About the Author

Ian Ross was born in England, and currently lives in Bath.

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 Also by Ian Ross:
‘Twilight of Empire’ series:
War at the Edge of the World
Swords Around the Throne
Battle for Rome
The Mask of Command
Imperial Vengeance
Triumph in Dust

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BATTLE SONG
Ian Ross
www.hodder.co.uk

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 First published in Great Britain in 2023 by Hodder & Stoughton
An Hachette UK company
Copyright © Ian Ross 2023
The right of Ian Ross to be identified as the Author of the Work has been
asserted by him in accordance with the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act
1988.
Cover image: Larry Rostant
All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in
a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form or by any means without the
prior written permission of the publisher, nor be otherwise circulated in any
form of binding or cover other than that in which it is published and without
a similar condition being imposed on the subsequent purchaser.
All characters in this publication are fictitious and any resemblance to real
persons, living or dead, is purely coincidental.
A CIP catalogue record for this title is available from the British Library
eBook ISBN 978 1 399 70885 2
Hodder & Stoughton Ltd
Carmelite House
50 Victoria Embankment
London EC4Y 0DZ
www.hodder.co.uk

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OceanofPDF.com
 1258: Magna Carta has failed to limit the power of the king, and
England is once more in turmoil. Led by Simon de Montfort, Earl of
Leicester, a band of rebel noblemen compel Henry III to put his seal to a
new document, the Provisions of Oxford, and to swear that he will govern
only by the consent of parliament and his council of advisors.
At first it seems that their demands have been met. But in the summer of
1261, Henry persuades the Pope to absolve him from his oath, then
overthrows the new rulings and seizes back absolute control of his realm.
Only Simon de Montfort refuses to bow to the king’s will, and departs for
France in disgust.
By the following winter, Henry appears secure on his throne once more.
Few are aware of the clouds gathering on the horizon. Fewer still can
foresee the coming storm that will burst over England and engulf the
kingdom in the violence of civil war.

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 CONTENTS

About the Author

PART ONE
Chapter 1
Chapter 2
Chapter 3
Chapter 4
Chapter 5
Chapter 6
Chapter 7
Chapter 8
Chapter 9
Chapter 10

Part Two
Chapter 11
Chapter 12
Chapter 13
Chapter 14
Chapter 15
Chapter 16
Chapter 17
Chapter 18

Part Three
Chapter 19
Chapter 20
Chapter 21
Chapter 22
Chapter 23
Chapter 24
Chapter 25
Chapter 26
Chapter 27
Chapter 28
Chapter 29
Chapter 30

