We crossed the river and rode north and east. Charles wasn’t hard to find — he was stringing up every peasant he found on the roads — and the trees laden with rotten fruit, sometimes fifty or a hundred in a row, are another of the beautiful memories I carry of that summer.
The second day, we found his army. Almost the first banner I saw was du Guesclin’s; near it was Sir John Hawkwood’s, and some other unlikely comrades — a Bourbon, a minor Ribercourt, a Scottish mercenary called Sir Robert Scot and Sir James Pipe. I didn’t know most of the knights, but their arms were all French, although I saw the black and white eagles of the Bourc Camus and gave his tents a wide birth.
Navarre’s army was just settling for the day. They were very well-organized — as they should have been, with a thousand professional soldiers from both sides as the core of the force. Navarre had almost the whole chivalry of the north under his banner. The Jacquerie had terrified the first estate, and the men of war were not amused.
Sir John Hawkwood received me like a prodigal son — the more so when I told him of my errand for Sir John Cheverston.
He smiled his thin-lipped smile and raised a silver cup, almost certainly the spoil of a church. ‘Here’s to a fine feat of arms, young William. I knew you had the makings of a knight.’
I shrugged and possibly even blushed. This praise was delivered in public, in front of forty men.
‘It was nothing — we took them by surprise.’ I shrugged.
Du Guesclin pushed through the crowd to me. ‘Were they armed? Awake?’ he asked.
I grinned. ‘Very much so, Sir Knight.’
He laughed. ‘Then the contest was fair. And before the eyes of half a thousand English knights, a fair deed of arms.’
He warmed my blood. I dismounted, gave my horse to my potboy and embraced du Guesclin. ‘What brings you here, messire? I have seen the trail of slime — or rather, the human fruit in the trees.’
Du Guesclin shrugged. ‘The canaille make war on us all — rape maidens, kill nobly born children. They are the common enemy, and my lord the Dauphin,’ he shrugged, ‘is not in the field.’
‘The Dauphin has found it more politic to leave us to fight the Jacques while he cowers in his mighty fortress.’ Hawkwood’s contempt was absolute.
‘I saw them on the way here. They wiped out an English garrison on the south of the river — burned two men alive on crosses.’ I shrugged. ‘I’ve seen our men do as much to them.’
Hawkwood nodded. ‘As have I. But if we let them feel their power — they’ll overturn the world order.’
Du Guesclin spat. ‘You have brought this on us, messire. So many good knights are dead-’
Hawkwood laughed. ‘Ah, messire, you are better born than I — a mere English yeoman. You should know better than that. The Jacques are out for your blood because you have failed to defend them. I heard a tale a month back — pardon me, it does no credit to a French knight. A deputation of wealthy peasants came to a lord not far from here. My men had just burned their barns. They went to their lord and asked him if he would go and fight — with my men.’ Hawkwood smiled a grim smile. ‘He explained that he stood no chance at all of defeating a hundred Englishmen with just he and his son.’
Du Guesclin, his friend de Carriere and a dozen other French knights all nodded along.
‘And the leader of the peasants said, “We don’t care whether you win or lose, my lord. As we owe you our tillage whether it rains or the sun shines, so you owe us your very best effort in our defence, whether you win or lose. For this is the obligation of l’homme arme to the men who till the soil.’ Hawkwood looked around.
The French knights were silent.
‘And the lord said, “But we will fail. And die.”’ Hawkwood laughed. ‘And the leader of the peasants said, “Then go die, my lord. That is all we ask.”’
Du Guesclin was angry. His shoulders were tense under his blue jupon and I could see the muscles in his neck. ‘This does not justify the wholesale murder of my class,’ he said.
Hawkwood shrugged. ‘To the Jacques, it does. You have failed them.’
Du Guesclin turned on his heel. ‘We do not need to stay and listen to this.’ He walked away, taking a mass of Frenchmen with him. A few paces away, he whirled. ‘If you love them so much, why not fight for them? Eh? Why fight with us?’
‘You’re paying,’ Hawkwood laughed. ‘You’re paying me and a thousand other Englishmen to kill the peasants who pay the taxes that maintain you.’
Du Guesclin didn’t turn around. He walked away and his men followed him.
I winced.
‘That was impolitic,’ I hesitated. ‘I like him.’
Hawkwood grimaced as if he’d been hit. ‘Do you ever look at the blood, the dead peasants, the wrecked villages, the burned barns, and wonder what it’s all for?’ he asked.
I looked at the ground. ‘All the time,’ I admitted.
Hawkwood nodded. His jaw jutted slowly, as it did when he was moved by great emotion. ‘It’s our living, and never forget that. They are amateurs. They are not like us.’ He shook his head. ‘But sometimes. . I think it is all worthwhile if we destroy them. As individuals, many are fine men, but as a whole. .’ He shook his head.
‘But you are fighting for them,’ I said.
He looked at me as if I was mad. ‘They’re paying, lad. Take care of yourself first.’ He waved and shrugged. His shrug dismissed the suffering of France.
I had letters to the King of Navarre, so I went to his great pavilion and spent an hour cooling my heels on a bench with a dozen Gascons, all waiting for an audience. The King of Navarre’s star was climbing — his Spanish officers were haughty as cardinals, and a mere ‘English adventurer’, as I heard myself called, was unlikely to impress anyone, most especially as I declined to offer a bribe to the boy who tracked ‘appointments’.
After an hour, I saw a man in black and white parti-colour approaching. I wanted to vanish, but I wasn’t about to give up my place on the bench. It was the Bourc Camus, trailing men-at-arms, and he came to the bench. Two of his men seized it and dumped us all on the ground.
While he was laughing, I put my fist in his face.
Gascons fear nothing, it is true, and I wasn’t going to cow a dozen Gascons with a dagger, but neither was I capable of backing down. So I drew de Charny’s dagger and snapped the flat pommel into one miscreant’s jaw.
The rest of them took me seriously, so they formed a rough circle.
‘Eh, messire,’ said one gap-toothed rogue. ‘You will pay now.’
‘The King of Navarre sends to ask why this unseemly disturbance?’ said a man with an arrogant lisp to his French. He was as tall as I am, with broad shoulders and the belly most men get in middle age, but he was so big he commanded immediate respect. He looked at me.
Camus bounced to his feet. ‘This English bastard tried to steal my place,’ he said with a winning smile.
My heart was beating sixteen to the dozen, but I forced a smile, too. ‘Pardon me, messire, but I believe you, not I, are the bastard,’ I said.
Camus went white.
You know that bourc means bastard, eh? I’m sure a herald knows such things.
Camus’ hand went to his dagger.
I turned to the big man as if the Bourc didn’t exist. ‘Is it nothing to the King that I am here from the King of England’s Lieutenant in Gascony? I am not on some idle errand, messire.’ I looked at Camus, implying he was on an idle errand.
‘By Christ’s passion, you are a dead man,’ Camus said, and he came at me, dagger high.
I stopped his blow with my left wrist, the way every English boy learns, and the Navarrese men-at-arms parted us.
Suddenly Charles of Navarre was there.
He was of middling height, very handsome, with curling dark hair, a fine beard, sparkling dark eyes and a warmth that I usually associate with the most beautiful and clever women. He almost always wore a smile, and he had a way of fixing his gaze on you that made you feel you were the most important person in the world. Sadly, he also had a way of giving in to fits of childish temper that dispelled the illusion that he was a great man and left the observer with the feeling that the King of Navarre was less than he might be.