Son of the Morning, page 48
part #1 of Banners of Blood Series
‘In the name of God!’ said Orsino, ‘we need to break that circle.’ He drew his knife.
‘Don’t kill him!’ said Dow.
‘Why not?’
‘He’s not our enemy. Save your sword for the high men,’ said Dow.
‘He’s a thief and devil summoner,’ said Orsino.
‘And what am I?’ said Dow.
‘We need to break that circle,’ said Orsino.
‘It’s already broken!’ said Osbert.
‘Better be safe than sorry!’
Orsino fell on the pardoner, grabbed his arm and bent it, as if to make a 4 of their entwined arms. Osbert tried to struggle but Orsino had him in an arm lock and the more he tried to break free the more painful it was.
‘I would keep still if I were you,’ said Orsino.
He pushed the tip of the knife into Osbert’s belly and drew it down in a swift nick. Osbert shouted out, but Orsino ignored him, pleased with his handiwork.
‘That should have broken it,’ said Orsino.
‘He stabbed me! He stabbed me!’ shouted Osbert.
‘Rather suggests you’ve never been stabbed,’ Orsino said. ‘I’ve seen men take the knife up to the hilt and complain less than you.’
He released Osbert and the pardoner sat up holding his belly, blood seeping over his fingers.
‘What did that creature tell you?’ said Orsino.
‘Not much!’ said the pardoner. ‘Just some stuff about salvation.’
‘We need to question that thing,’ said Orsino.
‘It’ll be long gone,’ said Dow.
Orsino wiped his knife on the pardoner’s tunic. ‘This one can’t fight, isn’t clever, he doesn’t sew or mend and he brings trouble on our backs. We should leave him here.’
‘How will he fend for himself?’ Dow said.
‘Somehow,’ Orsino said, ‘I think he’ll manage. Now let’s load the horses and be gone.’
‘You’re not going to leave me here are you, dear Dow, prey to wild men and bandits?’
Orsino came very close to him. The man had a dislikable presence, thought Osbert, solid, spiky, as if you could hurt yourself just rubbing up against him.
‘I think you’ll find a way to survive,’ said Orsino.
24
Montagu made his way north around the edge of the city to the place they called either The Temple or Le Grève. It was near to the old Templar’s monastery and housed for the men who waited daily for what work they could get at the square of Le Grève inside the city walls. The day was hot, the June sun burning his neck, and there was no wind to drive away the stink of the camp.
The ground here was swampy and everywhere rough little huts sprouted like so many animal shelters from the watery earth. These were not animal pens though; they were places that people lived. The smell was overpowering – the ground ran with waste of every description; scurf-ridden dogs, lean as skeletons, ran among the rot, searching for any scrap they could get, bare-footed children chased after them. One boy collided with Montagu, who looked down at him. The child had the face of an old man, so thin that the shape of the skull was visible around the eye sockets.
A pity, Montagu thought briefly, that children should have to live so. But God had set them there, their station in life was clearly described in the Bible. If He deemed things must be so then there was a purpose to it. And besides, it was well known these people knew nothing else and so didn’t suffer. Still, Montagu couldn’t help thinking of the farm boys on his own estates in the West Country. They lived like kings by comparison – they might know a hungry July one year in five but the rest of the time they were well fed on good rye bread and soup. They even ate meat on occasion, and his father had made a great show of cooking a hog for the poor at Christmas. Not much cooking here. The very few fires Montagu could see were lit for warmth in the cooling evening rather than to prepare food. This was what became of the masterless poor. Without the clergy to guide them and the nobility to look after them they were like children who fell to ruin. If he’d been given care of the area he would have drained the swamp in no time, had the men build proper shelters and put them to good work in a healthy state, not blighted by disease.
