Part 14 (1/2)

Thomas frowned. 'I've never met a Jew,' he said.

Jeanette almost exploded. 'You think I have? You need to meet the devil to know he is bad? A pig to discover he stinks?' She began to weep. 'I don't know what to do.'

'We shall go to the King,' Thomas said, and next morning he walked north and, after a few heartbeats, Jeanette followed him. She had tried to clean her dress, though it was so filthy that all she could manage was to brush the twigs and leaf mould from the velvet. She coiled her hair and pinned it with slivers of wood.

'What kind of man is the King?' she asked Thomas.

'They say he's a good man.'

'Who says?'

'Everyone. He's straightforward.'

'He's still English,' Jeanette said softly, and Thomas pretended not to hear. 'Is he kind?' she asked him.

'No one says he's cruel,' Thomas said, then held up a hand to silence Jeanette.

He had seen hors.e.m.e.n in mail.

Thomas had often found it strange that when the monks and scriveners made their books they painted warfare as gaudy. Their squirrel-hair brushes showed men in brightly coloured surcoats or jupons, and their horses in brilliantly patterned trappers. Yet for most of the time war was grey until the arrows bit, when it became shot through with red. Grey was the colour of a mail coat, and Thomas was seeing grey among the green leaves. He did not know if they were Frenchmen or Englishmen, but he feared both. The French were his enemy, but so were the English until they were convinced that he was English too, and convinced, moreover, that he was not a deserter from their army.

More hors.e.m.e.n came from the distant trees and these men were carrying bows, so they had to be English. Still Thomas hesitated, reluctant to face the problems of persuading his own side that he was not a deserter. Beyond the hors.e.m.e.n, hidden by the trees, a building must have been set on fire for smoke began to thicken above the summer leaves. The hors.e.m.e.n were looking towards Thomas and Jeanette, but the pair were hidden by a bank of gorse and after a while, satisfied that no enemy threatened, the troops turned and rode eastwards.

Thomas waited till they were out of sight, then led Jeanette across the open land, into the trees and out to where a farm burned. The flames were pale in the bright sun. No one was in sight. There was just a farm blazing and a dog lying next to a duck pond that was surrounded by feathers. The dog was whimpering and Jeanette cried out for it had been stabbed in the belly. Thomas stooped beside the beast, stroked its head and fondled its ears and the dying dog licked his hand and tried to wag its tail and Thomas rammed his knife deep into its heart so that it died swiftly.

'It would not have lived,' he told Jeanette. She said nothing, just stared at the burning thatch and rafters. Thomas pulled out the knife and patted the dog's head. 'Go to St Guinefort,' he said, cleaning the blade. 'I always wanted a dog when I was a child,' he told Jeanette, 'but my father couldn't abide them.'

'Why?'

'Because he was strange.' He sheathed the knife and stood. A track, imprinted with hoofmarks, led north from the farm, and they followed it cautiously between hedges thick with cornflowers, ox-eye and dogwood. They were in a country of small fields, high banks, sudden woods and lumpy hills, a country for ambush, but they saw no one until, from the top of a low hill, they glimpsed a squat stone church tower in a valley and then the unburned roofs of a village and after that the soldiers. There were hundreds of them camped in the fields beyond the cottages, and more in the village itself. Some large tents had been raised close to the church and they had the banners of n.o.bles planted by their entrances.

Thomas still hesitated, reluctant to finish these good days with Jeanette, yet he knew there was no choice and so, bow on his shoulder, he took her down to the village. Men saw them coming and a dozen archers, led by a burly man in a mail hauberk, came to meet them.

'What the h.e.l.l are you?' was the burly man's first question. His archers grinned wolfishly at the sight of Jeanette's ragged dress. 'You're either a bleeding priest who stole a bow,' the man went on, 'or an archer who filched a priest's robe.'

'I'm English,' Thomas said.

The big man seemed unimpressed. 'Serving who?'

'I was with Will Skeat in Brittany,' Thomas said.

'Brittany!' The big man frowned, not certain whether or not to believe Thomas.

'Tell them I'm a countess,' Jeanette urged Thomas in French.

'What's she saying?'

'Nothing,' Thomas said.

'So what are you doing here?' the big man asked.

'I got cut off from my troop in Brittany,' Thomas said weakly. He could hardly tell the truth - that he was a fugitive from justice - but he had no other tale prepared. 'I just walked.'

It was a lame explanation and the big man treated it with the scorn it deserved. 'What you mean, lad,' he said, 'is that you're a b.l.o.o.d.y deserter.'

