The Ill-Made Knight

Poitiers 1356

You want the story of Poitiers, messieurs? Well, I was there, and no mistake. It was warmer there — I fought in the south for several years, and I can tell you that the folds of Gascony are no place to farm, but a fine place to fight. Perhaps that’s why the Gascons are such good fighters.

Par dieu. When I began the path that would take me to chivalry, I was what? Fifteen? My hair was still red then and my freckles were ruddy instead of brown and I thought that I was as bad as Judas. I played Judas in the passion play — shall I tell you of that? Because however you may pour milk on my reputation, I was an apprentice boy in London. And in the passion plays, it’s always some poor bastard with red hair, and that described me perfectly as a boy: a poor bastard with red hair.

It shouldn’t have been that way. My parents were properly wed. My da’ had a coat of arms from the King. We owned a pair of small manors — not a knight’s fee; not by a long chalk — but my mother was of the De Vere’s and my father was a man-at-arms in Wales. I needn’t have been an apprentice. In fact, that was my first detour from a life of arms, and it almost took me clear for ever.

I imagine I’m one of the few knights you’ll meet who’s so old that he remembers the plague. No, not the plague. The Great Plague. The year everyone died. I went to play in the fields, and when I came home, my mother was dead and my father was going.

It changes you, death. It takes everything away. I lost my father and mother and all I had left was my sister.

I’ll tell you of knighthood — and war, and Poitiers, and everything, but with God’s help, and in my own time.

My father’s brother was a goldsmith. In my youth, a lot of the young gentry went off to London and went to the guilds. Everything was falling apart. You know what I’m telling you? No? Well, monsieur, the aristocracy — let’s be frank: knighthood, chivalry — was dying. Taxes, military service and grain prices. Everything was against us. I remember it, listening to my father, calm and desperate, telling my mother we’d have to sell our land. Maybe the plague saved them. I can’t see my mother in a London tenement, her husband some mercer’s worker. She was a lady to her finger’s ends.

My uncle came and got us. Given what happened, I don’t know why he came — he was a bad man and I was afraid of him from the first. He had no Christian charity whatsoever in him, and may his soul burn in hell for ever.

You are shocked, but I mean it. May he burn — in — hell.

He came and fetched us. I remember my uncle taking my father’s great sword down from where it hung on the wall. And I remember that he sold it.

He sold our farms, too.

I remember riding a tall wagon to London with my sister pressed against my side. Sometimes she held my hand. She was a little older and very quiet.

I remember entering London on that wagon, sitting on a small leather trunk of my clothes, and the city was a wonder that cut through my grief. I remember pointing to the sights that I knew from my mother and father — the Tower, and the Priory of the Knights at Clerkenwell, and all the ships. . My uncle’s wife was as quiet as my sister. My uncle had beaten all the noise out of her — he bragged about it. My pater used to say that only a coward or a peasant hit a woman, and now I think he had his brother in mind, because Guillaulm the Goldsmith was a coward and a peasant.

His wife was Mary. She took us into her house. Her eyes were blank. I can’t remember what colour they were — I don’t think she ever looked me in the eye.

Before the sun had set a finger’s width, I discovered that we were to be servants, not children.

It wasn’t the end of the world. I had waited tables for gentlemen visiting our house — my mother was trying to bring me up gently, even though we lacked the money or influence to have me placed as a page. I could carve and I could serve, so I hid my dismay and did my best.

It’s a long time ago, but he beat me before the day was out, and he liked it. I remember his breath, his face red. Licking his lips. I took it. I think I cried, but I took it. But later on he tried to beat my sister, and I bit him.

I had years of it. I doubt a day went by when he didn’t hit me, and some days — some days he beat me badly.

Bah. This isn’t what you want to hear.

I went to the church school — he did that much for me — and the monks liked me, and I liked them. Without them, I think I’d be a much worse man. They doctored me when he beat me too badly, and they prayed with me. Praying — it’s always helped me. I know there’s men-at-arms who spit at God. I think they’re fools.

I learned some Latin. Saved my life later.

I also learned to cook. My uncle wasn’t just a bad man, he was a nasty-minded miser who wouldn’t buy good food or pay a cook. He bought old meat and the last vegetables in the market. It was like a compulsion for him, not to spend money. And his poor wife was too broken to do more than throw it all in a pot and boil it. I was tired of this, and hungry, and when I complained I was beaten. Well, I’m not the only boy to be beaten for complaining about food, but I may be one of the few who decided on the spot to learn to cook. I asked men in pot houses and taverns, and women who worked in great houses, and I learned a few things. As you will see. The path of arms, for me, included many beatings, a little Latin and cooking.

A boy can grow used to anything, eh? I served in the house; I ran errands for the shop; I did apprentice work like polishing silver and pewter and cleaning the files and saws; I went to Mass and to matins; I learned my letters and I cooked. And on Sundays, after church. .

If you three were Londoners, you’d know what we do on Sunday after church.

The girls dance in the squares.

And the lads take a sword and a buckler and fight.

By the gentle Christ, I loved to fight. I never minded the split knuckles, the broken fingers, the gash in the head. Daily beatings from my uncle made me hard. I had to borrow a sword — it was years before I had one of my own — but there was this fellow who was like a god to us youngers; he was an apprentice goldsmith to the big shop that served the court, and he had woollen clothes and a fine sword and he was such a pleasant fellow that he let little things like me use it. Thomas Courtney, he was. Long dead. I’ll wager he is not burning in hell.

Thomas Courtney was my hero from very young. And par dieu, messieurs, he would have been a good knight. He was ill-sorted for the life of a draper, and he was an example of everything that I could be.

I’d like to say I grew better, but I was too young to wield a man’s sword properly — it was all I could do to block a blow — but I learned how to move, and how to avoid one. One of the monks was a good blade, and he taught me, too. He was a lusty bastard, a terror with the virgins as well as being quite fast with his fists, and he taught me some of that, too. Brother John. A bad monk, but not such a bad man. Nor a good one, as you’ll hear.

And there was wrestling. Everyone in London — every man and boy and no few women — can wrestle. Out in the fields, we’d gather in packs, peel off our hose and have at it.

I loved to fight, and there were many teachers. It was just as well. I grew fast, and I had red hair.

When I was eleven, I came in from an errand and couldn’t find my sister. She should have been helping the cook, who was my friend in the house. Cook hadn’t seen her. I went up to the rooftrees and I found her, with my uncle trying to get between her legs.

He’d tried his member on me several times, and I’d learned to knee him in the groin. So I wasn’t as shocked as I might have been.

I hit him.

He beat the living hell out of me, his parts hanging out of his braes. He chased me around the attic, pounding me with his fists.

But he didn’t finish what he was about.

After that, I never left my sister alone in the house. I went to my aunt and told her, and she turned her head away and said nothing.

So I went to the monks. An eleven-year-old boy needs an ally.

Brother John took me to the Abbott, and the Abbott went to the guild of goldsmiths, and that was the end of it.

A week later, my uncle came home late, with his face puffy and his lip and eyebrows cut from punches. Footpads had set on him, taken his purse and pounded him.

Next day, Brother John had two sets of split knuckles, and so did Brother Bartholomew. Perhaps they’d had a dust up.

For a year, things were better. But better is an odd word to a boy who has to fear everything and everyone, and who has to fight every day. I’m not making excuses for what came later. Just saying.

I’m coming to Poitiers in my own time. Listen, messieurs. When you face the arrow storm, when you face a big man in the lists or on the battlefield, when you stand knee deep in mud and your sword is broken and you cannot catch your breath and you have two bloody wounds — then you need to have something. Some men get it from their fathers. Some get it from God.

So just listen.

I always wanted to be a knight. In my boy’s head, my pater had been a knight — not strictly true, but a boy’s dreams are golden and that’s how it was. And yet, such is youth, when the Guildhall sent for me and I was entered as an apprentice — at the insistence of the Abbott, I think — I was puffed like an adder, over the moon with delight. I intended to be the best goldsmith since the Romans, and I worked like a slave. I went to another shop. My sister was working every day for the sisters of St John, serving the poor and thus safe from my uncle, so I could go and work the whole day with a free heart.

As apprentices, we had thirty-five feast days a year. My master was John de Villers, and he beat me when I broke things. I never heard a word of praise from him, and I got a ration of curses, but that was only his way. He wasn’t a money-grubbing louse. He was a fine craftsman, and he didn’t make the cheap crap you see in the streets. He made nothing but scabbard fittings for the nobility, and he made things that caused me, as a boy, to gawk. Enamel blue, whorls of gold like the tracery on a cathedral — by St John, friends, he had the true gift of making, and all his bad temper didn’t stop him from teaching us. In fact, he liked his apprentices better than some apparently kinder men — most of his boys made their grade and got their mark.

I worked in copper and learned my way. I did a lot more low work — I remember that I spent a week cleaning his stable shed, which can’t have taught me a thing about metal work — but he took the time to show me some things, and I loved the work, and I could tell that he could feel my enthusiasm.

I made a set of clasps and hinges for a Bible for the monks, and Master de Villers said they were good enough. That was a great day for me. As far as I know, the monks still use that Bible — I saw it on the lectern in King Richard’s day.

Oh, aye, messieurs, I’m older than dirt. I can remember Caesar. You asked for this story — fill my cup or go to your bed.

That’s better.

I was getting bigger. I had a little money. I finally bought a tuck — a sword. It probably wasn’t so much, but par dieu, gentlemen, it was the world to me, and I wore it out on Sundays’ under my buckler — a fine buckler with copper and bronze studs and a fine iron rim, all my work or my friends’ work. And when I swaggered swords with another boy, girls watched me.

Well. When they danced, I watched them.

And glances became looks, and looks became visits, and visits became hands brushing, and perhaps clasping, and then there was kissing. .

Heh, I’ll assume you know whereof I speak. So you know what comes next. I’m a sinful man, and lust has always had a place for me. A pretty face, a pair of breasts, a fine leg shown when tying a garter, and by our saviour, I’m off like a greyhound. I started young, and I’m not sure that I’m finished. But a chivalrous man is a lover of women — Lancelot was a lover of women, and Sir Tristan, and all the great knights. The priests clip us too close. There’s very little harm in a little love, eh?

Any gate, by the time I was fourteen I was ready to be wed, and my chosen mate was Nan Steadman, whose da’ was an alderman. He thought me beneath her, but she had him wrapped around her fingers. She wed another, and I have a different life, but we still share a cup when I’m in London, Nan and I. Fifty years and more.

Bah, I’m old. What I’m trying to say is that I had a life, a fine life. Hard, but I was making it, and with gentle manners and a good craft skill, there were no limits to what I might be. A fine life. I haven’t really said what an advantage my mother’s work on my manners were. But I spoke like a gentleman, English or French, and I could bow, carve, pour wine, read or speak a prayer. These may not seem like great achievements, but by our lady, without them you are doomed to be a certain kind of man. I had them, and as the alderman said, if I wasn’t hanged, I’d be Lord Mayor.

I had everything required to succeed, in London.

And in two afternoons, I fucked it away.

I was learning to ride and joust and use the bow. Nay, don’t shake your heads — the Londoners over there nodding know that by law any free man of London, and that includes an apprentice, may bear arms and ride the joust — eh? Just so, messieurs. And such was my passion for it that I took Nan to see some foreign worthies fight at barriers in the meadows — knights and squires. There were Frenchmen and Germans and Englishmen and even a Scot. We fought the French, but we hated the Scots. But the Scottish knight was preux, and he fought well, and the French knights fought brilliantly — one of them like the god Mars incarnate — and one of the Brabanters was no great swordsman, but he was brave and spirited and I admired him. He was in the Queen’s retinue, I thought — she was a Hainaulter, and she brought more than a few of them with her.

Things were different then, and when he was in his pavilion disarming, I walked in, bowed and paid my compliments on his fighting. He was older than I thought, and he was very pleased to have his fighting complimented by any man; it was nothing to him that I was an apprentice, and we talked for some time and I was served wine like a gentle. I think it went to my head, the wine and the company.

There were other men about, and my Nan, looking a tad embarrassed as women are want to be when out of their element. But Sir Otto, as he was called, was courtly to her, and she blushed.

A young English knight came in. They’d fought three blows of the sword, and they embraced, and I saw that the knight knew me. And I knew him. He was a cousin, on my mother’s side. A De Vere. He winced when I said I was a goldsmith.

We might have had hot words, but then he shrugged. I didn’t want to admire him, but I did; he was everything I wasn’t, and suddenly he, by existing, burned my happiness to the ground.

I didn’t want to be a goldsmith. I wanted to be a knight.

He was Edward. Well, everyone was Edward in those days. He was a little too courtly to Nan, who ate his admiration the way a glutton eats pork. He had fine clothes, beautiful manners and he’d just fought in armour. Every one of you knows that a man never, ever looks better than when he’s just fought in harness. His body is as light as air. Fighting is a proper penance for sin — a man who has endured the harness and the blows is as stainless as a virgin for a little while. Edward had golden hair and a golden belt, and even then and there, I couldn’t resent Nan’s attention.

Besides, after some initial hesitation, he treated me as family, and that only made me seem higher. I was glad. Nan would go home to her father and say we’d been served wine by gentlemen who were my relatives.

The French knights came — they were prisoners of the war in France, waiting in England for ransom. The older knight was courtly to Nan and quite polite to me — no foolish distance. His name was Geoffrey de Charny, and if my cousin Edward looked like a true knight, De Charny looked like a paladin from the chansons. He was as tall as me — and damned few men are — a good six feet in his hose, and maybe a finger more. He had a face carved from marble, and hair the colour of silver-gilt, with blue eyes. He looked like the saint of your choice. He was the best fighter in armour that I ever saw, and he had the most perfect manners, and the reputation of being the fiercest man in the field. In fact, he was considered the greatest knight of his generation — some men say the greatest knight of all time.

You know of him, messieurs, I’m sure. Well, I will have more to say of that noble gentleman.

The other man knight was as young as me, or Nan, but he wore the whole value of my master’s shop on his back. The first silk arming jacket I ever saw, with silk cords pointed in figured gold — and this a garment meant to be worn under armour and unseen.

Nan was the only woman in the tent, and she received a great deal of attention, and I tried not to be angry or jealous. I was so busy hanging on de Charny’s every word that I scarcely noticed her. But young men are fools, and she blushed and smiled a great deal, and eventually came and stood by me, and Messire de Charny told her that she was very beautiful. She still tells that story, and well she might. He asked her for a lace from her sleeve, and promised to wear it the next time he fought.

I admired him so much that I restrained my jealousy and managed to smile.

We had too much wine, and on the way home we found a lane and we dallied. She had never been so willing — grown men know about women and wine, but young ones don’t know yet. She was liquorice, and I was hot for her. Her mouth tasted of cloves. We played long, but we stayed just inside the bounds, so to speak.

I took her to her door, begged her mother’s forgiveness for the hour and escaped alive. Just.

So when I came home to my uncle’s house, I thought I was safe and whole, relatively sinless.

He was raping my sister. She was crying — whimpering and pleading. I could hear them from the back door, and all the while I climbed the stairs I knew he had her and was using her, and that as a knight, I had failed, because I had not been there to protect her. Climbing those stairs still comes to me in nightmares. Up and up the endless, narrow, rickety stair, my sister begging him to stop, the sound of his fist striking her, the wet sound as he moved inside her.

Eventually I made the top. We lived in the attic, under the eaves, and he had her on my pallet. I went for him. I wasn’t ten years old any more, and he never trained to arms.

I’ll make this brief — you all want to hear about Poitiers.

I beat him badly.

I dragged him off her, and locked one of his arms behind his back, using it to hold him, then I smashed his face with my fists until I broke his nose. As he fell to the floor, arse in the air, I kicked him. I made his member black by kicking him there fifteen or twenty times.

The next day, he stayed abed. I had to mind his shop, and I sent a boy round to my true master and said my uncle was sick. It was evil fate riding me hard.

The French knight Geoffrey de Charny — the one who had fought so well the day before — came to the shop. The younger knight was with him. De Charny had a dagger, a fine thing, all steel — steel rondels, steel grip, steel blade — and better than anything I’d seen in London. It was a wicked, deadly thing that shouted murder across the room. He laid it on the counter and asked how much it would cost to put it in a gold-mounted scabbard.

After I named a price, he looked down his nose at me. In French, he asked me if he hadn’t seen me at the passage of arms the day before.

I spoke French well, or so I thought until I went to France, so I nodded and bowed and said that yes, I had been present.

He pursed his lips. ‘With the very handsome woman, yes?’ he asked. He looked at the younger knight, who grinned.

I nodded. I didn’t like that grin.

‘And the English knight, Sir Edward, is your cousin?’ he asked.

‘Yes, my lord,’ I said.

‘But you are in a dirty trade. Your hands are not clean.’ He made a face. ‘Why do you betray your blood like this?’

Perhaps my anger showed in my eyes, but he shrugged. ‘You English,’ he said. ‘I have insulted you, and truly, I mean no insult. You look like a healthy boy who would not be useless in arms. Why not turn your back on this dirt and do something worthy?’

I had no answer for that. I do not think that trade is dirty. Good craft still makes my heart sing like sweet music, but something he said seemed to me to be from God. Why was I intending to be a goldsmith?

You might ask why I wasn’t seeking the law and revenge for my sister. I’m telling this badly. In fact, I spent the morning taking her to the nuns before I opened the shop. I went to Nan’s father and swore a complaint. I did all that, and the French knight’s visit was, if anything, a pleasant diversion from my thoughts. Perhaps I should have killed my uncle myself. That’s what a man-of-arms does — he is justice. He carries justice in his scabbard. But in London, in the year of our lord 1355, an apprentice went meekly to the law, because the King’s courts were fair courts, because the Mayor and Aldermen, despite being rich fucks, were mostly fair men, and because I believed then — and still do, friends — that the rule of law is better than the rule of the sword, at least in England.

My uncle wasn’t bound by such rules.

When I closed the shop, I didn’t want to spend another minute under his roof, so I went to evensong, and then I walked. I’d been in the great passion play at the hospital as Judas — I already mentioned that — and I knew a few of the knights, that is, the Knights of the Order. They sometimes allowed me to watch them while they practised their arms, and my sister worked there. Now my sister was lying on a bed among the sisters, so my feet took me out Clerkenwell way to the hospital priory. I saluted the porter and went to find my sister. I sat on her bed for three quarters of an hour by the bells, listening to the sound of sheep cropping grass, and to the squawking of hens and the barking of dogs and the sounds of a Knight of the Order riding his war horse, practising, in the yard. Twice I went and watched him.

The Hospitallers — the Knights of St John — have always, to me, been the best men, the best fighters, the very epitome of what it means to be a knight. So even while my sister wept with her face to the wall, I watched the knight in the yard.

When I went back to her bedside and tried to hold her hand, she shrank into a ball.

After some time, I gave up and went back to get some sleep. I walked up to the servant’s door of my uncle’s house, and two men came out of the shadows and ordered me to hand over my sword.

I did.

And I was taken.

I want you, gentlemen, to see how I came to a life of arms, but I’ll cut this part short. I was taken for theft. My uncle swore a warrant against me for the theft of the knight’s dagger. I never touched it — I swear on my sword — but that boots nothing when a Master Goldsmith swears a case against an apprentice. I was taken. I wasn’t ill used, and all they did was lock me in a plain room of the sheriff’s house. I had a bed.

The next day, I went for trial.

Nothing went as I expected. I have always hated men of law, and my trial for theft confirmed what every apprentice knows: the men of law are the true enemy. I could tell from the way they spoke that none of them — not one — believed me guilty. It was like the passion play, they acted out the parts of accuser and accused. My uncle said that I had always been bad and that I had stolen the dagger. The French knight, Sir Geoffrey, appeared merely to say the dagger had been his. He looked at me a long time. When the court thanked him formally for attending, he bowed and then said, in French, that my case was what came of forcing a nobly born boy to ignoble pursuits.

