It was my turn to laugh. ‘John Hawkwood made me. When he asks me to ride, I ride.’
Several of the French men nodded in approval. One said, ‘That’s how it is,’ and nodded emphatically.
Du Guesclin rubbed his beard with his left hand and sipped wine. ‘Really, then, I should release you all.’
Richard nodded. ‘Yes!’ he said.
Du Guesclin looked off into the dark.
‘Perhaps you could decide that the lot of us were worth a hundred florins,’ I said.
‘Hah! I’ve already paid you,’ he said.
‘I’ll just send it back,’ I said. I could tell we were winning this round.
He sighed. ‘So many gold florins slipping through my fingers.’
‘You lucky bastard!’ Jamie Wright said. ‘Well done!’
The next night, we watched snow fall. Du Guesclin restored Goldie to me — an act of true friendship, and one I treasure. My horse and arms were his by right. No one in Normandy in those days made quibbles about diplomatic missions and sauvegardes. We were lucky — had one of the other French routiers taken us, we’d have been dead or bled for silver.
The way we’d have done if we took them.
Du Guesclin had an iron stool; it folded, and he sat on it like a King. ‘Tell me of the Dauphin,’ he said. ‘Our commander, de Clermont-’
I was sitting on carefully broken-up firewood, and I was more sprawled than sitting. ‘The Marshal of Normandy,’ I said. ‘I met him in Paris. We almost exchanged blows.’
‘That would have been honour for you,’ he said. ‘He is a great knight, and a most puissant man-at-arms.’
‘Hmm,’ I said. ‘He had a pole-hammer and I had a horse.’
Du Guesclin laughed. ‘I like you. For an Englishman, you are not so very bad.’ He leaned forward. ‘Tell me of the Dauphin.’
I shrugged.
‘Many in Normandy would have me support Charles of Navarre,’ du Guesclin said. ‘Men say he’s reached an accord with the Dauphin.’ He shrugged. ‘I’m a country boy. I don’t pretend to understand what is happening in Paris.’
‘Nor I,’ I said. ‘Bertrand, it’s not my place to tell you how to run your country.’
‘The more so as you’ve done your part to pull it to pieces, eh?’ he asked.
I nodded.
‘But nonetheless.’ He laughed.
‘Well. .’ I remember sitting, not sure what to say, when Chaucer joined us, bringing me wine — he wasn’t always an arse. I made space for him on the wood pile, and he shared the wine.
‘Bertrand wants to know what’s happening in Paris,’ I said.
Chaucer shook his head and rolled his eyes. ‘I think that might count as comforting the enemy.’
I took a swallow of wine and spat it in the snow, where it showed like new blood. ‘Who exactly is the enemy?’ I asked.
Chaucer met my eye and nodded. ‘Sometimes, even you have a point,’ he said. He turned to du Guesclin. ‘Paris is rent by factions, and anything I tell you is probably already changed, but there are at least four factions. The Dauphin’s party — men who consider themselves the government.’
‘But they are not the government,’ du Guesclin said. ‘The King is the government.’
Chaucer waved his arms. ‘Just so, mon vieux. The second faction is the King’s party, men who served the King — many of them were at Poitiers and are now prisoners — some released or ransomed, some who escaped from that field. They consider themselves the government, and the Dauphin to be either a tool of the enemy or a dupe.’
‘Yes!’ du Guesclin said.
‘The third faction is that of the Paris Commune. It, itself, is split into two factions, one led by the Mercer, Etienne Marcel, who seems to want to be the Tyrant of Paris — he and Robert Le Coq and the Council of Eighty intend to rule France, I guess, by assembly and election.’
Du Guesclin shook his head. ‘I have heard all this, of course, but never put this way. Surely this Parisian grocer has little power.’
‘Twenty thousand men, an army and many professional soldiers,’ I said. ‘Your Marshal told me he had hired a professional knight to train the militia — Pierre de Villiers.’
Du Guesclin nodded. ‘I know that name. He is from here.’
‘The other Parisian faction is less tied to the assembly. It is led by the richest merchants, who want a complete reform of the laws and the coinage, and who accuse the King of gross mismanagement,’ I said. Chaucer cast me one of his few approving looks.
‘And into this mess rides Charles of Navarre,’ Chaucer said.
‘That imp of hell,’ du Guesclin said. ‘He leaves a trail of slime wherever he goes, like some foul snail.’
I laughed. ‘I wish you’d speak your mind,’ I said. ‘Stop sitting in resentful silence.’
Even Chaucer laughed.
Du Guesclin shook his head. ‘He tried to buy me when he escaped.’ He glared at the fire. He really wasn’t much older than we. ‘Now his army is full of Englishmen. And yet he prates about saving France. He would be all things to all men, but he has no honour.’
Chaucer sat back. He had Master Hoo’s boots on, I noted. ‘Honour,’ he said dismissively. ‘How can you two — knights — prate of honour? You saw the raped nuns on the road, William. What honour is there?’
Du Guesclin shook his head. ‘There is honour everywhere! Almost every day, I fight. Every child in Normandy knows my name.’ He spoke with complete satisfaction. ‘I’ve faced the very flower of England and Gascony — and in the main, I have won.’ He bowed in his seat to me. ‘Sometimes, fortune has been against me. I rape no nuns; I fight my King’s enemies. There is honour everywhere.’
‘Master Chaucer is quick to see the flaws in chivalry and slow to see the glory,’ I said.
Chaucer grunted. ‘This from a man who runs a brothel to pay for his horses.’
To be honest, I had forgotten the brothel. Just for a few days, at the clearing in the woods of Normandy, I had prayed with a priest, practised my sword cuts with Jamie Wright and felt like a knight.
‘Who will protect the weak, if not the men-at-arms?’ I asked.
‘Sweet Jesu, William! How can you even ask that? Who in the name of God oppresses the weak? It’s only you men-at-arms. If you all died of a plague tomorrow, every peasant in France and England would only cheer.’ Chaucer drank more wine.
Du Guesclin narrowed one eye and raised an eyebrow — it was a look he had, when he was thinking. ‘But surely this is what the “hoods” in Paris say?’
Chaucer looked at his hands. ‘Perhaps,’ he admitted.
Du Guesclin shook his head. ‘Foolishness. What would you prefer? A tyranny of money? Look at Italy! Men are bought and sold by merchants. Men-at-arms are at least men who crave public renown and fame, who are strong and well-trained and enobled by the thousand penances of war and pain. Are there bad men among us? Bien sur! But by St Denis, there are bad priests and bad Popes, and no one says that Christ should be dismissed! Is Paris so well-directed? What I hear is a tale of greed and crime, of women oppressed, of churches despoiled for their silver by the crowds.’
Chaucer looked surly.
‘What of the Turks?’ I asked.
Du Guesclin looked at me.
‘Surely it is noble to fight the Turks — who threaten all of Christendom?’
Chaucer spat. ‘Go fight them then.’
‘Perhaps I will yet,’ I said.
Du Guesclin laughed. ‘You two must be a pleasure to ride with, hein?’
Du Guesclin had another problem, which was that suddenly all of the King of England’s officers in Normandy had become the captains of Charles of Navarre. Du Guesclin wasn’t at war with Charles of Navarre — it complicated his operations, and our release as well. I sent word to the Three Foxes — a letter copied fair by Master Chaucer — asking that one hundred florins be paid to du Guesclin’s agent, who proved to be our Genoese banker.
Du Guesclin pointed this out to Chaucer. ‘You think it is the men-at-arms who make war,’ he said. ‘Ask who takes the gold from both sides.’