At any rate, after Vierzon, we knew the French royal army was close, and we were racing for the crossings of the Loire. My hero, Sir John Chandos, and another captain, Sir James Audley, made a dash for the bridge at Aubigny and met with a detachment of French troops. They won the fight, but lost the race for the bridge. It was a great fight, or so I’m told. A passage of arms. But, militarily, it got us nothing.
The next day we turned east, heading for the coast and a rendezvous with the Duke of Lancaster, or so we hoped, because the new rumour was that the King of France had 15,000 men.
The following day — perhaps two — we made good progress, then a brave French captain threw a garrison into a small castle right on our marching route, forcing us to take it. The man who commanded the enemy was a famous knight, Boucicault, and he had seventy more knights and 400 professional infantry, so we couldn’t march around. Mind you, I didn’t know that then, although I suppose I parroted the phrase. We couldn’t leave them behind us because they’d have devastated our line of march and killed our stragglers and wounded, stopping us from robbing and burning.
They were the first organized opposition we’d met, and suddenly we became an army, rather than a horde of locusts. Within hours, every man was in the ranks with his own retinue, under the banner of his lord. The Prince formed us in a tight array, and we stormed the town — not in disorganized drabbles, the way we’d taken the last town, but in one overwhelming rush. The walls of Romorantin were in poor repair, and they fell at the first assault, but Boucicault, who wasn’t much older than me and had been a fighting knight since he was fourteen, gathered his men into the citadel.
I cooked.
I mention this because I went up a ladder with Master Peter. I don’t think I fought anyone, although I remember being afraid when the crossbow bolts started to hit men around me, and fear is very tiring. But after the assault, I got a good ivory, and then Abelard found me and ordered me to go get the fires lit.
Cooking on a hot day in the Loire Valley when insects fill the air, after storming a wall and looting, is truly miserable. And we failed to take the citadel, so that the men who came to eat the food I’d prepared — mutton, a whole pig and a pair of chickens for my lord de Vere — were surly. Several were wounded. The French were no cowards.
I was cursed for undercooked meat and for not having enough wine. Probably for having red hair, as well. Fatigue is the greatest cause of men’s anger — fatigue and fear — and any captain knows that the two are the same.
That was a bad night. John came and ate — I’d saved the best for him, and he sneered at it. I even gave him my wine — I saw him as my mentor.
After he’d eaten, he pointed at Mary. ‘Bring her here,’ he said. ‘I want a ride.’
I thought I must have misheard. ‘What’s that?’ I asked.
‘Give me your woman,’ he said. ‘She’s too handsome for you. You’re just a boy; she wants a man.’
Mary didn’t speak any English, but she backed away. It had taken a week for her to start showing herself in camp at all.
The Gascon archer from the affair at the farmyard, a snaggle-tooth villain named Markus, grabbed her. He gave her a squeeze. ‘Plenty here for all of us, boy,’ he said.
I couldn’t think.
I looked around for Abelard.
He wasn’t there.
John walked over, grabbed her skirts and hiked them over her hips in one movement, exposing her.
It hit me then.
A few of you know what I mean. For those that don’t, you have choices sometimes. Once you make them, they are made. If I let them rape her — fifteen or so men — that was a decision. If I didn’t let them, that was another.
I’d like to say to a priest that I couldn’t let her be hurt again, but that’s not it at all.
The reason was that I wanted to be a knight, not a looter.
And the other reason was that she was mine, not theirs.
I turned, made my decision and acted. I wore my sword, even to cook — think about all the boys you’ve known. Of course I wore my sword to cook.
I didn’t go for John. I went for Markus, who didn’t expect me.
I drew it back and slammed the round-wheeled pommel into Markus’s mouth as hard as I could, which was pretty hard even then.
I made him spit at least four teeth.
He fell to his knees, and I kicked him as hard as I could.
I’d finished the sergeant in Vierzon. My uncle had left me pretty hard. Perhaps not hard enough to let a fourteen-year-old French whore get gang-raped to death, but hard enough for this.
Markus went down and was silent, and Mary got behind me.
John was looking at the point of my sword.
‘Walk away,’ I said.
And he did.
I was fifteen and he was twenty-five, and we were no longer friends. Nor was he my mentor any more.
And we both knew which one of us was the cock of the yard, and which one had backed down.
That was a bad night. The next day was worse. The Earl came and asked for volunteers to storm the keep. I volunteered and he turned me down. They went up the ladders three times and failed. We lost good men that day. Our archers swept the walls with their longbows, and the French — brave men, every one of them — came out just as our men reached the tops of the ladders, and threw rocks, shot crossbows and swept the walls clear with partisans and poleaxes.
Abelard was back from wherever he’d been. I told him the tale of the night before and he snorted.
‘Listen, boy. These are soldiers. If you keep a pretty piece like that in camp. .’ He shrugged. ‘If you like her so much, let her go.’ He looked away. ‘If the Earl had taken you to the tower today, they’d have done her while you were gone. Eh bien?’
‘She’ll be done in ten steps if I let her go!’ I protested.
He smiled a nasty smile. He looked away and started unloading the two mules he’d acquired, full of sausages and hams and bread. ‘If we don’t take that keep today,’ he said, ‘it’ll be worse tonight. The boys don’t exactly love you, Judas. Why are you making your life so difficult?’
That’s not what I wanted Abelard to say, but the truth was that now that we were in France, he was like a different man — a much more dangerous, criminal man. Indeed, I had begun to think of France as a different world, like purgatory, or hell. The world of war.
Mind you, I was richer than I’d ever been, and I had a woman of my own as pretty as a picture of the Virgin, and a fine sword and a horse, so I wasn’t complaining. Just trying to learn the rules. Trying to keep a little for myself.
But in some way that is not utterly base, I liked Mary for more than her slender body, her breasts, her soft stomach and what lay under it — or maybe I liked my image of myself as a knight too much. So after everyone snored, I woke her, stole one of Abelard’s mules and led her out into the countryside. I got her clear of our picket posts and gave her the mule and a sharp knife.
I’d like to think she made it to Orleans and lives yet, a grandmother who says prayers for my soul. Or perhaps she curses me to hell every night. Perhaps she died a day later, taken by Gascons on the road.
Christ, I hope not. I pray for her still.
The next morning the Earl came and asked for volunteers to storm the tower. I’d been up late, but I volunteered.
He looked at me for as long as a calm man’s heart beats three times, and then I knew he’d take me.
Abelard said, ‘You’re a fool.’
It was my second storming action. If storming Vierzon, with a small, badly led garrison was dangerous, storming Romorantin was insane. The donjon walls were forty-feet high, and every yard there was a French soldier or a French knight, in good, modern armour, carrying a crossbow or a bill.
The knights went up the ladders first. Say what you will about knights, and many hate us, we’re not shy. The best-armoured, youngest men went up the ladders first. No one said aloud that we were only a feint. In fact, during the night the walls had been mined, and the Prince thought the mine would collapse one of the towers.