‘What a fucking waste,’ Chaucer said. His voice broke. Perhaps he wept — who could tell?
Richard looked as tired as I felt. ‘You put that big fuck down?’ he asked.
I smiled. ‘No thanks to you.’
‘I was a little busy,’ he said.
I was proud. Du Guesclin had fallen over a brook, and it took ten of us to bring down de Charny, but the Paris Butcher, while no knight, was all mine. I’m a different man now than I was then, but that was a fair fight, and more than fair.
He banged his helmet against mine. ‘Well struck!’ he said. ‘I got two,’ he added.
Chaucer turned to me. ‘While you two crow over your murders,’ he said, ‘my master is dead.’
Sam was holding his cloak over his head. Like most veterans, now that the fighting was over, he was just trying to stay dry. He never mentioned how many men he’d put down, if any, but he looked at Hoo and shook his head. He pointed north and east. ‘St Denis is that way,’ he said. ‘If we leave the road, we might get clear.’
Chaucer slapped my breastplate to get my attention. ‘Are you abandoning the enterprise, messire?’ he asked.
‘What enterprise?’ I asked. ‘Only Master Hoo knew what the hell we were doing here. If he knew himself.’
The rain poured down.
Chaucer reached down and took the heavy leather scrip that Hoo always wore under his short cloak. He made heavy work of getting the scrip off Hoo’s corpse.
‘We should bury him,’ I said.
Richard nodded.
Christopher shook his head. ‘Jesus fuck! Are you two children mad? Wood? We’re in the heart of France! Every man is agin’ us! Can we just get the fuck out of here?’
Chaucer took Hoo’s cloak.
‘Take his boots,’ Sam commented. ‘Those are good boots.’
Chaucer hesitated.
Sam looked at me, but I was too tired and too rattled by the fight to understand his look.
John Hughes coughed. ‘Take his boots or I’ll take ’em myself, yunker.’
‘Monastery,’ I said.
Richard understood immediately. ‘We can do that,’ he said. ‘Put him over his horse.’
Chaucer looked at us as if we had multiple heads. ‘We may have the fate of two kingdoms in our hands,’ he said. ‘He’s carrying a copy of the draft treaty for the Dauphin. Master Hoo told me it’s essential to King Edward that the Dauphin ratify the treaty.’
The rain poured down.
‘Why? For the love of God? By the virgin, Chaucer. .’ I shook my head. ‘Is this one of your stories? Why is the Dauphin’s treaty so important?’
‘Because the treaty gives us half of France,’ Chaucer said.
‘Christ,’ Richard said. ‘By the Virgin.’
‘Which half?’ asked Sam.
No one laughed.
‘So why the rush?’ I asked.
Chaucer looked at me a long time.
The rain fell.
I was being judged by a sixteen-year-old inkpot, the son of a rich wine merchant.
‘You don’t have the need to know,’ Chaucer said quietly.
Sam sighed. It was audible over the rain. ‘Because Sir James Pipe told Master Hoo that Charles of Navarre escaped from prison four days ago,’ he said. ‘He’s headed for Paris, and if he gets to the Dauphin first, the treaty is cooked. Right, Master Chaucer?’
Chaucer glowered at him. If anger were fire, Chaucer might have kept us all warm.
‘Yes,’ he spat.
I looked at Richard. ‘Why couldn’t I know that?’ I asked.
Richard shrugged.
‘Can we get the fuck out of here?’ asked Christopher.
‘How can we get to the Dauphin?’ I asked Chaucer.
Sam spat. ‘You boys are mad,’ he said. ‘Wood. Solid wood. I don’t know how Master Hoo planned to penetrate Paris, but he was good at this part. The crowd there would rip us apart.’
Boys was the right word. Chaucer was sixteen, and Richard and I were a year older.
Sometimes, mad boys do things.
‘Where’s the Dauphin?’ I asked Sam. ‘Do you know?’