Given it was a court of merchants and craftsmen, I’m fairly sure his words did me no good. Most of the court talk was in Norman French, which I understood well enough. My advocate wasn’t much older than me, and seemed as willing to see me hanged as my accuser. No one seemed to care when I shouted that my uncle had raped my sister.

I was found guilty and condemned to be branded.

They branded me right here, on my right hand. See? Of course you can’t, messieurs. I was branded with a cold iron, because Brother John and the Abbott appeared as if from a machine and told the court that I was in lower orders. I read one of the psalms in Latin when the Abbott ordered me to. It was like having a fever — I scarcely understood what was happening.

I was dismissed from the guild.

My uncle burned all my clothes and all my belongings. He had the right to do so, but he made me a beggar.

Nan’s father told me never to come to his house, but in truth he was decent about it. He didn’t say it in words, but he made it clear that he knew I was no thief. And yet. .

And yet, my life was done.

I went and slept on the floor of the monks’ chapel, where I swept their floors. I was there three days, and they gave me some cast-off clothes, while the Abbott made me a reader — I read the gospel two mornings — so as not to have lied in court.

I’ll never forget those mornings, reading the gospel to the monks. I am a man of blood, but for two whole days, I loved Jesus enough to be a monk. I considered it and the Abbott invited me.

But the third day, Brother John came and took me on a walk.

We walked a long way. I was still so shattered I had no conversation, and he merely walked along, greeting all who looked at him, winking at the maidens and sneering at the men. We walked along the river to the Tower and back.

Just short of our chapel, having walked the whole of London, he stopped. ‘I’m giving up the habit,’ he said suddenly.

I doubt I looked very interested.

‘The Prince is taking an army to Gascony,’ he said. ‘The indentures to raise the troops are written — it’s spoken of in every tavern. I’m not cut out for a monk, and I mean to try my hand at war.’

I suppose I nodded. Nothing he said touched me at all.

He put his hand on my shoulder.

‘Come with me, lad,’ he said. ‘If you stay here, you’ll be a thief in truth soon enough.’

I see you all smile, and I’ll smile with you. It is the hand of God. I was born to be a man-of-arms, and then the plague and the devil and my uncle came to stop me. But every work of the devil rebounds to God in the end. The Abbott taught me that. My uncle tried to hurt me, and instead he made me tough. Later, he made me a criminal, and because of him. .

I went to France.

Brother John and I left the monks without a goodbye and walked across the river at the bridge. I had to pass my former master’s shop, but no one recognized me. We walked out into the meadow, and there were the city archery butts — really, they belonged to Southwark, but we all used them. And John — no longer brother John — walked straight up to an old man with a great bow and proclaimed himself desirous of taking service.

The old man — hah, twenty years younger than I am now, but everyone looks ancient when you are fifteen — looked at John and handed him his bow.

‘Just bend it,’ he said. ‘And don’t loose her dry or I’ll break your head.’

John took the bow which, to me, looked enormous — the middle of the bow was as thick as my wrist. It was a proper war bow, not like the light bows I’d shot. A good war bow of Spanish yew was worth, well, about as much as a fine rondel dagger.

John took it, tested the string, and then he took up an odd posture, almost like a sword stance, pointed the bow at the ground and raised it, drawing all the while.

He didn’t get the whole draw. I was no great archer, but I knew he should have pulled the string to his cheek and he only got it back to his mouth, and even then he was straining. He grunted, exhaled and let the string out gradually.

‘Too heavy for me, master,’ he confessed.

The old man took an arrow from his belt and turned to face the butt. He took his bow back the way a man might receive his wife back from a guardian at the end of a long trip. His right hand stroked the wood.

Then he seized the grip, pointed the bow down as John had, lifted it and loosed his arrow in one great swinging motion. His right hand went back almost to his ear, and the arrow sang away to bury itself in the butt — it was no great shot, yet done so effortlessly as to show mastery, just as a goldsmith or cordwainer might do some everyday craft so that you’d see their skill.

An armourer once told me that any man might make one fine helmet, but that a master armourer made one every day just as good.

At any rate, the master archer watched his arrow a moment. ‘You know how to shoot,’ he admitted to John. ‘Have your own bow?’

‘No,’ John confessed.

The old man nodded. Spat. ‘Armour?’ he asked.

‘No,’ John said.

‘Sword?’ he asked.

‘No.’ John was growing annoyed.

‘Buckler?’ the old man pressed on.

‘No!’ John said.

‘Rouncey?’ the old man asked. ‘I am only taking for a retinue. We ride.’

‘No!’ John said, even more loudly.

The old man laughed; it was a real laugh, and I liked him instantly. He laughed and clapped John on the shoulder. ‘Then you shall have to owe me your pay for many days, young man,’ he said. ‘Come and I’ll buy you a cup of wine, then we’ll go and find you some harness.’

‘I’d like to come to France,’ I said.

He nodded. ‘Can you pull a bow?’ he asked.

I hung my head. ‘Not a war bow,’ I admitted. ‘But I can fight.’

‘Of course you can. God’s pity on those who cannot. Can you ride?’ he asked.

‘Yes.’

That stopped him. He paused and turned back. ‘You can ride, boy?’ he asked.

‘I can joust. A little,’ I admitted. ‘I can use a sword. My father was a knight.’ The words came unbidden.

‘But you have no gear.’

I nodded.

He looked at me. ‘You are a big lad, and no mistake, and if your hair is any sign of your fire, you’ll burn hot. I misdoubt that my lord will take you as a man-at-arms with no arms of your own, but you look likely to me. Can you cook?’

Here I was, being measured as a potential killer of men, and suddenly I was being asked if I could cook. I could, though.

‘I can cook and serve. I can carve. I know how to use spices.’ I shrugged. It was true enough.

He reached into his purse and handed me flint and a steel. ‘Can ye start a fire, lad?’

‘I could if I had dry tow, some bark and some char,’ I said. ‘Only Merlin could start a fire with flint and steel alone.’

He nodded and pulled out some charred linen and a good handful of dry tow.

I dug a shallow hole with my heel because of the wind and gathered twigs. I found two sticks and made a little shelter for my bird’s nest of fire makings, and laid some char cloth on my nest of tow. Then I struck the steel sharply down on the flint, with a piece of char sitting on the flint. I peeled minute strips of metal off the face of the steel with the flint — that’s really what a spark of metal is, as any swordsman can see, just a red-hot piece of metal, too small to see. A few sparks fell on my charred linen and it caught. I laid it on my nest and blew until I had flame, and laid the burning nest on the ground and put twigs on top.

The old man put out my fire with one stomp of his booted foot. ‘Can you do it in the rain?’ he asked.

‘Never tried,’ I admitted.

‘I like you,’ he said. ‘You ain’t a rat. Too many little rats in the wars. If I take you to France to help cook, you’ll still get to France. Understand me, boy?’

‘Will I fight?’ I asked.

He smiled. It was a horrible smile. ‘In France, everyone fights,’ he said.

So I went to France as the very lowest man in a retinue: the cook’s boy.

It’s true. In Italy, they still call me Guillermo le Coq — William the Cook. It’s not some social slur. When I started fighting in Italy, I was riding with men who could remember when I was their cook’s boy.

Because in France, everyone fights.

We’re almost to Poitiers, so hold your horses. I went and said goodbye to my sister. She wanted to be a nun, but we were too poor — convents required money for women who wanted to take orders — and the Sisters of St John, the women who served with the knights, were very noble indeed, and didn’t take women without more quarters of arms than my sister would ever be able to muster. But they were good women, for all that, and they accepted her as a serving sister, a sort of religious servant. It was low, but so was the rank of ‘cook’s boy’. I was lucky I wasn’t visibly branded a thief; she was lucky she wasn’t spreading her legs in Southwark five times a day. And we both knew it.

Before I saw her, the lady of the house came in person. I gave her my best bow and the sele of the day, and she was courteous. She spoke beautifully. She was the daughter of one of the northern lords, and she spoke like the great aristocrat she was.

‘Your sister has been grievously miss-used,’ the lady said.

I kept my eyes down.

‘She has a real vocation, I think. And my sisters and I would, if certain conditions were met, be delighted to accept her.’ She honoured me with a small smile.

I bowed again. I was a convicted felon and my sister was a raped woman. A gentleman knows, but among peasants, rape is the woman’s fault, isn’t it? At any rate, I had the sense to keep my mouth shut.

‘It is possible that you will, ahem, improve yourself,’ she said, her eyes wandering the room. ‘If that were to happen, with a small donation, we would be delighted to accept your sister as our sister.’ She rose. ‘Even without a donation, I will make it a matter of my own honour that she is safe here.’

I bowed again.

The lady’s words — and her unsolicited promise on her honour — are probably what prevented me from murdering my uncle on the last night I was in England. Before God, I thought of it often enough.

Her suggestion fired my blood and helped set me on the road to recovering from the darkness that surrounded me. Remember, gentles, I had lost my girl, my sister’s honour and my own.

I had nothing and I was nothing. Brother John was right: I’d have been a sneak thief in days.

But the lady gave me an odd hope, a sense of mission. I would take a ransom in France and buy my sister grace.

My sister had recovered some in three days. She was sorry to see me go, but truly happy to be staying with the sisters, even as a servant. She managed to embrace me and wish me well, and gave me a little cap she’d made me of fine linen, with the cross of her order worked into it. She saved my life with that cap. It may be the finest gift I ever got. At the time, I was so happy to hear her speak without whimpering that I paid it no heed.

At the gate, there was a Knight of the Order chatting with the porter. He smiled at me. He was one tough-looking bastard, with a tan so dark he looked like a Moor, a white line from his brow across one eye and across his nose. He wore a black arming coat with the eight pointed cross-worked in thread and black hose. I bowed.

‘You must be Mary’s brother,’ he said.

I bowed again. ‘Yes, sir.’

‘She says you go to France. To war.’ He fingered his beard.

I nodded, awestruck to be talking to one of the athletes of Christ. ‘I want to be a knight,’ I said suddenly.

He put his hand on my head and spoke a blessing. ‘Fight well,’ he said. His eyes had a look, as though he could see through me. ‘May the good shepherd show you a path to knighthood.’

We sailed for France in a ship so large I could have got lost in the holds. The ship was assigned to Lord Stafford and some young menat-arms. John had two doublets, a fine fustian-covered jack, a dented basinet and a pair of boots that were like leather hose. His sword was rusty and his buckler wasn’t as nice as the one my uncle had robbed me of.

I spent all my time on the boat fixing his gear. I’d done some sewing — how John, who’d been a monk, had avoided sewing is a mystery to me, but he wouldn’t sew a stitch. I begged needles and thread from some of the women. All the older archers had women — some were mere whores, but others were solid matrons, married to their archers. Two were dressed like ladies. A master archer after Crecy might have more money than a moneylender and could dress his lady as well as many knights.

Any gate, I was pretty enough, and by the standards of a company of archers, I had excellent manners, so they cosseted me and loaned me needles and thread, and I mended everything John owned. Our first night in Gascony, I took his helmet to an armourer — the castle was ringed with them after so many years of English armies coming — and begged the use of the man’s anvil and a mushroom stake. You don’t need a hammer to take the dent out of a helmet.

The armourer was kindness itself. I’ve often noticed that people will be friendly to the young where they might be stiff to an older man. So he fed me some cheap wine, and watched while I unpicked the liner of the helmet, laid it aside (filthy, ill kept and needing repair) and carefully bashed the dent against the stake — from the inside.

I couldn’t budge the dent.

Finally the Gascon laughed, took the helmet from me, and removed the dent with three careful whangs against the stake.

‘You know how,’ he said. ‘You just aren’t strong enough.’

It’s true. I’d watched a master armourer in Southwark take the dents out of a knight’s helmet once, so I knew the technique. I just didn’t realize that the simple motions required great strength and technique — there’s a lesson there for swordsmen, if you like. The armourer made it look simple. Like the master archer, eh?

Since the cheap wine was free and he fed me, I sat in the Gascon’s forge and repaired the liner, mending the places where the raw wool of the padding was leaking, washed it and hung it by the forge fire to dry. There truly are Christians in the world, and I mention him to God every time I hear Mass. He and his good wife fed me a dozen times during the weeks we were in Bordeaux.

My point is that I got John’s kit into better shape, and the master archer, Master Peter, saw it. That was good.

The cook was called Abelard the Deacon. The word in the company was that he’d been ordained a deacon as a young man, and they’d cast him from his order for gluttony. In truth, he wasn’t fat like other cooks; he must have had some curse on him, for he ate and ate and never gained. He was tall and very strong, and I saw him fight and he was a killer. He was like a monster — no skill, but lots of strength. Sometimes, they are the most dangerous men.

He was also well read, and when he found that I had read some of the words of the great Aquinas, my status changed more than it would have if I could have arrayed myself in new armour. He became my protector against archers with a tendency to young men, and against men who simply like to haze the young, and against my true foes, the squires.

By the sweet saviour, they were my first enemies. I hated my uncle, but he was just a sad sinner, a miser and a rapist. The squires were my age, nobly born and very full of themselves. Their leader, Diccon Ufford, had made a campaign the year before with his knight, but the rest of them were as green as I was, and eager to improve their status by putting themselves above someone else. I was just about the only man they could be lord of, as the archers treated them with the scorn they richly deserved. To be fair, Diccon scarcely troubled me, but his lieutenant in all things was Richard Beauchamps, and he never tired of humiliating me.

As the cook’s boy, it was my place to do whatever was asked of me, and I found that the squires devoted themselves to using all my time. My second night in Gascony, I was kicked awake to curry horses. The next night I cooked for my Lord and the captain of our retinue, Thomas de Vere, Earl of Oxford. I didn’t try to play on our relation. Richard Beauchamps was the lord’s squire; when I went to cut the beef, Richard took the knife from my hand and kicked me.

‘That for your impudence, bastard!’ he said. ‘Carving is for gentles.’

I watched him for a moment — I was proud of my control — as he failed to carve the beef. My hands were shaking with anger, but I made myself take deep breaths.

‘Then perhaps you’d like me to show you how to do it?’ I said in my mother’s best accent.

The Earl was watching us, and his squire couldn’t really attack me in public, so he turned.

‘You’re dead,’ he said. ‘I’m going to beat you blue and make you beg me to stop.’

I smiled.

War.

Our war amused the archers. I’d love to say they all backed me, but they didn’t. Most of them were twenty-five, or even older, and the affairs of boys were beneath them. Even John, who liked me and was truly grateful, then and later, for my work on his kit, still thought that any bruises I got from boys my own age were either deserved or part of growing up.

Try the organized hatred of six older boys.

When I carried a tray, I was tripped. When I curried a horse, dirt was poured on its back. When I cooked, hands would pour pepper and salt into my dishes. When I built a fire, people would piss on it.

The archers found it funny, in the way mistreating a mongrel dog can become funny.

I may have red hair and a temper, but I had never been the scapegoat, the Judas, before. I was usually top boy or close enough. I didn’t have the right armour for the contest, and a bitter month passed while I grew some.

It wasn’t the beatings. Richard beat me three times, I think. He lacked the pure evil to kill or maim me, and he wasn’t as vicious as my uncle. But the endless hatred had an effect.

I never seemed able to get one of them alone, yet they quite regularly got me, three or four to one. The worst was when I was bathing. They took my only set of clothes and burned them. Then three of them beat me very thoroughly, leaving me bruised and naked by the river. Walking naked through a military camp is a good way to make yourself known to a great many men, let me tell you. I was the laughing stock of the camp for two days.

John found me clothes — too big to fit, dirty and full of lice.

I survived.

But I yearned to turn the tables, though I never seemed to manage it. I lay in wait for one of them and he never came to water his knight’s horse, even though he’d done it three days in a row. I put salt in their food, and they either didn’t notice or I hadn’t used enough.

It was the cook who saved me. He liked to talk, so we talked, and after a few doses of Aquinas he started to protect me. Just in small ways.

‘Two boys seem to be waiting under the eaves of the armoury tent,’ he said one evening.

‘A mysterious hand tried to salt the goose,’ he mentioned the next day.

‘I found a squire with no work to do, so I made him wash pots,’ he grinned a week later.

At the same time, I had found something to love, and that was riding. I had never owned a horse. Indeed, I’d scarcely learned to ride, even while learning to joust — like many young men, it was enough to stay on through the course. I laugh now at what I thought was good riding, back as a boy in London.

Master Peter purchased me a small riding horse. I’ll never know what the old archer saw in me, but he saw something — that horse cost him nine silver pennies of Gascony. I rode every day, everywhere I could — I remember fetching six leather canteens full of water on horseback, once, to the vast amusement of the archers.

The truth is that, when I tell this tale, I make my life sound hard. The other boys annoyed me, and sometimes they hurt me, but I was also outside, riding, cooking, getting taught how to use a sword and a spear. The knights — men I worshipped the way the ancient men worshipped their gods — were not distant beings. They were right there with us, and every day I had a chance to speak to one or other of them.

My favourite, of course, was our own Earl of Oxford. He was a great lord, but he had the common touch. He spoke to the older archers as if they were comrades, not inferiors, and he ruffled my hair and called me ‘Judas’, which may sound harsh, but it was better than ‘bare arse’, which is what most of the men called me after the river incident. We were in his contingent; Peter was one of his sworn men, and we all wore the Oxford badge on our red and yellow livery.

Like many boys, I was in a constant state of anxiety about my status. Technically I was a cook, not a soldier, and I was worried I would be left behind — either when the army marched or when the day of battle dawned. By blessed St George, what a pleasure it might be to be left behind for a battle! Bah. I lie. If you are a man-of-arms, it is in arms you must serve, and that was my choice. But fear of being left behind made me work very hard, both as a cook and as an apprentice soldier. I was big, even then, and I would walk out into the fields below the castle to cut thistles with my cheap sword, or to fence against a buckler held by my friend the cook.

One day — I think we’d been in France about two weeks, and the war horses were getting the sheen back in their coats after the crossing — I was cutting at the buckler, and Abelard was cutting at mine. This is a good training technique that every boy in London knows by the time he is nine years old, but I’ve never see it on the Continent. You cut at your companion’s buckler and he, in turn, cuts at yours. The faster you go, the more like a real fight it can be, but relatively safe, unless your opponent is a fool or a madman. The point is that you only hit the opponent’s shield.

We were swashing and buckling faster and faster, circling like men in a real fight. Abelard was two fingers taller than me and broader, but fast. He was trying to keep his buckler away from me, and I was trying to close the distance.

Suddenly there was the Earl of Oxford and half a dozen men-at-arms with hawks on their wrists. The Earl motioned to Master Abelard, who came and held his stirrup, and the earl dismounted.

‘So, Master Judas,’ he said. ‘Those who live by the sword will die by the sword, or so it says in the Gospels.’

I bowed and stammered. I’d like to say that I held my head up and said something sensible or dashing, but the truth is that I stared at my bare feet — my dirty bare feet — and mumbled.

‘He’s very good, my lord.’ Abelard didn’t seem as tongue-tied as I was. It was also the first time anyone had told me I was good with a sword. I’d had suspicions, but I didn’t know.

The Earl took Abelard’s buckler and drew a riding sword from his saddle. ‘Let’s see,’ he said.

I bowed and managed to stammer out that he did me too much honour — in French.

The Earl paused. ‘That was nicely said. Are you gently born?’

I bowed. ‘My father was a man-at-arms,’ I said. ‘My mother-’ I must have blushed, because several of the men-at-arms laughed and one shook his head. ‘No better than she needed to be, I suppose.’ He laughed.

It must be hard to be bastard born. Luckily, I’m not, so I felt no resentment. And, praise to God, I was intelligent enough not to claim to be a distantly related de Vere then and there.

De Vere waved his sword. ‘Show me some sport, young Judas.’ He stepped in and cut almost straight up into the edge of my buckler. For a straight, simple blow, it was shrewd, powerful and deceptive all in one.

