1356 (Special Edition)

PART ONE

Avignon

One

The message arrived in the town after midnight, carried by a young monk who had travelled all the way from England. He had left Carlisle in August with two other brethren, all three ordered to the great Cistercian house at Montpellier where Brother Michael, the youngest, was to learn medicine and the others were to study at the famous school of theology. The three had walked the length of England, sailed from Southampton to Bordeaux and then walked inland, and, like any travellers committed to a long journey, they had been entrusted with messages. There was one for the abbot at Puys, where Brother Vincent had died of the flux, then Michael and his companion had walked on to Toulouse, where Brother Peter had fallen sick and been committed to the hospital where, as far as Michael knew, he still lay. So the young monk was alone now and he had just one message left, a battered scrap of parchment, and he had been told that he might miss the man to whom it was addressed if he did not travel that same night. ‘Le Bâtard,’ the abbot at Paville had told him, ‘moves swiftly. He was here two days ago, now he is at Villon, but tomorrow?’

‘Le Bâtard?’

‘That is his name in these parts,’ the abbot had said, making the sign of the cross, which somehow suggested that the young English monk would be lucky to survive his encounter with the man named le Bâtard.

Now, after a day’s walking, Brother Michael stared across the valley at the town of Villon. It had been easy to find because, as night fell, the sky was lit with flames that served as a beacon. Fugitives passing him on the road told him that Villon was burning, and so Brother Michael merely walked towards the bright fire so that he could find le Bâtard and thus deliver his message. He crossed the valley nervously, seeing fire twist above the town walls to fill the night with a churning smoke that was touched livid red where it reflected the flames. The young monk thought this was what Satan’s sky must look like. Fugitives were still escaping the town and they told Brother Michael to turn around and flee because the devils of hell were loose in Villon, and he was tempted, oh so tempted, but another part of his young soul was curious. He had never seen a battle. He had never seen what men did when they unleashed themselves to violence, and so he walked on, putting his faith in God and in the stout pilgrim’s staff he had carried all the way from Carlisle.

The fires were concentrated around the western gate, and their flames lit the bulk of the castle that crowned the hill to the east. It was the Lord of Villon’s castle, that was what the abbot at Paville had told him, and the Lord of Villon was being besieged by an army led by the Bishop of Lavence and by the Count of Labrouillade, who together had hired the band of mercenaries led by le Bâtard.

‘Their quarrel?’ Brother Michael had asked the abbot.

‘They have two quarrels,’ the abbot had answered, pausing to let a servant pour him wine. ‘The Lord of Villon confiscated a wagon of hides belonging to the bishop. Or so the bishop says.’ He grimaced, for the wine was new and raw. ‘In truth Villon is a Godless rogue, and the bishop would like a new neighbour.’ He shrugged, as if to admit that the cause of the fighting was trivial.

‘And the second quarrel?’

The abbot had paused. ‘Villon took the Count of Labrouillade’s wife,’ he finally admitted.

‘Ah.’ Brother Michael had not known what else to say.

‘Men are quarrelsome,’ the abbot had said, ‘but women always make them worse. Look at Troy! All those men killed for one pretty face!’ He looked sternly at the young English monk. ‘Women brought sin into this world, brother, and they have never ceased to bring it. Be grateful that you are a monk and sworn to celibacy.’

‘Thanks be to God,’ Brother Michael had said, though without much conviction.

Now the town of Villon was filled with burning houses and dead people, all because of a woman, her lover, and a cartload of hides. Brother Michael approached the town along the valley road, crossed a stone bridge and so came to Villon’s western entrance, where he paused because the gates had been torn from the arch’s stonework by a force so massive that he could not imagine what might do such a thing. The hinges were forged from iron, and each had been attached to its gate by brackets longer than a bishop’s crozier, broader than a man’s hand and thick as a thumb, yet the two leaves of the gate now hung askew, their scorched timbers shattered and their massive hinges wrenched into grotesque curls. It was as though the devil himself had plunged his monstrous fist through the arch to rip a path into the city. Brother Michael made the sign of the cross.

He edged past the fire-blackened gate and stopped again because, just beyond the arch, a house was burning and in the door opposite was the body of a young woman, face down, quite naked, her pale skin laced with rivulets of blood that appeared black in the firelight. The monk gazed at her, frowning slightly, wondering why the shape of a woman’s back was so arousing, and then he was ashamed that he had thought such a thing. He crossed himself again. The devil, he thought, was everywhere this night, but especially here in this burning city beneath the fire-touched clouds of hell.

