‘Follow me!’ I called, and led my men: Grice and Courtney, Perkin Smallwood and Robert Grandice, de la Motte — he’d just rejoined me — and a few others. Ah, messieurs, I should remember their names and styles, for they were good men of arms, every one, and that was a feat of arms for any book. We rode west through broken country for a quarter of a league or less and there they were, breasting the stream.
Our opponents chose a terrible crossing, took a risk and paid. We caught them in the water and gaffed them like spawning fish with our spears. I captured a young knight — I was disappointed when he proved too small for his beautiful new harness to fit me. It fit Perkin, though, and he took it and wore it. I sent the young man home on parole to get me a thousand Florins, a price he named himself.
An afternoon’s fighting, I didn’t lose a man and I made a thousand florins. It’s a tale of its own how I came to be paid, but par dieu, gentlemen. With a dozen men-at-arms and ten archers, I held a mile of streamside against 300 knights.
Another thing, the horse I’d stolen from the priest was magnificently trained. Every day I rode him, I learned another trick he could do — there were hand commands, knee commands and spur commands. I would discover them by mistake, but after three weeks on this magnificent animal, I spent time with him, riding around a field and trying different combinations. I suspected he had voice commands — he was a very intelligent animal, for a horse — and he fought brilliantly at the ford, backing under me and changing direction as soon as he felt a shift in my weight.
As soon was we’d beaten them and seen their backs, we rode back north to find de Badefol, who sat twirling his moustache like Satan’s lieutenant — he was an evil-looking man, and no mistake. He grinned and nodded when he saw our prisoners and haul of armour.
‘If you weren’t such a giant, you’d be easier to arm!’ he called.
In truth, after that skirmish I was the worst-armed man in our band, and it rankled. We were fighting in winter and had no servants — everything I owned was brown and orange, and my clothes were all besmottered with rust.
And yet, 1,000 gold Florins, even in expectation, seemed to cure all my woes. And I was proud of my feat, and prouder still that I’d behaved with steady courtesy to the young knight I’d taken. I hadn’t had to despoil a peasant or burn a house in weeks.
As soon as we were sure we’d driven them from the field, we turned tail and ran ourselves, all the way back to Mechin, who was waiting six miles up the valley with the rest of the Great Company, at the crossroads to Lyon.
He already knew from our outriders, and before we reached him, the army was marching north. By chance, I was the first officer to reach the little man, and he hugged me. ‘The ill-made knight triumphs!’ he said, and other men laughed.
Well, I hated the name, but when you are a mass of rusty brown, you know what you’re being teased for.
We marched north. At the edge of night, there was a stir at the front of the column and I was afraid we were fighting. I assumed that the archpriest had stolen a march and surprised us.
I had my gauntlets on, and Perkin was slipping my helmet over my head when John Thornbury reined in by my horse.
‘Not an attack, then,’ I said.
He shook his head. ‘We burned the castle at Rive-de-Gier and ran,’ he said. ‘The whole royal army of France appeared from over the river. Brignais is under siege.’
I thought of my beans and peas and barley. Brignais under siege threatened everything. ‘Does Mechin know?’ I asked.
Thornbury nodded. ‘I’m to fetch de Badefol. Sir John’s with the little Frenchman now.’
I followed him. No one asked me, and I certainly didn’t have enough lances to count as a captain, but he didn’t say me nay. I’m glad I went.
When I came in with Thornbury and de Badefol, Sir John Hawkwood was sitting across a two-board table from Petit Mechin in the ruins of an abbey hall. The army was halted outside on the road, and the word was we were moving all night. A pair of whores were satisfying a line of clients outside the burned-out hall, and a small boy was collecting coins from the men in the line.
Life in the field. I want you to see this — the best soldiers in France were planning their battle to the accompaniment of the grunts of twenty customers.
Very well. You want Brignais. The end of the companies. The death of the Nation of Thieves.
Mechin was picking his teeth when I came in. He had both Albret’s at the table, Camus, of course, Sir John Hawkwood, Leslie, Birkhead, Naudin de Bagerin and another half a dozen captains. He looked at me and smiled.
‘Heh,’ he laughed. ‘You all know the news?’
I think we all nodded.
‘Worse than Poitiers, and no mistake,’ Sir John said.
Mechin smiled. ‘I didn’t come out so well at Poitiers,’ he said. ‘And you did, you dog of an Englishman.’
Sir John smiled.
‘Listen,’ Mechin went on. ‘Creswell is in Brignais with half a thousand men. Even if we could leave him, our ill-made knight and his friends have all too efficiently fixed Marshal Audreham in place astride the road south. The archpriest has the north road to Lyons.’ He shrugged. ‘We have no choice. We are trapped like a badger in his earth.’
‘Fight?’ asked de Badefol.
‘Fight,’ said Sir John, with professional distaste.
‘Fight,’ said Mechin, and his eyes sparkled.
We marched all night.
Mechin made the plan, and it was a good plan. He divided the army into two parts. All the lesser men-at-arms — the brigands and the routiers and the men with bad horses — went with Mechin himself. They marched straight at Brignais. Two hours before dawn, they dismounted, formed in close order and marched to the top of the high ridge that towers over the castle of Brignais and emerged into the open, spear tips sparkling. Then Mechin sent a herald, as if he was the King of France himself, to the Count of Tancraville, inviting him to try the issue in combat. Listen, I’m not proud of what I did as a routier at times. I was just learning what it might mean to be a knight, to have honour, to be just. But I’m proud of that moment — an army of little men and squires challenging France’s very best men-at-arms. With a certain joy.
The Count of Tancraville accepted Mechin’s challenge to battle. He took the time to arm his men, and he knighted his son and a dozen other rich young men. He formed his army in three great battles — the first led by the archpriest, the second he led in person, and the third led by Jacques de Bourbon.
The archpriest begged Tancraville to wait until the sun burned off the morning mist. And he insisted that attacking Mechin up the hill would lose him knights he didn’t need to lose.
Most of the archpriest’s men were routiers like me, and the Count of Tancraville replied, with stunning honesty, that he didn’t care if the archpriest’s whole command was killed.
I wasn’t there for any of this. I agree that my account isn’t the same as that rascal Villani’s, or others you may have heard, but by the Virgin, messieurs, I knew a thousand men who were there, and neither of those fellows was within a hundred miles of the spot. I wasn’t there, because I was with Seguin de Badefol and John Hawkwood, riding like the devil.
We went south, again, in the darkness, along the left side of the same great ridge that had been on our right the day before. We were all well-mounted, and we’d left all the riff-raff — even our own riff-raff — behind.
Perhaps the greatest jest of Brignais is that the peasants helped us. Never forget the Jacques, friends. French peasants hate their masters, who screw them for silver the way a laundress twists cloth. Someday, mark my words, Messieurs, some day the Jaques will have their way. Their hate can suffocate you, though. So great that they would help us — the routiers — defeat their own aristocrats, who claimed to be their defenders. Twenty local men led us south and then east over the next ridge. At midnight, with no moon, we were climbing the ridge with our reins in our hands, on foot, our spurs clanking with every step. But first light found us coming upon Brignais from the south, and if the French knew we were there, they didn’t give a hint of it.