I made a simple overhand blow, and he pulled the buckler back the way boys do when they make the swashbuckle into a game. I stepped with my left foot and caught it as it moved.

Then I ducked away to the left, moving forward instead of back — another trick London apprentices use to deceive each other. Backing away is one way of fooling an opponent — closing suddenly is a better one.

He stepped back and cut from under his buckler on the left side, again catching my buckler perfectly with a strong, crisp blow.

We were close, almost body to body, so I sprang back and wind-milled my cheap sword, cutting the steel boss on Abelard’s buckler with a snack. I pivoted, he pivoted, and he thrust — faster than a striking snake — and caught my buckler as I pulled it back. We were going quite fast by then, and if you are a swordsman, you will know that I had a complicated choice to make in half a heartbeat. We were close, and if I stepped forward and he did the same, I’d miss my blow. If I sidestepped and he stepped back, I’d miss my blow.

I was fast when I was young, so I stepped slightly off the line that we were moving on — circling a quarter step, you might call it — then passed forward fast and cut straight up — his blow thrown back at him.

Snick. A smart blow into the lower rim. I was quite proud of it, as he stepped forward too late, trying to get the buckler inside my blow. I had scored a real hit on a trained man. I slipped to the right with another turning step that John had taught me, pulled back the buckler, and the Earl’s counter-cut-

Missed the buckler altogether and cut my left arm above the wrist.

At first all I felt was the cold, and the flat impact of the blow on my forearm. I laughed, because any hit to the body loses your companion the bout.

Then the pain hit. It was not a sharp pain, but rather a dull pain, and when I glanced down, I was terrified to see the amount of blood coming out of the cut-a long, straight cut, almost parallel to my arm, from just above the wrist to the elbow.

In hindsight, friends, I was the luckiest boy alive. The cut landed along the length of the bone, and the Earl, a trained man, pulled much of it, no doubt in horror. But at the time, all I saw and felt was the welling blood and the pain.

He was with me in a moment, his hand around my waist. ‘Damn me — your pardon, boy.’

Abelard had his own doublet unlaced, and now he pulled his shirt over his head and wrapped my arm before I could see any more. The white linen turned red. I sat down. Men and horses moved around, and I had trouble breathing. I remember looking out to sea and wondering if I would die. Then my vision narrowed. My mouth began to taste of salt, as if I was going to vomit. One of the Earl’s men-at-arms had a horn cup of wine, which he held to my lips. He was ten years older than me, round faced, with twinkling eyes.

‘Drink this, lad,’ he said.

I must have been dazed as I said something hot, like, ‘I’m no lad! I’m William Gold!’

He smiled. ‘I’m John,’ he said. ‘I meant no offence to such a puissant warrior.’

That’s all I remember. If I passed out, which I doubt, it wasn’t for long. It was my first wound, and I took it from Thomas de Vere, Earl of Oxford. Nothing better could have happened for my prospects, because he was a debonair, chivalrous knight, and by wounding me, he felt he was in my debt somehow. The world is full of men-at-arms who would have cut my arm and told me it was my own fault. In many ways, that wound was the foundation of my career. The joke is, it was so slight it didn’t even leave a scar.

The life of the young is never a straightforward progression. So just after the Earl wounded me and his men-at-arms began to speak well of me, with immediate consequences for their squires, someone came to the army from London. I never knew who it was, but I think it was yet another squire from the Earl of Warwick’s retinue. Whoever the bastard was, he spread the word that I had stolen a valuable dagger and been branded.

Well, you are all soldiers. There’s nothing soldiers hate more than a thief — even though, if the truth be told, we’re all thieves, even the most chivalrous among us, eh? We kill men and take their armour; we loot houses and take convoys; we steal on a scale no poor man could imagine.

Aye, but we despise a thief.

Consequently, the squires, after a week of forced respect, had a new reason to hate me. And they were loud. They harassed me morning and night. I was ‘thief’ at campfires and ‘thief’ in the horse lines. Men who had liked me stopped speaking to me, and men who had been indifferent cheered when three of the squires caught me and beat me.

I’d love to say that someone — the Earl, perhaps — came and saved me from that beating, but no one did.

Of course I fought back! I left every mark I could on those popinjays, those pampered rich boys. I blackened their eyes and broke one blackguard’s nose. But at odds of three to one, I was hard put to accomplish much, and sometimes, if they took me by surprise, I wouldn’t even get to land a blow.

I had two cracked ribs, my nose was broken so often it lay almost flat and my left hand was swollen like a club. I couldn’t be on my guard all the time, though I tried to be wary.

I went to Mass with John, where I knelt on the stone floor and said my beads and looked at the paintings. I knew more Latin than the priest, but he said a good piece about Jesus as a man-at-arms.

John rose from his knees. ‘See you at camp,’ he said.

‘You won’t stay?’ I asked.

‘I had a bellyful of this crap as a monk,’ he replied. ‘I’ve prayed enough for my entire life.’

I hadn’t. The chapel was beautiful, decorated with the pillage of a generation of English raids and victories, I suppose, and it was the finest church I’d ever been inside to pray. I felt safe, and happy. After Mass, I went and said my confession — only the second time, I think, that I had made a private confession, but soldiers are honorary gentlemen, in many ways.

I was unwary walking out the door, and four of the squires were waiting for me. They pulled me down immediately — I didn’t even land a blow — and Richard sat on my chest while another sat on my legs.

The bastard on my chest grinned and breathed his foul breath all over me. He was wearing Oxford’s colours.

‘Only criminals need to spend so much time in church,’ he said. He bounced a little, but he didn’t hurt me much — yet. Except, of course, that his bouncing moved my ribs.

This was going to be bad.

I cursed myself for a fool, letting my guard down. At the same time, I felt curiously absent. What kind of man attacks you just after you are shriven?

Best to get it over with.

‘Is your breath so foul from sucking a pig’s member?’ I asked.

He turned so red I thought he might explode. He began to beat me — one fist and then the other, right to my unprotected face. There was nothing I could do: left, right, left, right.

I remember it well.

And then God sent me a miracle.

Like a mother cat picking up a kitten, the priest grabbed Richard by the neck and lifted him with one hand, then hit him so hard he broke Master Richard’s jaw. I heard it go.

The other squires ran, but Richard just lay there and moaned.

The priest kicked him.

He screamed and moaned.

The priest looked at me. ‘Go with God, my son,’ he said.

It didn’t raise my popularity with the squires. But that didn’t matter as much as it might have, because we’d spent six weeks or more in Gascony, and suddenly the Prince was ready.

I’d seen him at a distance, with Sir John Chandos and other famous men, all instantly recognizable to a boy like me by their arms and their horses. For me, seeing Chandos was like seeing Jesus come to earth. But the Prince — by God, messieurs, the Prince was one of the best men I ever saw: tall, debonair and as full of preux as any man could be. Too few men of high station have the bearing and power to maintain their status in the eyes of the world, but the Prince looked just as he was — one of the most powerful lords in all the world, whether by strength of arms or strength of lands.

At any rate, the Prince did not ride out to visit the archers every day, so we seldom saw him, but at about the end of June, rumours began to fly that we were to march against the Count of Armagnac, because the French King and his army were busy in the far north, facing the famous Duke of Lancaster, our finest captain. Now, I could tell you that we didn’t know anything about the Prince’s plans, but I’d be a liar, because in an army of 5,000 men, in which 2,000 are men-at-arms, every man knew what the Prince intended, and his plans and stratagems were discussed round every campfire and in every inn. God help me I, too, criticized his plans. There is no critic louder than an ignorant fifteen-year-old making his first campaign.

I therefore knew that the King, that is, King Edward, had decided to knock the Count of Armagnac out of the war. The whoreson count had promised to become the King’s man, but he had reneged, and we were going to make him pay — or so all the older men said. And certes, the Prince had hit Armagnac hard in the fall, so it seemed likely we’d march on Armagnac.

But then, as so often passes in war, nothing happened.

Aye, comrades. For weeks. We saw the ships sail in from England with more arrows and more livery coats — I finally got one of my own — and we practiced, and I cooked better meals. Some of the Gascon lords who had ridden in took their retinues and went raiding. I stopped bathing in the river to avoid being beaten or losing my new coat, which I had tailored to fit tight, like a knight’s jupon.

And then we marched.

When we marched, it was like a bolt of levin had flashed across the heavens and illuminated the landscape. Every man in Bordeaux — about 7,000 men — marched together, and we moved fast, heading north to Bergerac in the Dordogne. We were there before anyone could say where we were headed, and suddenly I learned a whole new set of lessons about finding firewood when 6,000 other men were doing the same; about finding a chicken, when 6,000 other men wanted one; about feeding my horse; about having time to sew; about finding a place to sleep. John was no help — he was as raw as I was myself. Abelard, on the other hand, was the consummate veteran, and he could spot a dry barn with a solid loft across six leagues of hills, predict it as being near the army’s eventual halting place and ride there cross country to set his camp. Although Abelard held no rank above that of ‘cook’ with de Vere’s retinue, he made himself indispensable by riding with the outriders, choosing a camp and arranging for the Earl’s great pavilion and all the lesser tents. He worked hard and I rode after him, and found that I was riding double the distance the army travelled. I became Abelard’s messenger boy, which suited me, as it meant I came in daily contact with the Earl and sometimes rode along with his men-at-arms or squires.

I have to laugh, even now. Listen — boys torment each other when there’s nothing else to do and no Frenchmen to fight, but once we were on the march, that ill-feeling was mostly gone. You think I should have harboured a grudge? Perhaps. But to tell the truth, I was far more afraid that the Earl would leave me with the baggage then I was of the squires.

A few of them felt differently, though, as you’ll hear.

And I admit that when I saw Richard riding with a bandage on his jaw like a nun’s wimple, I mocked him.

At any rate, when we arrived at Bergerac after five days rapid marching, I slept for most of day, rose, ate Abelard’s meal and slept again. It wasn’t until our third day in Bergerac that I pulled my weight or worked, because I was so tired and awestruck by the cook’s constitution. He was made of iron. He could ride all day and cook all night.

After our lightning fast ride across Gascony, we stopped and waited.

The waiting was brutal. And dull.

By then, I was wary all the time. And after sleeping a long time and working a day or two, I was aware of a certain watchfulness from the squires. I hadn’t won them over. Most of the oldsters had something better to do than work on me, but the younger ones — and the fools, and Richard, who had had his jaw broke — weren’t going to change their minds, and the oldsters weren’t going to stop them. I could feel it. Abelard warned me — twice, in just so many words — that they meant me harm.

I took what precautions I could, but I couldn’t hide for ever. We were still in Gascony, but I wore my sword all the time, and my jack when I could get away with it, and I did more work on horseback than any other boy my age.

Richard Beauchamp watched me like a hawk watched a rabbit.

I’d like to sound brave, but I was terrified, and the waiting made it worse. I was recovering from two broken ribs and a number of other, lesser injuries, and I was tired of pain. Pain wears you down — pain when you lie down hurts affects sleep, pain when you are awake affects your work — and lying on the ground makes everything worse.

The rapid march had seemed so decisive, and all the raw men like me thought it presaged a battle. We truly were fools — all the old archers of twenty-five said we might march all summer and merely burn a castle or two, but we were in a constant state of excitement. So every day that we awoke under the ancient, mouldering walls of Bergerac and had no orders was a day of torment. The speculation ran wild. We were going to await the King, from England. We were going to fight Armagnac. We would march home. The King of France was coming for us.

Nothing happened. And with the waiting came increased work, because foraging grew harder every day. Each day we had to ride farther to find wood, to ‘buy’ provisions from well-armed, well-warned peasants who hated us. Supposedly, we were their army, but ask a peasant who’s just had all his winter meat stolen how he feels about his protectors.

It was the fourth or fifth day of waiting, and I was out with Abelard, looking for food. We came to a farmstead with a dozen outbuildings and we could hear screaming.

The peasant was dead. He’d been prosperous, and he was lying face down in his own yard with a spear through him.

Abelard’s face grew hard. ‘I mislike this,’ he said. ‘The Prince hangs men for this. Let’s be away.’

Still he hesitated. If the peasant was dead, his whole farm — a very rich farm — was open to us.

You know how war is, messieurs?

I was learning very quickly.

Abelard dismounted in the yard, and I’ll give him this, he went to see the peasant and tried his body, but the man was dead.

Peter went towards the nearest barn — a great stone barn that two men could have held against an army.

I went towards the sound of the screams.

Around the side of the house I saw the horses, and I knew them immediately. I recognized Richard Beauchamp’s horse and I knew Tom Amble’s, too. Both squires. The other horses were archers’ rounceys like mine.

It has always been one of my virtues — or vices, whichever you like — that when I’m afraid I go forward. I saw their horses and I heard the screams, and I went forward.

One of the archers was raping a middle-aged woman.

She was screaming, and the other archer was mocking her.

The two squires weren’t even watching. They were eating a ham, consuming it with the lust only a sixteen-year-old boy can bring to eating.

I stood frozen for perhaps as long as it took my heart to beat three times.

What is it that makes a knight?

I ran forward and I kicked the rapist — in the head. My feet were lightly shod, but I put him down.

The other archer was a Gascon — not a big man, but an old, canny one. He didn’t waste any time. He drew his sword.

I whirled so I could see all three of them. ‘So, Master Richard, this is your gentility? Killing our own peasants and raping their wives?’

Until I opened my mouth, I doubt the archers even knew I was English. They probably thought I was the son of the house, or some such.

Beauchamp swallowed a mouthful of ham. ‘Look who it is? The Judas thief.’ He laughed. ‘Look, we have ham and a cook to make it for us — and no priest to come and save his worthless arse.’

I watched the Gascon archer. I was canny enough to know that he was the most dangerous of the lot of them.

Richard drew his sword.

Tom Amble was one of the oldest squires. He’d tripped me once or twice and had laughed when I was the butt end of a prank, but he’d never hurt me, and the look on his face betrayed his intense confusion. ‘He’s English,’ he said, as if that made my person sacrosanct.

‘Don’t be a half-wit, Tom. If he blabs, we could swing for it.’ Richard didn’t seem unduly moved by the murder he was about to commit, and he wasn’t about to charge me. In fact, he was circling quickly to get between me and the farm gate.

I retraced two steps until I had a wall at my back, then drew my sword.

Tom, bless him, just stood there.

The Gascon’s eyes narrowed. ‘We will have to get rid of the body,’ he said, with Gascon practicality.

Then he started to edge to my right. As he passed the corner of the house he gave a little jump and went down. Just like that.

Abelard emerged from the shadow of the stone barn.

Richard Beauchamp went white. Abelard was a low-born man and not a man-at-arms, but everyone knew him and he had the ear of the Earl. Nor was he the kind of man to allow himself to be killed in a fight at a barn.

‘Cover the poor woman,’ Abelard said. ‘Sweet Christ, masters, do none of you care a shit for your souls?’ He smiled and took a step forward. He smiled because he didn’t care a fig seed for his own soul. Or for women.

Amble went to throw his cloak over the woman, and Abelard waited until he’d done it, then placed a knife at his throat as he rose.

‘Now, gentles,’ he said.

The Gascon said, ‘Fuck,’ quite clearly in English. He could see how the whole thing was going wrong. He was a veteran and he didn’t want to die in a farmyard, so he threw his sword down in the manure heap.

Amble was protesting his innocence.

Abelard the Deacon shrugged. ‘Put up, or take what I have to give,’ he said to Master Richard.

‘You always seem to have these men to save you,’ Richard said. ‘The priest, the cook. One day, you won’t have one of your lovers around.’

I stood away from the wall. I’d had a minute to compose my speech. ‘We could just fight,’ I said. ‘Just you and me. With all these men watching. Or don’t you want to face me unless other men knock me down first?’

Richard shrugged. ‘You’re a thief and a man-whore. I’m a gentleman. It makes me dirty even to touch you with my fists.’

I was trembling — with fear, shock, anger, who knows? I remember that I could smell the manure in the sun, and the roses; hear the sound of flies on the manure and the woman crying.

‘I think you are just afraid to face me,’ I said.

He shrugged again and turned to walk away.

Abelard cleared his throat. ‘I have a suggestion,’ he said. ‘You come back and fight him, man to man.’ He laughed. ‘Or I just take this man under my knife to see the Prince.’

Richard stopped. ‘You wouldn’t.’ He shook his head.

Abelard laughed. ‘I’m tempted just to kill this one, to show you what life is like in France. Eh, boy?’ He rotated the older squire on his shoulder and the young man screamed as his shoulder popped.

Richard Beauchamp frowned and sheathed his sword. ‘And when I beat the Judas into a pulp?’

Abelard nodded. ‘Then we’re all done. You may go and I’ll keep my mouth shut.’ He rotated the other young man’s shoulder and the man squealed. ‘But you’d best hurry, if you want to save your friend’s shoulder.’

Beauchamp looked at me and shed his swordbelt.

Then he shed his arming coat, and I shed mine.

Abelard let Amble go, and he crawled a few feet, lay by the barn and wretched up his last meal. He was a good fighter and he wasn’t injured.

I would love to tell you of how well we fought and how I held him, but he almost had me at the outset. We went for counter holds, as wrestlers do, and in a flash he had my left arm, and he locked it and went to break it.

I didn’t know the hold or the lock, and I was desperate, so instead of giving in under his grab, I slammed my right hand into his hated face, palm flat, and broke his nose. Then, because I was a moment from having my arm broken, my filthy fingernails searched for his eyes.

He let go my arm, slammed a short punch into my broken ribs, and we stumbled apart.

Remember that the priest had broken his jaw?

I pounced, despite the pain, stepped in close, took a blow on my shoulder and another on my cheek and punched over his arms into his jaw, using the advantage of my size. I broke it, and he stumbled and threw a clumsy right-handed punch to back me off.

I had fought other boys all my life.

I caught his right arm in my right hand at the wrist and pulled, jerking him off balance so that he stumbled half a step towards me, then I got my left hand up on his elbow and broke his arm with a snap.

He screamed like a cow giving birth, and I dragged him by his broken arm.

Abelard pulled me off him. I hit Beauchamp more than a few times after he was helpless. Now, I’m ashamed of that, but then. .

Then it was as sweet as a girl’s kiss.

We rode back to the army, leaving a dead man and a desperately injured woman in a looted house.

That’s the way it was.

We never mentioned what had happened in the yard again.

While I heard the truth said many times — that the Prince was waiting for word from Lancaster up in Brittany — I didn’t believe it, because I didn’t know enough about France to realize how close we were to the Duke and his army. Because the plan — in as much as the Prince had a plan — was that the Prince of Wales and the Duke of Lancaster would march towards each other, join forces and face the King of France, or, if he refused battle, devastate his lands.

Take it as you will, in early August, the Prince held a great council, and there he divided his army. He gave the Lord of Albret — a right bastard, and one of the hardest men and worst knights I’ve ever known, though I didn’t know that then — about 2,000 men, most of the arrayed archers and some of the English men-at-arms and many Gascons. They were to hold Gascony against Armagnac and raid his demesne lands if they could.

The mounted men — the Prince would have no man who was not well-mounted — were to go with the Prince. Nothing was said about leaving cooks behind, or boys. A farrier looked at my little horse and pronounced him fit and ready for war, so I was going to war with my Prince.

It still makes me smile.

We marched the next day. We marched fast — faster, if anything, than we had on the way to Bergerac. I stuck by Abelard, because the looks I got from some of the squires were not just vengeful, but murderous, and we went north to Perigueux, a rich town, part of which was still French, but in territories we considered part of Gascony, and hence ours. We were not allowed to loot, and we paid hard silver for wine, which was growing harder, as no one had been paid for some time.

When we left Perigueux after a day of rest, we moved even faster. I was in the saddle all day, and I remember little except the morning, when I found I had fallen asleep by my horse without taking his saddle off. He was none too fond of me that day, and I felt bad — as bad as being beaten by squires.

