my clothes, which were still well-preserved at that point. There was very little fighting that summer. Everyone was waiting, on edge, to see what the King of England would do. Whether peace would be signed.

Richard had John Hughes with him, and I had Perkin – the last remnants of our former lances. The rest of the men had melted away – most of the Hainaulters had gone to other companies, and Marcus, who could write, sent to us inviting us to join the German Albert Sterz in pillaging the north of France, but Sir John offered us steady employment and a home. Besides, most of his men-at-arms were English, and men like John Thornbury and Thomas Leslie kept the company well-ordered, if not prosperous. De la Motte joined us from a Gascon company, with news of the Bourc Camus, who was rising in favour with the Prince.

One of the developments of that autumn was that the moneylenders slowed their flow of cash to us to a trickle. It was clear that peace was to be signed. We were not going to get wages from anyone. Some of the men left for Brittany, the last active theatre not covered by the treaty.

There were rumours that we might get employment in Spain, or Italy. There was a papal order that all routiers prepare to go on crusade.

So with no credit, I had to bear the expenses of a war horse, two pack horses, a squire, four archers and my own food. Perkin had had a war horse, which he lost when he was taken outside Reims. As my status fell, his did, as well.

In the autumn of 1360, it looked as if I was to have
nothing
. Richard complained of my temper, and Perkin tended to watch me out of the corner of his eye – I had hit him several times.

I was glad that Emile was not there to see me. I folded my red and black finery away and went back to my old clothes and my old ways. I even prepared a letter – a letter full of self pity, I promise you – to tell her to forget me, as I was nothing but a bandit.

In late autumn, a man came with a retinue. He bore no arms, but I knew him. Chaucer. And John Hughes knew the archers.

‘King’s men,’ he said smugly, in his Cumbrian accent. ‘Bodyguard archers.’ He pointed them out. ‘Sam was one of ’em, for a while. Paid by the King, or the Prince. The best.’

I thought that Chaucer would stay, but he was ahorse in our yard again in the time it took me to lace my doublet. I ran down in my hose and Hawkwood caught me at the base of the stairs.

‘Better hurry, Master Gold,’ he said. ‘Your friend isn’t staying.’

It was cold. Steam rose off the horses, and their nostrils vented smoke like dragons.

Richard had one of Chaucer’s hands in his when I went out.

‘I’m for London,’ Chaucer said. ‘I’m done with playing courier.’ He smiled his old, sly smile. ‘I’ve found something better.’

‘I’m glad someone has,’ I said. ‘Can I trouble you to take a letter to my sister?’

He looked at his archers, who shrugged.

‘I could do wi’ a cup o’ cheer,’ said the big bastard by Chaucer’s right side. He swung a leg over.

I ran into my corner of the common room, where most of the men-at-arms slept, and I wrote Mary a letter – a long letter.

I told her most of the truth – of what I was and who I served. I told her that I had paid a little less than two thirds of her dowry, and that the rest might have to wait, as I was short on war. I smiled when I wrote that. I smiled to think of her.

I folded it, sealed it and addressed it care of Clerkenwell.

Then gave it to Chaucer. He finished a jack of wine and poured more into his flask. ‘Clerkenwell?’ he asked, looking at the address. ‘Damn, Gold, you make me feel as if I was home already.’

‘Will you be back?’ I asked.

He looked at Richard, and then at me. ‘Not unless I have no other choice.’ He looked both ways. ‘What they are doing now . . . ?’ He shook his head.

‘If you see my sister, will you write to me?’ I asked.

Chaucer smiled. ‘You kept me alive a few times,’ he admitted. ‘I’ll write you about your sister.’

We bowed to each other, and he embraced Richard. Not me.

Then he rode away.

It was two days after Chaucer came and went that Sir John summoned us to the great hall, and we sat at trestle tables.

He came out in a gown, like a lord. ‘Fear not,’ he announced. ‘We have employ.’

Richard shouted, ‘Where?’ into the cheers.

Sir John laughed. ‘Provence,’ he said, and Richard frowned.

A great deal happened in a few weeks and I may not get the order of events the right way round, but the way I remember it, the first thing that happened was that Richard came to the room we shared. The word room is far too grandiose and makes one imagine a closed bed and a fine chimney, when what we had was the slates of the roof at the level of our necks so we had to stoop all the time, no window, and a space a little smaller than a soldier’s tent, which we shared with our armour, our spare saddlery, our clothes, and a woman or two with her own basket of goods.