“Well spoken young lad, isn’t he?” said Hugh to Robert as they strode toward the pavilion.
“That comes from him being a failed monk. The Benedictines threw him out about two years ago.”
Hugh shot a quick look at Alan, who had developed a sudden deep blush. “Their loss and our gain! I look forward to hearing the story tonight! Here we are!” He pushed a way through the crowded entrance to the tent and then forced a way towards a small, shaven-headed man who was sitting behind a table looking harassed. “Ho, Michel! My friend Thibaut de Aumale has sent two knights, including his son, and five men to join us!”
Michel barely glanced up from the papers in front of him. “Give their details to my clerk, over there. The knights can join your squadron. Do the men-at-arms have their own horses? No? Well, they can join Walter’s infantry company. Six deniers each a week, plus food and fodder for the horses.”
Michel looked past Hugh at the next in line and began to speak to him when Robert interrupted. “When do we see Count Geoffrey to swear fealty?”
Michel laughed. “Count Geoffrey doesn’t have time for that crap! We’re due to sail as soon as the wind changes fair for England. Take your places, do your duty and if you’re found worthy he can worry about that later. Next!”
Back outside in the late afternoon sunshine Alan commented, “Well, that was a bit abrupt. I didn’t think we’d exactly be greeted like the prodigal son, but I’d have thought we’d have been made more welcome than that!” Hugh flushed with embarrassment but made no comment. Clearly he was put out by the cavalier treatment he himself had just received. “Let’s get ourselves set up before it gets dark,” Alan continued.
“You have your own tent?” asked Hugh.
“Yes, a five-man tent,” replied Robert.
Hugh nodded his acknowledgment that either Alan and Robert, or more likely their fathers, knew something about campaigning and said, “There’s an open space over there where you can set up your tent. Horse-lines are down there. You’re responsible to look after your own horses. The main meal is at mid-day, of course. There’s also food provided at about dusk. Don’t rely on getting any food in the town. There’s a baker, pie-sellers and so on- but with 6,000 hungry men in camp the food in the town is poor quality, expensive and scarce. You get a pound of meat, half a pound of cheese and some fruit and vegetables a day. Err… if you’re religious, there’s no fish on Fridays, sorry. Horses get fresh-cut grass and hay twice a day. If you want them to have oats, you have to arrange that yourself. Again, it’s expensive- you can spend your whole wage just feeding your horse.”
While Gillard took the horses down to the horse-lines, rubbed them down and fed and watered them, the others set up the tent, squeezed into a vacant spot of grass, and moved the knight’s equipment inside before the men-at-arms went to report at the infantry compound. Alan took three palliasses to the hay store and filled the mattresses, carrying all three back at once, draped over his head and back.
After dark Alan sat around a camp-fire with Hugh, Robert and another dozen or so men, some sitting close to the flames and others leaning back against saddles and other equipment in the semi-darkness further from the fire. The meat, a nondescript grey in colour, full of gristle and starting to turn slimy, had been boiled with vegetables. Alan was eating from a wooden bowl, having already drunk the liquid. Having given up trying to cut the meat with his knife he was gnawing patiently at the hunk of meat with his side teeth. A slice of rancid cheese lay on the grass next to him.
Alan, Hugh and Robert were the only knights in the troop, the others being common soldiers. While the talk at table at home had rarely been refined, the talk about the fire was sufficiently gross as to make Alan uncomfortable. He really wasn’t interested in hearing, thrust by thrust, of one man’s conquest of a local village slut.
“You going to eat that, boy?” demanded a man who was slouched several paces away, his voice thick with a Flemish accent. Having obtained Alan’s attention, he indicated towards the cheese with a knife which he has been using to clean his fingernails. Alan gave him a flat stare before picking up the cheese and tossing it to him. “What’s the matter, boy? Not up to your usual standards at high table? Well, queer boy, you’re going to have to get used to worse than that before the campaign is over.”
