By God, I was determined to find one.
. . Until your devoted servant is able to come to your side.
I finished it.
Du Guesclin held out his hand. ‘Let me see it before you seal it,’ he said gruffly. ‘If I’m to carry my death warrant-’
‘Is d’Herblay so dangerous?’ I asked.
‘He represents a certain. . kind.’ Du Guesclin shrugged. ‘He has money, and the ear of the Dauphin.’
As I finished folding my note, I heard a stir. I had a moment of hope that it might be Sir John Chandos, coming to tell me that all was forgiven? At some level, I wondered that the Prince hadn’t even mentioned our original transgression, the Three Foxes. Forgotten? I put wax on it and jammed my seal into the wax.
As if summoned in a passion play, Master Chaucer poked his head into my tent.
‘Pax?’ he asked. He was parchment white — afraid of me, and little wonder. The beeswax candles and the oil lamps together couldn’t give him a ruddy glow, he was so pale.
‘Monsieur du Guesclin?’ I said with a bow. ‘Master Chaucer, an English squire. Who you may recall.’
The two men eyed each other warily.
Du Guesclin palmed my note, sealed and folded a dozen times. He bowed. ‘I must go prepare for the lists,’ he said. ‘I remain sorry that I will not face you there.’
‘Monsieur may be satisfied that in the fullness of time, we will meet on some field or other,’ I said.
We embraced. Chaucer watched us like a falcon, and when du Guesclin was gone, he shook his head.
‘But you’ll gut each other with poleaxes,’ he said.
‘Have you met Guillaume de Machaut?’ I asked.
Chaucer paused. ‘Yes,’ he admitted, as if I’d dragged it from him. For once in our relationship, I had him off guard.
‘I met him at Reims. He impressed me deeply. And I thought of you.’ I shrugged.
Chaucer was dressed to ride, in a short wool gown and tall boots. ‘Sir John Chandos is sending me to Hawkwood,’ he said. ‘He said that you would escort me.’
He turned to face me and our eyes met.
‘The Prince employs Hawkwood, then? Unofficially?’ I asked.
He looked away. ‘Not my damned business to answer.’
‘I’m just a routier?’ I put in again.
Chaucer bit his lip. ‘You know the score as well as I do.’ He turned away, his nerves showing. ‘Damn it, Gold! I didn’t rat you out to the Prince in the first place! In fact, I tried to make it better.’
I shrugged. ‘There’s a lot of dirty water under that particular bridge,’ I assured him. ‘I’ll escort him. I assume that Sir John Chandos expects me to take service with Hawkwood?’ I paused. ‘Even in peacetime?’
Chaucer set his face. ‘It’s a dirty business, Gold, and no mistake.’
My name was struck from the rolls of the lists at Calais. I collected my borrowed armour and the clothes my love had bought me, and I rode east, looking for Sir John Hawkwood. I had Chaucer at my side, and Perkin, and I picked up almost a dozen English archers in Calais. They knew which way the winds were blowing. The King was selling his garrisons in France to the King of France, and when that happened there’d be no employment for archers at all.
The end of the war was forcing change, and some of those changes were hard on the professional soldiers. The King of France had to hand over more than a hundred castles to the King of England, but the King of England had to hand another sixty to the King of France. The problem both men faced is that of these almost 200 castles, routiers and brigands held two-thirds of them. They sat in all the vital castles and towns, collecting patis and fighting each other, looting the countryside and taking what they wanted. Some of them flew the flag of France, some the flag of England, and some of Navarre. The treaty included them, but no one had asked their opinion.
Sir John Hawkwood had a company in his own name, operating from a pair of castles in the Auvergne country in the very centre of France. They flew the flag of Navarre, and they served no interest but their own.
Sir John welcomed me with open arms. He spoke for two hours with Master Chaucer, who rode away again. Then he inspected my English archers and embraced me as warmly as du Guesclin had.
‘About time, lad. I’ll make your fortune,’ he said.
And that was my new goal. A fortune. And the settlement of a certain dispute with the Comte d’Herblay.
Richard Musard returned to Sir John in late September. He’d gone to Avignon with an English knight on an official embassage — and returned to Calais to find that he, too, was officially repudiated by the Prince. The Captal told him where to find me, and despite our shared anger, we were delighted to be reunited. We drank a great deal and he admired my clothes, which were still well-preserved at that point. There was very little fighting that summer. Everyone was waiting, on edge, to see what the King of England would do. Whether peace would be signed.
Richard had John Hughes with him, and I had Perkin — the last remnants of our former lances. The rest of the men had melted away — most of the Hainaulters had gone to other companies, and Marcus, who could write, sent to us inviting us to join the German Albert Sterz in pillaging the north of France, but Sir John offered us steady employment and a home. Besides, most of his men-at-arms were English, and men like John Thornbury and Thomas Leslie kept the company well-ordered, if not prosperous. De la Motte joined us from a Gascon company, with news of the Bourc Camus, who was rising in favour with the Prince.
One of the developments of that autumn was that the moneylenders slowed their flow of cash to us to a trickle. It was clear that peace was to be signed. We were not going to get wages from anyone. Some of the men left for Brittany, the last active theatre not covered by the treaty.
There were rumours that we might get employment in Spain, or Italy. There was a papal order that all routiers prepare to go on crusade.
So with no credit, I had to bear the expenses of a war horse, two pack horses, a squire, four archers and my own food. Perkin had had a war horse, which he lost when he was taken outside Reims. As my status fell, his did, as well.
In the autumn of 1360, it looked as if I was to have nothing. Richard complained of my temper, and Perkin tended to watch me out of the corner of his eye — I had hit him several times.
I was glad that Emile was not there to see me. I folded my red and black finery away and went back to my old clothes and my old ways. I even prepared a letter — a letter full of self pity, I promise you — to tell her to forget me, as I was nothing but a bandit.
In late autumn, a man came with a retinue. He bore no arms, but I knew him. Chaucer. And John Hughes knew the archers.
‘King’s men,’ he said smugly, in his Cumbrian accent. ‘Bodyguard archers.’ He pointed them out. ‘Sam was one of ’em, for a while. Paid by the King, or the Prince. The best.’
I thought that Chaucer would stay, but he was ahorse in our yard again in the time it took me to lace my doublet. I ran down in my hose and Hawkwood caught me at the base of the stairs.
‘Better hurry, Master Gold,’ he said. ‘Your friend isn’t staying.’
It was cold. Steam rose off the horses, and their nostrils vented smoke like dragons.
Richard had one of Chaucer’s hands in his when I went out.
‘I’m for London,’ Chaucer said. ‘I’m done with playing courier.’ He smiled his old, sly smile. ‘I’ve found something better.’
‘I’m glad someone has,’ I said. ‘Can I trouble you to take a letter to my sister?’
He looked at his archers, who shrugged.
‘I could do wi’ a cup o’ cheer,’ said the big bastard by Chaucer’s right side. He swung a leg over.
I ran into my corner of the common room, where most of the men-at-arms slept, and I wrote Mary a letter — a long letter.
I told her most of the truth — of what I was and who I served. I told her that I had paid a little less than two thirds of her dowry, and that the rest might have to wait, as I was short on war. I smiled when I wrote that. I smiled to think of her.