We raced across south-western France, and it was all wonderful to me — steep hills, rich farms, often overgrown. A generation of farmers had been destroyed by a generation of war. You could hear wolves at night, and of course the plague had been through not ten years before.

Indeed, as I’ve heard peasants say a hundred times, you’d be hard put to decide which was worse if you were a Frenchman: the English or the plague.

We emerged from this near-wilderness at the great abbey of La Peruse, a few leagues from Limoges. I won’t weary you with details, except to say that when we left Bordeaux I was a raw boy, and by Limoges I was a seasoned campaigner. I could find food and I could make a fire. I could help Abelard choose a campsite, based on local fresh water, wind protection, security and having a place to tether horses — there are a hundred factors that made one campsite better than another. Sometimes the pickings were slim and we all slept on rocks — 7,000 men is a great number, and if they have 15,000 horses, you have a fair number of bodies to feed, water and sleep.

At the abbey, the Prince held a ceremony I had never seen before. He unfurled his banner. It was a formal, chivalric declaration of war, and Sir John Chandos, his standard bearer, held it forth, snapping like three angry leopards over his head. The Prince made a speech about his rights and how just our campaign was.

I felt as if I was going to cry, I was so proud to be there, on horseback, with a sword at my side. Even as a cook’s boy. In an army that murdered and raped peasants.

There was nothing chivalrous about what followed. We were now formally at war, in the domain of the King of France. We proceeded with banners unfurled, burning everything as we went. Abbeys, great houses and farms — all were sacked and burned.

It was stunning. I was, to be frank, horrified at first. I watched a dozen archers rape a pair of sisters and leave them weeping — later one of the men told me they were lucky not to have been killed. I saw children cut down for screaming too loudly; older men butchered by laughing Gascon brigands, and nuns stripped naked and sold to a pimp as whores.

Because that’s what war is, friends, and everyone here knows what I’m saying.

It was an orgy. The land was rich and untouched, and old soldiers, archers who’d been at Crecy or Sluys, laughed and said they’d never seen the like. We took so much money as we went that when we were ordered to leave the farms and great houses of the Countess of Pembroke — an Englishwoman with holdings in France — we did. We went around them.

We spread across the country like a swarm of locusts, and with us went fire and sword, cutting and burning like a farmer clearing land. We ate what we liked, drank free wine, and forced the women to our will, killing the men. This was the land of the King of France, and the message we left was that he was too weak to protect his own.

Mind you, French peasants are no more foolish than English peasants, and most of them, when they had even a little warning, burned their crops, took their womenfolk and ran for the strong walled towns. But they left their sausages hanging from their roof beams, and we burned their cottages and made our meals from their hoarded savings of food, cooked on their carefully built homes.

When we took them by surprise, with our horses and rapid marching, we got everything.

I’d like to say that I neither stole nor burned, but the only sin from which I was free was rape, and that was only because of my sister.

A boy of fifteen does what the men he’s with do. I took what I wanted, and that included Marie, a girl of my age or perhaps a little less. She’d been raped and hurt, and I took her in, carried her on my horse, cleaned her up and then used her myself.

The only difference I can offer is that I fed and kept her.

We were deep in the heart of France by this time. We were shadowed by French knights on horseback — in fact, several times the Earl of Oxford rode out to make them fight, but they slipped away like Turks. We were almost at the Loire — the famous Loire, a name even a boy like me knew — when we sacked a town for the first time.

Here’s how we got in. I was far across the fields, looking for a spot to set up camp for the Earl, when I saw dust, which I knew signalled horsemen moving fast. By mid-morning, we learned from some of Warwick’s men moving from our right towards the town that the Prince had ordered the town be stormed. I was determined to be there.

Abelard was less interested in the fighting. ‘If we can be among the first into the town,’ he said, ‘we’ll be rich.’

I liked the idea of that!

Don’t imagine there was an order given or trumpets blared. It wasn’t like that at all. We followed some of Warwick’s men, and by noon we’d met up with our own Earl, abandoned any notion of camping to the north of the town, and instead were riding at a fast trot along the high road to Issoudun.

Let me note that while my wound and broken ribs had healed, I had no armour, no helmet and a cheap, badly made sword.

An hour after the sun was at its height, or perhaps two, our men started storming the town. They made ladders or stole them from farms, and tried them against the walls, but they were all too short. There was no order at all, and groups of men — ten or twelve strong — rode up to different points along the walls and had a go. The walls looked low, but close up they were too steep, recently refaced. The garrison was shit — too small, and cowardly. I could have held the place with fifty men today, but the French were on the defensive, and I’ll wager the castellan didn’t think we were serious. Later we heard the Count of Poitiers had stripped the garrison of all its best men for the field army.

We were serious, though.

Abelard and Master Peter met on the road, held a brief conference without the Earl, and suddenly we were galloping to the east, back out into the countryside. It made no sense to me, but as a new boy, nothing ever did, and I was wise enough to put my head down, my heels to my mount and follow them.

We tore down a narrow road, perhaps thirty of us, and ended up in a farmyard. Peter cursed, and we went through a gate and were moving across the fields; I could see the town wall a bowshot away to my left, and I realized what we were doing.

We rode hard. I remember that an archer fell from his horse in a lane, struck his head and was killed.

The rest of us left him and rode on. On and on, around the faubourg (the suburbs), then Abelard stiffened like a hunting dog, turned his horse’s head and rode for the wall.

There was an apple tree growing in the shade of the town wall, and someone — lazy, or proud of his tree — had left it like a living ladder, right under the wall.

Now when someone has to climb an apple tree in broad daylight to see if the wall above it is occupied, guess who gets that duty?

I went, and so did my bitter enemy Tom Amble, as we were the smallest and lightest.

Abelard shifted my scabbard all the way round so my sword hung like a tail, out of my way for climbing — something any hardened man knows, but I didn’t. Nevertheless, I was first up the tree, and I swayed a branch over to the wall and, without thinking too much about it, jumped.

I landed on the wall’s catwalk, and it was then I discovered the wall was manned.

Everything seemed to slow to a crawl. Climbing the tree had been a lark — I was going to be first into the town, or perhaps Amble was. Even the jump — a jump that would have terrified me in London — seemed like an adventure. But once my feet were on the wall, it was too far to jump down and a dozen French sergeants were running at me, I had a great deal of time to consider my own mortality and foolishness — and to wonder where Amble had got to.

I drew my sword and got my buckler on my left fist.

Then I had a notion, and I put it into immediate effect. I retreated away from them, all the way to the next tower. That covered my back and caused all of them to pursue me down the catwalk, leaving the area by the apple tree empty.

Even as the first man — they were in no particular order — ran at me, and his sword slammed into my buckler — the first blow aimed at me in earnest during my whole career as a soldier — I saw Amble, hardly a close friend but in that moment the sweetest sight in all the world, leap onto the wall.

Then I was fighting for my life. For the first time.

It never crossed my mind to try and kill any of them. I fought purely defensively for long heartbeats. The wall was only really wide enough for two men, and my back was covered. And from the first, they were looking over their shoulders, because Abelard was the next man on the wall after Amble, and Master Peter followed.

I did well enough, if I may say so. After a long ten heartbeats or so, I chanced a counter-cut at the bolder of my two adversaries. I stepped back and avoided his blow easily, but suddenly I was in the fight, not just defending myself. Remember, I was big — bigger than these men.

I slammed my buckler into the smaller Frenchman’s shield, and I probably broke his hand. It’s not in the books, but it’s a very effective blow, as any London boy knows.

He dropped his guard, and my back-cut caught him in the jaw.

Christ, how he screamed. I was appalled. He seemed to come apart under my blade.

The other man looked over his shoulder, then back at me. He wasn’t being backed up by his mates — they were all throwing down their weapons, because Peter, the master archer, had put three feet of ash through one of them with his great war bow, and that was the end of them. My fellow flopped about a bit — I had severed most of his lower jaw.

I couldn’t take my eyes off him. He screamed and tried to put his jaw back with his good hand.

Ever seen a kitten dying in the street? Abandoned by its mother, mewing and mewing its pitiful way to death? Why is that so heartbreaking, when a jawless man you’ve cut down yourself is just a wretched sight?

I didn’t wait for help. I cut his throat, and only then discovered I’d bent my worthless sword.

That was all right, though, because now I had a dozen French swords to choose from.

And a town to sack.

We took so much coin out of that town that some of the professional soldiers openly suggested we turn about and march home. I got almost a hundred ecus. For a boy who’d never had three silver coins, it was a staggering amount.

I was, by all accounts, the first man into the town. The Earl came and gave me his hand as a token of esteem. From that sack, I got two suits of clothes, a fine helmet and a French brigantine that was far better than John’s. It fit, too. So when I clasped arms with the Earl, I looked like a man-at-arms for the first time.

Of course, I wasn’t. I was a cook’s boy. But in my mind, I was a great knight. I took several shifts and a fine kirtle for my whore, and she was pleasantly thankful to receive from me the looted goods of another French family, because that’s how it was in France that summer. I had good shoes, handsome ones that fit, which I lifted off the corpse of a baker that Abelard killed in the door of his shop. I should have been warned by that incident. The man was protesting — and not very hard — as Abelard stripped him of white flour and fresh bread, so Abelard just cut him down rather than listen to him — if you take my meaning.

Anyway, I took his shoes.

The next day we rode hard, and then we sacked another town. Now men were dropping loot they’d taken earlier to carry better loot.

Peter, my master archer, gave me the best advice of my professional life at Vierzon. We’d just broken into the town — abandoned by the populace, who were cowering in the nearby royal fortress. I had a feather mattress on my back and I was eyeing an ivory inlaid chair I’d just dragged down from the second floor of a burgher’s house.

Peter laughed. ‘Listen to me, Judas,’ he said.

Christ, I hated that name.

I paused. ‘Yes, Master?’

‘Coin. Only take coin. Best of all, gold. Nothing else is worth carrying.’ He smiled.

I went back into the house and found a gold cross, a small gold cup and six more silver ecus. I left the rest.

Listen, some men have fine memories for fights. I myself can remember most of my best passages of arms, and I’ll make the rest up if you keep the wine coming — hah! But I remember loot. I remember the Book of Hours I had at the taking of Sienna-

Ah, you fine gentlemen don’t care about filthy loot.

But looting is what we do. That, and feats of arms. Listen. If you are born a rich man, you can perform your feats of arms on your family’s money. But if you are born poor — and I started my career of arms with no more than the clothes on my back — war can enrich you. Let us not mince words.

At any rate, after Vierzon, we knew the French royal army was close, and we were racing for the crossings of the Loire. My hero, Sir John Chandos, and another captain, Sir James Audley, made a dash for the bridge at Aubigny and met with a detachment of French troops. They won the fight, but lost the race for the bridge. It was a great fight, or so I’m told. A passage of arms. But, militarily, it got us nothing.

The next day we turned east, heading for the coast and a rendezvous with the Duke of Lancaster, or so we hoped, because the new rumour was that the King of France had 15,000 men.

The following day — perhaps two — we made good progress, then a brave French captain threw a garrison into a small castle right on our marching route, forcing us to take it. The man who commanded the enemy was a famous knight, Boucicault, and he had seventy more knights and 400 professional infantry, so we couldn’t march around. Mind you, I didn’t know that then, although I suppose I parroted the phrase. We couldn’t leave them behind us because they’d have devastated our line of march and killed our stragglers and wounded, stopping us from robbing and burning.

They were the first organized opposition we’d met, and suddenly we became an army, rather than a horde of locusts. Within hours, every man was in the ranks with his own retinue, under the banner of his lord. The Prince formed us in a tight array, and we stormed the town — not in disorganized drabbles, the way we’d taken the last town, but in one overwhelming rush. The walls of Romorantin were in poor repair, and they fell at the first assault, but Boucicault, who wasn’t much older than me and had been a fighting knight since he was fourteen, gathered his men into the citadel.

I cooked.

I mention this because I went up a ladder with Master Peter. I don’t think I fought anyone, although I remember being afraid when the crossbow bolts started to hit men around me, and fear is very tiring. But after the assault, I got a good ivory, and then Abelard found me and ordered me to go get the fires lit.

Cooking on a hot day in the Loire Valley when insects fill the air, after storming a wall and looting, is truly miserable. And we failed to take the citadel, so that the men who came to eat the food I’d prepared — mutton, a whole pig and a pair of chickens for my lord de Vere — were surly. Several were wounded. The French were no cowards.

I was cursed for undercooked meat and for not having enough wine. Probably for having red hair, as well. Fatigue is the greatest cause of men’s anger — fatigue and fear — and any captain knows that the two are the same.

That was a bad night. John came and ate — I’d saved the best for him, and he sneered at it. I even gave him my wine — I saw him as my mentor.

After he’d eaten, he pointed at Mary. ‘Bring her here,’ he said. ‘I want a ride.’

I thought I must have misheard. ‘What’s that?’ I asked.

‘Give me your woman,’ he said. ‘She’s too handsome for you. You’re just a boy; she wants a man.’

Mary didn’t speak any English, but she backed away. It had taken a week for her to start showing herself in camp at all.

The Gascon archer from the affair at the farmyard, a snaggle-tooth villain named Markus, grabbed her. He gave her a squeeze. ‘Plenty here for all of us, boy,’ he said.

I couldn’t think.

I looked around for Abelard.

He wasn’t there.

John walked over, grabbed her skirts and hiked them over her hips in one movement, exposing her.

It hit me then.

A few of you know what I mean. For those that don’t, you have choices sometimes. Once you make them, they are made. If I let them rape her — fifteen or so men — that was a decision. If I didn’t let them, that was another.

I’d like to say to a priest that I couldn’t let her be hurt again, but that’s not it at all.

The reason was that I wanted to be a knight, not a looter.

And the other reason was that she was mine, not theirs.

I turned, made my decision and acted. I wore my sword, even to cook — think about all the boys you’ve known. Of course I wore my sword to cook.

I didn’t go for John. I went for Markus, who didn’t expect me.

I drew it back and slammed the round-wheeled pommel into Markus’s mouth as hard as I could, which was pretty hard even then.

I made him spit at least four teeth.

He fell to his knees, and I kicked him as hard as I could.

I’d finished the sergeant in Vierzon. My uncle had left me pretty hard. Perhaps not hard enough to let a fourteen-year-old French whore get gang-raped to death, but hard enough for this.

Markus went down and was silent, and Mary got behind me.

John was looking at the point of my sword.

‘Walk away,’ I said.

And he did.

I was fifteen and he was twenty-five, and we were no longer friends. Nor was he my mentor any more.

And we both knew which one of us was the cock of the yard, and which one had backed down.

That was a bad night. The next day was worse. The Earl came and asked for volunteers to storm the keep. I volunteered and he turned me down. They went up the ladders three times and failed. We lost good men that day. Our archers swept the walls with their longbows, and the French — brave men, every one of them — came out just as our men reached the tops of the ladders, and threw rocks, shot crossbows and swept the walls clear with partisans and poleaxes.

Abelard was back from wherever he’d been. I told him the tale of the night before and he snorted.

‘Listen, boy. These are soldiers. If you keep a pretty piece like that in camp. .’ He shrugged. ‘If you like her so much, let her go.’ He looked away. ‘If the Earl had taken you to the tower today, they’d have done her while you were gone. Eh bien?’

‘She’ll be done in ten steps if I let her go!’ I protested.

He smiled a nasty smile. He looked away and started unloading the two mules he’d acquired, full of sausages and hams and bread. ‘If we don’t take that keep today,’ he said, ‘it’ll be worse tonight. The boys don’t exactly love you, Judas. Why are you making your life so difficult?’

That’s not what I wanted Abelard to say, but the truth was that now that we were in France, he was like a different man — a much more dangerous, criminal man. Indeed, I had begun to think of France as a different world, like purgatory, or hell. The world of war.

Mind you, I was richer than I’d ever been, and I had a woman of my own as pretty as a picture of the Virgin, and a fine sword and a horse, so I wasn’t complaining. Just trying to learn the rules. Trying to keep a little for myself.

But in some way that is not utterly base, I liked Mary for more than her slender body, her breasts, her soft stomach and what lay under it — or maybe I liked my image of myself as a knight too much. So after everyone snored, I woke her, stole one of Abelard’s mules and led her out into the countryside. I got her clear of our picket posts and gave her the mule and a sharp knife.

I’d like to think she made it to Orleans and lives yet, a grandmother who says prayers for my soul. Or perhaps she curses me to hell every night. Perhaps she died a day later, taken by Gascons on the road.

Christ, I hope not. I pray for her still.

The next morning the Earl came and asked for volunteers to storm the tower. I’d been up late, but I volunteered.

He looked at me for as long as a calm man’s heart beats three times, and then I knew he’d take me.

Abelard said, ‘You’re a fool.’

It was my second storming action. If storming Vierzon, with a small, badly led garrison was dangerous, storming Romorantin was insane. The donjon walls were forty-feet high, and every yard there was a French soldier or a French knight, in good, modern armour, carrying a crossbow or a bill.

The knights went up the ladders first. Say what you will about knights, and many hate us, we’re not shy. The best-armoured, youngest men went up the ladders first. No one said aloud that we were only a feint. In fact, during the night the walls had been mined, and the Prince thought the mine would collapse one of the towers.

It didn’t.

We had two siege towers of our own, full of the best archers in the army. Without them, the whole attempt would have been suicidal. Even so, with thirty ladders going up against thirty different points, and the flower of English archery sweeping the catwalk it was still horrible.

I was perhaps the fifteenth or twentieth man on my ladder. Other men carried it forward and put it up against the wall — it had massive supports, and was very difficult to overturn. We stood in a neat file behind the ladder, waiting for the word to go, while the crossbow bolts and rocks from the walls clanged off men’s helmets or killed them stone dead.

I didn’t know where to look. For the first time in my life, I thought of running away. One of the Earl’s hobilars died at my feet, having received an unlucky bolt down through the crown of his kettle helmet. Blood came out of every opening in his body, and he thrashed like a bug on a pin. I raised my eyes and stepped back so as not to see him, and instead I saw an archer fall right off the siege tower behind me, and his head hit a rock in the road and split open like a melon. Bits of him decorated my brigantine.

Just beyond the corpse, I saw Richard Beauchamp, whose elbow couldn’t yet be healed, Tom Amble and half a dozen of my former tormenters. Out here in the open at the base of the wall, we exchanged a glance that said it all.

Here, the only enemy was the wall.

Richard shrugged, dismissing me, and went back to watching the wall.

Back behind the siege towers stood the Earl, surrounded by his best men. They weren’t hanging back. Far from it. They were waiting for a lodgement — for one of the ladders to score a success.

Then we heard a shout. I turned and saw the first knight on our ladder. He was about twenty-five, in fine armour, a heavy brigantine over good mail, with plate legs and arms and a basinet with a pig’s snout, all shining steel from Italy, and over his red velvet brigantine he had a lady’s gown. Probably his fiancee’s. Such chivalric games were, and are, as much a part of war as raping French farm girls. He wore the gown to show his courage, to flaunt her beauty.

He ran to the ladder. I’d seen him before, but in that moment I realized that he was my de Vere cousin.

He ran to the foot of the ladder and past it.

He got under the ladder and began to climb the underside, hand over hand. In full armour. By God, he was strong, and noble. And fast.

It had never occurred to me until that moment to climb the underside of a ladder.

A man-at-arms a few men ahead of me ran to the underside and joined him, and before my head could take control, I was with them. He was, in that moment, my new hero. He was the man I wanted to be.

The first five rungs were easy.

The thing is that on the underside of a ladder, you cannot rest, you have to keep climbing, and in a brigantine and helmet, all your weight is in the wrong places. Everything hangs from your arms. Your legs don’t take as much of your weight as they do on top of the ladder.

