1356 (Special Edition)

Thomas was silent for a few heartbeats. ‘The Seven Dark Lords possessed it,’ he quoted the verse that the Black Friars had been spreading through Christendom, ‘and they are cursed. He who must rule us will find it, and he shall be blessed.’

‘The sword of the fisherman,’ Father Levonne said. ‘It isn’t a sword, Thomas, but the sword. The sword that Saint Peter used to Christ’s displeasure, and because of that disapproval they say the blade is cursed.’

‘Tell me.’

‘I’ve told you all I know!’ Father Levonne said. ‘It’s only an old story, but the story says la Malice carries Christ’s curse in her blade and if that’s true then la Malice must be horribly powerful. Why else would the sword bear that name?’

‘And Cardinal Bessieres searches for her,’ Thomas said.

Levonne looked sharply at Thomas. ‘Bessieres?’

‘And he knows I look for her too.’

‘Oh dear God, but you choose powerful enemies, Thomas.’

Thomas climbed from his knees. ‘Bessieres,’ he said, ‘is a devil’s turd.’

‘He’s a prince of the church,’ Levonne said in mild admonishment.

‘He’s a prince of turds,’ Thomas said, ‘and I killed his brother not a quarter-mile from here.’

‘And Bessieres wants revenge?’

‘He doesn’t know who killed his brother. He knows me, though, and he’ll pursue me now because he thinks I know where la Malice is.’

‘Do you?’

‘No, but I let him think I knew.’ Thomas genuflected to the altar. ‘I dangled a bait in front of him, father. I invited him to pursue me.’

‘Why?’

Thomas sighed. ‘My liege lord,’ he said, meaning the Earl of Northampton, ‘wants me to find la Malice. And Bessieres, I think, is looking for the same thing. The trouble is I don’t know how to find it, father, but I want to be close to Bessieres in case he finds it before I do. Keep your enemies close, isn’t that good advice?’

‘La Malice is an idea, Thomas,’ Father Levonne said, ‘an idea to inspire the faithful. I doubt she exists at all.’

‘But she must have existed once,’ Thomas said, ‘and why is there a picture of Saint Peter giving the sword to a monk? That monk must have possessed it! So I need to know which saint is painted kneeling in a cleared patch of snow.’

‘God alone knows,’ Levonne said, ‘but I don’t. Maybe it’s a local saint? Like Sardos here.’ He waved at a wall painting of Saint Sardos, a goatherd, who was driving wolves away from the lamb of God. ‘I’d never heard of Sardos before I came here,’ the priest went on, ‘and I doubt anyone ten miles from here has ever heard of him! The world is full of saints, there are thousands! Every village has a saint no one else knows.’

‘Someone must know.’

‘A learned man, yes.’

‘I thought you were learned, father.’

Father Levonne smiled sadly. ‘I don’t know who your saint is, Thomas, but I do know that if your enemies come here then this town and its good people will be destroyed. Your enemies may not capture the castle, but the town can’t be defended for long.’

Thomas smiled. ‘I have forty-two men-at-arms, Father, and seventy-three archers.’

‘Not enough to hold the town walls.’

‘And Sir Henri Courtois commands the castle garrison. He won’t be beaten easily. And why would my enemies come here? La Malice isn’t here!’

‘The cardinal doesn’t know that. You risk the safety of all these good people,’ Father Levonne said, meaning the townsfolk.

‘Protecting these good people is my task and Sir Henri’s responsibility.’ Thomas spoke more harshly than he had intended. ‘You pray and I’ll fight, father. And I’ll search for la Malice. I’ll go south first.’

‘South? Why?’

‘To find a learned man, of course,’ Thomas said, ‘a man who knows all the stories.’

‘I have a feeling, Thomas,’ the priest said, ‘that la Malice is an evil thing. Remember what Christ said when Peter drew the sword.’

‘‘‘Put up your sword,”’ Thomas quoted.

‘That is a command from our Redeemer! To abandon our weapons. La Malice earned his displeasure, Thomas, so it should not be found, it should be destroyed.’

‘Destroyed?’ Thomas asked, then turned because hooves and the squeal of ungreased axles sounded loud in the street. ‘We can argue about this later, father,’ he said, and strode down the nave and pulled open the door to be dazzled by the spring sunshine. Pear blossom was white on the trees around the well where a dozen women watched a cumbersome four-wheeled wagon being dragged by six horses. A score of horsemen accompanied the wagon, all of them Thomas’s men except for two strangers. One of those strangers was wearing expensive plate armour beneath a short black jupon on which a white rose had been embroidered. His face was hidden by a tournament helmet that was crested with a black-dyed plume, and his horse, a war-destrier, was swathed in a striped cloth of black and white. He was accompanied by a servant who carried a banner with the same symbol of the white rose.

‘These buggers were waiting down the road.’ A mounted archer jerked a thumb at the strangers in their white rose livery. The archer, like the rest of the men who guarded the wagon, wore the Hellequin’s badge of the yale holding a cup. ‘There are eight of the bastards, but we said only two could come into the town.’

‘Thomas of Hookton,’ the rider wearing plate armour demanded, his voice muffled by the big helmet.

Thomas ignored the man. ‘How many barrels?’ he asked the archer, nodding at the wagon.

‘Thirty-four.’

‘Good Christ,’ Thomas said in disgust, ‘only thirty-four? We need a hundred and thirty-four!’

The archer shrugged. ‘Seems the bloody Scots have broken the truce. The king needs every arrow in England.’

‘He’ll lose Gascony if he doesn’t send arrows,’ Thomas said.

‘Thomas of Hookton!’ The rider kicked his horse closer to Thomas.

Thomas still ignored him. ‘Did you have any problems on the road, Simon?’ he asked the archer.

‘None at all.’

Thomas walked past the rider to the big wagon and hauled himself up onto the bed where he used the hilt of his knife to knock off a barrel lid. Inside were arrows. They were stacked fairly loosely to make sure the feathers of the fledging did not become distorted or else the arrows would not fly true. Thomas pulled a couple free and sighted down their ash shafts. ‘They look well enough made,’ he said grudgingly.

‘We loosed a couple of dozen,’ Simon said, ‘and they flew straight.’

‘Are you Thomas of Hookton?’ The knight of the white rose had pushed his destrier close to the wagon.

‘I’ll talk to you when I’m ready,’ Thomas said in French, then spoke in English again. ‘Cords, Simon?’

‘Whole sack of them.’

‘Good,’ Thomas said, ‘but only thirty-four barrels?’ One of his constant worries was the supply of arrows for his feared longbowmen. He could provide new bows in Castillon d’Arbizon because the local yew trees were good enough to be fashioned into the long war staves, and Thomas, like a half-dozen of his men, was a proficient enough bowyer, but no one knew how to make English arrows. They looked simple enough: an ashwood shaft tipped by a steel head and flighted by the feathers of a goose; but there were no pollarded ash trees near the town, and the smiths could not fashion the needle-sharp bodkin heads that could pierce armour, and no one knew how to bind and glue the feathers. A good archer could shoot fifteen shafts in a minute, and in any skirmish Thomas’s men could loose ten thousand in ten minutes, and though some arrows could be reused, many were destroyed by fighting, and so Thomas was forced to buy replacements from the hundreds of thousands that were shipped from Southampton to Bordeaux and then distributed to the English garrisons that protected King Edward’s lands in Gascony. Thomas put the lid back on the barrel. ‘This lot should last us a couple of months,’ he said, ‘but God knows we’ll need more.’