1356 (Special Edition)

‘Then welcome,’ Thomas said, ‘to the devil’s lost souls.’

Who now turned south and east to teach a fat and greedy count a lesson.

The Count of Labrouillade made slow progress. The horses were tired, the day grew warmer, most of his men were suffering from the wine they had drunk in the captured city, and the carts lumbered awkwardly on the rough road. Yet it did not matter, for shortly after midday the men he had sent to spy on le Batard returned with the news Labrouillade wanted.

The Englishman had ridden west. ‘You’re sure?’ the count snapped.

‘We watched him, my lord.’

‘You watched him do what?’ the count asked suspiciously.

‘He counted the money, lord, his men stripped off their armour, then they rode westwards. All of them. And he told the abbot he would send lawyers to demand payment.’

‘Lawyers!’ The count laughed.

‘The abbot said so, and he promised your lordship that he would speak for you in any proceedings.’

‘Lawyers!’ The count laughed again. ‘Then the quarrel won’t be settled in our lifetime!’ He was safe now and the slowness of his journey did not matter. He stopped in a miserable village and demanded wine, bread and cheese, none of which he paid for, but the peasants’ reward was to be in his presence and that, he sincerely believed, was recompense enough. After the meal he rattled the gelding knife on the bars of his wife’s cage. ‘You want it as a keepsake, Bertille?’ he asked.

Bertille said nothing. Her throat was raw from sobbing; her eyes were red and fixed on the rusted blade.

‘I shall shave your hair off, madame,’ the count promised her, ‘and make you go on your knees to the altar to beg for forgiveness. And God may forgive you, madame, but I shall not, and you’ll go to a convent when I’ve done with you. You will scrub their floors, madame, and wash their habits until your sins have been cleansed, and then you can live in regret for the rest of your miserable days.’

She still said nothing, and the count, bored that he could not provoke her to protest, called for his men to heave him into the saddle. He had discarded his armour now and was wearing a light surcoat blazoned with his badge, while his men’s armour was piled on packhorses along with their shields and lances. They rode carelessly, unthreatened, and the crossbowmen walked behind packhorses that were laden with sacks of plunder.

They followed a road that wound into the hills between chestnut trees. Pigs rooted between the trunks, and the count ordered a couple of them killed because he liked pork. The carcasses were thrown on top of the countess’s cage so that the blood dripped down onto her tattered dress.

By mid afternoon they were approaching the pass that would lead them into the count’s own land. It was a high place of scrawny pines and massive rocks, and legend said a force of Saracens had fought and died in the pass many years before. The country people went there to cast curses, a practice officially disapproved of by both the count and by the church, though when Bertille had first run off with her lover the count had gone to the Saracen’s Pass and buried a coin, struck the high rock at the top of the hill three times, and so put a curse on Villon. It had worked, he thought, and Villon was now a gelded lump of bleeding misery chained to the bed of a dung cart.

The light was fading. The sun was low over the western hills, but there was an hour of daylight left and that should be sufficient to see the tired soldiers over the pass, and from there the road ran straight downhill to Labrouillade. The bells of the castle would ring for the count’s victory, filling the new darkness with jubilation.

And just then the first arrow flew.

Le Batard had led thirty archers and twenty-two men-at-arms southwards while the rest of his force was continuing westwards with those wounded who could still ride. Le Batard’s horses were tired, but they kept a steady pace, following paths they had reconnoitred in the long days as they waited for the attack on Villon.

Thomas read the Earl of Northampton’s message as he rode. He read it once, then again, and his face betrayed nothing. His men watched him, suspecting the message might affect their future, but Thomas just folded the parchment and pushed it into a pouch hanging from his sword belt. ‘Has he summoned us?’ Sam finally asked.

‘No,’ Thomas said. ‘And why would he summon us? What use are you to the earl, Sam?’

‘None at all!’ Sam said cheerfully. He was pleased that the Earl had not called Thomas back to England or, more likely, to Gascony. The Earl of Northampton was Thomas’s liege lord, his master, but the earl was happy to let Thomas and his men serve as mercenaries. He shared the profits, and those profits were lavish.

‘He says we must be ready to join the prince’s army in the summer,’ Thomas said.

‘Prince Edward won’t need us,’ Sam replied.

‘He might if the King of France decides to play games,’ Thomas said. He knew the Prince of Wales was ravaging southern France and that King Jean was doing nothing to stop him, but he would surely march if the prince conducted another chevauchee. And that must be tempting, Thomas thought, because France was weak. The King of Scotland, France’s ally, was a prisoner in the Tower of London, and there were Englishmen in Normandy, Brittany and Aquitaine. France was like a great stag being mauled by hounds.

‘And that’s all the message says?’ Sam asked.

‘No,’ Thomas said, ‘but the rest of it is none of your business, Sam.’ Thomas spurred his horse ahead and beckoned Genevieve to follow him. They went into the trees, seeking privacy. Hugh, their son who was mounted on a small gelding, had followed his mother, and Thomas nodded to show the boy he was allowed closer. ‘You remember that Black Friar who came to Castillon?’ Thomas asked Genevieve.

‘The one you threw out of the town?’

‘He was preaching nonsense,’ Thomas said sourly.

‘What was his nonsense called?’

‘La Malice,’ Thomas said, ‘a magic sword, another Excalibur.’ He spat.

‘Why do you remember him now?’

Thomas sighed. ‘Because Billy has heard of the goddamned thing.’ ‘Billy’ was Thomas’s lord, William Bohun, Earl of Northampton. Thomas handed Genevieve the letter. ‘It seems another Black Friar preached in Carlisle and spouted the same nonsense. A treasure of the Seven Lords.’

‘And the earl knows …’ Genevieve began uncertainly, then checked.

‘That I’m one of the seven lords.’ Some people had called them the Seven Dark Lords of hell, and all were dead, but their descendants lived. Thomas was one. ‘So Billy wants us to find the treasure.’ He sneered as he said the last three words. ‘And when we find it we’re to deliver it to the Prince of Wales.’

Genevieve frowned over the letter. It was, of course, written in French, the language of England’s aristocracy. ‘The Seven Dark Lords possessed it,’ she read aloud, ‘and they are cursed. He who must rule us will find it, and he shall be blessed.’

‘The same nonsense,’ Thomas said. ‘It seems the Black Friars have got excited. They’re spreading the tale everywhere.’

‘So where do you look?’

Thomas wanted to say nowhere, that the nonsense was not worth a moment of their time, but the Abbe Planchard, the best man he had ever known, a Christian who was truly Christ-like and also a descendant of one of the Dark Lords, had an elder brother. ‘There’s a place called Mouthoumet,’ Thomas said, ‘in Armagnac. I can think of nowhere else to look.’

‘“Do not fail us in this,”’ Genevieve read the letter’s last line aloud.

‘Billy’s caught the madness,’ Thomas said, amused.

‘But we go to Armagnac?’

‘Once we’re finished here,’ Thomas said.

Because before the treasure could be sought the Count of Labrouillade must be taught that greed has a price.

So le Batard set up the ambush.

It was raining in Paris. A steady rain that diluted the filth in the gutters and spread its stink through the narrow streets. Beggars crouched under the overhanging houses, holding out skinny hands to the horsemen who threaded through the city gate. There were two hundred men-at-arms, all big men on big horses, and the riders