The Outlaws, page 14
Robert jumped down from the wagon and tugged Hugh’s shoulder. “We should go now!”
Hugh glanced at the struggling mass at the rope. “I can’t swim!”
Robert shoved his bow and arrow bag into Hugh’s hands. “Hold these and your breath.”
Then he grasped a fold of Hugh’s chain mail shirt and jumped into the river just as French knights rounded both sides of the wagon.
The spot where they landed was only waist deep, but the bottom dropped away. Within two steps it was over Robert’s head.
Hugh had the sense not to struggle and went stiff as a board, eyes closed tight and holding his breath as water washed over his face.
It was a hard swim across the river, holding Hugh’s head up, with a sword and a bagful of arrows tangling in his legs, but Robert made it somehow. One foot touched the mud near the opposite side and he steadied Hugh on his feet. The French across the way shouted insults at them. Robert retrieved his bow, nocked a sopping arrow and drew as if to shoot. The French mocked him. Two or three threw rocks, which splashed short. They turned away in disgust.
Meanwhile, several Frenchmen had reached the root that held the rope and cut it so that the strand curved downstream with the current, carrying clusters of struggling men. Dismayed, Robert watched them glide past where he stood safe by the bank. He reached out with the bow toward several who went by, but none came close enough to grasp it.
All the common soldiers who had not jumped into the river had been killed. The French knights who had slaughtered them lost interest once they were dead. The corpses had nothing of value worth looting.
The Norman knights and men-at-arms fought on, surrounded by a pack of Frenchmen for a short time, but soon they were overwhelmed, and most of them were killed.
“Look,” Hugh said, taking off his helmet in the shallows, “they have taken Helmo.” They could see there were at least five Norman survivors across the river. Helmo was one of them. He tottered in the grip of two French knights, who had begun to tear off his armor. There was blood on his face from a head wound, but he was alive. The French had not carried out their threat to kill everyone. Live knights were worth more than dead ones, after all, and the urge to profit had overcome the desire for revenge.
“Thank God for that,” Robert said.
Robert climbed up the bank and offered Hugh a hand. “We better get out of here before they find a way across,” Hugh panted. “They don’t have to go far for that.”
Robert said, “I suppose we have to go back and tell Petronilla.” She was Helmo’s wife.
“I wish there was a way to avoid that,” Hugh said.
CHAPTER 13
Normandy
July 1179
“I’ll do the talking,” Hugh said, as he and Robert entered Fervaques’ marketplace. Ahead lay the village church. The road next to it ran west to the castle, which lay on the other side of a large stream. They were almost there. “She won’t want to hear from you. You’re just an archer.”
“Right,” Robert said, looking forward to a real bed and a decent meal. “I don’t matter.”
“Exactly. Well, you know what I mean. She’s a lady after all. What are they looking at?”
An inn and tavern sat at the corner, well situated to attract the attention of any travelers who might happen by this small patch of Normandy and business on market days. People had come out into the street and were staring at them, cups in hand. It was not allowed to carry your cup into the street in Fervaques, partly because of the lord’s dislike of public drunkenness but also because the proprietor feared he might not see his cups again. Next door was a draper’s shop, its timbers painted a pleasant light blue, and the owner and his journeymen were leaning out the windows to get a look at them. Eyes followed Robert and Hugh as they passed out of the marketplace, but nobody said anything, lending an air of unnatural quiet to the atmosphere.
“You’d think we were a funeral,” Robert said.
“Maybe we are,” Hugh said. He had worried ever since they had got away how they would deliver the word of Helmo’s capture to Petronilla. Hugh kept saying that she had a furious temper, although Robert had not seen many signs of it, perhaps because she had not been much in Fervaques during the last few months.
It was a relief to pass out of view of the watchers, although a few followed them as far as the corner of Castle Street.
A wooden bridge crossed the stream to the castle’s main entrance, where Helmo was building a new gate tower. It was about ten feet high at the moment and covered with scaffolding. Two men were walking the treadmill for a crane beside it, lifting a pallet of stone that had been shaped by the masons at the foot of the tower. One of the men on the treadmill spotted them just before they reached the bridge. He nudged his companion, and they whispered and smirked.
“I don’t think we’re that funny looking,” Hugh said as they came up to the gate, which stood open. After the violent events along the border, one might have expected it to be closed as a precaution against a sudden assault, but both the castle and village seemed to be carrying on business as if it was a normal day.
“Well, you do look funny without your horse,” Robert said.
“Perhaps I should ride you!”
“Now that they would find truly funny.”
Any hopes they might have had of passing though the gate and into the comfort and safety of the bailey were dashed when one of the gate wards emerged from his nook and barred the way with his spear.
“Sorry, boys,” the ward said. He was one of the older men, over fifty, and had been left behind to guard the castle. “I can’t let you in.”
“What do you mean you can’t let us in?” Hugh said, astonished. “Out of the way.”
He pushed the point of the spear aside, but the ward stepped back and re-leveled the spear. “I got orders. I’m not to let you in.”
“Orders?” Hugh asked. “From whom?”
“From our lady, of course. Who did you think?”
