LITMIR.BIZ

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in the wide peninsula between the two rivers north of La Roche-Derrien were spared because they were needed to feed the garrison. Some of the serfs who were torn from their land were put to work heightening La Roche-Derrien’s walls, clearing a wider killing ground in front of the ramparts and making new barriers at the river’s edge. It was a winter of utter misery for the Bretons. Cold rains whipped from the wild Atlantic and the English scoured the farmlands.

      Once in a while there would be some resistance. A brave man would shoot a crossbow from a wood’s edge, but Skeat’s men were experts in trapping and killing such enemies. A dozen archers would dismount and stalk the enemy from the front while a score of others galloped about his rear, and in a short while there would be a scream and another crossbow was added to the plunder. The crossbow’s owner would be stripped, mutilated and hanged from a tree as a warning to other men to leave the hellequin alone, and the lessons worked, for such ambushes became fewer. It was the wrecking time and Skeat’s men became rich. There were days of misery, days of slogging through cold rain with chapped hands and wet clothes, and Thomas always hated it when his men fetched the duty of leading the spare horses and then driving the captured livestock home. Geese were easy–their necks were wrung and the dead birds hung from the saddles–but cows were slow, goats wayward, sheep stupid and pigs obstinate. There were, however, enough farm-bred boys in the ranks to ensure that the animals reached La Roche-Derrien safely. Once there they were taken to a small square that had become a slaughteryard and stank of blood. Will Skeat also sent cartloads of plunder back to the town and most of that was shipped home to England. It was usually humble stuff: pots, knives, plough-blades, harrow-spikes, stools, pails, spindles, anything that could be sold, until it was said that there was not a house in southern England which did not possess at least one object plundered from Brittany.

      In England they sang of Arthur and Lancelot, of Gawain and Perceval, but in Brittany the hellequin were loose.

      And Thomas was a happy man.

      * * *

      Jeanette was loath to admit it, but the presence of Will Skeat’s men was an advantage to her. So long as they were in the courtyard she felt safe in the house and she began to dread the long periods they spent away from the town, for it was then that Sir Simon Jekyll would haunt her. She had begun to think of him as the devil, a stupid devil to be sure, but still a remorseless, unfeeling lout who had convinced himself Jeanette must wish nothing so much as to be his wife. At times he would force himself to a clumsy courtesy, though usually he was bumptious and crude and always he stared at her like a dog gazing at a haunch of beef. He took Mass in the church of St Renan so he could woo her, and it seemed to Jeanette she could not walk in the town without meeting him. Once, encountering Jeanette in the alley beside the church of the Virgin, he crowded her against the wall and slid his strong fingers up to her breasts.

      ‘I think, madame, you and I are suited,’ he told her in all earnestness.

      ‘You need a wife with money,’ she told him, for she had learned from others in the town the state of Sir Simon’s finances.

      ‘I have your money,’ he pointed out, ‘and that has settled half my debts, and the prize money from the ships will pay much of the rest. But it is not your money I want, sweet one, but you.’ Jeanette tried to wrench away, but he had her trapped against the wall. ‘You need a protector, my dear,’ he said, and kissed her tenderly on the forehead. He had a curiously full mouth, big-lipped and always wet as though his tongue was too large, and the kiss was wet and stank of stale wine. He pushed a hand down her belly and she struggled harder, but he just pressed his body against hers and took hold of her hair beneath her cap. ‘You would like Berkshire, my dear.’

      ‘I would rather live in hell.’

      He fumbled at the laces of her bodice and Jeanette vainly tried to push him away, but she was only saved when a troop of men rode into the alley and their leader called a greeting to Sir Simon, who had to turn away to respond and that allowed Jeanette to wrench herself free. She left her cap in his grasp as she ran home, where she barred the doors, then sat weeping and angry and helpless. She hated him.

      She hated all the English, yet as the weeks passed she watched the townsfolk come to approve of their occupiers, who spent good money in La Roche-Derrien. English silver was dependable, unlike the French, which was debased with lead or tin. The presence of the English had cut the town off from its usual trade with Rennes and Guingamp, but the shipowners were now free to trade with both Gascony and England and so their profits rose. Local ships were chartered to import arrows for the English troops, and some of the shipmasters brought back bales of English wool that they resold in other Breton ports that were still loyal to Duke Charles. Few folk were willing to travel far from La Roche-Derrien by land, for they needed to secure a pass from Richard Totesham, the commander of the garrison, and though the scrap of parchment protected them from the hellequin it was no defence against the outlaws who lived in the farms emptied by Skeat’s men. But boats from La Roche-Derrien and Tréguier could still sail east to Paimpol or west to Lannion and so trade with England’s enemies. That was how letters were sent out of La Roche-Derrien, and Jeanette wrote almost weekly to Duke Charles with news of the changes the English were making to the town’s defences. She never received a reply, but she persuaded herself that her letters were useful.

      La Roche-Derrien prospered, but Jeanette suffered. Her father’s business still existed, but the profits mysteriously vanished. The larger ships had always sailed from the quays of Tréguier, which lay an hour upriver, and though Jeanette sent them to Gascony to fetch wine for the English market, they never returned. They had either been taken by French ships or, more likely, their captains had gone into business for themselves. The family farms lay south of La Roche-Derrien, in the countryside laid waste by Will Skeat’s men, and so those rents disappeared. Plabennec, her husband’s estate, was in English-held Finisterre and Jeanette had not seen a penny from that land in three years, so by the early weeks of 1346 she was desperate and thus summoned the lawyer Belas to the house.

      Belas took a perverse pleasure in telling her how she had ignored his advice, and how she should never have equipped the two boats for war. Jeanette suffered his pomposity, then asked him to draw up a petition of redress which she could send to the English court. The petition begged for the rents of Plabennec, which the invaders had been taking for themselves. It irked Jeanette that she must plead for money from King Edward III of England, but what choice did she have? Sir Simon Jekyll had impoverished her.

      Belas sat at her table and made notes on a scrap of parchment. ‘How many mills at Plabennec?’ he asked.

      ‘There were two.’

      ‘Two,’ he said, noting the figure. ‘You do know,’ he added cautiously, ‘that the Duke has made a claim for those rents?’

      ‘The Duke?’ Jeanette asked in astonishment. ‘For Plabennec?’

      ‘Duke Charles claims it is his fief,’ Belas said.

      ‘It might be, but my son is the Count.’

      ‘The Duke considers himself the boy’s guardian,’ Belas observed.

      ‘How do you know these things?’ Jeanette asked.

      Belas shrugged. ‘I have had correspondence from the Duke’s men of business in Paris.’

      ‘What correspondence?’ Jeanette demanded sharply.

      ‘About another matter,’ Belas said dismissively, ‘another matter entirely. Plabennec’s rents were collected quarterly, I assume?’

      Jeanette watched the lawyer suspiciously. ‘Why would the Duke’s men of business mention Plabennec to you?’

      ‘They asked if I knew the family. Naturally I revealed nothing.’

      He was lying, Jeanette thought. She owed Belas money, indeed she was in debt to half of La Roche-Derrien’s tradesmen. Doubtless Belas thought his bill was unlikely to be paid by her and so he was looking to Duke Charles for eventual settlement. ‘Monsieur Belas,’ she said coldly, ‘you will tell me exactly what you have been telling the Duke, and why.’

      Belas shrugged. ‘I have

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