Of course Montagu had ridden through these tumbledown towns of straw and wood before on his way in and out of great cities. He had never needed to talk to the people who lived there, though, and never lingered. Montagu knew he stood out. He had been born to wealth, well-fed from his earliest years, meat every other day and usually fish on the days when God banned the eating of flesh. He was a head taller than most of the people here. He was armed with a good sword and, though he wore his prison rags, he knew his bearing would give him away. He had learned by his father’s example and that of the men of the court in his youth to dominate the space around him, head high, gaze meeting the eye, standing tall. That stance would draw notice here, unless it was mistaken for a brawler’s bravado. It didn’t matter that they thought him a foreigner – Paris was full of foreigners. It mattered if they thought him a lord, worth robbing or ransoming. He still had the sack and, in it, the crown of thorns. He really couldn’t afford to lose that. Still, better that than stooping like a servile man. Breeding couldn’t just be abandoned at the first sniff of danger.
The pauper’s clothes itched him – full of lice, he guessed – and he was aware he smelled. More than that, it was deeply unsettling to him to disguise his identity. A nobleman did not sneak and hide – he went in with his banners flying, his retinue around him, unless absolutely unavoidable. In his youth he had considered himself ill served if he travelled with one tailor rather than two. A man, his father had said, is like the peacock. All very well for women to dress more demurely but a man – and especially a lord – should be spending double, if not triple his wife’s clothes budget. A warrior, a man’s man, showed it in his fine taffeta, his velvets, his rings of gold, his pearls, diamonds, rubies and emeralds. In the prison guard’s rough braies and mantle he felt less powerful, less masculine, not himself.
The slum went on for miles – rough houses, some no more than lean-tos constructed from draped cloth, from broken carts, from turf and, occasionally, from rough piled stones. Montagu didn’t understand why more of the inhabitants didn’t build in stone. To live in such temporary accommodation year after year could only suggest they had hope of advancement, contrary to the will of the Lord. Could a knight live here as Bardi had suggested? Hardly.
He was bone-tired and needed to find somewhere to sleep for the night. He thought to walk back into the city and find an inn. But at this hour that would require him to talk to the city watch and it was certain the French queen had been alerted – even if she was out at one of the hunting lodges in the countryside. She would have her men searching for him now. The death of one of the French angels was a serious matter. An inn would be an obvious place to search and he, with his one eye, would not be difficult to find.
His problem was that he had no money he could actually spend. Joan had given him twenty gold écus in her purse – enough to feed the whole slum for a year. He needed smaller, less ostentatious coins. He kept walking, not quite knowing what he was looking for. Did he really expect the Templar’s flag was going to be flying above one of the rough shacks?
He had been walking an hour in the slum and had descended a little hollow before he realised he was surrounded. Eight men with ravenous eyes converged on him from the deepening gloom. Two of them bore knives, the others were just armed with stones. Montagu drew the sword from his belt.
‘I’m looking for Jacques the Good,’ he said. ‘I will pay well to be taken to him.’
‘Who are you?’ The accent was so thick Montagu could scarcely understand it. He guessed, more than knew, what the man said.
‘A friend of the Templars.’
‘None we’ve seen. You’re a foreigner by your voice and of a good family. They’ll pay well to get you back.’
‘I’ll pay you myself if you like,’ said Montagu. He took up his guard with his sword, a fancy, low stance – not really much good for combat but one that showed he was a master of arms. He’d change into a position more useful for killing as soon as the men took a step forward.
A knifeman came on, his step halting, his eyes uncertain.
‘You really want to make up your mind if you intend to kill me or take me prisoner, dear boy,’ said Montagu. ‘If you cut my throat I’m going to be of value to no one.’
The man glanced at his fellows and, in the instant he had taken his eyes off Montagu, the earl had closed the distance between them to deliver a hard strike to the collar bone with the pommel of the sword. He didn’t want to kill the man and antagonise the whole camp. The shoulder strike was an excellent tactic itself for taking a prisoner and could work even through thick armour. You weren’t going to be swinging a knife about in a hurry after that one. The blow sat the robber straight on his backside in the mud and Montagu put a kick into his face to encourage him to stay down.
