The old woman opened a wooden chest. “Take what you want,” she said. “I have no one to give them to.” She picked up a bucket and went off to fetch water.
Caris began to sort through the garments in the chest. Jeanne had not asked for payment. Clothes had little monetary value after so many people had died, she guessed.
Mair said: “What are you up to?”
“Nuns aren’t safe,” Caris said. “We’re going to become pages in the service of a minor lord – Pierre, Sieur of Longchamp in Brittany. Pierre is a common name and there must be lots of places called Longchamp. Our master has been captured by the English, and our mistress has sent us to find him and negotiate his ransom.”
“All right,” Mair said eagerly.
“Giles and Jean were fourteen and sixteen, so with luck their clothes will fit us.”
Caris picked out a tunic, leggings and a cape with a hood, all in the dull brown of undyed wool. Mair found a similar outfit in green, with short sleeves and an undershirt. Women did not usually wear underdrawers, but men did, and fortunately Jeanne had lovingly washed the linen garments of her dead family. Caris and Mair could keep their own shoes: the practical footwear of nuns was no different from what men wore.
“Shall we put them on?” said Mair.
They pulled off their nuns’ robes. Caris had never seen Mair undressed, and she could not resist a peek. Her companion’s naked body took her breath away. Mair’s skin seemed to glow like a pink pearl. Her breasts were generous, with pale girlish nipples, and she had a luxuriant bush of fair pubic hair. Caris was suddenly conscious that her own body was not as beautiful. She looked away, and quickly began to put on the clothes she had chosen.
She pulled the tunic over her head. It was just like a woman’s dress except that it stopped at the knee instead of the ankles. She pulled up the linen underdrawers and the leggings, then put her shoes and belt back on.
Mair said: “How do I look?”
Caris studied her. Mair had put a boy’s cap over her short blonde hair, and tilted it at an angle. She was grinning. “You look so happy!” Caris said in surprise.
“I’ve always liked boys’ clothes.” Mair swaggered up and down the small room. “This is how they walk,” she said. “Always taking more space than they need.” It was such an accurate imitation that Caris burst out laughing.
Caris was struck by a thought. “Are we going to have to pee standing up?”
“I can do it, but not in undershorts – too inaccurate.”
Caris giggled. “We can’t leave off the drawers – a sudden flurry of wind could expose our… pretences.”
Mair laughed. Then she began to stare at Caris in a way that was strange but not entirely unfamiliar, looking her up and down, meeting her eyes and holding her gaze.
“What are you doing?” said Caris.
“This is how men look at women, as if they own us. But be careful – if you do it to a man, he becomes aggressive.”
“This could be more difficult than I thought.”
“You’re too beautiful,” Mair said. “You need a dirty face.” She went to the fireplace and blackened her hand with soot. Then she smeared it on Caris’s face. Her touch was like a caress. My face isn’t beautiful, Caris thought; no one ever judged it so – except Merthin, of course…
“Too much,” Mair said after a minute, and wiped some off with her other hand. “That’s better.” She smeared Caris’s hand and said: “Now do me.”
Caris spread a faint smudge on Mair’s jawline and throat, making it look as if she might have a light beard. It felt very intimate, to be looking so hard at her face, and touching her skin so softly. She dirtied Mair’s forehead and cheeks. Mair looked like a pretty boy – but she did not look like a woman.
They studied one another. A smile played on the red bow of Mair’s lips. Caris felt a sense of anticipation, as if something momentous was about to happen. Then a voice said: “Where are the nuns?”
They both turned round guiltily. Jeanne stood in the doorway, holding a heavy bucket of fresh water, looking frightened. “What have you done to the nuns?” she said.
Caris and Mair burst out laughing, and then Jeanne recognized them. “How you have changed yourselves!” she exclaimed.
They drank some of the water, and Caris shared out the rest of the smoked fish for breakfast. It was a good sign, she thought as they ate, that Jeanne had not recognized them. If they were careful, perhaps they could get away with this.
They took their leave of Jeanne and rode off. As they breasted the rise before Hopital-des-Soeurs, the sun came up directly ahead of them, casting a red light on the nunnery, making the ruins look as if they were still burning. Caris and Mair trotted quickly through the village, trying not to think about the mutilated corpse of the nun lying there in the debris, and rode on into the sunrise.
47
By Tuesday 22 August the English army was on the run.
Ralph Fitzgerald was not sure how it had happened. They had stormed across Normandy from west to east, looting and burning, and no one had been able to withstand them. Ralph had been in his element. On the march, a soldier could take anything he saw – food, jewellery, women – and kill any man who stood in his way. It was how life ought to be lived.
The king was a man after Ralph’s own heart. Edward III loved to fight. When he was not at war he spent most of his time organizing elaborate tournaments, costly mock battles with armies of knights in specially designed uniforms. On the campaign, he was always ready to lead a sortie or raiding party, hazarding his life, never pausing to balance risks against benefits like a Kingsbridge merchant. The older knights and earls commented on his brutality, and had protested about incidents such as the systematic rape of the women of Caen, but Edward did not care. When he had heard that some of the Caen citizens had thrown stones at soldiers who were ransacking their homes, he had ordered that everyone in the town should be killed, and only relented after vigorous protests by Sir Godfrey de Harcourt and others.
Things had started to go wrong when they came to the river Seine. At Rouen they had found the bridge destroyed, and the town – on the far side of the water – heavily fortified. King Philippe VI of France was there in person, with a mighty army.
The English marched upstream, looking for a place to cross, but they found that Philippe had been there before them, and one bridge after another was either strongly defended or in ruins. They went as far as Poissy, only twenty miles from Paris, and Ralph thought they would surely attack the capital – but older men shook their heads sagely and said it was impossible. Paris was a city of fifty thousand men, and they must by now have heard the news from Caen, so they would be prepared to fight to the death, knowing they could expect no mercy.
If the king did not intend to attack Paris, Ralph asked, what was his plan? No one knew, and Ralph suspected that Edward had no plan other than to wreak havoc.
The town of Poissy had been evacuated, and the English engineers were able to rebuild its bridge – fighting off a French attack at the same time – so at last the army crossed the river.
By then it was clear that Philippe had assembled an army larger by far than the English, and Edward decided on a dash to the north, with the aim of joining up with an Anglo-Flemish force invading from the north-east.
Philippe gave chase.
Today the English were encamped south of another great river, the Somme, and the French were playing the same trick as they had at the Seine. Sorties and reconnaissance parties reported that every bridge had been destroyed, every riverside town heavily fortified. Even more ominously, an English detachment had seen, on the far bank, the flag of Philippe’s most famous and frightening ally, John, the blind king of Bohemia.
Edward had started out with fifteen thousand men in total. In six weeks of campaigning many of those had fallen, and others had deserted, to find their way home with their saddlebags full of gold. He had about ten thousand left, Ralph calculated. Reports of spies suggested that in Amiens, a few miles upstream, Philippe now had sixty thousand foot soldiers and twelve thousand mounted knights, an overwhelming advantage in numbers. Ralph was more worried than he had been since he first set foot in Normandy. The English were in trouble.