Acknowledgements

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PART ONE
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 Chapter 1
January 1262
The forty-sixth year of King Henry III
Epiphany’s eve, and snow lay on the slope of the castle mount.
Boisterous, alight with spiced ale, the three young men scraped it up with
their hands and packed it onto the steps that descended from the upper hall.
With their heels they rubbed it to a smooth grey slick. Then they leaned
against the railing of the bridge that spanned the moat, breath steaming,
curbing their laughter as they waited for their prey.
A figure appeared at the top of the steps, lean and hunched against the
cutting breeze as he emerged from the shelter of the hall. He was a squire
like them, eighteen years old, with cropped hair and a short tunic. Hurrying
down the steps, his arms burdened with folded linens, he did not see the
trap until it was too late. Then his foot skated out from beneath him and he
was tumbling backwards, the stone step cracking into his spine as he fell.
Their laughter was raucous in the frigid air.
‘Look at him!’ the biggest of the three cried. ‘Look at him, writhing like
a worm! What’s this worm called?’
‘His name’s Adam de Norton,’ said one of the others.
‘Adam de Nought!’ the big youth said with a grin, dropping from
French into the English of the common people. ‘Adam de Nothing – he
comes from nothing! Was his father a nothing?’
‘A Welshman killed his father,’ the third of them said, stamping his feet
to keep warm.
Sprawled on the icy steps, Adam de Norton felt the pain bursting
through him. The humiliation too. The clean linens he had been carrying
were scattered in the dirt and the muddy snow; they were cloths for the
feasting tables, and he knew he would be punished for spoiling them. Then
he heard their words, and fierce anger flared in his blood.
‘Let’s see if this worm can swim,’ the big youth was saying, eager in his
malice. ‘Perhaps the moat’s a good place for him?’
‘Leave him, Gerard,’ one of the others said. By his tone, he was already
having misgivings about this game. Adam turned his head and blinked; he
had considered that one a friend.
 The second youth he knew as well, a fellow squire of the household.
But the leader, the one who had clearly bullied them into this sport, was a
stranger to him. Gerard was stocky and thick-fleshed, with a red face and a
snub nose and very small eyes. On his white tunic was sewn a red diagonal
cross-lattice. A heraldic device, but Adam did not recognise it; Pleshey was
full of strangers who had come for Earl Humphrey’s winter court.
Gerard advanced a pace closer. Adam was still lying on the steps, his
muscles bunched. He felt the pain in his back and head, but the ache was
fading fast. He knew that Gerard wanted more. He wanted to assert himself,
and intimidate his followers.
‘Leave him – someone’s coming!’ said the third squire, but his friend
remained sitting on the bridge railing, watching avidly. Gerard took another
stamping step towards Adam, reaching down to seize his shoulder.
With a surge, Adam pushed himself upright, darting clear of the young
man’s clumsy grab and getting his feet beneath him. Anger drove him;
without thinking, he was swinging his fist with the momentum of his
movement, a wide reaping blow that smacked meatily into the centre of
Gerard’s face.
For a few long moments nobody made a sound. Birds cried harshly
from along the moat. Woodsmoke scented the air. Gerard was still standing,
bent forward and clutching his face. Spots of blood spattered at his feet,
jewel-bright in the snow.
‘By dode!’ he managed to say. ‘He boke by dode!’
The two other squires were motionless, staring in fascinated shock.
Then Gerard straightened, let his hands drop from his bloodied face, and
roared as he flung himself at Adam.
They went down together, locked in combat. Adam was numb to
Gerard’s savage blows on his chest and face. He knew he had to win. His
adversary was two stone heavier than him and driven by pain and outraged
pride, but Adam was agile and angry. He dragged his right arm free of
Gerard’s crushing grip and slammed two punches into the man’s face,
bursting the remains of his nose. His third blow struck his eye, and his
fourth struck the stretched column of his throat. Gerard had his thumbs
clamped over Adam’s face, trying to gouge at his eyes. But Adam had rolled
on top now, shoving himself clear. He swung his fist, and slammed another
blow into Gerard’s right eye socket. Blood sprayed across the dirty snow,
and he felt his attacker’s grip slackening. Again he struck, and again, fury
powering his blows.