Two men, one in a ragged mail coat and the other in a loose leather jerkin and both holding long knives, stepped over the dead woman. They were alarmed by the sight of the monk and turned fast, eyes wide, ready to strike, but then recognised the grubby white robe and saw the wooden cross about Brother Michael’s neck and ran off in search of richer victims. A third soldier vomited into the gutter. A rafter collapsed in the burning house, venting a blast of hot air and whirling sparks.

Brother Michael climbed the street, keeping his distance from the corpses, then saw a man sitting by a rain barrel where he was trying to staunch the bleeding from a wound in his belly. The young monk had been an assistant in his monastery’s infirmary, and so he approached the wounded soldier. ‘I can bind that up,’ he said, kneeling, but the wounded man snarled at him and lashed out with a knife, which Brother Michael only avoided by toppling sideways. He scrambled to his feet and backed away.

‘Take off your robe,’ the wounded man said, trying to follow the monk, but Brother Michael ran uphill. The man collapsed again, spitting curses.‘Come back,’ he shouted, ‘come back!’ Over his leather jerkin he wore a jupon that showed a golden merlin against a red field and Brother Michael, dazedly trying to make sense of the chaos about him, realised that the golden bird was the symbol of the town’s defenders, and that the wounded man had wanted to escape by stealing his monk’s robe and using it as a disguise, but instead the man was trapped by two soldiers in green and white colours who cut his throat.

Some men wore a badge showing a yellow bishop’s staff surrounded by four black cross-crosslets, and Brother Michael decided they had to be the bishop’s soldiers, while the troops who wore the green horse on the white field must serve the Count of Labrouillade. Most of the dead displayed the golden merlin, and the monk noted how many of those corpses were spitted by long English arrows that had blood-speckled white feathers. The fighting had passed through this part of the town, leaving it burning. Fire leaped from thatched roof to thatched roof, while in the places where the fire had not reached a horde of drunken, undisciplined soldiers plundered and raped amidst the smoke. A baby cried, a woman shrieked, then a blinded man, his eyes nothing but blood-weeping pits, staggered from an alley to collide with the monk. The man shrank away, whimpering, holding up his hands to ward off the expected blow.

‘I won’t hurt you,’ Brother Michael said in French, a language he had learned as a novice so he would be fitted to finish his education at Montpellier, but the blinded man ignored him and stumbled down the street. Somewhere, incongruous in the blood and smoke and shouting, a choir sang, and the monk wondered if he was dreaming, yet the voices were real, as real as the screaming women and sobbing children and barking dogs.

He went cautiously now, for the alleys were dark and the soldiers wild. He passed a tanner’s shop where a fire burned and he saw a man had been drowned in a vat of the urine used to cure the hides. He came into a small square, decorated with a stone cross, and there he was attacked from behind by a bearded brute wearing the bishop’s livery. The monk was pushed to the ground and the man bent to cut away the pouch hanging from his rope belt. ‘Get away! Get away!’ Brother Michael, panicking, forgot where he was and shouted in English. The man grinned and moved the knife to threaten the monk’s eyes, then he opened his own eyes wide, looked horrified and the flame-lit night went dark with a spray of blood as the man slowly toppled over. Brother Michael was spattered with the blood and saw that his assailant had an arrow through his neck. The man was choking, clawing at the arrow, then began to shudder as blood pulsed from his open mouth.

‘You’re English, brother?’ an English voice asked, and Michael looked up to see a man wearing a black livery on which a white badge was slashed with the diagonal bar of bastardy. ‘You’re English?’ the man asked again.

‘I’m English,’ Brother Michael managed to speak.

‘You should have clouted him,’ the man said, picking up Brother Michael’s staff, then hauling the monk to his feet. ‘Clouted him hard and he’d have toppled over. Bastards are all drunk.’

‘I’m English,’ Brother Michael said again. He was shaking. The fresh blood felt warm on his skin. He shivered.

‘And you’re a long bloody way from home, brother,’ the man said. He had a great war bow strung across his muscled shoulders. He stooped to the monk’s assailant, drew a knife and cut the arrow out of the man’s throat, killing him in the process. ‘Arrows are hard to come by,’ he explained, ‘so we try to rescue them. If you see any, pick them up.’

Michael brushed down his white robe, then looked at the brutal badge on his rescuer’s jupon. It showed a strange animal holding a cup in its claws. ‘You serve …’ he began.

