‘And what are you hunting?’ Keane asked.
‘An Englishman.’
‘You’ll not find him here,’ Keane said, ‘and if it’s the fellow I’m thinking you’re after then surely he’ll still be inside the city?’
‘Maybe,’ one said. He and his companions were to Thomas’s left, Keane was to his right, and Thomas needed the horsemen to be closer. He could just see them through the leaves. Three young men, richly dressed in fine cloth with feathers in their caps and long boots in their stirrups. Two were holding wide-bladed boar-spears with cross- pieces just behind the heads, and all three had swords. ‘And maybe not,’ the man said. He kicked his horse forward. ‘You come here to pray?’
‘Isn’t that what I said?’
‘Ireland is close by England, isn’t it?’
‘She’s cursed by that, right enough.’
‘And in town,’ the rider said, ‘a beggar saw two men by the Widow. One in a student’s gown and the other climbing aboard a shit-cart.’
‘And there was me thinking I was the only student who got up early from bed!’
‘Eloise! Abelard!’ the owner of the dogs snapped their names, but the hounds just whined and settled even closer to Keane.
‘So the beggar went to find the consuls,’ the first man said.
‘And found us instead,’ another man said, amused. ‘No reward for him now.’
‘We helped him to a better world,’ the first man took up the tale, ‘and perhaps we can help your memory too.’
‘I could always do with help,’ Keane said, ‘which is why I pray.’
‘The hounds picked up a scent,’ the man said.
‘Clever doggies,’ Keane said, patting the two grey heads.
‘They followed it here.’
‘Ah, they smelled me! No wonder they were running so eagerly.’
‘And two sets of footprints by the river,’ another man added.
‘I think you have questions to answer.’ The first man smiled.
‘Like why he wants to be a crow,’ the dog’s owner said. ‘You don’t like women, perhaps?’ The other two horsemen laughed. Thomas could see them more clearly now. Very rich young men, their saddlery and harness were expensive, their boots polished. Merchants’ sons, perhaps? He reckoned they were the kind of wealthy young sons who could break the city’s curfew with impunity because of their fathers’ status, young bucks who roamed the city looking for trouble and confident that they could avoid the consequences. Men who had apparently killed a beggar so they would not need to share the reward with him. ‘Why does a man want to be a priest?’ the horseman asked scornfully. ‘Perhaps because he isn’t a man, eh? We should find out. Take your clothes off.’ His companions, eager to join the sport, kicked their mounts forward and so passed under Thomas’s branch. He dropped.
He fell onto the rearmost horseman, hooked his right arm around the man’s neck and seized the boar-spear with his left. The man fell. The horse reared and whinnied. Thomas slammed onto the ground, the unseated rider on top of him. The man’s left foot was trapped in the stirrup and the horse skittered away, dragging the man with him, and Thomas was already rising, the spear in both hands now. The other spearman was turning his horse and Thomas swung the weapon fiercely, and the flat of the blade cracked hard against the rider’s skull. The man swayed in the saddle as Thomas ran at the leading horseman, who was trying to draw his sword, but Keane was holding the man’s forearm while the horse circled frantically. The dogs were leaping at Keane and the horse, thinking it a game. Thomas swung the spear, and the wide blade sliced under the horseman’s ribs. The man yelled in pain, and Keane dragged him from the saddle and brought his right knee up to meet the man’s head and the rider dropped, stunned. The first man had managed to disentangle his foot from the stirrup, but he was dizzy. He attempted to stand, and Thomas kicked him in the throat and he too went down. The dazed rider was still in the saddle but he was just staring at nothing, his mouth opening and closing. ‘Get the horses,’ Thomas ordered Keane, then ran out of the trees, crossed the ditch and used his knife to cut the twine that held the bundles of chestnut stakes. ‘We’ll tie the bastards up,’ he told Keane, ‘and if you need a change of clothes, help yourself.’ He hauled the third man from his saddle and dazed him even more with a slam of his hand that drew blood from the man’s ear.
