Chaucer reined in.
Sir James Pipe passed within a few hundred paces of us.
‘We’ll have a clear road to Normandy,’ Sam said. ‘These gentry have cleared it for us.’
I saw the Bourc Camus’ colours, black and white. And de Badefol’s. And Hawkwood’s.
I just sat there, dumbfounded. ‘Are we on the wrong side?’ I asked.
Chaucer breathed in and out a few times, like a dying man. When he spoke, his voice was gasping. ‘I. . how? We talked about it. He said the treaty was everything. That we had to reach the Dauphin.’ He looked at me.
For the first and perhaps only time, I felt bad for him. He’d been really brave, resourceful, loyal and capable. By my standards, he’d proved himself.
Richard shrugged. ‘I don’t think we’re all going to be made Knights of the Garter this time,’ he said.
A crowd was pouring out of Paris, cheering Charles of Navarre. Now Paris had three masters: the Provost, the Dauphin and Charles of Navarre.
I met Richard’s eye. ‘We cocked this up,’ I said.
He shrugged. ‘We did what we were ordered to do,’ he said.
‘That’s our story,’ I agreed. ‘Let’s stick to it.’
That was hard. The feeling of failure. The feeling that somehow we were on the wrong side.
I remember looking at my little pennon with the Prince’s white feather in white on a black field. I wasn’t sure I should still be displaying it openly.
But I had days riding across the devastated landscape of the Isle de France and the Seine valley to contemplate just how we’d got the whole thing so wrong.
Every night, at small fires that didn’t really warm us, we shared looted wine and chewed it over again and again.
I had begun to harbour a suspicion that we — that is, Master Hoo — had been used. The fourth night on the road, we were camped in a corner of a burned-out stone barn. It had enough of the upper floor left intact to provide a feeling of dryness — mostly false, but with a fire of dry timber from what had once been the house, we did well enough.
I was trying to work some oil into the straps on my sabatons. The straps under the feet were about to give, and that required an armourer to pull the rivets. Rich men pointed the sabatons to their shoes, but that meant having a steady supply of shoes that fit just right.
Richard was sewing.
Chaucer was staring into the fire.
Sam was asleep, as were the other men. We were young and raw, so we sat and talked. They were older and knew how desperate our situation was, so they slept.
‘May I have your beeswax?’ Richard asked.
I tossed him my housewife — a small fabric pocket that held my horn needlecase, my silver thimble, my beeswax and my sewing knife. Every soldier has one.
He missed his catch and it went splot into the muddy water at the edge of the fire.
I shot to my feet. ‘By all the saints, you useless mongrel! All my thread wet! And my pins ruined! Give me that-’
‘I meant no offence. .’ He looked very hurt. Richard had been treated worse than me as a boy and he didn’t stand up well to harsh words. Blows, yes — he was brave as a paladin — but words. .
‘Leave off,’ Chaucer said. ‘Your foul temper is your least attractive trait, on a long list of them.’
‘You’re a canting hypocrite, and your lying story landed us in this state-’ I barked.
‘You can’t kill everything you don’t like, bully-boy,’ Chaucer said. ‘I never lied-’
‘Yon story about the treaty — Master Hoo never said such a word! Or if he did, he didn’t say it to you!’ I shouted.
Chaucer deflated. ‘Never said it to me — aye. That’s the truth. But I heard him say it to Sir John Hawkwood.’
‘Leave off, Will. You do have a foul temper and we don’t need it just now,’ Richard added.
‘And some of us are trying to sleep, gentle knights,’ said Christopher.
‘Ah, my friends. Tempers flaring?’
I whirled. My sword was on my bed-roll; his sword was at my nose.
Bertrand du Guesclin, of course.
‘My turn to be host, I think?’ he exclaimed.
He had twenty men-at-arms with him, emerging out of the rain.
I saw Sam Bibbo strike Christopher sharply, and the two of them rolled out from under the wooden floor into the rain and were gone.
Du Guesclin never even saw them go.
I sighed. ‘God’s curse is on me,’ I said.
Du Guesclin smiled. ‘What do you think you are worth to ransom?’
We spent Christmas with the French knight. He was growing more famous every day, so Frenchmen were flocking to his banner. As yet he had no office — in fact, part of his problem was that there was no government to give him an office — but in Normandy he was the French commander.
We slept warm, in wattle huts in the woods.
We were spoiled of all our armour. And our horses.
‘Just a loan,’ he quipped. ‘I know full well you didn’t strip me, but France’s need is great.’ He smiled. He wasn’t a cruel bastard, but he did lord it over us.
He must have gone on a long raid — a chevuachee — but he came back after a week, and he had a great hart, a boar and other meat, so we had a proper Christmas feast. He let us hunt, and Richard and I managed two brace of hares — we fed the camp for a day and a night.
The wine flowed. And talk turned to feats of arms and the war, as it was bound to do. It took du Guesclin a fortnight to ask us why we were abroad in France — with so many routiers riding, he took us for another such party until some chance remark of Chaucer’s got his attention — it was Candelmas night, I think. We’d just heard Mass from du Guesclin’s priest, a big fellow with a weight of muscle that belied a quick head. Unlike most priests, this one — Pere Joseph — read Latin well, and knew his gospels and his Aquinas. He hated Englishmen, but we got on well enough, and he taught me the new beads I’d only seen monks use: prayer beads. I’d all but stopped praying until I was taken. I owe Pere Joseph for that. With him, I started saying the paternoster and the Ave Maria like a son of the church.
But that bores you, I’m sure.
At any rate, we were seated around a great open fire. It was Candelmas eve, we’d all taken Communion, and we were sitting together like comrades — he had six other English knights, a dozen prosperous archers and ten of his own men gathered around a bon-fire, like an open-air round table.
He turned to Chaucer. ‘What treaty is this you had?’ he asked.
I missed whatever had led up to this, but at the word treaty, all fell silent.
Chaucer bit his lip and looked at me.
‘If there ever was a secret,’ I said, ‘it scarcely matters now.’
Du Guesclin’s eyes locked on mine. ‘What treaty?’ he asked.
‘King John signed a treaty with King Edward at Windsor — in August.’ I shrugged. ‘Master Chaucer was there — he can tell it full. We had orders-’ suddenly I had that feeling again that I was in over my head. The worst of it was that I liked du Guesclin. Better than I liked Robert Knolles or the Bourc Camus.
‘Yes?’ du Guesclin asked.
‘To take a copy to the Dauphin,’ I said.
The Frenchmen present all became quiet. The Englishman closest to me was a man-at-arms from the north, James Wright. I saw him again in Italy. He made a face as if he’d eaten something bad. ‘The Dauphin? He is the enemy, surely?’
Du Guesclin leaned forward. He put a skewer of deer meat across two big stones, moved his riding boots a little to see they were toasted, and held out a silver beaker for a villain to refill. ‘You never made it?’ he asked.
Richard laughed bitterly. ‘We made it. An hour before Charles of Navarre rolled into Paris.’ He shrugged. ‘Your Dauphin burned the treaty.’
Du Guesclin narrowed his eyes. ‘You were on a diplomatic errand?’
I nodded.
‘You took a little time off to fight me?’ he asked. Aside, in his broad Norman French — to an Englishman, the language of lawyers! — he said to his friends, ‘He captured me — the ambush at La Foret.’ He made a motion as if to say ‘that story I’ve told you’.