‘Then I’m no knight,’ I said, spoiling for a fight.
She looked at me. ‘You are a knight. And if you seek the rank, and achieve it, it is on your shoulders to support it. A knight is in control of his temper — always. This is the essence of courtesy, and courtesy is at the heart of knighthood.’
I thought of Chatillon, and du Guesclin, and Sir John Chandos. And even Hawkwood.
I had never seen Sir John Hawkwood lose his temper. Then I considered Boucicault.
I winced.
She smiled. ‘If you wish to command others, you must always show that you are in command of yourself. This my father taught me.’ Her eyes met mine — too wide, too open, too bright.
‘Perhaps I’m just a common churl who kills men for money,’ I spat.
Her mad eyes met mine. ‘You saved me,’ she said in a low voice.
I couldn’t hold her eyes. There was something burning there and I had to look away.
I also remember another evening — we’d outrun our pursuit and found a stream coming out of the high hills towards Spain, so we washed off the dust and dirt, and in some cases blood, of five days of moving fast. She bathed with us — like the man she’d made herself — sometimes.
I refused to let myself look at her body, but I was aware of it.
And afterwards, we lay around the pool. All the men had put shirts on — that was the effect she had — so she put on a shirt.
That’s not what makes the moment memorable, nor was the flask of Gascon wine that was going around. Amory and Ned were in the rocks above us, on watch. John Hughes, moving carefully, climbed up to them with wine.
‘I could teach you to ride better,’ she said. She lay between Richard and me, and it was hard to tell which of us she addressed.
‘What is wrong with my riding?’ Richard asked. He raised his head.
She smiled at the blue sky. ‘You are not in command of your horse, and he knows it.’
Richard sat up. ‘Really?’
‘Yes,’ she said. She turned her head and smiled at me. Her teeth were much whiter than a peasant girl’s. ‘And you are no better. If I didn’t know better, I’d say that you were afraid of horses. Did you learn late?’
Par dieu, mes gentils! I sat up and found myself nose to nose with Richard.
She laughed.
I think that Richard had only known prostitutes and camp women. He was tough as nails, gentle and true, but he was a fool with women, and he never had a chance. My Lady had all the skills of the nobility — all the skills, to be frank, that Richard and I lacked. While we rode, she would chat, or even discourse. It was as if, having been silent for two months, she had to make up for lost time.
I liked her a great deal.
Richard was hit with a poleaxe.
In a matter of days, our lives changed and changed again. We caught up with the Grand Company, and as we rode past Narbonne and turned north into the Rouergue, Richard changed, too. One night, he saw his love to bed — not a sign, by the by, that his feelings were returned — and came to sit with me at the fire.
‘This is no life for a lady,’ he said.
I guess I’m an insensitive brute. I thought it was a fine life for her. Emile had given me some notion of what a well-born girl had to look forward to — and worse if she’d been publicly shamed like Milady. A convent? At best? Whereas with us, she was safe as houses. She seemed to me to be blooming like a summer flower in high heat.
So I shrugged. ‘She looks fine to me,’ I said. ‘Better every day.’
‘When I was in Avignon,’ he said, ‘I met a man — a great lord. The Count of Savoy.’
‘The Green Count?’ I asked. He was a great noble and a famous knight. One of the few great men who still risked his body in the field. I was picking up Milady’s language.
Richard nodded. ‘I could take service with him.’
‘He has a great name,’ I agreed, ‘but I doubt he’d accept Milady as a lance.’
‘Oh, as to that,’ he said dismissively. ‘She doesn’t need to continue that charade. I’ll provide for her.’
That didn’t sound like what I saw every day, but on the other hand, I was more interested in a little loot, and in where my captain intended to spend the winter. The loot was because I had just two payments left on my sister’s dowry. When it was paid, I was a free lance. And spending the winter? I was determined to ride to Emile. Time spent close to Milady Janet had convinced me I needed Emile.
A rumour had come that Sir John Hawkwood and some of the other companies had gone over the mountains to Italy after cutting a deal with the Pope. The rumour came from one of the Florentine bankers who rode with us, and when he’d told me the rumour, he handed over two letters — one from Sir John Hawkwood, requesting that I rejoin his company for the spring campaign, and one — a small, well-wrapped package — from Bertrand du Guesclin. He thanked me for the return of the borrowed armour — the fine breast and backplates he’d loaned me for the tilt at Calais — and he enclosed a note from ‘a friend’.
Monsieur my heart,
I hear from our mutual friends that you are alive, still brave and still in the field. My thoughts turn to you often, even while I sit at my high window and spin. In the spring I will bear my lord another child — but these are the petty concerns of a young matron, and I pray that wherever you are, you spare a thought for one who thinks of you each day.
I enclose something that I hope you will treasure for my sake, and for your own.
And she signed it, the little fooclass="underline" ‘Emile d’Herblay’.
I sat on my horse with an army flowing around me, and a great rage rose in me because she was pregant, again. Because I was not with her. Because, in fact, she went on with her life, doing as a wife must, and I went on with my life, doing as a mercenary must.
We weren’t just an army of mercenaries. To understand the years of the sixties, you have to understand that we weren’t an army or a nation, but we had aspects of both. Badefol’s version of the Great Company had about 8,000 professional soldiers, but another 12,000 men, women and children — desperate people, yes, but some merely looking for a better life or tired of oppression and tyranny. We had, in one vast army, men who had been Jacques, women who had fled brutal husbands, children who fled hateful parents; men who had been Flemish burghers, men who aspired to be English knights. It was not an army of looters and rapists, although we committed those crimes with increasing frequency.
It was also a very young army. I was about to be twenty-one, and I was older than most of the women and quite a few of the men. I had been at war for five years — some of the men-at-arms had been at war for twenty, but most were on their second or third campaign.
At any rate, we attracted a surprising number of women. We had women who had been nobles, like Milady, and women who had been merchant’s wives, and women who had been peasants, serfs, nuns, whores — the whole morality of our moving tribe was shockingly at odds with the morality of the towns. We had very few rules.
Of course, we lived by the sword, and we died like lemmings. Our women died of exposure, childbirth and famine; our children were thin beggars, and our men fed their horses before they fed the women and children. I’m not moved to argue that there was anything particularly noble about our army of mercenaries, except to say that, for a great many men and women, it was the closest thing to power they ever achieved. Odd, because many of our people were refugees from other bastards just like us. I’d read Aristotle and Aquinas, by then. So I would sit with my back against my saddle, some nights, and contemplate such things.
Emile’s cursed note came with a package. It proved to be a book. It was, in fact, Sir Ramon Llull’s book of chivalry. It was a beautiful thing, with gilt capitals and four magnificent, painted miniatures — one of two knights jousting, and one of a hermit talking to a knight.