He wheeled around as the next men came in – three of them running at him trying to attack him from behind but, faced by the point of his sword, all three lost their footing on the mud as they tried to stop on the wet ground.
Montagu’s pride wouldn’t let him take advantage of their floundering to run. Eight starving paupers weren’t going to put him down – he’d felled three Scots clansmen at the siege of Berwick, any one of whom would have eaten a dozen French alive. He was Montagu, scourge of the Scots, the man who had lost an eye and won the Isle of Man when he killed Archibald Douglas, Guardian of the realm of Scotland at Halidon Hill. Retreat was not in his nature.
He attacked, running screaming into the dusk. The men scattered, fleeing before his sword, which Montagu kept raised in the position to attack, not wasting energy in showy swipes. He turned back to the three who had slipped. They were getting up. They were scared and beaten and he should have let them go. But his blood was up and he charged towards them, launching a good kick into the face of the nearest. The ground, though, was slick and he missed his own footing in the dark. As his kick landed, his standing leg went from under him and he fell heavily. Immediately he cut up with his sword to block anyone swiping for his head but too late. They were on him, all over him, dragging him down, pulling at his sword arm. One had his purse, but Montagu would not release Arondight no matter how they beat at him. There was a cry, a scream like that of a monstrous gull and the men scattered. A little hopping devil sat up on Montagu’s chest – a head supported only by spider legs. It blinked at him for a second and then scuttled away.
The hollow was now empty. Montagu ran to the top of the rise, still breathless from the fight. Everywhere he looked, people were retreating. As the head scuttled over a ridge and disappeared, people were still screaming and running from it. Well, if the sorcerer Jacques was in the slum he would know Montagu was there now. Perhaps he could explain where the devil had come from. And perhaps not. Nothing to do but sit and wait.
25
The land around Tournai was already burning when Edward’s army marched in. The French had fired their fields – only a month from harvest – and burned their suburbs too, to deny the invading army food and shelter. Edward had swept wider, first pillaging and then burning, trying to make more land useless to the French. You can’t tax the scorched earth and Edward, as any invader would, looked for the dual benefit of feeding his army and denying his enemy revenue. The angel had been useful there – tongues of fire flashing from its great sparkling wheel body incinerated the farms. The people who lived there built no chapels, offered no great donations or sacrifices, some even went to church with heavy hearts, said the angel. They deserved to burn.
It was now August, and Edward sat through the long evening watching his siege engines fire at the walls. He felt inclined to tell them to stop. Every time they got a big rock into the town it came back at them within the hour and to worse effect. His troops were stationed in tents, the townsmen of Tournai in buildings. Already his chief engineer – the man supposed to advise on winning the siege – had been decapitated almost in front of him when a stone from a French trebuchet had struck him at a supposedly safe distance of nearly two hundred and fifty yards.
There was a bang and a satisfying puff of dust as a stone landed in the town. The dust was scarcely in the sky before five or six crossbow quarrels slammed into the carts that had been put in front of the siege engine as a barricade.
The angel, manifesting as that great wheel again, turned and sparkled above the field, its many eyes looking out on the town. It was a frightening sight, but so far it had done nothing to help the siege.
Edward looked up at it. ‘Why do you not help us? Why do you not lift this siege?’
The voice, when it came was like a whisper on the wind. ‘They are holy people within. They follow God’s will. Even under your assaults and bombardment they keep God’s holy law.’
‘We keep God’s holy law.’
‘You build no chapels for me, no great church.’
‘How can I do that out in the field?’
‘I tell you not how to serve God. I only ask that you serve him.’
‘You will have a chapel, when we take this town.’
‘Tournai built a great church that was finished only last year. Its townsmen invite me to enter it.’
‘You are an angel of the Holy Roman Empire. I am its vicar and you will obey me.’
‘I will weigh what I owe you against what I am asked and what is required of me by God.’