The strangest thing happened to me about ten rungs up. I suddenly wondered how the hell I was going to get over the wall at the top, since I was under the ladder. It almost panicked me. I couldn’t imagine how I was going to do it, and I was now halfway up.

Down on the ground, men were starting up the front of the ladder.

A big stone came and plucked the first two men off, sending them crashing to the ground. That would have been me if I wasn’t on the underside. Even as it was, the stone made the ladder bounce.

Another rung.

Another.

How was I going to get around the ladder to go up the wall?

Above me, my cousin, the knight in the lady’s gown, and the other climber were faster than I. I watched the young knight.

God, he was good.

Just short of the base of the crenellations, he threw a leg out from behind the ladder, swarmed around it and vanished up it.

The hobilar followed him.

I was ten rungs behind. I didn’t know whether they were alive or dead. I don’t remember any sound, just the pure fear. The pain in the muscles of my arms. The way my smooth leather soles slipped on the rungs of the new ladder. The sheer distance to the ground.

I couldn’t breathe.

And when I looked down, there was no one else on the ladder.

The ladder was resting on wooden hoardings — a sort of wooden catwalk that stuck out from the wall and allowed the enemy to shoot straight down at our assault parties. Most castles had hoardings stored in the donjons, waiting for this day. I was now level with the base of the hoardings — massive timbers that ran from the lower crenellations to the new wooden walls.

In front of me — remember, I was climbing backwards — our archers were visible on the siege towers, loosing onto the French-held wall. It gradually penetrated my head that a man was shouting at me.

He pointed.

I was running out of courage, so I did what you do when you are desperate: I attacked my fear. Remember, it is my blessing and my curse that I go forwards when I am afraid.

I threw one leg around the ladder, the way I’d seen the knight do, got my smooth sole on the outer side of the rung and started to change my weight.

Suddenly I felt the ladder begin to move.

Good Christ.

There was a French sergeant just above me, trying to throw the ladder down. He’d hooked it with some kind of pike, and he was pushing.

I don’t remember how I got onto the wall, but I did. He was at my feet, dead, and I was standing on the wall. I must have climbed the last two rungs and jumped, and I still can’t muster any recollection of the deed.

He fell on top of the hobilar.

But my heroic, well-armoured cousin had a longsword, four feet long, and he had swept an eight-foot space on the wall and was holding it. His eyes flicked over to me — even through his visor I could see their fierce glitter — and the moment he saw me, he stepped toward me and cut twice, fast as an adder, giving me a clear space. Then I was down on the wall and got my sword in my right hand and my buckler in my left.

Somewhere in the next minute, I took my first real wound. My legs were unarmoured, and someone got in a cut to my right shin. I never felt it. I got one man and threw him off the wall, and I kept Sir Edward’s side safe for that minute. There was shouting — cheering — and suddenly the air around us was full of clothyard shafts.

In fact, Master Peter saw me go onto the catwalk, and only then saw that Sir Edward was alive. He shouted the news to one of the Earl’s men-at-arms.

This is what it is to be a knight.

The Earl ran, in armour, at the head of his household to the base of our ladder, which men steadied and reset. Then they ran up the ladder — in eighty pounds of plate and mail.

The archers kept us alive. They poured arrows into the wall on either side of us, wasting precious shafts that we would need later in the campaign, but the French didn’t fancy running that gauntlet just for a taste of Sir Thomas’s longsword. We were hard pressed, but never by more than two men at a time.

A minute is a long time under such conditions.

There are many forms of courage. We’d both taken wounds, and suddenly Sir Edward stumbled — a chance spear blow to the foot, it proved. He fell to one knee, and the French knight he was facing raised his sword to finish him — I was a heartbeat too far away — and the hobilar, already lying in a pool of his own blood, slammed his dagger hand into the French knight’s groin from out of the pile of dead and wounded. The French hacked him to death, but he’d saved my cousin, who got back to his feet.

They prepared a rush.

And the Earl leaped in through the hoarding, his standard bearer right behind him, and speared a sergeant with his poleaxe, roaring his war cry.

I’m not ashamed to say I fell to my knees.

I couldn’t believe it.

I almost died, because a Frenchmen couldn’t believe it either, and instead of surrendering, he smashed his axe at me. I got my buckler up, pushed to my feet under his blow, and his haft smashed into my helmet. I was stunned, and I made the mistake of throwing my arm around him. He punched me three times as fast as a dog would bite, but even his steel gauntlet made no progress against my coat of plates. I tried to hook his leg.

I could smell his breath, and feel it on my face, because he had no visor.

He kneed me in the crotch.

The Earl’s poleaxe slammed into the French knight’s helmet.

Both of us fell to the ground, entangled.

It should have been over then, but it wasn’t.

The Earl’s men-at-arms came up the ladder and cleared the catwalk, and in the time it takes a nun to say ‘Ave Maria’, we held two towers and fifty feet of wall. But then young Boucicault led a counter-attack.

I was still breathing like a bull who scents a cow. I had my helmet off, and I was crouching there, bleeding like a stuck pig and panting. One of the men-at-arms shouted, and John — the man who’d served me wine, and who I now saw to have three scallop shells on a black chevron as his arms — ran by, paused and said, ‘Get up, William Gold.’

Good Christ. He knew my name.

I followed him. We ran along the wall, which is to say, I hobbled after him, and there were a dozen French knights in excellent harness fighting against the Earl and four of our knights. The catwalk was, as I said, only wide enough for two.

Boucicault was everywhere. I had seldom seen a man fight so well, and I watched him drive the Earl back, blow after blow, thrown so fast that the Earl had trouble getting in a counter-cut. He was bigger and faster than our Earl and, frankly, better.

Oxford fell back, and fell back again, until he was driven onto the hoardings of a small tower, where the flat area widened and all of us could join the fight. Now it was six men-at-arms — and one unhelmeted fifteen-year-old — against two French knights.

Boucicault didn’t care. He leaped forward and hacked the Earl down with a great blow of his poleaxe, then stepped forward and blocked John’s cut, occupying the space. Another French knight pressed in, and another — we were going to lose the tower.

John was suddenly toe-to-toe with Boucicault. He parried a blow of the poleaxe with his sword held in both hands, and then another, then he pushed in close to wrestle the French knight, and I took the opportunity to ring a heavy blow against the French knight’s helmet. He staggered, and John got a hand under the Earl’s armpit and dragged him out of the melee. .

Leaving me with the French knights.

That was my first fight with Boucicault. I had a good sword and we were the same size, but he was fully armoured and I didn’t even have a helmet. He was dazed, and I had a leg wound.

He was trying to regain his balance and I cut at him two handed. He caught my blow high, kicked me between the legs and down I went.

That’s what happens when you fight a knight.

You lose.

I rolled on the ground, trying to master my pain, and got my dagger off my hip and blocked an attempt to kill me from above — I had no idea who threw that blow — then I felt a strong hand under my armpits, and I was dragged bodily from the fight.

Behind me, Master Peter was setting the hoardings on fire. It had rained hard for a few days, but that had been a week ago, and now the wood was as dry as kindling. He’d smashed a railing to make splinters, and they caught, and that fire ran across the platforms like a living thing.

The French grabbed their gallant captain and backed away, and the Earl’s man-at-arms carried me through the blaze.

In later years, men in Italy asked me why I stayed so utterly loyal. John Hawkwood saved my life — that day and fifty other times. He was a right bastard — the coldest man I ever met, and bound for hell if he doesn’t rule it — but he was always good to me, and that day I would have died horribly had he not carried me out of the fire.

While I was failing to beat one of the best knights in France, Peter had decided, like the professional archer he was, that we weren’t winning. He set the hoardings on fire to cover our retreat, and we retired from our dear-bought towers and climbed down the ladders, step by step.

The hoardings burned — first where we lit them, then it all caught, and then one of the tower roofs caught fire. .

And by nightfall, Boucicault had to surrender: his hall was burning over his head. We took him and all his knights and soldiers. We treated them well and ransomed the lot. In fact, we fed the lords a fine dinner that night, in the best traditions of chivalry. I helped cook it, despite two wounds and aching balls. Abelard didn’t give a shit that I was injured, and said that if I volunteered for foolishness, I could pay the price. I hobbled about all evening in a daze, and went back to my empty blankets to lie down.

There was still light in the sky when a page came looking for me. By name. William Gold.

So I put my now stained livery coat and my best hose on over my filth, washed my face, and followed the page.

Two pavilions had been set side by side to make a great hall of canvas and linen. On the dais sat the Prince and Boucicault and the Earl of Oxford, as well as Sir John Chandos, Warwick, Stafford and the Captal de Buch, Jean de Grailly. The tables in the tent were full of men-at-arms and knights — there was John Hawkwood, well down on the left, and there was my cousin, Sir Edward, sitting just below the dais.

For a moment, it seemed to me I had been summoned to be knighted.

Well, laugh all you like. A boy can dream.

It was almost that good.

My enemy, Richard Beauchamp, had summoned me.

He looked like I felt. He had a black eye and two missing teeth, and he could barely talk.

‘Gan’ye serf?’ he asked.

When you have been at odds with a boy, it can take an effort of will to decide you are not at odds. It looked as if he was calling me a serf, but I was sober enough to see that he was hurt, and so it was pretty fucking unlikely that he’d summoned me for casual harassment. Nonetheless, I remember bridling.

Diccon, the senior squire, came by with a platter of roast beef. ‘Well fought,’ he said as he walked by. Casual. As if we’d always been friends.

Well.

Richard glared at me — or perhaps that was just how he looked in the fading red sunlight.

The page at my side said, ‘I think Master Richard is asking if you could carve and serve. Sir.’

I wasn’t being knighted.

But I waited on table with the squires, and I wasn’t tripped. I carried a wine ewer and served the Prince with my own hands, and I ached with pride. I carved a goose under Diccon’s eye. He nodded, satisfied, and went off to see to other things.

Boucicault drank, and the Prince drank, and Oxford drank. Long after dark, I was serving wine — still, to tell the truth, floating on air that I was serving my Prince with my own hands, which were none too clean. Despite the fact that my balls ached and I had pissed blood.

Boucicault looked up from his conversation.

He was the second French knight from the shop. The one who had been with de Charny the day I was arrested.

He grinned.

‘I knew you would find a better profession,’ he said in French.

The Prince glanced at me, and the Earl looked up. I wanted to burst into tears. Now it would all come out, and I’d be a thief all over again, I thought.

‘You know my young Judas?’ asked the Earl.

Boucicault raised his cup of wine to me. ‘This young squire and I had a passage of arms today, did we not?’ he said. ‘And I remember him from a tourney in London. The last time I was a prisoner of you English.’ Everyone laughed. God, I have hated that man in my time, but he spoke for me that day.

The Earl smiled at me. ‘Par dieu, young man. You fought in a tourney in London, and yet you are serving at my table?’

Other men laughed and that was the end of it. I went back to the sideboard, carved a morsel of kidney and put it neatly on a platter for a younger man to carry, and suddenly Richard was there. He took me by the elbow and led me out into the darkness.

Put a cup of wine in my hand.

We sat on a bench.

‘Thief,’ he said, pleasantly enough.

‘Whoreson,’ I replied, raising my cup to his.

Diccon came, and Geoffrey de Brantwood and Tom Amble and several other men I don’t remember — all boys, then. We ate a quick meal of cast-off beef, and drank good wine. The pages waited on us.

‘Why didn’t you say you was a de Vere?’ asked Diccon, fairly late in the meal.

I’ve thought of a hundred hot answers and a dozen cold ones, then and since, but I did the boy’s thing, and it was the right thing. I shrugged and took another bite of beef.

We took Romorantin, and our march route was clear, but we didn’t go far. Two days later we were before Tours. We wanted the bridges over the Loire, and the French wanted to hold the town, which was the biggest we’d tried yet. They got a garrison into it, led by their Marshal, Clermont, and the Count of Anjou.

The Prince put Lord Burghersh in charge of the assault.

It failed.

I cooked. We had fresh, virgin countryside to despoil, and I made a soup of sausages and leeks and some poor woman’s carefully hoarded chicken broth. The soldiers gulped it down with fine wines from an abbey cellar.

I was serving my third kettle of the stuff — I liked good copper kettles, still do for that matter. I had paused to loot three matching pots from the ruins of an inn that morning. I made up the soups, cutting vegetables straight into the pots, while the assault went up the walls. I moved my stolen three-legged stool around the fire to avoid the smoke and to have a good view of the attack. The Captal’s Gascons were brave, but the walls were high and the defenders were even more numerous than they had been at Romorantin. Burghersh was the Chancellor of England, and while he may have been a competent man-at-arms, he wasn’t loved like Oxford, Stafford or the Prince, and that love can get a man one more rung up the ladder, one more push forward onto the wall.

At any rate, I was on my third big kettle of soup, and out of bread, when my cousin appeared out of the smoky, humid evening. He held out a wooden bowl and I filled it.

He sat — on my stool. Well, he was a knight.

He ate, I refilled his bowl, and he ate again. I found him the last — the very last — of the good French bread that Abelard had looted. He devoured it. I doubt he noticed that it was fine ground or white.

‘You made all this?’ he asked.

‘Not the bread,’ I admitted.

He laughed, but then his face grew solemn. ‘You really are a cook,’ he said. ‘Lord Boucicault told me — privately — that you were taken in London as a thief.’

‘Yes,’ I admitted. I started an explanation, but he held up his hand.

‘No one here cares,’ he said. ‘Listen, my squire is being sent back to Bordeaux. He broke both legs falling off a ladder.’

That’s falling off a siege ladder, friends.

‘I need a squire. And God has sent you to me.’ Sir Edward spoke of God as if they were personal friends. Perhaps they were — he was a fine knight.

Abelard appeared out of the falling darkness. ‘Are you taking my apprentice cook, Sir Thomas?’ he asked.

They exchanged a look, and I knew that Abelard had, somehow, made this happen for me.

We didn’t take Tours.

What happened instead was not good. The King of France marched to Blois and crossed the Loire to our side. We heard about it from scouts about the hour of matins, and by the end of matins we were packing to move south, abandoning the siege of Tours, if one failed assault can be called a siege.

I didn’t understand at the time — in fact, I was bitter that we were retreating — but Marshal Clermont had roughly our numbers inside Tours, and the King had twice our numbers and was coming up behind us. They held all the crossings over the Loire and cut us off from the Duke of Lancaster absolutely, so there was no way we could face them. Thus we turned south, abandoned most of our booty and ran for our lives.

I’ve heard it made to sound more glorious, but that’s how it was. I lost two of my three copper kettles, but not one of my gold or silver coins, which should give you a fine idea of how accurate Master Peter’s advice was.

In the suburbs of Tours, I did pick up a donkey. Talk about the miracles of God — a healthy donkey, wandering free, in the middle of a war. I loaded her as much as she could bear with Sir Thomas’s goods and a few of my own, and we ran south. As a former cook and a provident squire, I foraged food as we went.

We crossed two rivers in a single day.

River crossings are an army’s nightmare, and the rivers were high for early autumn. The fords were about four horses wide and stony enough, but the slowness of the crossing made the whole army nervous and caused us to huddle up. By this time, the army had added a train of servants — French boys desperate for food — and whores — French girls desperate for food — and they huddled along with us.

At the second river, the Prince ordered them driven away from the army. This was military routine — we couldn’t feed them any more and we were going to move fast. No one questioned it and yet, to me, it seemed the most brutal thing we’d done. We had, in effect, taken these people by force, to show that the King of France could not protect them. Now we could not protect them.

Bah, perhaps I should have been a monk. I was glad I’d sent Marie north, because I’d have died in my heart as a knight to drive her away from me with the flat of my sword, as I saw other men — even men wearing the spurs and golden belts — do.

At any rate, we crossed, and when the French appeared to harass our rearguard, Sir John Chandos and a few knights and a hundred archers drove the French right back north up the road.

You may note in this tale that the French always seem fearsome as individuals, but not nearly so preux in bodies. It is hard to say why. Man for man, their best knights were better than ours — not the Prince or Sir John Chandos, but most of the rest of ours. They feared our long bows, but I seldom saw a French knight with an arrow in him. I’ve heard dozens of stout yeoman who’ve never loosed a shaft in anger tell me that the bent stick won us our territories in France. Perhaps. I was always happy to have the archers close to hand, but fights are won sword to sword. And sword to sword, the French should have been our betters, but they never were.

We were usually fed, often paid, and most nights we got some sleep. The same men led us in the field and ate with us in camp. That wasn’t the way with the French, and I think that eating, sleeping and getting paid are fundamental to war.

But then, I was a cook.

We halted at Montbazon, where the French cardinal Talleyrand met our army. He’d been to England, trying to negotiate peace for the Pope, but his bodyguard were all Frenchmen and greedy bastards to boot. Considering how intimately I later came to know part of the papal court, I wish I could tell you that I met Talleyrand, but I didn’t. He was closeted with the French or hiding in his rooms.

We sent messengers and scouts west, looking for Lancaster. It was no secret that the Prince was desperate. To the north, the King of France marched to Tours and joined forces with his son, the Dauphin, then turned south after us with four times our number. We retired on Le Haye — that’s a military way of saying we moved as fast as we could to get clear of the gathering French force, which wasn’t just behind us, now: there were small bands of Frenchmen in every ford and behind every hedge. Abelard took a wound ‘foraging’.

I remember this part well, because now I was waiting on tables every night with the commanders. I heard it all — every squire did. The Prince wasn’t afraid, but he was deeply worried, and while he tried to watch his words, we all knew how important Lancaster’s army — and his reputation and experience — were to us.

But the next morning, when I packed in darkness and left my favourite cup by the fire in my rush to get my knight on the road, the French were coming after us. As we marched out of the south of Le Haye, the French came in from the north. It was that close. Luckily, they missed us, and having marched all night, they halted for a rest, and it was noon before they knew how close we’d come.

We took Chatellerault without too much effort the next day, and the rumour was we’d hold it until relieved by Lancaster — it was a bridge town, and with it in our hands we could whistle at the French and wait for Lancaster to come down from the north. It was a lucky capture, and all agreed we were saved — indeed, that now we held the whip hand.

I curried horses. I had time to help Abelard. I made an early decision not to cut my ties with him or the company of archers. I was proud to be a squire, but I had no friends there. The squires had no love for me. While no one beat me or played tricks now, I had no friends among them. I seldom ate with them, and Richard and I were creeping back towards a fight. It was like a dance — and we were dancing towards a duel. We both knew it, and the other squires knew it, too. Since this was serious — sword in the guts serious — they didn’t torment me. They just waited for me to be dead.

At any rate, I kept working with Abelard whenever I had time. We were in the same retinue, and now I knew everyone — not just Abelard and archer John, my former mentor, but John Hawkwood; Peter Trent, the master archer; Sir Edward Cressey, my master, and Thomas de Vere himself. As well as fifty other men — archers and men-at-arms and squires and servants.

Everything was fine, except that Lancaster didn’t come. He couldn’t. He was the best soldier England ever grew, but he couldn’t get his army over the Loire. We waited three days for him, and there was more wine drunk at every dinner in the Prince’s pavilion, and by the third night, tempers were flaring and Boucicault, who was still with us, used the term ‘trapped’ in a sentence.

That night, as I carved some questionable venison, a messenger came in and reported that the King of France was just east of us, at Chauvigny.

All conversation died.

The Prince was wearing black. He didn’t always — that’s just the sort of crap men say — but that night he wore black with his three white livery feathers embroidered in silk thread on his chest. He was the tallest man in the tent — or perhaps that’s just how I remember him. He stood.

‘Messieurs,’ he said. ‘If the King of France is really at Chauvigny,’ he looked around. I swear his eyes came to rest on me. He spoke in French, of course. ‘If he is at Chauvigny, then we have no choice. We must fight.’

By God, they rose and cheered him.

No one said, ‘Christ, they outnumber us four to one.’