‘Is that velvet?’ Keane asked, fingering one of the young men’s jackets. ‘I always saw myself in velvet.’
Thomas dragged the boots off all three men and found a pair that fitted him. One of the horses had saddlebags with a flask of wine, some bread, and a hunk of cheese, and he split them with Keane. ‘You can ride a horse?’
‘Jesus, I’m from Ireland! I was born on horseback.’
‘Tie them up. Strip them naked first.’ Thomas helped Keane truss the three men, then stripped off his damp clothes and found a pair of hose that fitted him, a shirt, and a fine leather jacket that was too tight around his archer’s muscles, but dry. He strapped a sword belt around his waist. ‘So you killed the beggar?’ he asked one of the three. The man said nothing so Thomas hit him hard around the face. ‘You’re lucky I’m not cutting your balls off,’ he said, ‘but the next time you ignore my question I’ll take one of them. Did you kill the beggar?’
‘He was dying,’ the young man said sullenly.
‘So it was an act of Christian charity,’ Thomas said. He stooped and held his knife between the man’s legs. He saw the terror on the sullen face. ‘Who are you?’
‘My name’s Pitou, my father’s a consul, he’ll pay for me!’ He was gabbling desperately.
‘Pitou’s a big man in town,’ Keane said, ‘a vintner who lives like a lord. Eats off gold plates, they say.’
‘I’m his only son,’ Pitou pleaded, ‘he’ll pay for me!’
‘Oh, he will,’ Thomas said, then cut the twine from Pitou’s ankles and wrists. ‘Get dressed,’ he said, kicking his own damp clothes towards the frightened youth. He tied Pitou’s wrists again when the boy was dressed, and he was little more than a boy, perhaps seventeen years old. ‘You’re coming with us,’ he said, ‘and if you hope to see Montpellier again you’d better pray that my servant and two men-at-arms are alive.’
‘They are!’ Pitou said eagerly.
Thomas looked at the other two. ‘Tell Pitou’s father his son will be returned when my men reach Castillon d’Arbizon. And if they don’t have their own weapons, mail, horses and clothes then his son will be sent home without his eyes.’ Pitou stared at Thomas when he heard those words, then suddenly bent forward and vomited. Thomas smiled. ‘He’s also to send a grown man’s right glove filled with genoins, and I mean filled. Do you understand?’
One of them nodded, and Thomas lengthened the stirrups of the largest horse, a grey stallion, and swung into the saddle. He had a sword, a spear, a horse, and hope.
‘The hounds will come with us,’ Keane announced as he climbed onto a brown gelding. He took the reins of the third horse on which Pitou was mounted.
‘They will?’
‘They like me, so they do. Where do we go now?’
‘I have men waiting close by, we go north.’
They rode north.
Roland de Verrec was unhappy. He should have been ecstatic, for the successful completion of his quest was in sight. He had captured Thomas of Hookton’s wife and child, and, though he had no doubt that they would be exchanged for the adulterous Countess Bertille de Labrouillade, Roland had still hesitated before making the capture. It went against the grain of his romantic ideals to use a woman and child, but the men-at-arms who supported him, all six of them loaned by the Count of Labrouillade, had persuaded him. ‘We’re not going to hurt them,’ Jacques Solliere, the leader of the count’s six men, had persuaded Roland, ‘just make use of them.’
The capture had been simple. The consuls of Montpellier had lent him even more men, and Genevieve and her son had been taken as they tried to leave the city with two men-at-arms and a servant as their only protection. Those three attendants were now in Montpellier’s citadel, but they were none of Roland’s business. His duty was to reach Labrouillade and exchange his captives for the count’s wayward wife, and then his quest would be done.
Yet somehow it did not feel chivalric. Roland insisted that Genevieve and her child be treated with courtesy, yet she returned that favour with defiant scorn, and her words hurt him. If Roland had been a more perceptive man
