The French start fighting back. They still won’t cross the border, but English raiding parties begin to disappear, or limp back to Antwerp beaten and bloody.
It’s three days’ ride from the English camp outside Antwerp to the French border, then there’s usually a week spent raiding, and three days’ back. So it takes a fortnight and a dozen English lives before they realise something has changed.
The survivors talk of organised patrols waiting for them. Of foreign sell-swords, and a mercenary leader in beeswax-blackened armour who goes by the name of the Chevalier de la Mort. Harry wakes a few mornings later to find that Guy d’Audley has left in the pre-dawn darkness, taking a force of thirty knights and men-at-arms, riding for Amiens to teach this Lord Death a lesson. They clearly hadn’t wanted ‘Auntie Harry’ along.
Harry trudges heavily across camp until he finds a familiar pavilion. Sir Hugh and Rolly, now Sir Roland, are at their breakfast in front of their tent, and when Sir Hugh sees Harry he beckons him to join them. Harry sighs and eases himself down onto an upturned bucket, still leaving a goodly distance between himself and Rolly.
Harry looks up at Sir Hugh, at the grey dirtying his light brown hair, the spider’s webs of care at the corners of his grey eyes. Sir Hugh is an old man in a young man’s profession, and Harry both respects and fears him for that. ‘What would Sir Simon do?’ Harry asks, as Sir Hugh proffers him a bit of bacon.
‘About what?’ Sir Hugh asks in his thick West Country accent. ‘If we’re talking about breakfast, he’d take the bacon.’
Harry grins, despite himself, and pulls the strip of meat off the proffered knife. ‘One of Montagu’s bully boys and a bunch of young knights have gone off to raid the French. You’ve heard there are mercenaries on the border now?’
Sir Hugh nods. ‘Rolly saw the party come back a few days ago. One of his friends was severely wounded.’
‘I have a bad feeling,’ Harry says. ‘I think they’re going to get themselves killed. Sir Guy is experienced enough that I’m not going to stop him riding to Hell if he wants to … but,’ he sighs, ‘some of the boys with him are no better than squires.’ He glances up at Rolly. ‘No offence.’
‘I’ve been a knight for three years,’ Rolly smiles. ‘None taken.’
‘And now you’re wondering if you should ride after them and try to save their foolish hides,’ Sir Hugh mumbles, around a mouthful of egg.
‘I’m wondering if Sir Simon would. I’m not sure my moral map is working any more. Think I lost my way, in Scotland,’ Harry says.
‘If you’re worried about it, you’re still on the path,’ Sir Hugh says, poking at their campfire. He sighs then, and looks every hour of his nearly fifty years. ‘They made their choice, Harry. You can’t … you can’t save all the young fools, even the ones you look at and think, there but for God’s grace was me.’ He smiles. ‘Besides, they might win. And if they don’t, the next ones will be more careful.’
They don’t win.
Out of thirty knights and men-at-arms, only four ride home. They are the youngest knights, raised from squires in the mud of Antwerp, and they have the pale, pinched look of boys who have seen their nightmares made real. Half the camp sees them limp in, a bloody, fly-blown sack hanging from the last one’s saddlebag.
They go directly to Montagu’s tent. Harry follows them.
He’s just stepping into the Earl’s marquee when one of the returned knights upends the bloody bag. Sir Guy’s severed head tumbles out of it.
‘We were ambushed,’ the young knight stutters. ‘They said the Black Knight and his men were camped outside Esplechin … as we rode through a village their bowmen cut us down.’
Montagu kneels to look at Sir Guy’s mottled, bloated visage. ‘Who killed him?’ the Earl asks.
‘The knight in black, he killed Sir Guy in single combat, and then they said we could go, and to take his head to you and tell you that this is the fate of raiders.’
‘This Black Knight,’ Montagu snarls, standing up. ‘What exactly did he say?’
The knights look at each other, warily. One of the others, his sword arm bandaged, speaks up. ‘He never said a single word. His men spoke for him.’
Montagu grunts, and nudges the severed head with his foot. It rolls over. On the left cheek is carved a strange, curled wound, like a loose, badly joined-up circle. ‘And what is this?’ he asks.
‘I, I don’t know,’ the young knight says.
But Harry knows.
It’s not a circle.
It’s the number nine.
Nine knights left. Nine of the Galloway Dozen, the men who murdered Marguerite of France. Crocker, Waldegrave, and now d’Audley dead.
It’s impossible, Harry thinks. It must be some freakish coincidence; his foolish heart leaping at the thinnest wisp of hope and constructing an entire castle on it.
But why else would the mercenaries specify Montagu by name? Why not the King?
‘I need to speak to His Majesty,’ mutters Montagu, pacing. He points at the head. ‘Take this thing away and bury it. You, come with me,’ he commands, his index finger rising to indicate the young knight who had spoken first. ‘You’ll give a full report in front of the King. Number of troops. Weapons. Likely nationalities. Tactics. If the King approves, we’ll raise a larger force and destroy this resistance and all who support them the same way we took care of it in Scotland.’
‘I’d like to go,’ says Harry, stepping forwards before he even realises it. ‘I’ve been on several raids across the border. I know some of the land.’ Harry inhales, and plays his final card. ‘Sir Thomas Howland, too, he is the most experienced raider of us all.’
Montagu smiles at him, his hooded eyes as dead as a December garden. ‘Good old Sir Harry. We can always count on you.’
The King
