I took what precautions I could, but I couldn’t hide for ever. We were still in Gascony, but I wore my sword all the time, and my jack when I could get away with it, and I did more work on horseback than any other boy my age.
Richard Beauchamp watched me like a hawk watched a rabbit.
I’d like to sound brave, but I was terrified, and the waiting made it worse. I was recovering from two broken ribs and a number of other, lesser injuries, and I was tired of pain. Pain wears you down — pain when you lie down hurts affects sleep, pain when you are awake affects your work — and lying on the ground makes everything worse.
The rapid march had seemed so decisive, and all the raw men like me thought it presaged a battle. We truly were fools — all the old archers of twenty-five said we might march all summer and merely burn a castle or two, but we were in a constant state of excitement. So every day that we awoke under the ancient, mouldering walls of Bergerac and had no orders was a day of torment. The speculation ran wild. We were going to await the King, from England. We were going to fight Armagnac. We would march home. The King of France was coming for us.
Nothing happened. And with the waiting came increased work, because foraging grew harder every day. Each day we had to ride farther to find wood, to ‘buy’ provisions from well-armed, well-warned peasants who hated us. Supposedly, we were their army, but ask a peasant who’s just had all his winter meat stolen how he feels about his protectors.
It was the fourth or fifth day of waiting, and I was out with Abelard, looking for food. We came to a farmstead with a dozen outbuildings and we could hear screaming.
The peasant was dead. He’d been prosperous, and he was lying face down in his own yard with a spear through him.
Abelard’s face grew hard. ‘I mislike this,’ he said. ‘The Prince hangs men for this. Let’s be away.’
Still he hesitated. If the peasant was dead, his whole farm — a very rich farm — was open to us.
You know how war is, messieurs?
I was learning very quickly.
Abelard dismounted in the yard, and I’ll give him this, he went to see the peasant and tried his body, but the man was dead.
Peter went towards the nearest barn — a great stone barn that two men could have held against an army.
I went towards the sound of the screams.
Around the side of the house I saw the horses, and I knew them immediately. I recognized Richard Beauchamp’s horse and I knew Tom Amble’s, too. Both squires. The other horses were archers’ rounceys like mine.
It has always been one of my virtues — or vices, whichever you like — that when I’m afraid I go forward. I saw their horses and I heard the screams, and I went forward.
One of the archers was raping a middle-aged woman.
She was screaming, and the other archer was mocking her.
The two squires weren’t even watching. They were eating a ham, consuming it with the lust only a sixteen-year-old boy can bring to eating.
I stood frozen for perhaps as long as it took my heart to beat three times.
What is it that makes a knight?
I ran forward and I kicked the rapist — in the head. My feet were lightly shod, but I put him down.
The other archer was a Gascon — not a big man, but an old, canny one. He didn’t waste any time. He drew his sword.
I whirled so I could see all three of them. ‘So, Master Richard, this is your gentility? Killing our own peasants and raping their wives?’
Until I opened my mouth, I doubt the archers even knew I was English. They probably thought I was the son of the house, or some such.
Beauchamp swallowed a mouthful of ham. ‘Look who it is? The Judas thief.’ He laughed. ‘Look, we have ham and a cook to make it for us — and no priest to come and save his worthless arse.’
I watched the Gascon archer. I was canny enough to know that he was the most dangerous of the lot of them.
Richard drew his sword.
Tom Amble was one of the oldest squires. He’d tripped me once or twice and had laughed when I was the butt end of a prank, but he’d never hurt me, and the look on his face betrayed his intense confusion. ‘He’s English,’ he said, as if that made my person sacrosanct.
‘Don’t be a half-wit, Tom. If he blabs, we could swing for it.’ Richard didn’t seem unduly moved by the murder he was about to commit, and he wasn’t about to charge me. In fact, he was circling quickly to get between me and the farm gate.
I retraced two steps until I had a wall at my back, then drew my sword.
Tom, bless him, just stood there.
The Gascon’s eyes narrowed. ‘We will have to get rid of the body,’ he said, with Gascon practicality.
Then he started to edge to my right. As he passed the corner of the house he gave a little jump and went down. Just like that.
Abelard emerged from the shadow of the stone barn.
Richard Beauchamp went white. Abelard was a low-born man and not a man-at-arms, but everyone knew him and he had the ear of the Earl. Nor was he the kind of man to allow himself to be killed in a fight at a barn.
‘Cover the poor woman,’ Abelard said. ‘Sweet Christ, masters, do none of you care a shit for your souls?’ He smiled and took a step forward. He smiled because he didn’t care a fig seed for his own soul. Or for women.
Amble went to throw his cloak over the woman, and Abelard waited until he’d done it, then placed a knife at his throat as he rose.
‘Now, gentles,’ he said.
The Gascon said, ‘Fuck,’ quite clearly in English. He could see how the whole thing was going wrong. He was a veteran and he didn’t want to die in a farmyard, so he threw his sword down in the manure heap.
Amble was protesting his innocence.
Abelard the Deacon shrugged. ‘Put up, or take what I have to give,’ he said to Master Richard.
‘You always seem to have these men to save you,’ Richard said. ‘The priest, the cook. One day, you won’t have one of your lovers around.’
I stood away from the wall. I’d had a minute to compose my speech. ‘We could just fight,’ I said. ‘Just you and me. With all these men watching. Or don’t you want to face me unless other men knock me down first?’
Richard shrugged. ‘You’re a thief and a man-whore. I’m a gentleman. It makes me dirty even to touch you with my fists.’
I was trembling — with fear, shock, anger, who knows? I remember that I could smell the manure in the sun, and the roses; hear the sound of flies on the manure and the woman crying.
‘I think you are just afraid to face me,’ I said.
He shrugged again and turned to walk away.
Abelard cleared his throat. ‘I have a suggestion,’ he said. ‘You come back and fight him, man to man.’ He laughed. ‘Or I just take this man under my knife to see the Prince.’
Richard stopped. ‘You wouldn’t.’ He shook his head.
Abelard laughed. ‘I’m tempted just to kill this one, to show you what life is like in France. Eh, boy?’ He rotated the older squire on his shoulder and the young man screamed as his shoulder popped.
Richard Beauchamp frowned and sheathed his sword. ‘And when I beat the Judas into a pulp?’
Abelard nodded. ‘Then we’re all done. You may go and I’ll keep my mouth shut.’ He rotated the other young man’s shoulder and the man squealed. ‘But you’d best hurry, if you want to save your friend’s shoulder.’
Beauchamp looked at me and shed his swordbelt.
Then he shed his arming coat, and I shed mine.
Abelard let Amble go, and he crawled a few feet, lay by the barn and wretched up his last meal. He was a good fighter and he wasn’t injured.
I would love to tell you of how well we fought and how I held him, but he almost had me at the outset. We went for counter holds, as wrestlers do, and in a flash he had my left arm, and he locked it and went to break it.
I didn’t know the hold or the lock, and I was desperate, so instead of giving in under his grab, I slammed my right hand into his hated face, palm flat, and broke his nose. Then, because I was a moment from having my arm broken, my filthy fingernails searched for his eyes.