No one said, ‘Christ, they’ve cut our retreat, and if we lose, we’ll all be taken or killed.’

But certes, I confess that every one of us thought those things.

The next morning, we were up before the cocks. We all knew it would be a desperate battle, and the older men walked around steadying us. Master Peter came and put a hand on my shoulder and told me to fill every bottle I had with water, and that was the best advice I ever received. I had a big leather wine-sack and I filled it with watered wine; I filled four leather pottles with water, and a small cask. Then I loaded the donkey with all the vessels.

Then I got into my brigantine and my helmet. I buckled on my sword and helped my knight arm, which took almost an hour in the dark. I wonder if he was angry at me? I hadn’t stowed all his harness well, there was rust on one greave and I got the elbows on wrong and had to take them off and do it again. All while John Hawkwood was bellowing for the Earl’s men-at-arms to form.

My master never said a harsh word.

Bless his soul.

I saddled my horse, his war horse and his riding horse, then I fed and watered them. I was so flustered I had to take their bridles off to let them eat. I was doing everything out of order.

I felt the way you young men feel before a fight.

Terrified.

I followed Sir Edward up onto the walls, where we watched the ground to the south and west. As the sun crested the horizon, we could see the French already moving, their army a glittering snake in the hills to the south east. Between us was a range of low hills, heavily wooded, and two good roads (rare, in France), one on our side of the river and one on theirs, with the wooded ridge between them. Look here, friends. We’re in Chatellerault. Here, at the top of the triangle. The King of France is here at Chauvigny, ten miles to the south and east, and Poitiers is at the other base of the triangle, ten miles to the south and west. See it? The King is marching on the highway from Chauvigny to Poitiers to cut our line of retreat.

I stood on the walls looking at the terrain while the Prince laid out his plan. He staked everything on the deep woods on the ridge between the river and the road. We could move in those woods, if we were careful and our scouts were good, and the King of France wouldn’t know where we were. The Prince hoped to catch the King on his route of march — French armies are slow as honey. We’d cut his army in half and destroy it.

Or die trying.

We marched. For three miles we stayed in the open, on our side of the river. I think the Prince was still interested in avoiding battle, and I know that Talleyrand rode from the Prince to the King of France about the hour the bells rang for matins. At that time, we were west of the river, apparently running for the coast.

But as soon as Talleyrand left us, and his retinue of French knights were well out of sight, our screen of mounted archers found a good ford and we crossed the Clain River. We were all mounted, and we went up the bank and onto game trails in the woods.

The Prince’s archers were brilliant at this sort of thing. They posted men at every major junction, even in the maze of trails — apparently, this is what they did when deer hunting with the Prince, when leading him to a prime animal. Our vanguard followed them, and as soon as the van came up to one guide, he’d mount and spur back ahead to rejoin his mates, so that we had a constantly moving chain of guides. The archers had two local men — poachers — they’d taken in the town and promised a fortune. I hope they got it, because they were good guides. One of Hawkwood’s rules was always pay your spies, and always, always pay your guides.

When the sun was high in the sky, we were deep in the woods. I was with the Earl’s men, and we were in the middle of the column, which was just one cart or two mounted men wide. Diccon, Richard and I took turns watching the baggage animals. We were sure we would fight at any moment, and we expected to emerge from the endless wood at every turn in the trail — on and on it went, and the green grew boring and frightening at the same time.

The carts slowed us. The Gascons under the Captal were our vanguard, because they spoke the language and a few of them knew the terrain, and they crept along behind the Prince’s elite archers — crept, and yet outraced us in the main body, so that by an hour after noon we’d lost touch with the Captal’s men altogether, which made the Prince curse and Burghersh wince. I know — I was right there, handing out watered wine.

That wood was waterless.

If Sir Edward had been annoyed with me in the early morning darkness, he was pleased with me at the lunch halt. Most of the knights had little water, whilst I could water my horse and his, and give watered wine to a dozen men.

We ate bread and cheese, our reins in our hands, and then we moved on. Even the Prince dismounted, now, to save the horses. Most of the knights took off their leg harnesses, to save weight and energy. Of course, under their leg harnesses they had only wool hose, so the brambles in the woods took their toll, as did the insects.

The sun began to sink in the sky, and it was clear, even to a fifteen-year-old squire, that we were not catching the French army.

Then we heard the cheers.

Sound carried oddly in the woods. We heard cheers in French, and the unmistakable sound of men fighting — swords and spears. On and on.

We tried to hurry.

Men started to push past the carts in the centre of the column, and there was no holding the Prince — he pushed ahead, and all the knights pushed ahead with him. I was on my turn with the pack animals. I wanted to go, but I didn’t. I stayed and cursed the men from Warwick’s division, who pushed past us and slowed us still further. The sounds of fighting intensified — the cheers grew to roars.

And then ended.

That was the most frustrating thing. There had been a great battle and I’d missed it — I was still in the deep woods with the insects and the baggage carts, just as I had feared all campaign.

That’s it, messieurs. The Battle of Poitiers. I was with the baggage.

Hah!

You know I wasn’t.

And you know we didn’t catch the King of France napping, either.

By the time we came up with the main body, it was almost dark, and our army was badly disorganized. The Gascons had caught the rearguard of the French Army and scattered it, capturing some nobles and killing a few hundred Frenchmen. But our Gascons and the Prince, who saw the last moments of the fight, had to retire in front of a French counter-attack, and they chose to retreat into the woods.

Most of us simply lay down where we were and slept.

We were tired, and the Gascons, who’d fought on horseback, were even more tired. The horses were blown, and so thirsty they called and called. There was no water in the woods, except a stream we’d passed several miles back.

Richard, Diccon and I went back to it. It was the first thing we’d ever done together. It wasn’t an adventure — in fact, we came to the stream long before we expected, because we were moving at horse speed not cart speed. We let our horses drink, and we filled everything we had.

Then we went back to the army. After I took care of my knight and his friends, I gave John Hawkwood a full canteen, and Master Peter another. Then I found John — Monk John. He was staring wide-eyed at the night. I gave him a canteen and he drank it dry and embraced me.

‘Sorry,’ he said suddenly. ‘By Christ, William, I don’t know what came over me that night.’

We were all going to die, so it seemed a good time to restore friendships. He knelt and made his confession to me. By St Peter, he had some sins to confess. I made mine to him, and we were comrades again. I fed him some sausage and went back to the squires.

‘Tomorrow I’ll kill ten Frenchmen,’ said Richard Beauchamp. He went on and on, describing what cuts he’d use. You know the kind of boy he was.

Diccon got to his feet. He was using tow with some fat and a bit of ash to make his helmet gleam. He wiped it with a cloth — he was a careful young man — and set it at his feet.

‘Listen to me,’ he said, and we did. ‘I’m the only one of you who has done this. By tomorrow night, at least three of us will be dead.’ There were only nine of us at the little fire. ‘One of us will die foolishly — falling from his horse, perhaps.’

I thought of the archer I’d seen die when he fell from his horse outside Issoudun.

He looked around. ‘One of us will die trying to be a hero, taking a foolish chance to get a rich ransom.’ He smiled. ‘I almost died that way, and John Hawkwood took a blow meant for me. Of course, he took the man for ransom, too.’

He said it with such flat confidence that we all believed him. This wasn’t male posturing. Diccon had seen the real thing.

‘And the third?’ I asked.

Diccon shrugged. ‘My best friend tried to face Geoffrey de Charny last year in Normandy,’ he said.

I’ve said that de Charny was Lancelot come to earth. He was the best knight in the world. He carried the Oriflamme, the King of France’s sacred banner. We all knew his arms, and we knew that in battle he was like some sort of moving siege engine. Men he touched, died. He had fought the Turks at Smyrna, and rescued the very cloth that touched the face of Christ. Not a word of a lie. He’d fought the heathen in Prussia. He’d fought in Italy, and had made all the great pilgrimages.

He was the best knight in the world.

Richard looked at Diccon in the flickering orange light. ‘What happened?’ he asked.

Diccon shut his eyes for a moment. ‘He died,’ Diccon said.

Richard could be a child — I think I’ve already shown that. Insensitive as only a rich boy can be, he said, ‘How?’

Diccon whirled. ‘He tried to match swords with de Charny. You want to know what happened? I was two arm’s lengths away. Before I could reach him, de Charny cut at him three times — knocked him to earth, put a foot on his chest and rammed his sword point through his mouth.’ Diccon said this in a shocking voice.

I was afraid that Diccon, who I respected a great deal, was about to burst into tears.

Hawkwood appeared out of the darkness. ‘Shouldn’t you boys be in your cloaks?’ he asked. He looked at Diccon. ‘Naught you could have done, Diccon.’

‘He died.’ Diccon was better in control now, but that voice wasn’t far away.

‘He died fighting the best knight in France — perhaps the world.’ Hawkwood looked around. ‘Go to sleep, you lot.’

I took a deep breath. ‘What do we do, if that happens?’ I asked. ‘I had to fight Boucicault. He had mercy on me.’

Hawkwood smiled. ‘So you know that, eh? You know he let you live.’

I nodded and swallowed.

Hawkwood nodded. ‘When one of them is on the loose, you close up with your friends, form a hedgehog of steel and try to keep the monsters at bay until someone comes and gets you.’

‘Someone like you?’ I asked.

Hawkwood shook his head. ‘Oh, no, boy. Not me. Perhaps your Sir Edward in a few years. The Prince. Sir John Chandos. Sir James Audley.’ He smiled. ‘Perhaps even you, Judas.’ He laughed. ‘If you survive tomorrow.’

Morning came. I slept. I can’t say the same for everyone, but I had to be kicked awake, and my master was less than perfectly pleased.

I fetched water again and missed a lot of arguing among the higher orders. By St George, scared men are like a pack of old crows, and they squawked and squawked.

But when the Prince decided, we moved.

We marched south. The Prince intended to offer battle from a carefully scouted position — one we could only reach by, in effect, sneaking round behind the French camp. But the plan showed he was as canny as Lancaster ever was, because with good guides, good scouts and superb luck, we passed through Noailles at the break of day and set out banners on the hilltop just west of the town, clear of the damned woods. In one easy march, we rested on the flank of a river full of fresh water running free over rocks — I mention this because the moment we were in battle order, all the squires and servants were sent in shifts to water the horses and men. Better yet, we’d passed south of the French, and we no longer had them between us and Bordeaux. If we were defeated, or if we chose to slip away, we could simply outmarch them to the south.

We were saved.

And we knew it. It was a march of supreme daring, and we were too tired even to know the risk we were running. The Prince threw the dice, and won. We occupied the ground from Noailles to the River Moisson in the south, and to the woods of Noailles to our north, and the archers on the naked slopes started to dig trenches while the archers on the southern flank cut holes in the hedges through which to loose their shafts. It was like a little fortress. We halted, formed our ranks, went for water, and sat to eat our breakfasts while the bedraggled cardinal returned to beg the Prince for a truce. The Earl had just sent me to the Prince with a small keg of water — the prince’s squires were fine gentlemen who didn’t want to get their nice iron sabatons wet — when Talleyrand rode up.

‘By the honour of our saviour and the Blessed Virgin Mary,’ he invoked. ‘Make peace while you can, my gracious lord.’

‘Speak and be quick,’ the Prince replied. He didn’t even look at the cardinal — Talleyrand was at that time only slightly less powerful than the King of France. He might have been Pope. He certainly had more money than God. I doubt he was used to being told to speak and be quick.

I laughed.

Talleyrand glared at me.

The Prince was watching the crest of the hill to the north, which divided us from the King of France. Banners were starting to appear.

‘Give me one hour to make peace, my gracious lord. In the name of Jesus Christ.’ The Cardinal bowed.

The Prince turned from looking at the gathering French banners, the way a shipman might turn from watching a gathering storm. He nodded. ‘One hour?’ he asked, looking at me of all people.

‘Just one,’ Talleyrand said.

The Prince bowed. ‘I will hear your proposals if the King of France will do,’ he said.

Talleyrand took a cup of wine from my hand, drank it and put his hand on my head. ‘God’s blessing on you, child, even when you are rude to your betters.’

That’s how I met the great Cardinal, of whom John Hawkwood said, ‘He farts gold.’

After he rode away, the Prince took wine and water from me. He looked at my boots, which were wet from riding into the stream so many times. ‘Good water?’ he asked.

‘Yes, my Prince.’ Oh, how I remember those words. I was speaking to the Prince.

He nodded. ‘The Cardinal may speak to his heart’s content while we water our horses and have a bite,’ he said. He looked past me to Burghersh. ‘And then, my lords, we will pick up our banners and march — away.’

They nodded and smiled. Listen, my friends — we had loot and an intact army, and they outnumbered us four to one. While I served the Prince and his lords, I watched the far hill as they did, and we counted eighty-seven banners. King John of France had 12,000 knights. We had about 2,000 men-at-arms. Of belted knights, we had fewer than 800.

We had our archers, and they had a veritable horde of infantrymen, but their infantrymen, with the exception of the communal militias, weren’t worth a donkey’s watery piss.

After a few minutes, I went back to the Earl, who, with Warwick, was commanding on the left, near the marshes and the river. The insects were fierce, but the French were far away. We watched the Prince canter his beautiful black charger across the fields towards the Cardinal, who was sitting with his his French knights under a banner of truce.

The Earl and Warwick already knew we were going to move. Men ate hurriedly, but suddenly the whole army — at least, all the men I knew — were in tearing good spirits. We’d marched around the French, and the Black Prince, bless him, was doing the right thing: turning his backside and slipping away. We weren’t going to fight at all.

No one was more relieved than the same men and boys who’d been counting dead Frenchmen the night before, believe me. Sound familiar, messieurs?

Every man was standing by his fed and watered horse. Most men had at least a canteen full of water. We stood to our horses, ready to move.

The Prince cantered back across the fields. Men started cheering.

He was a fine sight, and we weren’t going to fight.

We cheered, too, and he vanished into the centre of the army. An army of 6,000 men is a little less than a mile long, all formed in order, and he wasn’t so very far away.

One of his squires galloped up to Warwick and bowed in the saddle.

Warwick laughed and waved to Oxford, who nodded and rode along the hillside to where I sat with his men-at-arms.

‘Gentlemen,’ he said. ‘We will be leaving before the party.’

We all smiled, and the left wing of the army began to pick their way south, led by a dozen of the Prince’s elite archers. All we needed was to get across the swamp.

The ground to our left was a damp swamp — deeper than it should have been in early autumn. I rode with the Earl, because he was using me as a mounted messenger. I was, at least in his eyes, a squire. Squires are generally accounted among the men-at-arms and not the servants. Or so I chose to account myself.

At any rate, I was near the head of the column as we marched off to the left. Marched is the wrong term. We slithered and slid down the steep ridge, then we squelched our way through the reeds and mud. We weren’t moving very fast.

But I was nearly at the dry ground around the ford marked by the Prince’s archers — I could see them — when there was a great shout behind me. It was a panicked shout. We were strung out across the hillside in a loose column, four men wide, all mounted. Ahead of me I could see our baggage carts, already crossing the ford. The Prince had this one in the bag — he’d sent our baggage ahead.

Down in the reeds, I could see the hillside behind me, but I couldn’t see anything happening except the shouting of some of the men — mostly retinue archers — at the top of the ridge. They were pointing behind them.

‘Go see,’ the Earl said. I think he meant to send Beauchamp, but I had my horse turned out of the column and picking his way across the reeds before Beauchamp or Amble got the idea. In fact, I didn’t go back along the column — the horses were chewing the trail to a morass — but laboured across the marsh a few paces, then rode straight up the ridge.

The moment my head was clear of the reeds, I saw it all.

The French had attacked. Fast and hard, and well led. Their chivalry were coming straight as an arrow across the low valley that separated the Prince’s army from the ridge where Talleyrand had held his peace talk. They were mounted on armoured horses the size of dragons, and they made the earth shake, even from where I was.

Warwick was with the tail of our column and had seen the threat immediately. Whether by bad fortune or cunning plan, the French were attacking in two deep battles of cavalry, one aimed at the Prince, the other aimed at the gap where we’d left the line. So Warwick was dismounting his own retinue archers and all his men-at-arms to form a hasty line at the top of the ridge, slightly back to form a shallow ‘L’, with the Prince’s battle to cover our now naked left flank.

It takes a half a cup of wine to explain, but I saw it in one glance.

I rode back down the ridge to the Earl, who had already picked his way clear of the morass. I reined in, but my horse fidgeted — curvets, bites.

‘The French are attacking the ground we quit,’ I said. ‘My lord, Lord Warwick is forming a battle from the rear of our division. He will be hard pressed, and-’

The Earl was a young man, but old in war, and he didn’t need any more of his fifteen-year-old squire’s views. He raised his hand for silence and looked up the hill — he stood in his stirrups and looked at his column.

I watched him, and I watched John Hawkwood, who tugged his beard, reached down and loosened his sword in its scabbard.

The truth is, I was green as grass. It looked to me as if we were beaten, and I was on the edge of panic. But neither the young Earl nor the middle-aged professional seemed flustered. Rather, both of them wore the looks of men in a good game of chess — the Earl might have said ‘good move’ aloud.

My horse stopped fidgeting. You know why? Because I stopped fidgeting.

‘On me,’ the Earl shouted. He turned his horse’s head and began picking his way along the marsh, not up the hill.

As it was — certainly by the Earl’s intent — he had his picked men about him, but we were at the head of his elite archers, men who wore his livery. Men like Master Peter wore as much harness as a man-at-arms — Peter wore leg armour, a brigantine covered in red and yellow leather with rose-head rivets, a fine German basinet with a mail aventail. Most of his mates — the veteran archers — wore the same. The Earl had 120 of these men, and he had placed himself at their head when he called, ‘Follow me.’

We rode. Riding through a swamp on a hot autumn day in armour is unpleasant, but I can’t say I noticed.

The sound of cheers and war cries grew louder and louder.

As we emerged from the reeds, I could hear the French and feel the movement of their horses. I was shaking with fear and excitement. I thought we might have lost the battle by the time we got through the swamp, although when I went over it later, we rode only about 200 paces through the marsh.

Where we came out, at the base of the ridge, we were below the fighting. The French had crashed into Warwick’s division at the hedge. The hedge saved us — nothing can stop a French knight with a lance on open ground, as I have reason to know — but even with the hedge, the first contact had pushed Lord Warwick and his men-at-arms back, and back again. His archers had shot their quivers empty — a good man can loose fifteen arrows in a minute. There was a handful of French men-at-arms or their horses lying like butterflies after a storm, dead and feathered, on the slope.

As soon as the head of our column was clear of the reeds, the master archers took over. The archer’s pages — their servants — appeared out of the column and took their horses — one boy for each six horses. The archers walked forward about twenty paces. Their bows were ready strung. They all looked at Master Peter like musicians look at their conductor. He was watching the French chivalry on the ridge.

He had an arrow in his hand. He pointed it. ‘Shoot for the rumps and backs,’ he said. We’d come out of the reeds on the flank of the French, of course — and even in Milanese plate, man is far more vulnerable from the back then the front. I’ve seen a man shot through armour by a heavy bow, but not often.

Master Peter nocked his arrow. He didn’t appear to aim. He drew and loosed.

His arrow vanished into the melee.

The hundred or so archers around him began to draw and loose, even as the first light-armed archers began to emerge from the marsh. The Earl sent them off further to the left, further around the flank of the French. I saw Monk John trot by, his eyes on the French. He gave his horse to a boy and sprinted along the dry ground, headed to the left.

The Earl’s retinue of archers — 120 men, remember — filled the sky with arrows. The volume of their shafts was incredible. It’s one thing to watch a few men at the butts on a hot Sunday after Mass; it’s another thing entirely to watch a hundred men, every one of whom was probably his village champion. Their arrows were big and heavy — four or five to the pound, with the heads on. They cost a fortune.

They made a sound in the air like a woman beating pots when they struck.