Sam nodded. The dead men said he was in the Louvre.’
‘Where’s that?’ I asked.
Sam blew out his cheeks in exasperation.
‘We’ll see it as soon as we ride out of the woods,’ Chaucer said. He looked at me. He was no coward. I admit that. That is to say, he was scared of a great many things, like any man, but he could control his fear and act. . like a brave man.
‘Does it have its own gate?’ I asked.
Sam sighed. ‘Yes. Listen, gentles. Recall what Sir John Chandos said — to listen to me? This adventure is at an end. You are brave. We fought well. We cannot fight our way into Paris.’
‘I can ride up to the porter of the Louvre and we’ll be with the Dauphin before vespers,’ Chaucer shouted.
Richard looked at Bibbo. ‘We have to try, Sam,’ he said.
‘Well,’ Sam said. He looked at Hoo’s body. ‘There is a small monastery house just past the wood on the right. I lodged there in forty-eight.’ He looked at me. ‘We can take Master Hoo that far. Leave coin for a Mass or two. I’d. . like to see him fair.’
I nodded.
Sam looked at Chaucer. ‘And then we’ll see,’ he said.
‘We can do this,’ Chaucer said. He might have seemed brave, but he really sounded desperate.
Sam shook his head. ‘I’ll come along,’ he said. ‘If only to see what the hell you do when you die.’
If the monks found anything remarkable about a party of Englishman riding abroad on the Isle de France, they didn’t say a thing. They didn’t seem afraid — the day porter opened the gate, and let us in. We gave him Master Hoo’s corpse, and explained that he’d been murdered by brigands. Apparently that sounded likely.
We left the monk ten gold florins for candles and a Mass. It was past noon when we left, and only as we went back into the rain on our tired horses did I see how big Paris was. Paris was, and is, about ten times the size of London.
Nevertheless, we could see the Louvre looming over the fields and shanties. We were on the right side of the river. All we had to do was ride six miles through the largest city in Europe. Being boys who believed we could save the world, we had to try.
And Sam Bibbo humoured us.
We came up under the walls of the Louvre almost unchallenged. That is to say, a number of men in red and blue hoods yelled at us. We rode on, and they ignored us, because it was pouring rain. No one is brave in a downpour. At least, no one dry is brave. If you are already wet, it’s different.
Chaucer had never been to Paris, but he’d heard a great deal about it, and read books. Sam had been to Paris, as an archer in a retinue during the long truce. But he didn’t know how to get into the Louvre.
Really, we were fools.
But God smiles on fools and lovers. Doubly on men who are both, and I have always been a good lover of women. So we rode up to the Louvre, and there was a sort of shanty town running back away from the ditch. I felt at home, because it’s like that around the Tower, too, but this was worse, and bigger.
Christopher had the idea of asking. We were trying to be secretive, but he got fed up and asked a whore who was standing in the cold rain as if that was her job. She had a soaking red dress and looked to be twelve.
She didn’t seem to be afraid of us, which, to be frank, I found odd.
‘Can you take us to the Louvre? To the gate where they admit visitors?’ Chaucer asked her.
She shrugged. ‘I suppose,’ she said. ‘I might.’
Richard held up a gold florin. Lo, the mighty knights will achieve their quest, but only if they have a florin.
Gower never wrote a romance like this, and neither did Chaucer, although he might have. Hah! That makes me laugh.
We gave her ten days’ wages in gold, and she took us around a corner of nasty tenements and up what I’d have taken for an alley, except that it ended in a wicket gate with a half door and a very elegant small portcullis.
It was closed.
‘Oh!’ she said. Now she was frightened. ‘Ne’er seen it closed before.’
It had been a long day. The sun was setting somewhere far beyond the clouds, and the rain was falling as if God had elected to cleanse the earth again. I knew that if we rode away, we’d never get this close again. I knew how lucky we were to have reached the wicket of the Louvre.