'I'd hardly come here if I was, would I?' Thomas asked defiantly.

'You'd hardly come here from Brittany if you just got lost!' the man pointed out. He spat. 'You'll have to go to Scoresby, let him decide what you are.'

'Scoresby?' Thomas asked.

'You've heard of him?' the big man asked belligerently.

Thomas had heard of Walter Scoresby who, like Skeat, was a man who led his own band of men-at-arms and archers, but Scoresby did not have Skeat's good reputation. He was said to be a dark-humoured man, but he was evidently to decide Thomas's fate, for the archers closed around him and walked the pair towards the village. 'She your woman?' one of them asked Thomas.

'She's the Countess of Armorica,' Thomas said.

'And I'm the b.l.o.o.d.y Earl of London,' the archer retorted.

Jeanette clung to Thomas's arm, terrified of the unfriendly faces. Thomas was equally unhappy. When things had been at their worst in Brittany, when the h.e.l.lequin were grumbling and it was cold, wet and miserable, Skeat liked to say 'be happy you're not with Scoresby' and now, it seemed, Thomas was.

'We hang deserters,' the big man said with relish. Thomas noted that the archers, like all the troops he could see in the village, wore the red cross of St George on their tunics. A great crowd of them were gathered in a pasture that lay between the small village church and a Cistercian monastery or priory that had somehow escaped destruction, for the white-robed monks were a.s.sisting a priest who said Ma.s.s for the soldiers. 'Is it Sunday?' Thomas asked one of the archers.

'Tuesday,' the man said, taking off his hat in honour of the sacraments, 'St James's day.'

They waited at the pasture's edge, close to the village church where a row of new graves suggested that some villagers had died when the army came, but most had probably fled south or west. One or two remained. An old man, bent double from work and with a white beard that almost reached the ground, mumbled along with the distant priest while a small boy, perhaps six or seven years old, tried to draw an English bow to the amus.e.m.e.nt of its owner.

The Ma.s.s ended and the mail-clad men climbed from their knees and walked towards the tents and houses. One of the archers from Thomas's escort had gone into the dispersing crowd and he now reappeared with a group of men. One stood out because he was taller than the others and had a new coat of mail that had been polished so it seemed to s.h.i.+ne. He had long boots, a green cloak and a gold-hilted sword with a scabbard wrapped in red cloth. The finery seemed at odds with the man's face, which was pinched and gloomy. He was bald, but had a forked beard, which he had twisted into plaits. 'That's Scoresby,' one of the archers muttered and Thomas had no need to guess which of the approaching soldiers he meant.

Scoresby stopped a few paces away and the big archer who had arrested Thomas smirked. 'A deserter,' he announced proudly, 'says he walked here from Brittany.'

Scoresby gave Thomas a hard glance and Jeanette a much longer look. Her ragged dress revealed a length of thigh and a ripped neckline and Scoresby clearly wanted to see more. Like Will Skeat he had begun his military life as an archer and had risen by dint of shrewdness, and Thomas guessed there was not much mercy in his soul's mix.

Scoresby shrugged. 'If he's a deserter,' he said, 'then hang the b.a.s.t.a.r.d.' He smiled. 'But we'll keep his woman.'

'I'm not a deserter,' Thomas said, 'and the woman is the Countess of Armorica, who is related to the Count of Blois, nephew to the King of France.'

Most of the archers jeered at this outrageous claim, but Scoresby was a cautious man and he was aware of a small crowd that had gathered at the churchyard's edge. Two priests and some men-at-arms wearing n.o.blemen's escutcheons were among the spectators, and Thomas's confidence had put just enough doubt in Scoresby's mind. He frowned at Jeanette, seeing a girl who looked at first glance like a peasant, but despite her tanned face she was undoubtedly beautiful and the remnants of her dress suggested she had once known elegance.

'She's who?' Scoresby demanded.

'I told you who she was,' Thomas said belligerently, 'and I will tell you more. Her son has been stolen from her, and her son is a ward of our king's. She has come for His Majesty's help.' Thomas hastily told Jeanette what he had said and, to his relief, she nodded her agreement.

Scoresby gazed at Jeanette and something about her increased his doubt. 'Why are you with her?' he asked Thomas.

'I rescued her,' Thomas said.

'He says,' a voice spoke in French from the crowd and Thomas could not see the speaker, who was evidently surrounded by men-at-arms, all wearing a green and white livery. 'He says that he rescued you, madame, is that true?'