“Come on, we’re tired and hungry. We haven’t had a decent meal since the day before yesterday.”
The ward looked apologetic. “If it was up to me, I’d have no problem with you. But our lady heard what you done, and she’s furious enough to dangle you at the end of a rope.”
“Heard what we did?” Robert asked.
“Ordicorus got here yesterday. He told us about the battle, and how you ran and deserted the lord.”
“We were cut off!” Robert protested. “We didn’t have any choice! It was that or be slaughtered.”
“That’s not how Ordicorus tells it.”
“That rat bastard,” Robert fumed. “He was one of the first to run away.”
“He isn’t a fighting man after all,” the ward said. He spat into the dirt. “Man like that is bound to run away. Anyway, the lady believes him. You best get out of here while you still can, before someone alerts her that you’re here.”
Hugh lay on his back, hands behind his head, looking up at the purple dusk above the trees, as the scent of roasted rabbit dissipated on the whisper of a breeze. “All I ever wanted was to sit on my front steps at a time like this, a cup of wine in my hand, and look across my vineyards. I’ll never have that now. I might as well hang myself, or something.”
Hugh was the fourth son in a large Gascon family, and when he came of age, his father had kicked him out without bothering to find a good marriage for him.
Robert kicked dirt on the cook fire. He thought about having his own manor. He saw his mother, the twins, and Brian sitting before a great hearth in the dead of winter with the wind howling around stone walls, yet they were safe and warm and had all they wanted to eat. It was an impossible dream for someone like him, of course. He said, “We have to move.”
Hugh propped himself on an elbow. He glanced at the dying fire. “What for? Why did you put it out?”
“We can’t sleep here. It’s a beacon to whoever owned the rabbits, and the gamekeepers might care enough about them to make trouble.”
“You make it sound like you’ve done this before,” Hugh said, climbing to his feet.
“Not I. I’m a law-abiding fellow.”
“Don’t tell lies. I’ve seen you in action. Desperate rabbit poachers are not to be trusted.”
“As you shared in the spoils, I doubt the gamekeeper is liable to distinguish between the two of us. And since you are the sergeant, you’ll hang first. Rank has its privileges, after all.”
“If it has its privileges, why did you get the bigger rabbit?”
“It was just big-boned. It didn’t have any more meat on him than yours.”
“I take issue with that.”
“My God, you’re starting to sound like a cleric, always disputing this issue and that, like it made any difference.”
“Now you really are getting insulting,” Hugh said, as they moved away from the remains of the fire.
They stumbled through the darkening forest a few hundred yards until they reached a small stream.
“This will do,” Robert said, settling down at the base of an oak. He wished he had a cloak or a blanket, but at least it was summer and the nights weren’t that cold.
He thought about the problem of manors again. While the possibility of him obtaining one was so remote that it wasn’t worth dreaming about, Hugh might still manage it, with luck and patronage. Robert might be able to ride upward with Hugh. Meanwhile, there was the problem of how to feed themselves and find work. He said, “In the autumn, don’t they usually have tournaments? I heard some of the boys talking about it before we left.”
“What? So?”
“If you fight, you might take a prize, enough to buy a manor. Some horses are worth a whole manor.
“I doubt I’ll take any prizes,” Hugh said. “Besides, they only allow knights to take prizes. I’m not a knight.
“You just tell them you are a knight. No one will know.”
Hugh looked doubtful. “That’s not very knightly.”
“Do you think that the high-born are honest when they stand to gain by lies? How old are you?”
“I still don’t like it.”
Robert brushed aside Hugh’s doubt and went on, enthused by his plan, “Then maybe you’ll come to some lord’s attention and he’ll take us on.”
“Us?”
“Of course, us.”
“How am I going to fight? No horse, no shield, no lance, just some rusty mail and a sword.”
“Don’t towns have wrestling matches on market days? We do that in England.”
“Yes,” Hugh said. “Sometimes.”
“Livarot is only fifteen miles from here. When’s its market day?”
“I don’t know.”
“Well, it’s the closest town. Tomorrow we’ll go there.”
“How is wrestling for a pig or a brace of chickens going to get me a horse and arms?”
“When you get the pig, you don’t eat it. You sell it.”
Hugh snorted. “Pigs aren’t worth that much. Certainly nothing close to a good horse.”
“Well, how many pigs does it take to equal a horse?”
“That’s a crazy question.”
Robert smiled in the dark. “Maybe not so crazy.”
Hugh spat. “What do you know about the cost of a pig? The last time the steward bought one, it cost three sous.”
Three sous in French money was the equal of three shillings. That was as much as his father might have earned in a good month, or maybe two. He sensed that it would take quite a few pigs to buy a horse. “Oh.”
“Right, oh!” Hugh said with satisfaction. “A decent war horse can cost twenty livres.”
“Oh,” Robert said again, startled. Twenty livres — twenty pounds in English money — was so vast a sum he could not imagine it.
“So there,” Hugh said.