Edward gave up. It wouldn’t do for his men to see him arguing with the thing. He’d said the blame for the angel’s inaction was down to his men who had not thanked God enough in their hearts for their victory at Sluys. The bowmen, in particular, had not worshipped as they should have. He had to be careful there. He couldn’t risk alienating the archers. And yet more and more he saw them make that gesture – the one where they held up the three fingers. Lucifer’s pitchfork. They’d fight for him while he paid them – because the alternative was to starve. But there was something in their eyes he didn’t like, something that said, but for thruppence a day they’d be directing their arrows not at the French, but at him.
And where was that thruppence a day going to come from? Even after Sluys the collection of taxes was meeting terrible resistance all over the country. There was talk that even merchants were turning to this Luciferian cult – because Lucifer let them keep their money, whereas God told them to give it to the king. Render unto Caesar what is Caesar’s! Had these people never heard the word of God? Edward had told his bishops to tell their priests that Matthew 22:21 was to be the basis for their sermons for the foreseeable future.
There was further troubling news from London – a riot on Seething Lane. The priest of St Olave’s had sold the church’s silver and given the money to the poor. He had tried to hold a Luciferian service there, but his curate had called the city watch. In the standoff a constable had been thrown into the river and two of the mob arrested. Even their hanging seemed not to have dampened the revolt.
‘Majesty.’ A squire was at the entrance to his pavilion.
‘Yes.’
‘The banker Bardi is here to see you.’
Edward breathed out. At least there was some relief. He could touch Bardi for a loan, even if he would have to pay the Florentine’s usurious rate of interest.
Bardi came into the tent, dressed in a cloak edged with ermine. He’d obviously put it on as an honour to the king, but Edward found it irritating. He wouldn’t be affording any ermine cloaks any time soon.
‘Great king!’ Bardi bowed extravagantly.
‘Bardi. What brings you to France? Hoping to press sixty instead of fifty per cent out of me this time?’
‘No, lord.’
Edward didn’t bother to tell the banker to sit. At his rates he could provide his own chair. ‘So what rate are you proposing?’
‘None, lord.’ The banker looked even more shifty than usual.
‘I’ll take a loan at that price, Bardi.’
Edward noticed something extraordinary. The banker had tears in his eyes.
‘Are you ill?’ said the king.
‘Great king,’ said Bardi, ‘I regret to inform you that our bank has its own creditors and they want their debts repaid. I need—’ he almost couldn’t continue ‘—I need you to pay back what you owe.’
‘£300,000?’ Edward felt the blood draining from his face. This man’s impertinence – to come to him whining about personal difficulties when the fate of nations hung in the balance.
‘Plus interest, lord. The true sum is £425,987, as of today.’
Edward stood, fast enough to make the banker take a step backward. He went to a chest at the rear of the pavilion and opened it. In it was a purse. He took it out and threw it to Bardi.
‘Open it.’
Bardi did as he was bid.
‘Count it!’
‘There are three pounds here, lord.’
‘Well, there you have it then: the sum total of my wealth.’
‘You have your crown.’
‘My crown is pawned.’
‘Your wife’s marriage jewels.’
‘Pawned.’
‘The castle at Windsor could be sold. The …’
Edward felt as if his head was a boiling cauldron. ‘I should live like a common man in the street so you can live like a king? I should take any shame so you can save face? You loaned the money, Bardi, remember that. You loaned it. Don’t go changing clauses or putting in special provisos now your own incompetence has cost you.’
‘My lord, our contract makes plain we are entitled to ask for the money whenever we want. That is what you signed.’
‘The devil take what I signed! You swore as a gentleman to support our war and now you cut the ground from beneath my feet!’
‘My lord, I am desperate! Our family firm is of great antiquity but the bank could collapse within the week. I have bent myself to England’s cause. Even now my agents are working to secure something that could restore all our fortunes. They are closing in on the holy banner of St George – the Drago. Closing in on more.’
