She changed our people.
The very first day she recovered her voice, we were sharing the loot from the dead Provencal knights, and Milady — we continued to call her that — looked at me.
‘Just give me the fucking money,’ Jack Sumner said for the third time to young Amory, who apparently owed him gambling debts.
Milady looked at me and frowned. ‘I will not have swearing,’ she said. ‘Not among my lord’s retainers.’
Jack looked abashed. He mumbled and apologized.
I reached for my share of the money.
‘You should have a man to carry your purse,’ she said to me. ‘It is ignoble for you to handle this money yourself. You practice largesse — you give to the poor, you host others in your hall. You pay no attention to money. That is the way of being a knight. Let another man watch it for you.’ Her mad eyes bored into mine. ‘When did you last give money to the poor?’
Perkin bowed to her. ‘Milady, I am Master William’s squire, and I will carry his purse.’
She sniffed. ‘See that it is done.’
Perkin beamed at her.
We mounted up and rode, heading north to rejoin the main ‘army’ of routiers. We called ourselves the Grand Company, and we had a good few men-at-arms.
As we rode through the sunshine, Milady began to sing. She was a southerner, an Occitan, and she sang the old songs. Her French — it wasn’t really all French — was hard to understand, but par dieu, she sang comme une ange, like an angel. She sang the songs of courtly love, and songs of war. She sang of Richard Coeur de Lion, and she sang of a peasant girl on a hillside refusing the love of a knight.
She held us spellbound.
That night — the first night of her speaking — we paid for a sheep from two terrified young peasants, butchered it and ate it in the shepherd’s stone cot, which was open on one side, where we built a roaring fire. The sheep we did in parts, not whole, and we had wine. Then Richard produced a deck of cards — the new cards that all the routiers spoke of. I hadn’t seen them. Some men said they came from the east — from India, even.
The cards Richard had were like the ones the Dominicans used to teach the catechism, except that the religious symbols had been replaced by those of venery — stags, ducks, spears and hawks. They were beautiful — hand-painted on fine parchemnt and pasted like artworks on fine paste board. Richard had taken them off a merchant we’d despoiled in the taking of Pont-Saint-Esprit.
Milady pounced on them like a young girl on a silk ribbon. ‘Do you play?’ she asked. ‘Piquet?’ She smiled. ‘I promise that I will deal gently with you, messieurs. My father taught me to play.’
At the words ‘my father’ her whole body gave a convulsive shudder. Then she pasted a smile on her face. ‘No matter. Let me teach you, eh bien?’
I remember that I leaned forward. ‘Would you rather dice, my lady?’
And she shook her head. ‘Dice are all very well, but a gentleman plays cards.’
I wanted to humour her — even then. ‘For high stakes?’ I asked.
‘A true knight never counts the cost, my lord,’ she said. ‘He wagers whatever he will, and if he loses, why, he pays. Rich or poor, a true knight never counts his coins like a merchant.’
Richard laughed. ‘This is why merchants own more and more of the world!’ he said. ‘And why Italian bankers defeat French knights.’
She frowned. ‘No, sir. Whatever amount of coin they amass, they are men of no worth. Only those who put their bodies in peril can be accounted preux. Those who will not risk death can have no preux.’ She smiled at me. ‘Surely I need not tell you this, monsieur.’
She smiled at me, and at Richard.
I sat back. ‘What of us? We take coin to fight.’
She shrugged. ‘Bah! A gentleman must feed his horses and his servants. Only a fool. . my father. .’ She paused and a shade passed over her face. ‘My father says only a fool or the Pope can expect a man to fight for nothing.’
I liked her nonsense. ‘And can a base-born man enoble himself by a life of arms?’ I asked.
She smiled. It was the pure smile of a maiden — lips slightly parted, eyes bright. ‘Of course!’ she maintained. ‘Who but a malcontent or caitiff would say else?’
Richard was grinning like a fool, or a big, happy dog. ‘Jesus,’ he said aloud.
‘And I will thank you not to take the lord’s name in vain,’ Milady said. ‘A knight is at all times respectful of his lord’s passion. A knight, by the pain of his armour and the labour of his wars, suffers with our lord every day.’
I think I swallowed. Hard.
But we drank, we played cards, and all the silver from my purse went into Milady’s. She giggled. ‘I will need my own squire,’ she allowed. Her eyes fixed on Amory. ‘You — you have a gentle way with you. Do you fancy being my squire?’
The snap of her words brought the boy to a position of deference and he leaped to do her bidding.
I think we all did.
The next few days were spent moving fast. We stared down a pair of knights at a river crossing and convinced them to move aside. We saw a strong force coming on the road an hour later, and we judiciously moved into the high hills south of Narbonne, with the sheep and the wolves. I don’t remember much of those days, except that we were enjoying her company so much we scarcely noticed that we were suddenly the focus of a papal hunt for malcontents. There were twenty papal men-at-arms chasing us, and another twenty mounted corssbowmen, and we were riding through deadly country, where a sudden rockfall could kill your horse. But again, Milady knew the area, and again, she knew how to move through it.
‘We hunted here,’ she said with a brittle smile, because hunting reminded her of her father, which reminded her of Pont-Saint-Esprit. I could follow her thought, and I was careful not to mention anything to do with that place. Richard was not so quick, and I had to kick him a few times.
There are few things as fatiguing as commanding men — and women — in flight, and doing so while attempting to control their tempers and their emotions. Richard couldn’t take his eyes off Janet, despite some admonitions from me. Amory was in the same state — not so much love as helpless adoration. John Hughes looked at her with a fatherly, protective air, which made him surly with me. And so on.
It wore on my temper, and when the load slipped on Jack Sumner’s mule, I lost my temper.
‘Get your head out of your arse and see to that animal!’ I shouted. ‘By the mother that bore you and god’s Grace, I should leave you to be taken. And the papal knights will string your useless corpse up by the roadside unshriven!’
Sumner had hovered by the pre-dawn breakfast fire instead of taking care with his packing. I’d noted it.
He didn’t quite meet my eyes and his face was working.
I could feel her coming. I could hear the horse picking its way along the hillside.
I thought I knew what she was going to say, and I was ready to have it out with her. Her presence was focusing our men on the wrong things.
She rode up next to me without so much as jostling my horse on the narrow track. Among her other abilities, she rode like a centaur in one of her romances.
‘Well?’ she said, imperiously, to Sumner.
He looked at her.
She raised an eyebrow. ‘You have justifiably angered your lord,’ she said.
Sumner stammered. Sumner was a tough bastard who’d have knifed his own mother to get a fresh horse, but he stammered.
She cocked an eyebrow at me and turned her horse’s head. I trotted up our column in a state of shock. I’d expected her to take his side, which, in retrospect, was foolish of me. She always deferred to my command.
At the head of the column, she motioned to Richard to fall back — he’d been riding with her — and when we had the privacy afforded by rapid movement on a narrow track, she said, ‘A knight does not lose his temper.’