Robert was silent for a while as he worked out the sums in his head. He couldn’t do that, so he cleared leaves from a spot and did his figuring in the dirt as best he could, given the near dark. At three shillings a pig, it would take more than a hundred-thirty to buy a horse worth twenty pounds. And they would need other things as well: a lance, a shield, a saddle, and bridle, all of which would add to the amounts they needed. Clearly trading in pigs was not enough. There had to be another way. He asked, “Are you a betting man?”
“What do you mean?”
“I mean, do you bet on things, horse races, dice, cards? That sort of thing.”
“What man doesn’t?”
“They bet on wrestling matches too, you know.”
“So?” Hugh said. “We don’t have any money to bet with.”
“We can get money.”
“How?”
“In Livarot, from a moneylender.”
“You can’t just walk up and ask for money. At least, we can’t. We’re strangers.”
“We can if we put up security.”
“Like what, your bow and arrows?”
“We won’t get enough to make the betting worth while.”
Hugh sat up. “What are you suggesting?”
“How much do you think we could get for your mail?”
“I’m not hocking my mail,” Hugh snapped, horrified. “What are you risking?”
“I’m doing the wrestling. You couldn’t wrestle a boiled cabbage. This is how business is done: one man puts up the money, the other does the work, and they both share the risks and the profits.”
“Business,” Hugh said, as if the word meant something dirty. “My people do not do business.”
Robert realized he had made a mistake. The gentry looked down on business people as lower than peasants. Yet when the circumstances suited them, they were as tight with a penny and as quick to do a deal as anyone. “Do you want that manor or don’t you?”
“Well, yes.”
So do I, a small voice dared to whisper in Robert’s head. He said: “Then you’re going to have to lower yourself and take some risks.” Robert lay back down. “Me, I’m betting I don’t get my arms broken. That happens, you know, now and then. That’s got to be worth something.”
Livarot was a pleasant little walled town, hugging the east side of a placid river that seemed to lie motionless under a hazy sky.
The air was hot and sticky, and they were both dying of thirst by the time they crossed the timber bridge to the town’s north gate. The shade beneath the gate tower was a welcome relief, and the stones radiated cool dampness and smelled of moss.
The single guard in his niche surveyed them without rising from his stool. He was not much impressed with the rabbit Robert had shot on the way, but he agreed to take it for the entry toll.
As the guard tossed it on a table in the guardroom next door, Robert asked, “Are there any moneylenders here?”
The guard snorted. “What would you want with a moneylender?”
“Money,” Robert said. “What does anyone want with a moneylender?”
“You think they’ll lend you anything? I’ve known beggars who were better off than you.”
“No, I’m going to rob one.”
“You go ahead. I like to watch hangings. Did you steal that mail?” The guard nodded toward the rolled up mail shirt under Hugh’s arm.
“It’s his,” Robert said, “and don’t make him mad. He’s got a short temper and he’s a demon with a sword. He killed half a dozen men in battle last week.”
“Six men! Fat chance. If it was true you wouldn’t be walking. He hardly looks a demon, and you don’t look old enough to get hard for a woman!” The guard roared.
“We lost the battle,” Robert said.
The guard chewed his lip. It seemed to help him think. “Soldiers, are you, down on your luck?” he asked, with some sympathy.
“And out of work.”
“Our lord’s not hiring. But you can get a free meal at the castle.”
“Thanks. We’ll remember that.”
“You’ll find the moneylenders in the lane of the goldsmiths. Far side of the parish church. Best of luck. Poor bastards.” His laughter followed them up the lane.
They found the goldsmiths’ street without much trouble. It was a narrow alley connecting two bigger ones just around the corner from the church. A series of inquiries directed them to a shop with its shutters folded down to make counters. They could see three bearded men and a boy making gold jewelry. It was intricate work requiring the use of fascinating small hammers and other odd tools. The oldest man noticed them watching and came over to the window. “Can I help you?” he asked in a tone that was polite enough but suggested that he thought he was wasting his time.
“We understand you lend money,” Robert said.
“I will need security,” the man said.
Robert reached for the mail shirt. Hugh clung to the shirt. Robert said, “Which would you rather give him? The shirt or the sword?”
“What about your sword?”
“If you expect to share in what we make, you’ll have to share the risk.”
Hugh released the shirt, but he didn’t look happy about it. “I’ll keep the sword.”
“Good.” Robert spread the shirt out on the counter. “Will this do?”
The jeweler fingered a fringe of the shirt. “It’s rusty.”
“We’ve had to sleep in the woods.”
“Rust makes it worth less.”
“Take a good look at it!” Hugh said. “There’s not a rent in any of the links. It just needs a little cleaning.”
The goldsmith shrugged. “You should have cleaned it before you brought it to me. I will give you twenty deniers on it.”
“Twenty!” Hugh exploded. “It’s worth sixty.”
“Twenty-five.”
“If we don’t pay you back, you’ll still make more than thirty on it if you have to sell, ” Robert said.
The goldsmith sniffed. “But when I sell it, I won’t get thirty. Weapons dealing is not my business. I will have to sell to someone who deals in such merchandise. He will get the thirty and will demand less from me. I cannot go higher than thirty.”
Hugh was unhappy with this offer, but before he could reject it, Robert said, feeling light-headed for dealing in such an extraordinary amount of money, “Done.”
