LITMIR.BIZ

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said nothing. Her throat was raw from sobbing; her eyes were red and fixed on the rusted blade.

      ‘I shall shave your hair off, madame,’ the count promised her, ‘and make you go on your knees to the altar to beg for forgiveness. And God may forgive you, madame, but I shall not, and you’ll go to a convent when I’ve done with you. You will scrub their floors, madame, and wash their habits until your sins have been cleansed, and then you can live in regret for the rest of your miserable days.’

      She still said nothing, and the count, bored that he could not provoke her to protest, called for his men to heave him into the saddle. He had discarded his armour now and was wearing a light surcoat blazoned with his badge, while his men’s armour was piled on packhorses along with their shields and lances. They rode carelessly, unthreatened, and the crossbowmen walked behind packhorses that were laden with sacks of plunder.

      They followed a road that wound into the hills between chestnut trees. Pigs rooted between the trunks, and the count ordered a couple of them killed because he liked pork. The carcasses were thrown on top of the countess’s cage so that the blood dripped down onto her tattered dress.

      By mid afternoon they were approaching the pass that would lead them into the count’s own land. It was a high place of scrawny pines and massive rocks, and legend said a force of Saracens had fought and died in the pass many years before. The country people went there to cast curses, a practice officially disapproved of by both the count and by the church, though when Bertille had first run off with her lover the count had gone to the Saracen’s Pass and buried a coin, struck the high rock at the top of the hill three times, and so put a curse on Villon. It had worked, he thought, and Villon was now a gelded lump of bleeding misery chained to the bed of a dung-cart.

      The light was fading. The sun was low over the western hills, but there was an hour of daylight left and that should be sufficient to see the tired soldiers over the pass, and from there the road ran straight downhill to Labrouillade. The bells of the castle would ring for the count’s victory, filling the new darkness with jubilation.

      And just then the first arrow flew.

      Le Bâtard had led thirty archers and twenty-two men-at-arms southwards while the rest of his force was continuing westwards with those wounded who could still ride. Le Bâtard’s horses were tired, but they kept a steady pace, following paths they had reconnoitred in the long days as they waited for the attack on Villon.

      Thomas read the Earl of Northampton’s message as he rode. He read it once, then again, and his face betrayed nothing. His men watched him, suspecting the message might affect their future, but Thomas just folded the parchment and pushed it into a pouch hanging from his sword belt. ‘Has he summoned us?’ Sam finally asked.

      ‘No,’ Thomas said. ‘And why would he summon us? What use are you to the earl, Sam?’

      ‘None at all!’ Sam said cheerfully. He was pleased that the Earl had not called Thomas back to England or, more likely, to Gascony. The Earl of Northampton was Thomas’s liege lord, his master, but the earl was happy to let Thomas and his men serve as mercenaries. He shared the profits, and those profits were lavish.

      ‘He says we must be ready to join the prince’s army in the summer,’ Thomas said.

      ‘Prince Edward won’t need us,’ Sam replied.

      ‘He might if the King of France decides to play games,’ Thomas said. He knew the Prince of Wales was ravaging southern France and that King Jean was doing nothing to stop him, but he would surely march if the prince conducted another chevauchée. And that must be tempting, Thomas thought, because France was weak. The King of Scotland, France’s ally, was a prisoner in the Tower of London, and there were Englishmen in Normandy, Brittany and Aquitaine. France was like a great stag being mauled by hounds.

      ‘And that’s all the message says?’ Sam asked.

      ‘No,’ Thomas said, ‘but the rest of it is none of your business, Sam.’ Thomas spurred his horse ahead and beckoned Genevieve to follow him. They went into the trees, seeking privacy. Hugh, their son who was mounted on a small gelding, had followed his mother, and Thomas nodded to show the boy he was allowed closer. ‘You remember that Black Friar who came to Castillon?’ Thomas asked Genevieve.

      ‘The one you threw out of the town?’

      ‘He was preaching nonsense,’ Thomas said sourly.

      ‘What was his nonsense called?’

      ‘La Malice,’ Thomas said, ‘a magic sword, another Excalibur.’ He spat.

      ‘Why do you remember him now?’

      Thomas sighed. ‘Because Billy has heard of the goddamned thing.’ ‘Billy’ was Thomas’s lord, William Bohun, Earl of Northampton. Thomas handed Genevieve the letter. ‘It seems another Black Friar preached in Carlisle and spouted the same nonsense. A treasure of the Seven Lords.’

      ‘And the earl knows …’ Genevieve began uncertainly, then checked.

      ‘That I’m one of the Seven Lords.’ Some people had called them the Seven Dark Lords of hell, and all were dead, but their descendants lived. Thomas was one. ‘So Billy wants us to find the treasure.’ He sneered as he said the last three words. ‘And when we find it we’re to deliver it to the Prince of Wales.’

      Genevieve frowned over the letter. It was, of course, written in French, the language of England’s aristocracy. ‘The Seven Dark Lords possessed it,’ she read aloud, ‘and they are cursed. He who must rule us will find it, and he shall be blessed.’

      ‘The same nonsense,’ Thomas said. ‘It seems the Black Friars have got excited. They’re spreading the tale everywhere.’

      ‘So where do you look?’

      Thomas wanted to say nowhere, that the nonsense was not worth a moment of their time, but the Abbé Planchard, the best man he had ever known, a Christian who was truly Christ-like and also a descendant of one of the Dark Lords, had an elder brother. ‘There’s a place called Mouthoumet,’ Thomas said, ‘in Armagnac. I can think of nowhere else to look.’

      ‘“Do not fail us in this”,’ Genevieve read the letter’s last line aloud.

      ‘Billy’s caught the madness,’ Thomas said, amused.

      ‘But we go to Armagnac?’

      ‘Once we’re finished here,’ Thomas said.

      Because before the treasure could be sought the Count of Labrouillade must be taught that greed has a price.

      So le Bâtard set up the ambush.

      It was raining in Paris. A steady rain that diluted the filth in the gutters and spread its stink through the narrow streets. Beggars crouched under the overhanging houses, holding out skinny hands to the horsemen who threaded through the city gate. There were two hundred men-at-arms, all big men on big horses, and the riders were shrouded in woollen cloaks with their heads protected from the rain by steel helmets. They looked about them as they rode through the rain, plainly astonished by such a great city, and the Parisians sheltering beneath the jutting storeys noted that these men looked wild and strange, like warriors from a nightmare. Many were bearded and all had faces roughened by weather and scarred by war. Real soldiers, these, not the followers of a great lord who spent half their time quarrelling in castle precincts, but men who carried their weapons through snow and wind and sun, and men who rode battle-scarred horses and carried battered shields. Men who would kill for the price of a button. A standard bearer rode with the men-at-arms and his rain-soaked flag showed a great red heart.

      Behind the two hundred men-at-arms came packhorses, over three hundred of them, loaded with bags, lances and armour. The squires and servants who led the packhorses wore blankets, or so it seemed to the onlookers. The garments, little more than matted and grubby rags, were thrown over a shoulder then wrapped and belted at the waist, and the servants wore no breeches, though no one laughed at them because their belts carried weapons, either crude long

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