‘The Bastard,’ the man interrupted. ‘We’re the Hellequin, brother.’

‘The Hellequin?’

‘The devil’s souls,’ the man said with a grin, ‘and what the hell are you doing here?’

‘I’ve a message for your master, le Bâtard.’

‘Then let’s find him. My name’s Sam.’

The name suited the archer, who had a boyish, cheerful face and a quick grin. He led the monk past a church that he and two other Hellequin had been guarding because it was a refuge for some of the townsfolk. ‘The Bastard doesn’t approve of rape,’ he explained.

‘Nor should he,’ Michael responded dutifully.

‘He might as well disapprove of rain,’ Sam said cheerfully, leading the way into a larger square where a half-dozen horsemen waited with drawn swords. They were in mail and helmets, and all wore the bishop’s livery, and behind them was the choir, a score of boys chanting a psalm. ‘Domine eduxisti,’ they sang, ‘de inferno animam meam vivificasti me ne descenderem in lacum.’

‘He’d know what that meant,’ Sam said, tapping his badge and evidently meaning le Bâtard.

‘It means God has brought our souls out of hell,’ Brother Michael said, ‘and given us life and will keep us from the pit.’

‘That’s very nice of God,’ Sam said. He gave a perfunctory bow to the horsemen and touched his hand to his helmet. ‘That’s the bishop,’ he explained, and Brother Michael saw a tall man, his dark face framed by a steel helmet, sitting on his horse beneath a banner showing the crozier and the crosses. ‘He’s waiting,’ Sam explained, ‘for us to do the fighting. They all do that. Come and fight with us, they say, then they all get pissing drunk while we do all the killing. Still, it’s what we’re paid for. Careful here, brother, it gets dangerous.’ He took the bow from his shoulder, led the monk down an alley, then checked at the corner. He peered around. ‘Bloody dangerous,’ he added.

Brother Michael, fascinated and repelled by the carnage all about him, leaned past Sam and discovered they had reached the top of the town and were at the edge of a big open space, a marketplace perhaps, and on its far side was a road cut through black rock to the castle gate. The gatehouse, lit by the flames in the lower town, was hung with great banners. Some enjoined the help of the saints, while others showed the badge of the golden merlin. A crossbow bolt struck the wall near the priest then skittered down the cobbled alley. ‘If we capture the castle by sundown tomorrow,’ Sam said, putting an arrow on his string, ‘our money is doubled.’

‘Doubled? Why?’

‘Because tomorrow is Saint Bertille’s day,’ Sam said, ‘and our employer’s wife is called Bertille, so the fall of the castle will prove that God is on our side and not on hers.’

Brother Michael thought that was dubious theology, but he did not argue the point. ‘She’s the wife who ran away?’

‘Can’t blame her. He’s a pig, the count, a bloody pig, but marriage is marriage, ain’t it? And it’ll be a chill day in hell that a woman can choose a husband. Still, I do feel sorry for her, married to that pig.’ He half drew the bow, stepped around the corner, looked for a target, saw none and stepped back. ‘So the poor girl’s in there,’ he went on, ‘and the pig is paying us to fetch her out double fast.’

Brother Michael peered around the corner, then twitched back as a pair of crossbow bolts caught the firelight. The bolts banged into the wall close to him, then ricocheted on down the alley. ‘Lucky, aren’t you?’ Sam said cheerfully. ‘Bastards saw me, took aim, then you showed yourself. You could be in heaven by now if the bastards could shoot straight.’

‘You’ll never get the lady out of that place,’ Brother Michael opined.

‘We won’t?’

‘It’s too strong!’

‘We’re the Hellequin,’ Sam said, ‘which means the poor lass has got about an hour left with her lover boy. I hope he’s giving her a good one to remember him by.’