The French at the top of the hill were scarcely annihilated. They were, as we later found, the picked men of 12,000 men-at-arms — the best armed and armoured — but their horses took a great many hits.

Even as I watched, a grey-bearded archer known as Gospel Mark shouted, ‘Horse killers!’ and drew from his quiver a misshapen thing like a child’s drawing of an arrow. Some men emulated him. The big-headed arrows could knock down a horse. The fine bodkin-point arrows that were supplied by the government were better for penetrating chain and leather — if they were well tempered, which they were not always.

The French recoiled from the arrow storm. Then one of them turned his horse, and suddenly fifty of them — they looked to me like a thousand — angled their horses across the hill and came for us.

They had the hill behind them, and as soon as they put their horse’s heads at us, instead of away from us, they stopped falling. The war bow isn’t so powerful as to drive through the three or four layers a French knight wore in front.

Again, they made the earth shake.

The Earl walked back into the marsh until he was standing on a tussock, about thirty yards into the morass.

Master Peter turned and, leg armour and all, his veterans ran back, shouting, cursing and making the black mud fly.

The army servants — of whom, had things gone otherwise, I might have been accounted one — appeared as if by one of Merlin’s spells and began to hand out sheaves of arrows. The veterans had already shot their quivers empty, and they couldn’t go forward to retrieve their shafts.

Battles, my friends, are won and lost by brave men, but also by boys with sheaves of arrows, and the clerks who counted the arrows and made sure that the boys did their work. That was Bishop Burghersh. A mediocre man-at-arms, but a fine administrator. Because of him, and because of an order he’d issued fifteen minutes before, the boys came with the arrows, brought in a cart to the far side of the marsh. The boys were barefoot and quick.

The French knights crossed the open ground in about the time it takes to say a paternoster.

They came up to the edge of the marsh and kept coming. Many horses baulked at the reeds, because horses are smarter than men, sometimes. And the horses that baulked turned broadside to the archers.

Monk John and the lighter-armed archers were just now forming, still further to the left, so that the new French attack was once more caught in the flank by our heavy bows.

It was close, my friends. It was all a matter of heartbeats and inches.

The lead French knight put his head down, and shafts whanged off his helmet so hard that his whole body rocked. His lance caught one of Master Peter’s archers and killed him, punching all the way through his body. The man screamed and blood shot from his mouth.

The French knight dropped his lance and drew his sword. He was about two horse-lengths from me, and once again I thought we had lost. I was still on my little riding horse, and I had my looted French sword in my hand. And I thought something like, Jesus Fuck, because the French bastard was a foot higher than me or more on a gigantic horse, and his sword was five-feet long.

He killed a second archer, even as Master Peter swung his bow and loosed at the knight, who was practically at the point of his arrow.

The arrow slammed into the man’s chest armour and stuck, but the knight didn’t seem affected. He didn’t want to kill archers; he wanted to fight knights, and he saw the Earl and the Earl’s standard, and he turned to go for them. Unfortunately, my horse and I sat between him and the Earl.

My horse was not a war horse.

His was.

His stallion bit my horse savagely in the neck and bore it down, and my little gelding collapsed, half reared, threw me into the muck of the marsh and ran, bleeding, from the stallion’s bite.

So much for my first encounter at Poitiers.

I lay, half-stunned, in the mud — nice, soft mud, which, if you must be thrown, is the very nicest landing — and watched as the Frenchmen went sword to sword with John Hawkwood. John was still mounted — it is possible the French knight thought he was the Earl — and they both cut one handed. It was curious to lie and watch them above me, like birds in the sky — I had time to see things I’d never have seen if I’d been fighting. Neither guarded himself at all. They both cut hard, high, sweeping blows meant to stun or injure right through armour. One of those blows would have split an unarmoured man in half.

Slam, slam, bang.

Like an armourer’s shop in Cheapside.

Another French knight appeared, and another, plunging into the marsh.

The Earl had sent his war horse to the rear. I don’t know why Hawkwood hadn’t, but the Earl shouted his war cry and appeared at Hawkwood’s stirrup with a poleaxe. He thrust up, and caught the first French knight in the aventail at the base of the helmet, throwing him from the saddle.

Two more French knights joined the fight. Every one of them was going for the Earl, who was now obvious in his bright Italian plate armour and his red and yellow arms and coronet. Remember that he’d come across the marsh with his standard bearer and a few picked men, as well as his archers.

Sir Edward, my cousin, appeared by his side.

The French knights circled for the kill. They were close.

I levered myself to my feet. I won’t say it was the bravest moment of my life. I’ll only say that I didn’t have to.

But I did.

I got to my feet and the world changed, and after that point I can only tell you what I remember.

First, about the time I got to my feet, the French knight the Earl had put down bounced to his. Christ, he was eager. Or angry.

And, once again, I was in his way.

This time, I didn’t have an old gelding between my knees. I had my buckler off my hip and on my hand, and when he swung his sword, I didn’t flinch, even though it was the longest sword I’d ever faced.

Fighting in mud is horrible, because everything is wrong. I wanted to close with him and get inside his absurdly long blade, but my legs were literally trapped. It was worse for him, though, in sabatons and leg armour, the mud just sort of ate you. I had on good high boots, and although one was full of water — the things you remember — I got one foot clear of the mud. He hit my buckler hard enough to dent the steel boss, and I lost my balance and was back where I started. We must have looked like antics.

I wasn’t even afraid.

I finally got my left leg out of the mud and forward, and I cut. His blow cut the rim of my buckler and lightly cut my arm, while my blow rang on his helmet. A perfect cut.

Unfortunately, my blade snapped and he was unhurt, because he was wearing a fine helmet. The bastard.

Now I had a four-inch sword stump and a buckler against an armoured knight.

I’d love to tell you how I wrestled him to the ground and took him, but the truth is that one of the archers put a quarter-pounder arrow into his arse, and down he went.

I just stood there.

Alive.

He was trying to get up.

Then I took his sword. It was a magical thing — long, curiously heavy and yet marvellously light. He was face down in mud, and I stepped, hard, on the back of his helmet, and pushed his face down. His thigh and groin were pouring blood. I sat on his backplate, drew my dagger, and thrust it deep. Up. From the bottom, so to speak.

He died.

I took his steel gauntlets. Right there. With another man coming for me.

I got the right one on, and then I was using the longsword to parry, again and again, as a mounted Frenchmen — three bars gules on a field d’or — cut at me over and over as his horse pushed against me. The horse was desperate, locked in the mud’s embrace. The French were churning it into the foam, and the horses were sinking further and further, but the first French knights had ridden in, and the sight of them encouraged more and more of them to try.

The blows rained down from over my head.

I can’t remember what happened to three bars gules. That fight seemed to go on for ever, but it can’t have been that long, because then I was standing by the Earl, thrusting my new longsword up at an eagle argent on a field azure, who had a war hammer and had just put John Hawkwood down with a blow to the helmet. After three failed thrusts, I changed tactics and thrust my sword into the horse, up from under the jaw, right into the brain, and the monster died instantly and fell.

The Earl’s poleaxe cured the eagle knight of his attempt to get to his feet.

I bent over and sucked humid air. The world smelled of swamp and blood.

I straightened up, painfully aware that my cousin Edward and the Earl were only an arm’s length away. My heroes. It took me three breaths to realize there was no one to fight.

No one.

In ten heartbeats, we went from desperate melee that might have won the battle for the King of France, to complete victory in our corner of the swamp. I’ve heard men say we won because the French couldn’t get at the archers. Crap. We won because the French knights didn’t want to kill archers; they wanted ransoms and chivalrous contests, so they all went for the Earl’s banner. Had just three or four of those monsters gone off to kill archers. .

But they didn’t. And Sir Edward and John Hawkwood, Sir Gareth Crawford, William Rose and I stopped them.

Heh.

The Earl started issuing orders. I did something absolutely brilliant for a raw soldier: I went and looked in the mud for the other steel gauntlet. They were a fine fit, and I knew what I wanted.

I wanted armour. I wanted to be able to go toe-to-toe with the French. I had learned a lot in one fight. I had learned that if you want to fight mounted, you need a good horse, and that if you want to fight on foot, you have to wear gauntlets.

See?

I got the second gauntlet out of the mud. It had a fancy engraved brass cuff, and that was just above the muck. I spent three or four very long minutes cleaning the muck out, and when I put it on my hand, the leather glove, a nice German chamois, was like slime, or the inside of a dead man’s entrails.

I didn’t care.

All over the edge of the marsh, archers were looting the dead or taking the wounded for ransoms. We’d cut down sixty of the richest men in France — just sixty, of 12,000 — but we broke the back of the French Marshal Audreham’s attack. The great man himself was taken prisoner a few horse lengths from where I was cleaning a dead man’s gauntlets, and brought to the Earl.

Again, being green, I thought we’d won.

But being halfway to canny, I looked around and saw that everyone older than me was either combing the ground for arrows or looting, and all of them looked like we weren’t done.

I drew the right conclusion.

A page boy emerged from the mud and now-trampled reeds and handed me the reins of my gelding, who didn’t even have the grace to look sorry. I thanked the boy — even then thinking that might have been me, holding the horses — and walked my horse to the edge of the marsh, where Oxford was drinking water from a cup and looking up the ridge to where the rest of the English Army was straightening itself out. The bulk of the French knights had fallen on Warwick and the old Earl of Salisbury. They’d all failed, although they’d probably come closest against us.

But by our saviour, the plain — from the top of the next ridge, where Cardinal Talleyrand had held his peace conference, all the way to the place where the Noailles Road crossed the Poitiers Road — was full of French soldiers.

For a moment I couldn’t breathe, and I’m pretty sure every Englishman there felt the same.

How could there be so much armour in one place?

It was as if the fields of Noailles had grown a crop of iron and steel.

The French chivalry had dismounted.

And now they were coming.

They were in six great divisions, with banners prominently displayed. I knew a few. In the centre of the rear was the great red blot that was the Oriflamme, the sacred banner of St Denis and France. Under it would be Geoffrey de Charny, the best knight in the world, and the King of France.

I could see the Dauphin’s banner in the front. I was too green to know who the others were, but every great lord in France was present — I hadn’t known there were that many knights in the world — and they started up the valley at the Prince and Salisbury.

The Earl of Oxford ordered his archers forward to the edge of the firm ground. We wouldn’t be taken by surprise again — armoured men on foot can be fast, but not as fast as horsemen. Our archers formed neater ranks, and boys and camp servants brought up more sheaves of arrows as we began to loose them into the flank of the French advance.

The French flinched away.

The Earl turned to me. ‘Judas!’ he said. ‘Go to the Prince and tell me what he desires. Tell him how we fare here.’

I nodded. I was by my horse. Richard was nowhere to be seen, and all the Earl’s noble squires were, as it proved, struggling to come up from the baggage.

I rode back along the base of the ridge to keep clear of the French, then up the hill, into the Forest of Noailles at the back of our army, and along our ridge to the middle of our line, where I could see the Prince’s banner. The ride only took me as long as it takes to read a Gospel reading, maybe a little longer, but when I left the Earl, the French were far away, suffering under our shafts, and by the time I reached the standard. .

The fighting had started.

What I hadn’t known, because I was with the Earl, was that at the top of the ridge, the whole face of the English army was protected by a trio of hedges, with two great gaps. The gaps were about forty men wide.

The whole of the Battle of Poitiers was played out in those gaps.

Only about a hundred men at a time could fight. It was like some kind of terrible tourney, because a thousand English men-at-arms duelled eight times their number of French men-at-arms, but both sides were able to rotate men out of the line. The fighting was fierce and protracted in a way I’ve seldom seen.

In fact, I’ll say that I think the hand-to-hand fight at Poitiers was the worst I ever saw. The French sent their very best, and the English wouldn’t give a foot.

When I rode to the standard, the Dauphin’s division had crashed into Salisbury’s at the right-hand gap, and the fighting sounded like a riot, with pots and pans as participants. The French roared, ‘St Denis!’ and the English roared, ‘George and England!’

The Prince stood by his banner with his war horse. Around him stood Chandos and the Captal and twenty other commanders and great lords. They were watching.

Chandos spotted me and called, ‘Messenger from Oxford, my lord.’

I slid from my horse and knelt. ‘The Earl of Oxford sends his respectful greetings, my lord. We are behind the right flank of the French advance, holding the line of the marsh. We have defeated one party and captured the Marshal d’Audreham. The Earl desires to hear what my lord wishes.’

The Prince smiled at me. ‘That was nicely put. Have you fought?’

‘Yes, my Prince.’ Now that made me glow.

He smiled. Then he started walking. He walked to the hedge, and archers got out of his way. Fifty knights followed him.

The archers had hacked an opening in the hedge too narrow to crawl through, and the other side of the hedge was crawling with Frenchmen, but it gave a view, like the crenellation on a castle curtain wall. The hedges themselves were twice the height of a man, and as thick as a road is wide.

He looked out over the swarm of French knights who filled the hillside, though in no particular order.

‘Where is the Earl of Oxford?’ the Prince asked me.

I pointed down the ride and well off to the left. ‘My Prince, you can just see the leftmost tail of our division — the light-armed men and some Welsh — see?

The Welsh were men of Cheshire, in green and white parti-colour that blended into the marsh reeds all too well.

‘Par dieu — that far? So the French are behind us, too?’ he said.

The Captal leaned in to us. ‘The hill is nearly round, n’est pas? So of course the Earl is almost behind us, and yet on the flank of the French.’

The Prince nodded. ‘Anything the Earl can do to prick the flank of the French assault will help relieve the pressure on Salisbury and Warwick,’ he said. ‘Go with God, boy.’

To be sure, I sat my horse for three long breaths, watching the shocking havoc of the two melees at the gaps. Blood actually flew — it rose like a hideous mist off the stour.

Then I rode down the ridge and through the marsh, back to the Earl.

By the time I returned — perhaps half an hour after I’d left — our archers were utterly spent of shafts. Let me be frank, they had hit many men, and every hit from a heavy arrow wears a man, saps his courage, reminds him of his mortality and the weight of his sins. But the archers hadn’t slain more than two or three hundred, for all the weight of their shafts had darkened the sun.

On the other hand, the whole French right wing had flinched, perhaps unconsciously, away from us. And as the morning wore into afternoon, the archers who had no place to loose their shafts up on the ridge — blocked by the hedge or by the melees — came in twenties and hundreds down to us on the flank, pouring their murderous barbs on the flank of the French again, galling them like spur rowels and pushing them a little further. And as our archers gained this ground, so the Earl moved his banner forward, so that by the time the sun was high in the sky, the Earl’s banner was more than a hundred paces clear of the marsh. The result — I had no idea of this at the time, but I understand it now — was to take almost all the pressure off Warwick’s men.

In the centre, the flower of the English knighthood stood chest to chest with the French chivalry. Neither side gave. From our newest position, I could see it all, and they were all intermixed, a great, writhing steel millipede.

About that time, Burghersh released the last reserves of arrows. Our archers were spread along the whole line of the Moisson, as far as the marsh protruded into the French lines, and there was no particular order. Our men would go forward to within range of the French and launch two or three shafts with great care, and return, discussing their shots. It was like watching a village archery contest. The French had all their archers — mostly crossbowmen — with their last division under the King of France’s hand, and they didn’t loose a shaft at us.

But when we received about a hundred sheaves of arrows, just at nones, Master Peter gathered his men and gave them ten arrows apiece. He had a brief exchange with the Earl, and the Earl sent me for the rest of the squires, who were busy watering horses. With the squires and all the men-at-arms, we had perhaps a hundred armoured men.

With the best of the archers, we were perhaps 300, arrayed as we used to say ‘en haye’, like a plow, with the cutting edge, the men-at-arms in the centre, and the archers on either flank. We went forward boldly, the Earl with his standard, carried now by John Hawkwood, who had a bandage on his head.

The Earl halted us less than a hundred paces from the flank of the French main battle, and the archers didn’t loose at random. Instead, for the first time, they loosed in great volleys to the orders of the master archers, so that all the shafts fell together. The range was short.

‘Nock!’ called Master Peter.

‘Draw!’

‘Loose!’

You could hear the bodkins strike.

Men screamed.

‘Nock!’ roared Peter.

‘Draw!’

‘Loose!’

The Dauphin’s division was broken in two volleys. It was like watching a herd of horses panic, or a flock of sheep — first a few men died, then others began to shuffle back — then the next flight struck and more men fell, and there was screaming everywhere, and then Master Peter called ‘Nock’, like the Archangel Gabriel’s trumpet, and they knew the wrath was coming upon them again.

Flesh can only take so much, even nobly armoured flesh.

In Italy, they say the Dauphin was the first to run. I was there.

It’s true.

I’m not sure what to think of him. He was my age, wearing the best armour on the field, surrounded by superb knights, men of true worth and high reputation. At that point in the fight, I had faced four or five men for perhaps ten minutes, and to be fair, the Dauphin stood in the stour for almost two hours. I have no idea how much fighting he did.

But I’ll tell you this for nothing. I don’t know one English man-at-arms, nor one Gascon, even a lying bastard like the Bourc Camus, who claims to have swaggered swords with the Dauphin. Maybe his father’s men hurried him out of danger when we moved against their flank. Or perhaps he’s the cowardly bastard everyone says he is. But he was the first to go. I saw him. Golden lilies powdering a field azure.

When he edged out of the melee, many knights came with him, and more followed, and suddenly, all the Frenchmen on the left, facing Warwick, were retreating. After more than an hour of stalemate, they fell back down the hill in surly disorder — not a rout, just a retreat. They still outnumbered us, and the Count of Anjou — we saw his banner — gathered half a thousand men and came at us on the flank.

The archers emptied their quivers and we fell back, all the way to the marsh. The archers scampered away from the French knights, who must have been exhausted. But not too exhausted to have a go at the Earl.

Anjou himself ran at our line, and the men-at-arms with him charged us hard. We’d been backpedalling, and we had to halt about fifty paces from the protection of the marsh, or be cut down running.

I was in the second rank, about five men from the Earl. I used my new sword over my cousin’s head. He fought with a sword and buckler, and I used my longsword as a spear, with my left hand halfway along the blade, thrusting over his shoulder or under his right armpit. I don’t think I killed anyone, but neither was I hit, nor was Sir Edward. We held, and held — Christ, how did they do this for an hour? Then Edward knocked a man flat with a backhanded blow, and the man waved weakly and cried, ‘Me rendre!’

Fair enough. The Earl pushed forward, but Anjou had pulled back and was reforming his conroy — his company. I pushed forward past my cousin, who was accepting the surrender and ransom of his noble adversary. There was a knot of Frenchmen still fighting — one had hacked the Earl’s banner pole in half. Hawkwood put his pommel in the man’s face — almost no one had a visor in those days — and the man fell back.

I cut hard with my new sword. The second man was just turning to face me, and my first cut — a rising cut — knocked his sword aside, and my descending cut was very strong. Strong and, by luck, perfect. He had a quilted linen aventail, and my blade went past his guard, through his aventail and beheaded him.

Blood gouted from his neck.

Men around me cheered.

And the other Frenchman fell to his knees and made himself my prisoner.

Friends, I think I laughed aloud. Grown men thumped me on the back.

Anjou’s company backed away.

Once again, I thought the battle was over.

And once again, I was wrong.

At the top of the Cardinal’s ridge — well, that’s what I called it all day — we saw the lilies of France and the flaming red silk of the Oriflamme. Even while I received a guerdon — my first — a token of my captive’s surrender, the King started down the ridge towards us. He had about 3,000 men, the cream of his army. His men were fresh, and they walked quickly down the hill.

Our archers loosed their next-to-last shafts at point-blank range, and knocked over a few men.

Warwick’s archers, and Salisbury’s, loosed whatever they had left. But archers, even master archers, tire, and we were nearly out of arrows. The density of the French meant they’d trampled the ground into which we’d shot all day, and when some of the younger men, like Monk John, ran forward to retrieve shafts, they came back with very few, because the rest were broken.