Alan sighed, put the tough meat back in the bowl and placed it on the ground next to where he was sitting. He realised he had to do something, otherwise his life was going to be made a misery for the next few months. “Maybe so,” he replied, wiping his hands on a cloth. “But I don’t have to get used to putting up with shit-for-brains like you not showing proper respect for their betters. Since you’re calling me a queer, I suspect that’s just wishful thinking on your part- not that anybody would want to have sex with a stinking deformed monkey like you.”
“Proper respect! Deformed monkey! We’ll see about that, you ponce!” snarled the Fleming in reply, starting to his feet as the others around the fire first guffawed and then fell silent in anticipation.
“No swords!” shouted Hugh, seeing Alan’s hand moving towards the sheathed sword that lay next to him. “Fists or knives!”
“Then knives it is!” said Monkey-Man in a low and dangerous tone as he circled around Alan waving his knife in the air as the latter rose to his feet and drew his own knife from a sheath in his right boot. “I’m going to cut you, boy. Cut you so bad your boyfriends will run in fright when they see you!”
Alan thought that the whole situation was ridiculous, but recognised its seriousness. He was surprised that Hugh was prepared to allow things to proceed, but knew he had to respond to the challenge and was confident despite his lack of years.
His background was an unusual in that, because he was intelligent and was a third son of a relatively poor family and with no prospects of inheritance, he’d been sent at the age of twelve to study at the Benedictine abbey at Rouen. A precocious lad, he was always in trouble, and at the age of sixteen was embarrassingly caught naked in the bed of a novice nun. That incident had caused the abbot to lose patience and expelled him. To allow Alan the opportunity to catch up for missed training time his father had called in a favour owed to him by the famous swordsman Angelo, and Alan had spent two years of intensive weapons-training at Angelo’s salle d’armes in Paris. Amongst the skills taught was ‘rough and dirty’ knife fighting. He remembered Angelo’s comments and instructions as if it were yesterday. ‘There’s no such thing as an experienced knife-fighter- everybody gets killed or badly cut after a few bouts’. ‘Fight to win- fight dirty’. ‘Keep it simple. Keep it short.’
“What’s your name, Monkey-Man?” asked Alan, goading his opponent. “I want to know who it is I’m going to kill.”
“Lonner the Quick,” came the reply, the Fleming disappointed to see confidence and contempt in Alan’s eyes rather than the fear he’d expected. He himself licked his dry lips quickly as he struggled to adapt to the change of roles.
The two men circled each other in the firelight, with a crowd of now of nearly fifty men, faces expectant in the flickering light, making a circle around them that was some eight paces wide. Alan was content to let Lonner make the first move, watching Lonner’s knife-hand and his feet. Lonner had a right lead, waving the knife back and forwards about six inches and had dropped his eyes to look at Alan’s knife. He made several feints and then tried a slash towards Alan’s arm. Alan stepped sideways to avoid the slash and circled left. With a sharp upward movement of his head he caught Lonner’s eye and stepped in and sideways to give his opponent a hard sideways kick to the left knee. The steel toecap of Alan’s boot smashed Lonner’s kneecap as he also savagely cut Lonner’s left upper arm with his knife. Lonner dropped with a squeal like a stuck pig, knee smashed and blood spurting from the deep wound in the arm.
Alan glanced about the crowd. “I guess that Lonner is no longer ‘the Quick’. Anybody else want to chance their arm?” he demanded. There were no takers and Alan walked back to sit by the fire, trying to still the trembling in his hands as he wiped his knife blade clean before putting it away in the sheath in his boot. Several men carried Lonner off towards the abbey infirmary.
“What the hell was that about?” Alan demanded of Hugh. “You could’ve stopped that anytime and made them give me the respect of my position. Instead I’ve had to cripple, and possibly kill, one of your men.”
Hugh de Berniers shrugged. “Respect has to be earned in a war-band. You have that now. I wanted to see what kind of man you are- now I know. You’re a killer who thinks quickly and fights dirty, which is just what I need. You’ll be second in command of the troop.”
Several days later they were still sitting and waiting for the wind. Each was eating a bowl of unsweetened oat porridge for breakfast when Robert asked Hugh, “Do you think we’ll ever get on the ships and sail to England?”
