‘Including Your Royal Majesty,’ Oxford said.
‘So I see,’ the prince said. He frowned as he read the names. ‘Sire Roland de Verrec? Surely he’s not in our army?’
‘It seems he is, sire.’
‘And a Douglas? Are they mad?’
‘Sir Robert Douglas is also here, sire.’
‘He is? Christ’s bowels, what’s a Douglas doing with us? And who in God’s name is Thomas Hookton?’
‘Sir Thomas, sire,’ Sir Reginald spoke for the first time. ‘He was one of Will Skeat’s men at Crecy.’
‘An archer?’
‘Now a vassal of Northampton, sire. A useful man.’
‘Why in Christ’s name is Billy knighting archers?’ the prince asked petulantly. ‘And why in hell’s name do the French know he’s here and I don’t?’
No one answered. The prince let the parchment drop onto the carpet that covered the turf. What would his father think? What would his father do? But Edward the Third, the most feared warrior-king in Europe, was in faraway England. So this was the prince’s decision. True, he had advisers and he was wise enough to listen to them, but in the end the decision was his alone. He stood and walked to the tent door and stared past the banners, through the trees to where the light was fading in the west. ‘The terms are harsh,’ he said again, ‘but defeat will be harsher.’ He turned and looked at the Earl of Warwick. ‘Beat them down, my lord. Offer half of what they demand.’
‘It’s hardly a demand, sire, but a suggestion from the cardinals. The French must accept the terms too.’
‘Of course they’ll accept them,’ the prince said, ‘they dictated them! Even half of what they want means victory for them! Christ! They win everything!’
‘And if the French won’t accept lesser terms, sire? What then?’
The prince sighed. ‘It’s better to be a hostage in Paris than a corpse in Poitiers,’ he suggested, then flinched as he thought again of the French demands. ‘It’s a surrender, really, isn’t it?’
‘No, sire,’ the Earl of Warwick said firmly. ‘It’s a truce and an arrangement.’ He frowned, trying to find some good news amid the bad. ‘The army will be allowed to march on to Gascony, sire. No prisoners will be demanded.’
‘And hostages are not prisoners?’ the Earl of Salisbury asked.
‘Hostages pay no ransom. We’ll be treated honourably.’
‘You can drape it in velvet,’ the prince said unhappily, ‘and drench it in perfume, but it’s still a surrender.’ But he and his army were trapped. Call it a truce, an arrangement, or a treaty, he knew it was really a surrender. Yet he had no other choice. So far as he could see it was surrender or be slaughtered.
Because the English were beaten.
The Hellequin guarded the ford. The Sire Roland de Verrec and Robbie Douglas had stayed on the hill with the rest of the Earl of Warwick’s men-at-arms, but the remainder of Thomas’s men were camped just south of the river. A cordon of archers was on the northern bank, and Keane was there with his wolfhounds. ‘They’ll howl if they smell men or horses,’ he said.
‘No fires,’ Thomas had ordered. They could see the glow of the English and Gascon campfires on the hill, and a greater glow stretching around the northern and western horizon that marked where the French army was spending the night, but Thomas would have no fires. Sir Reginald did not want to draw the enemy’s attention to the crossing over the Miosson, and so the men-at-arms and archers shivered in the cold autumn darkness. Clouds smothered the moon, though there were gaps through which bright stars showed. An owl called and Thomas made the sign of the cross.
Some time in the night and somewhere in that darkness hooves sounded. The wolfhounds stood and growled, but then a voice called softly, ‘Sir Thomas! Sir Thomas!’
‘I’m here.’
‘Sweet Jesus, it’s dark.’ It was Sir Reginald who appeared out of the blackness and eased himself out of his saddle. ‘Good man, no fires. Any visitors?’
‘None.’
‘But we reckon they’ve moved men onto that hill.’ He gestured towards the dark loom of le Champ d’Alexandre. ‘Damn it, they must know the ford’s here; they must have realised we’ll try to escape. Except we might not.’
‘Might not?’
‘The churchmen have come up with terms. We pay the bastard French a fortune, give them hostages, return all the land we’ve conquered, and promise to behave ourselves for the next seven years. The prince has agreed.’
‘Jesus,’ Thomas said quietly.
‘I doubt he has anything to do with it. And if the French agree to the church’s proposal? Then tomorrow we give them hostages and slink away.’ He sounded disgusted. ‘And you’re one of the hostages.’
‘Me!’
‘Your name’s on the list.’
‘Jesus,’ Thomas said again.
‘So why would the French want you?’
‘Cardinal Bessieres wants me,’ Thomas said. ‘I killed his brother.’ This was not the time to talk of
‘His brother?’
‘An arrow. Bastard deserved it too.’
‘He was a churchman?’
‘God no, a rogue.’
Sir Reginald chuckled. ‘Then my advice, Sir Thomas, is to ride away from here if the truce is declared.’
‘And how will I know?’ Thomas asked.
‘Seven trumpet calls. Long blasts, seven of them. That means there’ll be no battle, just humiliation.’
Thomas thought about the last word. ‘Why?’ he finally asked.
He sensed that Sir Reginald shrugged. ‘If we fight,’ the older man said, ‘we’d probably lose. We think they might have ten thousand men, so we’re badly outnumbered, we’re exhausted, there’s no food and the damned French have plenty of everything. So if we fight we condemn a lot of good Englishmen and loyal Gascons to death, and the prince doesn’t want that on his conscience. He’s a good man. Too easily distracted by ladies, perhaps, but who’d blame a man for that?’
Thomas smiled. ‘I knew one of his ladies.’
‘You did?’ Sir Reginald sounded surprised. ‘Which one? God knows there are enough.’
‘She was called Jeanette. The Countess of Armorica.’
‘You knew her?’ The surprise was still there.
‘I often wonder what happened to her.’
‘She died, God rest her soul,’ Sir Reginald said bleakly, ‘she and her son both. The pestilence.’
‘Dear God,’ Thomas said, and made the sign of the cross.
‘How did you know her?’
‘I helped her,’ Thomas said vaguely.
‘I remember now! There was talk that she escaped Brittany with an English archer. That was you?’
‘Long time ago now,’ Thomas said evasively.
‘She was a beauty,’ Sir Reginald said wistfully. He was silent for a moment and when he spoke again his voice was brusque. ‘One of two things will happen tomorrow, Sir Thomas. One, you hear seven blasts on the trumpet and if you’ve any sense you mount up and ride like hell to escape the cardinal. And two? The French decide they win more by fighting us, which means they’ll attack. And if that happens I want the baggage over the river. The damned French usually take hours to ready for a battle so we’ve a chance to slip away before they know it. And to escape we need this ford. You’ll have help if there’s going to be fighting, but you know as well as I do that nothing goes to plan in a battle.’
‘We’ll hold the ford,’ Thomas said.
