Milady was shaking me. ‘Hello?’ she said, over and over, with a certain brittle cheerfulness.
I didn’t know who she was or where I was for long heartbeats. I thought for some reason that I was in the Castle of Meaux, with Emile.
Perkin cured my confusion by leaning into the tent. ‘Sir? he asked. ‘I have all your prisoners, but it’s getting pretty bad out here.’
It was, too. Never, even in storming a town, did I see a lawless riot like the night after Brignais. The men were exhausted and elevated at the same time. Men of low birth, men who had, until a few months earlier, tilled the earth, suddenly had captured lords worth the value of a hundred farms or more.
Men were killing each other for their prisoners, or gambling a dozen fortunes away at dice, while friends gathered around them with weapons drawn. A young woman — whore or not, she was young and pretty — came past us dressed only in a kirtle, and she had two French knights on a rope. I have no idea how she came to have them, but they were her prisoners.
Armoured as I still was, it was all I could do to get to my feet, and my muscles protested — the skin at my hips where the weight of my awful coat of plates rested was rubbed raw, and under my arms, at the top of the muscles that rest where a woman has breasts, it hurt like the lash of a whip every time I raised my arm.
Stooping to exit the tent required an act of will.
Perkin had Richard Musard and my brave Burgundian, whose name I didn’t know, and two more knights. They were stripped to their arming clothes, and they were sitting at a small fire.
Musard was lying on a pallet. The Burgundian had a drawn sword in his hand.
I leaned over Richard, who winced. ‘You broke my fucking arm,’ he said.
‘I could have spent the time capturing someone worth money,’ I said.
Richard managed a small smile. ‘I’m worth a ransom, Will. Never doubt it.’
I shrugged. ‘Listen, brother, there is no ransom between us. I’m sorry about your arm, but when the coast is clear, you are free to go.’
‘How like a trained ape he is, your black man,’ said a familiar voice. ‘I don’t suppose you’ll do the same favour for me? I’m almost family, am I not?’
Firelight and muzzy-headedness didn’t help. It took me a moment to know him.
‘You don’t remember me? Oh, you knew my wife so much better, I think.’ His sneer was palpable, like a blow.
‘The Count d’Herblay,’ I croaked, with a bow.
‘I won’t rise,’ he said.
Perhaps foolishly, I looked at Perkin. ‘Whose capture is he?’ I asked.
‘Yours, sir,’ he said. ‘You put him down, man and horse together. I reined in to take him before the other jackals had him.’ He grinned.
I grinned back. But then all of d’Herblays’ barbs made sense.
I ignored him. I was sad, and afraid, that he knew too much and would punish Emile. And I wanted to kill him. I very much wanted to kill him.
My Burgundian bowed. ‘You let me keep my sword,’ he said, ‘and your squire chose to allow me to help him defend us against-’ he coughed delicately into his fist, ‘marauders.’
‘Your brothers and sisters in arms,’ said the Count d’Herblay. ‘I didn’t know that there were so many criminals in the world. And whores to service them.’ He nodded with apparent amicability at Milady as she emerged from the tent.
‘Better men-at-arms than you, it would appear,’ I said. He made me angry very easily. Why not? He had what I most wanted in the world, and he didn’t seem to place any value on her. But then I thought of everything Milady had taught me — and other men. I thought of how well it had worked, to show nothing to the Bourc. So I showed d’Herblay nothing, either. Nothing but courtesy.
He shrugged. ‘Any thug can swing a sword or wield a lance,’ he said. ‘That’s all knights are, thugs in fancy dress. You and your companions prove it.’
The Burgundian whirled on him. ‘Do not allow despair and defeat to rob you of your honour, monsieur. These gentlemen have taken us today. That is the fortune of war, which may turn in our favour another day. Fortune does not rob chivalry of its power.’
‘Chivalry is a myth for ignorant little men,’ d’Herblay said with a superior air. ‘To gull the small-minded into fighting.’ He looked at me. ‘Or to excuse the tyranny of raw force.’
I bowed to my Burgundian. ‘William Gold,’ I said.
‘Ah!’ he said. ‘I know of you. You don’t appear so very like Satan as you are described, monsieur. However, you will want my name and style, and I’m afraid I will prove a disappointment. I am merely a squire, Anglic de Grimard, and I doubt I’m worth 500 florins. Indeed, even that would beggar me.’
D’Herblay laughed nastily. ‘Why, then, you should have stayed home!’ he said. You are like a man who wagers on a game of dice and then announces he has no money to pay.’
De Grimard whirled on him. ‘I obeyed the summons of my lord,’ he said.
D’Herblay shrugged. ‘The more fool you,’ he said.
You can imagine that by this time I wished with all my heart that I’d killed the noble bastard ten times, but that was who he was: an endless drip of caustic commentary. It is a commonplace to say that such people hate themselves most of all — it doesn’t really help to know it.
I’ll add that all around us that night, men were being murdered for no better reason than that they were not worth a ransom. I could have killed him. My life might have been very different if I had killed him.
I never thought of it, though. He was Emile’s husband. I’d saved his life at the Bridge of Meaux, and I wasn’t going to ruin that now.
The last knight was really John Hughes’ capture — a knight from Tancraville’s retinue, A member of the Rohan lineage named Jean de Meung. He rose and bowed.
‘I am most pleased to find that I am the prisoner of a gentleman,’ he said, a little stiffly.
‘Don’t believe it!’ said d’Herblay. ‘He’s a branded thief, a traitor to his sworn lord and an excommunicate.’ He smiled at me. ‘Aren’t you, my dear?’
At any rate, men came out of the darkness — twice in the next fire-lit hour — and tried to take my captives. They were all Gascons, and they were. . wanton. Feral.
One group we chased away with a display of arms — we faced them down like you face down a pack of wild dogs, with shouts and gestures, and they slunk away.
The second group did the same, but again, like feral dogs, they turned at the edge of the firelight and threw themselves on us. They had little armour and a wretched array of weapons. I don’t even know if they were Gascon routiers or merely desperate men who had joined for plunder. They attacked us by firelight and we killed them. Richard held a dagger and did his best; de Grimard and I fought back to back at one point; de Meung stood by the Count d’Herblay and put men down with a great two-handed axe. John Hughes emerged from the darkness with Ned Candleman and Jack Sumner and our two servants, both of whom had good mail shirts and pole-arms. They were all drunk, but they were all alive, and after they came back to us, our little camp was secure and our prisoners could stop defending themselves.
Sometime after midnight, the tumult died away. Perkin helped me disarm, and we rolled dice for watches. I drew the very last watch before cock-crow — the best watch of all — and I fell onto my pallet and darkness came down.
The morning after Brignais was the beginning of the end of the Great Company. Who would have predicted that victory would destroy as effectively as defeat? We smashed the remaining armed power of France and took a fortune in ransoms, but we were not really an army. We had no King. We served no legitimate authority. We were under ban of excommunication. We didn’t really have a single commander, or if we did, Petit Mechin was interested in money and glory, not in, for example, making himself the King of France. We’d won a victory that, in a proper war, would have ended in a major concession of territory, but we were routiers, and we held no ground.