1356 (Special Edition)

‘Free?’ Robbie grimaced and looked up at Thomas. ‘Free?’

‘I release you. All your oaths to me, they’re gone. You’re free to fight the English, do what you will. Te absolvo.’

Robbie smiled at the priestly Latin. ‘You absolve me,’ he said tiredly, ‘to be free and poor.’

‘You’re still gambling?’

Robbie nodded. ‘And losing.’

‘Well, you’re free. And thank you.’

‘Thank you?’

‘For what you did tonight. Now I need to see Genny.’

Robbie watched Thomas walk to the door. ‘So what do I do?’ he blurted out.

‘It’s your choice, Robbie. You’re free. No oaths any more.’ Thomas paused at the door, saw that Robbie was not going to answer and so walked out. The cow lifted her tail and filled the byre with stench.

Sculley pushed the door wide. ‘They’re bloody English,’ he protested.

‘Yes.

‘Still, that was a good fight,’ Sculley said, then laughed. ‘I had a son of a whore try to axe my feet away and I jumped over the bastard’s swing and put my sword in his mouth and he just stared at me and I gave him a moment to think about it, then pushed. Bloody Christ, the noise he made! I think he was calling for his mama, but that’s no bloody use when you’ve a Douglas sword down your gullet.’ He laughed again. ‘Aye, a rare good fight, but for the English?’

‘We were fighting for Genevieve,’ Robbie said, ‘and she’s French.’

‘The thin bitch? Pretty enough, but I like them with more meat. So what do we do? What happened to the bloody fisherman?’

Robbie smiled wanly. ‘I don’t think Father Marchant will want us back.’

‘It was a waste of time anyway. Pissing about for a daft priest with a magic bird.’ Sculley stooped and picked up a handful of straw and scrubbed at his sword blade. The bones woven into his hair rattled as he bent over the weapon. ‘So we leave?’ he asked.

‘Leave?’

‘Jesus! To join the lord, of course!’

He meant the Lord of Douglas, Robbie’s uncle. ‘Is that what you want?’ Robbie asked, his voice dull.

‘What else? We came here to do a bloody job, not piss about with bloody fishermen.’

‘I’ll talk to Thomas,’ Robbie said, ‘and I’m sure he’ll give you a horse. Money too.’

‘The lord will want you back.’

‘I took an oath,’ Robbie said, then remembered that Thomas had just freed him of all his commitments. He could choose his own fate now. ‘I’m staying, Sculley,’ he said.

‘Staying?’

‘You can go to my uncle, but I’m staying here.’

Sculley frowned. ‘If you stay with this fellow,’ he gestured towards the other part of the house where he assumed Thomas had gone, ‘then the next time I see you I’ll have to kill you.’

‘Yes, you will.’

Sculley gobbed towards the cow. ‘I’ll make it quick. No hard feelings. You’ll talk to the man about a horse?’

‘I will, and I’ll ask him to give you coins for the journey.’

Sculley nodded. ‘That sounds fair,’ he said, ‘you stay, I go, and then I’ll kill you.’

‘Yes,’ Robbie said.

He was free.

Father Levonne, to his own astonishment, discovered a pair of boots in a chest that stood in a small upstairs room of the farm. ‘The farmer fled,’ he said, watching as Roland tried the boots on, ‘but we shall leave him money. Do they fit?’

‘They do,’ Roland said, ‘but we can’t steal them.’

‘We’ll leave more money than they’re worth,’ Father Levonne said. ‘Trust me, he’s a French farmer, he’d rather have gold than shoes.’

‘I have no money,’ Roland said, ‘or rather the money I have is in the castle.’

‘Thomas will pay,’ Father Levonne said.

‘He will?’

‘Of course. He always pays.’

‘Always?’ Roland sounded surprised.

‘Le Batard,’ Father Levonne explained patiently, ‘lives on the edge of English Gascony. To eat he needs grain and cheese and meat and fish, he needs wine and hay, and if he steals those things then the country folk won’t like him. They’ll betray him to Berat or Labrouillade, or to any of the other lords who’d like to hang Thomas’s skull in their hall, so Thomas makes sure they appreciate him. He pays. Most lords don’t pay, so who do you think is more popular?’

‘But …’ Roland began, then faltered.

‘But?’

‘Le Batard,’ Roland said in puzzlement, ‘the Hellequin?’

‘Ah, you think they’re the devil’s creatures?’ Father Levonne laughed. ‘Thomas is a Christian, and even, I dare say, a good one. He’s not sure of that, but he does try.’

‘But he was excommunicated,’ Roland pointed out.

‘For doing what you did, saving Genevieve’s life. Maybe you’ll be excommunicated next?’ Father Levonne saw the horror on Roland’s face and tried to alleviate it. ‘There are two churches, sire,’ he said, ‘and I doubt God takes any notice of an excommunication from one of them.’

‘Two? There’s only one church,’ Roland said. He gazed at the priest as though Father Levonne was a heretic himself. ‘Credo unam, sanctam, catholicam et apostolicam Ecclesiam,’ he said sternly.

‘Another soldier who speaks Latin! You and Thomas! And I too believe in one holy, catholic and apostolic church, my son, but that church is Janus-faced. One church, two faces. You were serving Father Marchant?’

‘Yes,’ Roland said in some embarrassment.

‘And whom does he serve? Cardinal Bessieres. Cardinal Louis Bessieres, Archbishop of Livorno and Papal Legate to the court of France. What do you know of Bessieres?’

‘He’s a cardinal,’ Roland said, but plainly knew no more.

‘His father was a tallow merchant in the Limousin,’ Father Levonne said, ‘and young Louis was a clever boy and his father had enough cash to see that he was educated, but what chance does a tallow merchant’s son have in this world? He can’t become a lord, he wasn’t born, as you were, to privilege and rank, but there is always the church. A man can rise far in the holy, catholic and apostolic church. It matters not if he was born in a gutter, so long as he has a good brain, and a tallow merchant’s son can become a prince of the church, and so the church draws in all those clever boys, and some of them, like Louis Bessieres, are also ambitious, cruel, greedy and ruthless. So

one face of the church, sire, is our present Pope. A good man, a little dull, a little too attached to canon law, but a man who tries to do Christ’s will in this wicked world. And the second face is Louis Bessieres, an evil man, who wants, above everything, to be Pope.’

‘Which is why he seeks la Malice,’ Roland said quietly.

‘Of course.’

‘And I told Father Marchant where to find it!’ Roland went on.

‘You did?’

‘Or perhaps where he can find it. I don’t know. It might not be there.’

‘I think you must talk to Thomas,’ Father Levonne said gently.

‘You can tell him,’ Roland said.

‘Me? Why me?’