The strictest interpretation of the rules of war would have said I should have shouted or announced myself, as I was riding into the Gascons from behind, but I made a different choice. I hit the banner-bearer in the middle of his back and probably killed him instantly — my lance broke under his weight as he went off his mount — and the Bourc’s black and white standard went down.
There was an immediate reaction.
I got my longsword out of the scabbard and looked again for the Bourc. He was nowhere to be seen. I could see Richard, locked in mounted combat with one of the Albret bastards, and I could see several coats of arms I knew, but most of the Bourc’s men wore his black and white, and any of them could have been the man himself.
The fight came to me. I felt the thunder of my opponent’s approach in time to duck, almost to my horse’s neck, and his sword cut just touched my helmet — I had a glimpse of his black and white cote, and then I was sawing at the reins left handed, trying to get around. My brute of a horse didn’t like my idea and was, in fact, turning the opposite way, so that my opponent got a free cut at my back. I swear I felt the blow before it hit — I knew where it was and I knew there was nothing I could do to stop it, and all because I had a poor horse.
He cut when he should have stabbed, so my backplate took the blow low, near the kidney — I pissed blood for days — and he must have taken a bit off the high back of my saddle, then I was around and our horses were flank to flank. I got my blade up and caught his — our cross guards locked. He had no visor, and I backhanded him in the face with my left gauntlet. Blood sprayed, and he fell back — his sword fell away from mine, and I stabbed twice, in rapid succession, as he tried to back his horse. My first stab caught his helmet and slid off, but the second went into his cheek and through the roof of his mouth, and he was done.
Then I was in the thick of a mounted melee. I’d never been in one before. Blows fell on my head and shoulders — my head was snapped around by a heavy blow, and I was shoved forward over the front of my saddle. I had just enough courage and spirit to snap back with my sword — short stabs with the point. I buried my blade in a horse’s unprotected neck, and horse and rider fell, and I thought, Jesu, I’ve put three of them down! Where is everyone?’
I leaned back against my saddle — my back shrieked in pain and I got my blade over my head and caught a mace coming in. My new opponent pressed, and I hammered him with the pommel of my sword — he drove the butt of his mace into my throat, and I got my left hand onto his visor and forced it up. I lost the visor.
We both fell from our horses together. I assume the two horses separated, leaving their human cargoes to fall, but before I even felt my brute’s change of weight, I was down and lost my sword.
He didn’t lose his mace, he swung it at me.
I got my dagger free — got it in both hands and parried.
See? De Charny’s dagger. I knew you gentlemen would want to see it. Three sided-solid steel, forged from a single piece. I’ve stopped a poleaxe with this; I’ve used it as a crow-bar in a burning building. It’s not so much a blade as a bar of steel with a point.
I got it in both hands, and he swung and I stopped the mace, then I got his wrist in my own left hand. He let go with his right and slammed me in the head, rocking me back, then he was trying to get atop me, but I had his right arm, now, in my left. He tried to pound at me with his left hand — my visor saved me and the dagger started searching his armour for a weak point. I rammed it up under his arm and his mail held — my point skidded off the cuisse protecting the top of his thigh.
He was still trying to get on top of me, to pin my arms with his knees. His steel-clad limbs looking for anything soft — between my legs, under my arms.
But I had his right arm, and my left hand made it to his neck — a basic wrestling lock that any English boy knows.
I rolled him and broke his arm.
He sagged immediately. The pain must have been like the kick of a mule, and I had him off me while he screamed. I knelt on his broken arm and pushed his visor up, and. .
. . It was the Bourc.
I won’t say it was the finest moment of my young life — it doesn’t quite rival Emile pulling her kirtle over her head — but by Christ it was good.
In retrospect, I should have killed him. But — here’s the irony — I had begun to see myself, as it were, reflected in this evil man. He was beaten and wounded. Screaming in pain.
I didn’t kill him.
Sometimes, the most moral decisions are the ones that cause everyone the most pain. Fra Peter taught me that, later.
I put him over his horse — what a struggle that was, and only Perkin’s appearance, like the miracle machine in a passion play, saved me from dumping him on the ground as a bad job. Perkin got under him and pushed, then roped him to his fancy saddle. I managed to get back into my own saddle — some horses don’t run away when you want them to.
Richard had just taken the older Albret boy.
Gaillard de la Motte — a good man, but at the time I barely knew him — was killing Camus’ men who’d been dismounted. He rode over, waving a lance head covered in gore. ‘They’re not gentlemen,’ he said, as if shocked. ‘They’re peasant boys dressed up like knights.’
So am I, I thought. Though I wasn’t precisely a peasant, I still felt some sympathy for those boys.
Who were dying. Every one. My men were offering them no quarter, and now the survivors of the cardinal’s men-at-arms were rallying and joining us, and they weren’t offering quarter either.
I got my men-at-arms together by raising the Bourc’s black and white banner and waving it. Richard roared his war cry, ‘The Black Squire, the Black Squire!’ Until we had a dozen mounted men, then we went back down the road. We left our squires and valets to plunder the enemy and find the gold.
We met the second force near the apiary. They had horses down, and they’d stopped to cover their wounded against the archers.
We blew right through them like falcons through a flock of songbirds, and they scattered. The fighting spread across the hillside, and then it was over — I don’t think I went sword to sword with a single man.
I was focused on Sam Bibbo, who was standing in the road, losing shaft after shaft at the Bourc’s men-at-arms as if he was in some personal Crecy or Poitiers. I positioned my horse just behind him, sword in hand. I was sure — as sure as I’d ever been — that he would die, and I was determined to keep him alive. I even prayed.
I’m guessing that God had a chuckle at our expense. Sam didn’t die. By the time the day was another hour older, we had a small fortune in gold, a dozen men-at-arms to ransom and only one man dead: a Gascon knight.
Late in the fight, as my Gascon mountaineers charged into the back of the melee on the hillside and started killing horses, I found that we’d migrated far enough west that we were in among the convoy. As de la Motte, his Hainaulters and our Gascons began to eliminate the last resistance, I found myself facing a cardinal. He had a long, ascetic face and a princely air, somewhat marred by a shrill voice.
‘Child of Belial! Thou creature of hell!’ he spat at me. ‘To rob the church! What is thy name, creature, that I may curse thee to the base of the pit of hell?’
I reined in and raised my visor. ‘Eminence,’ I said. ‘I believe our timely appearance has-’
‘Curse you and your kind!’ he screamed.
He was the Cardinal of Perigueux — Tallyrand. The most powerful man in Avignon. I met him again, as you’ll hear if you keep my cup filled.
He was not afraid. By God, he should have been, but his sense of his own power was absolute, and I could not get through to him. He began to say aloud the words of the sentence of excommunication.