The French King’s Italian crossbowmen went up the hill first. About 200 of them broke off to face us under their master archer. I heard his voice yelling orders, and they wheeled off like old Romans. They were good.

Unfortunately, you cannot move forward with a pavise and a spanned crossbow. So having faced off against us, they had to halt and span. I think they thought our veterans were shot dry.

Master Peter was a canny devil. Every one of his archers had three shafts under his right foot, where they couldn’t be seen.

They loosed them.

Just like that, the Italians were gone. They ran. The English shafts punched right through their great pavises. I saw it happen in Italy, too, and it broke their morale. I doubt we killed ten of them, because they had good armour, but as soon as they took hits, they ran. They were mercenaries, not patriots.

And, thank God, we didn’t have to stand their return volley.

Then the King’s division was past us, walking quickly up the hill, with ten great banners and the Oriflamme in the centre. From where I stood, I could see de Charny’s arms — at this distance, his arms appeared to be three red dots on gleaming white.

The greatest knight in the world.

I was watching when the royal messenger came to the Earl. I didn’t hear a word through my helmet, but I knew what he was asking. He was asking that the Earl send every man-at-arms who could walk to the top of the hill, to try and hold the King of France and the best knight in the world. Sir Edward was already trotting, in full armour, up the hill, going the long way round Warwick’s archers.

He was my hero — and my knight. What could I do but follow?

By the sweet saviour, I was tired. There is a special fatigue — some of you will know it — when some parts hurt, and other parts are so far gone that it seems they might just refuse their service to the rest of the body. I had no leg armour, and still my left thigh muscles were exhausted. I was more hobbling than running. Sir Edward drew ahead of me as he reached Warwick’s men, and then he turned in behind them and I lost him.

The King reached the top of the hill, and his division slammed into the Prince. Even as I hobbled along, I saw the centre of the English line stagger back from the hedge for the first time, losing five paces in as many breaths of air. Fresh, expert fighters in the very best armour money could buy, facing tired men who had braved two attacks that day, and who were usually none too well armoured to start with.

I started to run, and be damned to my left leg. John Hawkwood caught me up and I was determined not to let an old man like him pass me. Other men-at-arms from Oxford and Warwick’s division pounded along with us — about sixty men-at-arms in all, and only three or four belted knights among us, I swear.

The English centre gave another step or two. A handful of French knights spilled around the edge of the melee and began hacking at the end of the English line. All the English men-at-arms who could stand were committed in the centre, and the French still outnumbered us — even with their third line alone.

But they didn’t outnumber our archers.

John Hawkwood started calling, ‘On me! On me!’ as he ran. Perhaps he meant to raise the spirits of the men fighting, but to the archers of Warwick’s division, with no foes in front of them, his call meant something different.

Friends, in the main, archers don’t go toe-to-toe with men-at-arms. There are excellent reasons, and the greatest is that no good archer wears iron gauntlets or arm armour — you cannot wear an arm harness and shoot a bow well. Yet in a melee, your hands and arms are the likeliest to draw a blow — even a sloppy, amateurish blow.

But-

But this was for everything. All of us knew it. Every Englishman — and every Welshman, Irishman, Scotsman, Gascon and man of Artois and Brittany — in our army knew that we’d stopped two French attacks, and that if we stopped this one. .

Well. If we didn’t, we’d lose and be dead.

The archers began to cheer, ‘God and St George!’

George and England.

George and England!

Par dieu, gentles, I can still hear it — because when 6,000 men pick up a cheer, it is loud. It is a weapon of its own. It grew louder, and men broke ranks and charged into the flanks of the French line or ran down the hill to envelop them. It wasn’t planned.

It was devastating.

Even then, the French knights were, in fact, the best fighters in the world. And I was far enough behind to watch what happened to one group of archers who separated themselves from the pack and ran behind the French line. Then Marshal Clermont, with perhaps five other knights, turned on them like lions on hyenas, and they died. I knew Clermont by his arms — trust me, war was a business to me even then, and where other boys spent the summer learning Latin verbs or how to plough, I knew which coat of arms was worth a ransom, and who was the most dangerous to face, and Clermont scored well in both lines.

His sword was like a living thing. He stepped out, cut, and an English archer folded over his spilling guts. He blocked a second cut from another man, stepped in under it and rammed his pommel into the man’s unguarded face. Then he stepped through him, rotating his sword so that he cut the man’s throat and thrust from low into the guts of the third — so hard that he batted the man’s buckler aside.

That’s why archers don’t fight knights.

I followed Sir Thomas, then, and he ran to the Prince’s banner in the centre. As I ran up, utterly winded, my left leg afire with pain and exhaustion, the Prince was pointing off to the right with a gauntleted hand, and he was grinning. At his hip, mounted, was the Captal de Buch — a young man, but another famous fighter, and a Gascon. Even as I stopped and tried not to heave my guts out in front of the flower of English chivalry, the Captal slammed his visor down and raised his sword. There was a cheer. He had about fifty men-at-arms and another hundred mounted archers — the kind of archers who wear leg armour and ride heavy horses. They rode off to the right in a cloud of late summer dust and a rumble of hooves.

The English line gave another few feet.

I straightened up, and there was the Prince, smiling at Sir Edward and John Hawkwood and another Gascon, Seguin de Badefol, who was later the captain paramount of all the mercenary companies in France, but that day was just another penniless Gascon adventurer — he had a dozen men-at-arms with him, in bad armour. I fit right in with them.

The Prince looked us over. ‘Gentlemen,’ he said, ‘with the grace of God and your aid, I will now win this battle.’

We all bowed. It’s odd to tell that in the midst of a stricken field we bowed, but he was the very Prince of chivalry, that day. We bowed like dirty, dusty courtiers, and then we formed a tight array, and followed the Prince into the very centre of the English line.

Thirty men-at-arms. In a battle of thousands and tens of thousands, it shouldn’t have been enough.

We didn’t crash into the French. In fact, I found myself behind a knot of men, too far from the melee to fight, but close enough to feel the desperation. I didn’t know what to do. A veteran would have known to wait his moment and then push in, relieving a tired man, but I’d never been in a close press before.

But luck stayed with me. I was behind an English knight — Sir John Blaunkminster — he thanked me later, and we were friends, so I know his name. At any rate, he took a blow to the side of his helmet from a poleaxe and stumbled back. His stumble took him past me, and I caught the French knight’s poleaxe on my new sword — Good Christ he was strong — and I was fighting.

I was fighting just to stay alive and not give ground, but the French were desperate, ruthless and very good, and before I’d breathed a hundred times, I had two dagger wounds — it was that close, and many of the French were letting go their shortened spears and poleaxes and using heavy rondel daggers. And wrestling.

I lost my sword. I don’t even remember being disarmed. Perhaps my hands couldn’t hold it any more. At any rate, I took a hard blow to the head, which rocked me. I chose to stumble forward, not back, and got my opponent around the waist. He pounded the back of my head with his sword pommel, and I bore him back into the crush and down hill, then suddenly he tripped and went down. He was slippery with blood — his limbs were armoured and mine were not, so any blow he threw hurt me. Armour is a weapon.

But I was on top.

I tried to open his visor, but his armoured hands were as fast as mine.

I remembered my dagger and went for it. By this time I was straddling his chest like a child on his father, slamming my armoured left fist into his visor over and over. Because if I let him have a second, I was done for.

My right hand found my dagger.

My fist closed.

I drew it and slammed it into his visor.

The third downward thrust did the trick, but I’ll wager I stabbed him ten more times.

That’s a fight I’ll take to my grave.

The problem with a melee is that in the moment after you kill an opponent, you sag, and you are very vulnerable in your moment of triumph. I sagged.

An armoured foot caught me in the shoulder and kicked me off my victim. I fell on my back. I’ve no idea who kicked me, but it hurt, and I was slow getting up, and when I did, men were cheering all around me.

The French were giving way.

There were archers all around the rear of their division, and we were pushing them back down the hill. I saw Sir Edward in the press, and I saw the French backing down the hill, closing in around their King. Men-at-arms near me simply sank to their knees, or sat like chastened dogs.

But Sir Edward was pressing down the hill with the Prince. The Prince was shouting orders, his faceplate up, and even as he shouted, Sir James Audley began to gather volunteers from the victors — men with horses nearby.

My horse was not good, and he was far away behind the hill, so I followed Sir Edward down the hill. He was hunting a good ransom.

We had won. Men were still fighting, but the French were starting to fall apart. Their first retreat had been disciplined, but now the Earl of Oxford’s archers were shooting a few hoarded shafts into their backs, and then throwing down their bows, picking up their bucklers and charging into the rear of the French line. The French flinched away like a wounded animal.

It must have occurred to every man on that battlefield at the same time that we could. .

. . take the King of France.

What do you think the King of France is worth as a ransom?

Friends, in the moment of victory — may you all live to know it — everything falls sway: fatigue, wounds, everything. You are a fresh man. While your enemies are suddenly full of self-doubt and fear. This is when men die.

Sir Thomas headed for the lilies and the Oriflamme. I was twenty paces behind him. All around us, men were still fighting — I saw a French squire stagger, trip on his own intestines, fall, rise and try to stagger on. I saw a knight with a dagger wedged under his armpit still fighting, and another with three English archers on him, holding him down and trying to finish him while he fought back with fists and feet. But I ran past all these, because Sir Edward was my knight.

And he was going where I’d have gone anyway.

Some of the Frenchmen were falling to their knees and asking for quarter. Others were suddenly killing Englishmen — running a few steps and then turning to swing their heavy swords.

Sir Thomas was just ten strides ahead.

We were under the Lilies of France. I could just see the King, with twenty men-at-arms around him. We were perhaps five paces from the Oriflamme. Ah, gentlemen, what a fine company you might have formed from the killers who were circling the King of France like sharks around a dying porpoise? There was the Bourc Camus, the evilest knight I ever knew, but a deadly killer; there was John Hawkwood, and Sir John Blaunkminster and Dennis de Moirbeke and Bernard de Troyes; there was John Norbury and Seguin de Badefol. I’ve heard about 600 men claim they were in that fight, and half of them claim to have taken the King. They’re lying.

I was there.

There, too, were all the squires from Oxford’s division — Richard Beauchamps and Diccon Ufford and the rest. They’d come the short way, into the rear of the French. But they’d missed the honour we gained following the Prince at the top of the hill, when the day was lost and won.

Still, there we all were around the King and his son and perhaps thirty desperate French knights.

And Geoffrey de Charny.

Sir Thomas plunged in like a young knight bent on errantry, and he led the squires forward to the man who held the Oriflamme. De Charny was so deadly, and so renowned, that there was empty space around him.

Men were curiously hesitant to strike the King of France or his young son. The fighting had an odd flavour, almost a tournament air, except that they were beyond desperation and we were very, very tired.

Sir Thomas put himself at our head and led us forward.

De Charny was not a small man, but nor was he one of the giants who tower over a battlefield, a head taller than other men. He wore a plain steel harness and a red wool cote over it, and he wore a single star on his helmet for the Order of the Star. When he saw Sir Thomas, he raised his spear, saluted Sir Edward, and stepped out of the huddle of men protecting the King-

And Sir Edward was dead.

He took the French knight’s spear just under his aventail, through the neck. De Charny was so fast that I don’t think Sir Edward ever knew to parry.

De Charny pulled the blade free of my knight’s neck like the tongue of an adder wagging and reversed his grip, then he struck down, hard, through Richard Beauchamp’s guard as if his heavy spear were a sword, and then the spear point glided into Beauchamp’s eye and out again as the great knight turned his cut into a thrust in mid-motion. As Beauchamp fell off his spear, he reversed it again and felled Diccon with a simple staff-blow to the temple, delivered with crushing force.

The next squire to face him was Harry Dearpoint, and he was already panicked, and didn’t set himself to fight before he had the point in under his arm to the lung.

We were saved by the Bourc Camus. He threw himself on de Charny, pinning the man’s arms. But de Charny flipped the Gascon right over his body and slammed him — in armour — to earth. Camus leaped to his feet, apparently unhurt, and faced the lion, but a blow from the staff broke his nose and he was down.

The Bourc gave me time to gather myself. I was standing like a fool with only a heavy dagger, and de Charny stepped over the Bourc Camus.

I tackled him. It had worked on my last opponent, but my last opponent hadn’t been Geoffrey de Charny. I got my arms around him, but he kneed me in the gut with a steel-clad knee, turned me and raked my arms with his spurs. I was trying to hold on, trying to dig my rondel into his side, but he was wearing a complex and very expensive coat of plates and my dagger wouldn’t bite. Then other men were by me. I had his waist with one arm — something had gone wrong with my left — as I slid down into a well of pain. Then I was on the ground, but luck — fortune? The will of God? — put his ankle in my hand. I got his spur and pulled as hard as I could, and somewhere miles above me, a Gascon pushed at him with a poleaxe. .

. . and he fell.

I’m told that when we brought him down, there were eight of us on him. One — Tancreville, one of the Prince’s squires — was dying from de Charny’s dagger in his bowels, but he had the French knight’s other leg.

I still had my dagger. I was being pushed into the mud, and another man was standing on my hip. The pain was nothing to the pressure. I got the tip of my dagger in behind his leg armour and pushed.

To be honest, I think I gave him his death wound, but Seguin de Badefol and John Hawkwood both claim the same thing. Or they did until they died.

I’ll tell you this, though.

He faced at least fifteen men-at-arms at once, and killed six, wounded five more and died fighting. I never saw his like.

But even while I lay in the mud — dry dust mixed with blood — with a broken left arm, two punctures in my left leg, and a bump on my scalp the side of a goose’s egg, I said to myself that that was the knight I wanted to be.

Christ, he was good.

God have mercy on his soul, for he lived the life of which we dream, and died better than any man I’ve ever seen.

I went in and out of consciousness. Thank God, I wasn’t badly wounded, but I had an accumulation of cuts, scrapes, breaks and bruises that lasted me for weeks. I lay by de Charny for over an hour. A few paces away, King John of France was captured. I lay there while the very flower of French chivalry were cut down, killed or taken prisoner by a few hundred Englishmen and Gascons. The archers were loose now, killing or taking men prisoner, and many a tavern and inn house from London to Durham was built on the proceeds of that hour.

The Prince received the King of France as his prisoner, and treated him as a chivalrous man would treat a King, bowing low and giving him the best of everything. And the Prince knighted a dozen men at the top of the hill. He knighted John Hawkwood, although there are some who dispute it. He might have knighted me, but I was lying in the mud, and no one was collecting the English wounded yet, because everyone was so tired.

It was thirst, of all things, that drove me to my feet. But I was in some sort of fever dream, and I stumbled about a few paces. Men were looting de Charny’s corpse, and suddenly that seemed unseemly to me. I drove them off, like a lion clearing vultures off a corpse, and they — Gascon brigands, every one — reviled me, but fled.

Fuck them. He deserved better than to be stripped naked and left to rot.

In the end, I sat down hard, and I was looking into his face. Was he still alive, even then? I don’t think so.

But he told me things anyway.

You laugh.

A battlefield is the strangest place, friends. So many men have died that the ties that bind this world and the next are frayed, and the other world is close. God send you never lie all night with a desperate wound and no water, listening to the four-footed wolves feed on bodies while the two-footed kind take gold and slit throats.

He told me, ‘He is worth most who does the most.’

Eventually, I took his sabatons, his spurs and his dagger, which was clutched in his right hand.

That’s how it was.

And then John Hawkwood found me. I was halfway from de Charny’s cooling corpse to the river, lying face down in the dust. Sir John never told me why he found me — I assume he was looting. There’s something there, like a passion play: that Sir John Hawkwood was knighted by the Prince on the battlefield, and went straight back to picking corpses for gold.

Of course, I had, too.

He gave me water and helped me to camp. Water restored me to a dramatic degree, and the other world fell away, although as we crossed the field, me supported on his mail-clad arm, I thought that Sir Edward was leaning on one elbow waving to me, while Richard Beauchamp cursed me, and I wept.

The Earl of Oxford came and sat with me later. He congratulated me on my courage, and told me that my prisoner was still safe and was still mine.

‘Sir Edward is dead,’ I blurted.

A shadow crossed his face. ‘Ah,’ he said. ‘I didn’t know.’

‘De Charny killed him.’ I must have sounded strange. ‘With one blow.’

Oxford met my eyes and put a hand on my arm. ‘Yes,’ he agreed.

‘One blow!’ I said, my voice rising. ‘He never even got his guard up!’

Oxford leaned forward. ‘Yes,’ he said sadly. ‘Sometimes it is like that.’

‘He was a fine knight!’ I said. I remember that I said that, because then I burst into tears.

Oxford sat with me for a long time. He was a good lord.

Later, about dark, Hawkwood came back. ‘If you got yourself a full harness, I’m sure the Earl would have you as a man-at-arms,’ he said. Ever the businessman, Sir John.

‘I can’t afford a harness,’ I said, or something equally foolish.

He laughed. His hands were brown with dried blood, and I saw that he had a small pile of iron gauntlets — the most saleable item of armour — on the ground by his tent. ‘It’s free,’ he said, waving at the field. ‘I confess that the process of trying pieces on can be. . wearing. Come on, Judas. I’ll see you right.’

He held my hand while a pair of archers splinted my left arm after straightening it, then he led me back onto the darkening battlefield. We didn’t have the time other men had, and many of the choice bodies had been picked clean already, but the corpse of Walter de Brienne was found by the heralds just as we passed into the area the locals now call the Champs de Mars. He’d been lying at the bottom of a pile of bodies, including a horse.

As soon as Hawkwood saw him, he called to Master Peter, who was busy stripping purses, and a dozen of our archers, including Monk John.

‘I’ll pay cash for that corpse,’ he said. ‘Intact.’

They rolled the horse off Walter de Brienne in no time, and six men pulled him out of the pile. He was in head-to-toe plate, the very latest. And he was my size — a big man. Sir John had seen that immediately.

His beautiful breast and backplate would never fit me, because he was old and overweight, but his legs and arms fit well enough. I was going to spurn his helmet as he’d vomited blood into it.

‘Are you a blushing virgin?’ Hawkwood said. ‘This is a brothel, miss, and this is a man’s prick.’ He shoved the helmet at me. It was far, far better than mine, with a magnificent aventail of fine mail, but the man’s blood and bile was all over it. I turned and heaved, and John laughed.

Monk John stripped de Brienne’s arm harnesses and stacked them and the upper and lower legs like firewood beside me. I was trying to recover, and he slapped me on the back.

‘I owe you, laddy. Here’s the payment. You’ll be a man-at-arms. Who knew, when you were a little thief at the door of the Abbott?’ John laughed. ‘You’ll be a gent. Remember us little archers, eh?’

I got to my feet, and the archers made a game of it. ‘We’re building a knight,’ they said, laughing. They ran all over the field, squandering their spirit like drunkards — indeed, we were all drunk on victory and fatigue. I got a new-fangled Italian steel frontplate, and a magnificent blue velvet-covered brigantine, and a pair of fine hardened-steel shoulder rondels in the Italian style and several pairs of gauntlets.

‘They like you,’ Hawkwood said. He was sitting by me in the dark as Abelard came and dropped a chain hauberk in my lap. The links were superb — almost white in the moonlight. ‘They like to see one of their own go ahead,’ he added.

They did, too, because while we sat there, men came and embraced Sir John and complimented him on his knighthood. And men brought us wine. Abelard drank deep. ‘I’m waiting to hear some praise for that shirt,’ he said.

Hawkwood spotted a hole. ‘Didn’t help the last owner,’ he said.

Abelard grunted. ‘I carried that fucking mail across the field,’ he said. He grinned at me. ‘The Duke de Bourbon,’ he chortled. ‘Never say I didn’t do anything for you, Judas.’

And that was the Battle of Poitiers.