‘Enough!’ somebody was shouting. ‘Enough! Stop this!’ Men were
hurrying from all directions, their cloaks and mantles flapping in the cold
air.
Adam barely felt the arms that hauled him out of the fight.
*
‘You don’t know who that was, do you?’ the cook’s mate said, sitting
under the back porch of the kitchen plucking geese. ‘Or rather, whose that
was . . . Whose squire, I mean.’
‘No,’ Adam replied. He set another log on the block, straightened, then
swung the axe down. His whole body ached, but he would not let it show. ‘I
don’t care,’ he said. The air in the kitchen yard was so cold it hurt to
breathe, but he was sweating.
‘You should care!’ the cook’s mate said. ‘That lad you mauled
yesterday, young sir, is squire to Robert de Dunstanville, that’s who!’
Natural John, Earl Humphrey’s fool, was squatting beside the basket of
goose down, trailing his fingers in the soft feathers. He raised his head at
the name and whined like a dog.
‘Dunstanville, hah!’ said the porter, rolling a keg from the bakehouse
door. ‘He’s here too, is he?’ He paused in his work to make a holy warding
sign.
‘I said I don’t care,’ Adam told them. He swung his axe again, splitting
another log into shards. Chopping wood for the kitchen fire was well
beneath even the lowest of squires, but this was his punishment for
brawling on the eve of a holy day. A morning of menial chores, while the
rest of the household rode out to the hunt.
‘Quiet down, Natural John,’ the cook’s mate snapped. The fool was still
whining, rocking on his haunches. ‘Robert de Dunstanville,’ he said to
Adam, gesturing with a handful of feathers, ‘is not a man to cross. There are
tales about him.’
‘Tales?’ Adam said, finally relenting. He propped his axe on the
chopping block and leaned on it, breathing hard. A blizzard of splintered
wood lay all around him.
‘They say he murdered a priest,’ the porter said from the doorway. ‘Cut
him down right on the steps of his own altar! He was excommunicated for
that, and would have been outlawed except for the pleas of Lord Humphrey
and his grace the Earl of Winchester. But his lands were seized anyhow, and
now he wanders the earth like a carrion dog . . .’
‘They say,’ the cook’s mate broke in, lowering his voice, ‘that he was
taken captive by the Saracens, and they forced him to renounce Christ, and
now he is the Devil’s Man! You see that red lattice he bears as his emblem?
That’s the devil’s fiery flaming griddle, that he uses to roast sinners down in
hell!’
Natural John let out a keening wail and buried his head in the basket of
goose down. Adam was unmoved. He remembered the red-on-white lattice
from Gerard’s tunic – he had seen it on a shield as well. A simple heraldic
design that he knew well from his lessons. Argent fretty gules. Something
else too: a lion on a red quarter, and a blue charge. In a quadrant gules a
lion passant gardant or, with a label of three points azure . . .
‘So why does Lord Humphrey admit him to his court?’ Adam asked. He
stooped down, feeling the ache of his bruised ribs, and set another log on
the block.
‘Because Robert de Dunstanville is Lord Humphrey’s bastard offspring,
that’s why,’ the porter said. ‘Or so they say,’ he added hurriedly, with a
glance towards the gateway. ‘Lord Humphrey got him on old Saer de
Quincy’s youngest daughter, who was wed to the brother of Walter de
Dunstanville, the Baron of Castlecombe.’
Adam sniffed tightly, not wanting to appear impressed. The porter
prided himself on his intimate knowledge of family connections among the
nobility.
‘Well, he’ll be leaving again soon enough,’ the cook’s mate said, going
back to his plucking with renewed vigour. ‘Soon as the feasting’s done he’ll
be away, and his misbegotten squire and light-fingered servants with him
. . . Off to wave a lance on the tourney fields overseas – that’s how he gains
his bread nowadays, when he isn’t living off his betters . . .’
‘And God be praised once we’re rid of them all,’ the porter muttered.
But Adam was no longer listening. He split another log, burying the axe
blade in the block, then pulled the steel free with a savage tug. Heat was
flowing through him, despite the chill of the morning. Gerard was equally
to blame for the fighting the day before, and everyone knew it, but only
Adam was being punished. The other squire was a guest at Pleshey, and had
Adam not struck the first blow? Besides, a badly broken nose and two black
eyes looked worse than mere bruises. Adam had spied the young man
leaving the chapel after mass that morning, and his face had been
shockingly battered and livid. Gerard had even had trouble mounting his