Michael, unseen, blushed. He was troubled by women. For most of his life that temptation had not mattered because, closed away in the Cistercian house, he rarely saw any women, but the journey from Carlisle had strewn a thousand devil’s snares across his path. In Toulouse a whore had grabbed him from behind, fondled him, and he had torn himself free, shaking with embarrassment, and fallen to his knees. The memory of her laughter was like a whip on his soul, as were the memories of all the girls he had seen, stared at, and wondered about, and he remembered the white naked skin of the girl at the town gate and he knew the devil was tempting him again, and he was about to say a prayer for strength when he was distracted by a whirring sound and saw a shower of crossbow bolts slashing down to the marketplace. Some, striking the cobbles, gave off bright sparks, and Brother Michael wondered why the defenders were shooting, then became aware that dark-cloaked men were running from every alleyway to line the open space. They were archers, who began loosing arrows at the high battlements. Flights of arrows; not the short, leather-fledged, metal bolts of crossbowmen, but English arrows, white-feathered and long, speeding silently up to the wall’s top, propelled by the great yew war bows with their hempen strings that gave a harp’s sharp note for every missile shot. The arrows trembled as they left the string, then their feathers caught the air and they streaked up, white flashes in the dark, the firelight glistening from their steel points, and the monk noted how the defenders’ bolts, so thick a moment ago, were suddenly sparse. The archers were drenching the castle’s defenders with arrows, forcing the crossbowmen to duck behind the wall’s parapet, while other bowmen shot at the slits in the flanking towers. The sound of the steel heads striking the castle walls was like hail on cobbles. One archer fell back, a bolt in his chest, but that was the only casualty the monk saw, and then he heard the wheels.

‘Stand back,’ Sam warned him, and the priest stepped into the alley as a cart thundered past him. It was a small cart, light enough for six men to push, but it had been made heavier because ten great pavises, man-sized shields designed to protect a crossbowman as he reloaded his clumsy weapon, had been nailed to the front and sides to protect the men who pushed the cart, which was loaded with small wooden barrels.

‘Much less than an hour,’ Sam said, stepping into the street when the cart had passed. He drew the big bow and sent an arrow towards the castle’s gate.

It was all strangely silent. Brother Michael had expected battle to be noise, he had expected to hear men calling to God for the sake of their souls, to hear voices raised in fear or pain, but the only sounds were the shrieks of the women in the lower town, the crackle of the flames, the harp-notes of the bows, the sound of the cart’s wheels on the cobbles, and the rattle of bolts and arrows clattering on stone. Michael stared in awe as Sam kept shooting, not seeming to aim, but just whipping shaft after shaft at the castle’s battlements.

‘Good thing we can see,’ Sam said, releasing another arrow.

‘The flames, you mean?’

‘That’s why we set fire to the houses,’ Sam said, ‘to light up the bastards.’ He loosed another shaft, seemingly without effort; when Brother Michael had once tried to draw a yew bow he had not been able to pull the string more than a hand’s breadth.

The cart had reached the castle’s gate now. It stopped there, a black shadow inside the dark archway, and Brother Michael saw a flicker of light spring up in that darkness, fade, revive, then steady to a dull glow as the six men who had pushed the cart ran back towards the archers. One of them fell, evidently struck by a crossbow bolt. Two of the others snatched his arms and dragged him back, and it was then that the monk caught his first sight of le Bâtard.

‘That’s him,’ Sam said fondly, ‘our bloody bastard.’ Brother Michael saw a tall man dressed in a belted haubergeon of chain mail that had been painted black. He had high boots, a black sword scabbard and his helmet was a simple bascinet that was black like his mail. His sword was drawn and he used it to wave a dozen men-at-arms forward, forming them in a line, shields overlapping, in the open space. He glanced towards Brother Michael, who saw le Bâtard’s nose was broken and his cheek scarred, but he also saw a force in the face, a savagery, and he understood why the abbot at Paville had spoken of this man with awe. Brother Michael had expected le Bâtard to be an older man, and was surprised that the black-armoured soldier looked so young. Then le Bâtard saw Sam. ‘I thought you were guarding the church, Sam,’ he said.

‘Poxface and Johnny are still there,’ Sam said, ‘but I brought this fellow to see you.’ He jerked his head towards Brother Michael.

The monk took a step forward and felt the full force of le Bâtard’s gaze. He was suddenly nervous and his mouth went dry with fear. ‘I have a message for you,’ he stammered, ‘it’s from …’

‘Later,’ le Bâtard interrupted. A servant had brought him a shield that he looped onto his left arm, then turned to look at the castle.

Which suddenly gouted flame and smoke. The smoke was black and red, shot through with stabbing flames, and filling the night with a bursting thunder that made Brother Michael crouch in fear. Scraps of flaming wreckage seared through the night as the heated air punched past the alley’s mouth. Smoke shrouded the open space as the noise of the blast echoed and rolled back from the valley’s far side. Birds that had been nesting in crevices of the castle wall flapped into the smoky air, while one of the great banners, calling on the help of Saint Joseph, caught the fire and blazed bright against the battlements. ‘Gunpowder,’ Sam explained laconically.