My favourite, of course, was our own Earl of Oxford. He was a great lord, but he had the common touch. He spoke to the older archers as if they were comrades, not inferiors, and he ruffled my hair and called me ‘Judas’, which may sound harsh, but it was better than ‘bare arse’, which is what most of the men called me after the river incident. We were in his contingent; Peter was one of his sworn men, and we all wore the Oxford badge on our red and yellow livery.
Like many boys, I was in a constant state of anxiety about my status. Technically I was a cook, not a soldier, and I was worried I would be left behind — either when the army marched or when the day of battle dawned. By blessed St George, what a pleasure it might be to be left behind for a battle! Bah. I lie. If you are a man-of-arms, it is in arms you must serve, and that was my choice. But fear of being left behind made me work very hard, both as a cook and as an apprentice soldier. I was big, even then, and I would walk out into the fields below the castle to cut thistles with my cheap sword, or to fence against a buckler held by my friend the cook.
One day — I think we’d been in France about two weeks, and the war horses were getting the sheen back in their coats after the crossing — I was cutting at the buckler, and Abelard was cutting at mine. This is a good training technique that every boy in London knows by the time he is nine years old, but I’ve never see it on the Continent. You cut at your companion’s buckler and he, in turn, cuts at yours. The faster you go, the more like a real fight it can be, but relatively safe, unless your opponent is a fool or a madman. The point is that you only hit the opponent’s shield.
We were swashing and buckling faster and faster, circling like men in a real fight. Abelard was two fingers taller than me and broader, but fast. He was trying to keep his buckler away from me, and I was trying to close the distance.
Suddenly there was the Earl of Oxford and half a dozen men-at-arms with hawks on their wrists. The Earl motioned to Master Abelard, who came and held his stirrup, and the earl dismounted.
‘So, Master Judas,’ he said. ‘Those who live by the sword will die by the sword, or so it says in the Gospels.’
I bowed and stammered. I’d like to say that I held my head up and said something sensible or dashing, but the truth is that I stared at my bare feet — my dirty bare feet — and mumbled.
‘He’s very good, my lord.’ Abelard didn’t seem as tongue-tied as I was. It was also the first time anyone had told me I was good with a sword. I’d had suspicions, but I didn’t know.
The Earl took Abelard’s buckler and drew a riding sword from his saddle. ‘Let’s see,’ he said.
I bowed and managed to stammer out that he did me too much honour — in French.
The Earl paused. ‘That was nicely said. Are you gently born?’
I bowed. ‘My father was a man-at-arms,’ I said. ‘My mother-’ I must have blushed, because several of the men-at-arms laughed and one shook his head. ‘No better than she needed to be, I suppose.’ He laughed.
It must be hard to be bastard born. Luckily, I’m not, so I felt no resentment. And, praise to God, I was intelligent enough not to claim to be a distantly related de Vere then and there.
De Vere waved his sword. ‘Show me some sport, young Judas.’ He stepped in and cut almost straight up into the edge of my buckler. For a straight, simple blow, it was shrewd, powerful and deceptive all in one.
I made a simple overhand blow, and he pulled the buckler back the way boys do when they make the swashbuckle into a game. I stepped with my left foot and caught it as it moved.
Then I ducked away to the left, moving forward instead of back — another trick London apprentices use to deceive each other. Backing away is one way of fooling an opponent — closing suddenly is a better one.
He stepped back and cut from under his buckler on the left side, again catching my buckler perfectly with a strong, crisp blow.
We were close, almost body to body, so I sprang back and wind-milled my cheap sword, cutting the steel boss on Abelard’s buckler with a snack. I pivoted, he pivoted, and he thrust — faster than a striking snake — and caught my buckler as I pulled it back. We were going quite fast by then, and if you are a swordsman, you will know that I had a complicated choice to make in half a heartbeat. We were close, and if I stepped forward and he did the same, I’d miss my blow. If I sidestepped and he stepped back, I’d miss my blow.
I was fast when I was young, so I stepped slightly off the line that we were moving on — circling a quarter step, you might call it — then passed forward fast and cut straight up — his blow thrown back at him.
Snick. A smart blow into the lower rim. I was quite proud of it, as he stepped forward too late, trying to get the buckler inside my blow. I had scored a real hit on a trained man. I slipped to the right with another turning step that John had taught me, pulled back the buckler, and the Earl’s counter-cut-
Missed the buckler altogether and cut my left arm above the wrist.
At first all I felt was the cold, and the flat impact of the blow on my forearm. I laughed, because any hit to the body loses your companion the bout.
Then the pain hit. It was not a sharp pain, but rather a dull pain, and when I glanced down, I was terrified to see the amount of blood coming out of the cut-a long, straight cut, almost parallel to my arm, from just above the wrist to the elbow.
In hindsight, friends, I was the luckiest boy alive. The cut landed along the length of the bone, and the Earl, a trained man, pulled much of it, no doubt in horror. But at the time, all I saw and felt was the welling blood and the pain.
He was with me in a moment, his hand around my waist. ‘Damn me — your pardon, boy.’
Abelard had his own doublet unlaced, and now he pulled his shirt over his head and wrapped my arm before I could see any more. The white linen turned red. I sat down. Men and horses moved around, and I had trouble breathing. I remember looking out to sea and wondering if I would die. Then my vision narrowed. My mouth began to taste of salt, as if I was going to vomit. One of the Earl’s men-at-arms had a horn cup of wine, which he held to my lips. He was ten years older than me, round faced, with twinkling eyes.
‘Drink this, lad,’ he said.
I must have been dazed as I said something hot, like, ‘I’m no lad! I’m William Gold!’
He smiled. ‘I’m John,’ he said. ‘I meant no offence to such a puissant warrior.’
That’s all I remember. If I passed out, which I doubt, it wasn’t for long. It was my first wound, and I took it from Thomas de Vere, Earl of Oxford. Nothing better could have happened for my prospects, because he was a debonair, chivalrous knight, and by wounding me, he felt he was in my debt somehow. The world is full of men-at-arms who would have cut my arm and told me it was my own fault. In many ways, that wound was the foundation of my career. The joke is, it was so slight it didn’t even leave a scar.
The life of the young is never a straightforward progression. So just after the Earl wounded me and his men-at-arms began to speak well of me, with immediate consequences for their squires, someone came to the army from London. I never knew who it was, but I think it was yet another squire from the Earl of Warwick’s retinue. Whoever the bastard was, he spread the word that I had stolen a valuable dagger and been branded.
Well, you are all soldiers. There’s nothing soldiers hate more than a thief — even though, if the truth be told, we’re all thieves, even the most chivalrous among us, eh? We kill men and take their armour; we loot houses and take convoys; we steal on a scale no poor man could imagine.
Aye, but we despise a thief.
Consequently, the squires, after a week of forced respect, had a new reason to hate me. And they were loud. They harassed me morning and night. I was ‘thief’ at campfires and ‘thief’ in the horse lines. Men who had liked me stopped speaking to me, and men who had been indifferent cheered when three of the squires caught me and beat me.