horse. But he and his depraved master would ride with Earl Humphrey on
the hunt, and only Adam would take the blame. The injustice was sickening.
For nearly five years Adam had served in the household of Earl
Humphrey de Bohun, riding with the retinue between the earl’s many
estates and castles, but still he was the lowest of the squires. Lord
Humphrey himself had scarcely said a word to him in all that time, except
to issue orders. Often he seemed uncertain of Adam’s name. Then again,
why should he not be? There were over thirty squires in the household,
some of them from great and powerful families. Adam himself had no great
name, no fortune or ancestral estate. His father had been a common
serjeant, knighted by the king for valour during the fighting in Aquitaine; he
had died in Wales, serving in Lord Humphrey’s retinue, and the earl had
taken Adam in as a favour to his widowed mother. Now his mother too was
dead, and strangers tenanted his father’s lands.
Earlier that morning, watching from the sidelines as Lord Humphrey’s
household and guests rode out to the hunt, Adam had been all too aware of
his own insignificance. He was closer to the servants than to the other
squires. The noisy swirl of horses and dogs, shouting men and screeching
horns had poured from the bailey yard, out across the bridge that spanned
the moat and away into the dimness of a cold winter’s dawn, leaving the
castle to the servants and the womenfolk, and to Adam.
He took a few moments to collect up the cords of cut wood, his fingers
too numbed to feel the splinters. The knuckles of both hands were still
grazed, the skin split and blackened. He stacked the wood, sucked at his
thick lip, then picked up the axe once more.
Counting the earl’s household, the castle servants, the guests, and the
resident paupers, well over two hundred people lived within the walls and
moats of Pleshey. Adam knew he could make no claims for special
treatment. But it angered him that he should have to toil like a common
labourer, while Gerard was pardoned. While a murderous Christ-despising
renegade like Robert de Dunstanville was treated as an honoured guest,
merely due to some accident of birth. What sort of world was this, he
seethed, when the godless and the vile were honoured and rewarded, and
the honest must suffer for the crimes of others? It was not the first time he
had mulled over these things. But now his grievance had a sharply personal
edge.
He set about the stack of wood once more, hacking the axe down into
the block with a cold destructive fury. Only when he paused, blinking the
sting of sweat from his eyes, did he notice the stillness around him.
Voices came from outside the gateway to the yard, and the sound of
horses and dogs. It was far too early for the hunters to have returned; barely
an hour had passed since their departure. Then two men came shoving
through the gateway, bearing something between them. A dog weaved
around their legs, tail thwacking. Another two men followed; it was a plank
they were carrying. A plank with a body tied to it.
‘. . . fell from the saddle when he was struck by a branch,’ one of the
men was saying to the group at the kitchen door. ‘His foot caught in the
stirrup and the horse dragged him at the gallop . . . was dead by the time we
got to him!’
‘What did they expect?’ another man said. ‘State of him this morning
. . .’
The yard was crowded now, a throng pressing through the gateway and
surrounding the body as the bearers set it down. Adam pushed his way
between them, his heart tight in his chest. He already knew what he would
see.
The body was battered almost beyond recognition, the face a black and
bloody mask. Adam’s throat tightened as he imagined what had happened:
the rider dragged by the panicked horse, whipped and smashed by thorns
and tree-trunks, likely kicked by the hooves too. With any luck his neck had
snapped immediately. The men crowding round the body hissed and sucked
their teeth. Natural John was capering in the kitchen doorway, wailing in
anguish.
But what drew Adam’s eye was the badge stitched to the dead man’s
breast. A diagonal red lattice on white. Argent fretty gules.
‘Poor lad could barely see where he was riding anyway,’ somebody
said. ‘Eyes swollen half shut, and not in his right senses either. They should
never have allowed it, after the pummelling he took yesterday . . .’
And as the guilt consumed him, Adam felt himself drawing back from
the throng, letting them close in and block the sight of Gerard’s mangled
body. The axe hung loose from his fist, and when he glanced to his right he
saw a group of riders outside the gateway to the yard, peering in. One of
