I’m not ashamed to say I fell to my knees.
I couldn’t believe it.
I almost died, because a Frenchmen couldn’t believe it either, and instead of surrendering, he smashed his axe at me. I got my buckler up, pushed to my feet under his blow, and his haft smashed into my helmet. I was stunned, and I made the mistake of throwing my arm around him. He punched me three times as fast as a dog would bite, but even his steel gauntlet made no progress against my coat of plates. I tried to hook his leg.
I could smell his breath, and feel it on my face, because he had no visor.
He kneed me in the crotch.
The Earl’s poleaxe slammed into the French knight’s helmet.
Both of us fell to the ground, entangled.
It should have been over then, but it wasn’t.
The Earl’s men-at-arms came up the ladder and cleared the catwalk, and in the time it takes a nun to say ‘Ave Maria’, we held two towers and fifty feet of wall. But then young Boucicault led a counter-attack.
I was still breathing like a bull who scents a cow. I had my helmet off, and I was crouching there, bleeding like a stuck pig and panting. One of the men-at-arms shouted, and John — the man who’d served me wine, and who I now saw to have three scallop shells on a black chevron as his arms — ran by, paused and said, ‘Get up, William Gold.’
Good Christ. He knew my name.
I followed him. We ran along the wall, which is to say, I hobbled after him, and there were a dozen French knights in excellent harness fighting against the Earl and four of our knights. The catwalk was, as I said, only wide enough for two.
Boucicault was everywhere. I had seldom seen a man fight so well, and I watched him drive the Earl back, blow after blow, thrown so fast that the Earl had trouble getting in a counter-cut. He was bigger and faster than our Earl and, frankly, better.
Oxford fell back, and fell back again, until he was driven onto the hoardings of a small tower, where the flat area widened and all of us could join the fight. Now it was six men-at-arms — and one unhelmeted fifteen-year-old — against two French knights.
Boucicault didn’t care. He leaped forward and hacked the Earl down with a great blow of his poleaxe, then stepped forward and blocked John’s cut, occupying the space. Another French knight pressed in, and another — we were going to lose the tower.
John was suddenly toe-to-toe with Boucicault. He parried a blow of the poleaxe with his sword held in both hands, and then another, then he pushed in close to wrestle the French knight, and I took the opportunity to ring a heavy blow against the French knight’s helmet. He staggered, and John got a hand under the Earl’s armpit and dragged him out of the melee. .
Leaving me with the French knights.
That was my first fight with Boucicault. I had a good sword and we were the same size, but he was fully armoured and I didn’t even have a helmet. He was dazed, and I had a leg wound.
He was trying to regain his balance and I cut at him two handed. He caught my blow high, kicked me between the legs and down I went.
That’s what happens when you fight a knight.
You lose.
I rolled on the ground, trying to master my pain, and got my dagger off my hip and blocked an attempt to kill me from above — I had no idea who threw that blow — then I felt a strong hand under my armpits, and I was dragged bodily from the fight.
Behind me, Master Peter was setting the hoardings on fire. It had rained hard for a few days, but that had been a week ago, and now the wood was as dry as kindling. He’d smashed a railing to make splinters, and they caught, and that fire ran across the platforms like a living thing.
The French grabbed their gallant captain and backed away, and the Earl’s man-at-arms carried me through the blaze.
In later years, men in Italy asked me why I stayed so utterly loyal. John Hawkwood saved my life — that day and fifty other times. He was a right bastard — the coldest man I ever met, and bound for hell if he doesn’t rule it — but he was always good to me, and that day I would have died horribly had he not carried me out of the fire.
While I was failing to beat one of the best knights in France, Peter had decided, like the professional archer he was, that we weren’t winning. He set the hoardings on fire to cover our retreat, and we retired from our dear-bought towers and climbed down the ladders, step by step.
The hoardings burned — first where we lit them, then it all caught, and then one of the tower roofs caught fire. .
And by nightfall, Boucicault had to surrender: his hall was burning over his head. We took him and all his knights and soldiers. We treated them well and ransomed the lot. In fact, we fed the lords a fine dinner that night, in the best traditions of chivalry. I helped cook it, despite two wounds and aching balls. Abelard didn’t give a shit that I was injured, and said that if I volunteered for foolishness, I could pay the price. I hobbled about all evening in a daze, and went back to my empty blankets to lie down.
There was still light in the sky when a page came looking for me. By name. William Gold.
So I put my now stained livery coat and my best hose on over my filth, washed my face, and followed the page.
Two pavilions had been set side by side to make a great hall of canvas and linen. On the dais sat the Prince and Boucicault and the Earl of Oxford, as well as Sir John Chandos, Warwick, Stafford and the Captal de Buch, Jean de Grailly. The tables in the tent were full of men-at-arms and knights — there was John Hawkwood, well down on the left, and there was my cousin, Sir Edward, sitting just below the dais.
For a moment, it seemed to me I had been summoned to be knighted.
Well, laugh all you like. A boy can dream.
It was almost that good.
My enemy, Richard Beauchamp, had summoned me.
He looked like I felt. He had a black eye and two missing teeth, and he could barely talk.
‘Gan’ye serf?’ he asked.
When you have been at odds with a boy, it can take an effort of will to decide you are not at odds. It looked as if he was calling me a serf, but I was sober enough to see that he was hurt, and so it was pretty fucking unlikely that he’d summoned me for casual harassment. Nonetheless, I remember bridling.
Diccon, the senior squire, came by with a platter of roast beef. ‘Well fought,’ he said as he walked by. Casual. As if we’d always been friends.
Well.
Richard glared at me — or perhaps that was just how he looked in the fading red sunlight.
The page at my side said, ‘I think Master Richard is asking if you could carve and serve. Sir.’
I wasn’t being knighted.
But I waited on table with the squires, and I wasn’t tripped. I carried a wine ewer and served the Prince with my own hands, and I ached with pride. I carved a goose under Diccon’s eye. He nodded, satisfied, and went off to see to other things.
Boucicault drank, and the Prince drank, and Oxford drank. Long after dark, I was serving wine — still, to tell the truth, floating on air that I was serving my Prince with my own hands, which were none too clean. Despite the fact that my balls ached and I had pissed blood.
Boucicault looked up from his conversation.
He was the second French knight from the shop. The one who had been with de Charny the day I was arrested.
He grinned.
‘I knew you would find a better profession,’ he said in French.
The Prince glanced at me, and the Earl looked up. I wanted to burst into tears. Now it would all come out, and I’d be a thief all over again, I thought.
‘You know my young Judas?’ asked the Earl.
Boucicault raised his cup of wine to me. ‘This young squire and I had a passage of arms today, did we not?’ he said. ‘And I remember him from a tourney in London. The last time I was a prisoner of you English.’ Everyone laughed. God, I have hated that man in my time, but he spoke for me that day.