them, wrapped in a thick cloak, stared back at him with accusation in his
eyes. A face like a blade, and a short pointed beard. Adam’s blood slowed.
He knew who this must be.
Robert de Dunstanville. The Devil’s Man.
*
The great hall of Pleshey Castle was warm and smoky, the glow of the
fire in the central hearth driving back the encroaching gloom of winter.
Three long trestle tables stood around the hearth, each covered with linens
laundered to fresh whiteness, and the household and guests filled the
benches. Adam de Norton took his place on the fourth side of the long hall,
between the doors, where the meats were laid to be dressed and carved. He
was one of four squires appointed to serve the high table, where Lord
Humphrey himself sat. Despite the tragic events of the morning, and the
premature end of the hunt, Adam seemed to have been forgiven his lapse of
the day before.
‘Did you see him though, when they brought him in?’ whispered the
squire beside him. Ralph de Tosny was one of the few in the household that
Adam considered a friend.
‘Briefly,’ he said, wincing.
‘I was away with the leading hunt,’ Ralph whispered. ‘But I heard what
had happened. Lord Humphrey was not at all happy – they’d only just
sounded the chase, and in the confusion the dogs lost the spoor—’
Then the steward hissed for them to be silent.
A blart of noise, and a group filed into the hall bearing the main course
between them. Two servants carried the massive platter holding the roast
boar, decked with festive holly and ribbons in the Bohun colours of blue,
white and gold. Not a real wild boar, of course – such creatures were
seldom to be found in England nowadays, even in the game parks of great
magnates – but a huge pig dressed to look like one. Its bulging flanks
dripped with honey, and its gaping snout was stuffed with a blackened
apple. Musicians accompanied the platter-bearers on bagpipes, vielle and
tabor as they made a round of the hall, circling the central hearth to display
the boar to the diners, before taking it back to the table to be carved and
dressed with piquant sauces. Adam was uncomfortably reminded of the
dead man tied to the plank that morning; surely others made the connection,
but none said a word about it. He tried to put the image from his mind as he
carved the meat and carried the platter up to the high table.
 Lord Humphrey de Bohun, Earl of Hereford and Essex, Constable of
England and one of the greatest magnates in the kingdom, was in his mid-
fifties, but still a powerful man and a famed warrior. He gripped his wine
goblet with a corded hand, and scrutinised his assembled guests through
hard and narrowed eyes. Only occasionally did his lips twitch a smile, as
some words of jest or praise reached him. He spared not a glance as Adam
stepped up with the platter and served the meats; Adam was glad of that,
and gladder still to return to his place at the far end of the hall.
Further courses were already arriving from the kitchens. Besides the
boar-pig there were rolls of stuffed venison, a rack of roasted geese and
ducks, veal rolled in almonds, roast herons and partridges, glazed sheep’s
heads and lark’s tongues in jelly, and pies stuffed with game and fowl. A
torrent of meats, as if all the beasts of the wild and the birds of the air had
hurried forth to fill the gullets of the diners. Between courses, the squires
made their rounds with silver ewers of water and jugs of wine, fresh white
loaves still warm from the ovens, and the big voider baskets to collect the
uneaten food and dripping trenchers. Lord Humphrey’s collection of
paupers were already gathered in the kitchen yard, waiting for their
allocation of alms from the master’s table.
Soon the feasting would be done. The hippocras and wafers would be
served, Natural John would appear in one of his amusing costumes, and
then Adam himself could eat. Perhaps before the hall was cleared there
would be music, or a poet to recite tales of chivalry. Lord Humphrey
enjoyed hearing singing after dinner, particularly rousing songs, so
everyone could join in the chorus. But Adam had always preferred to hear
stories; since childhood he had loved the romances of Arthur and his
knights, of Roland and Alexander, and of Godfrey de Bouillon.
As a boy, listening to the poets in the warm shadows of the hall, he
would let his mind drift to scenes of distant lands and great deeds of
prowess, beautiful ladies and chivalric champions. Picturing the young
Roland, knighted by Charlemagne on the battlefield of Aspremont and
girded with the sword Durendal that he had captured from the King of the
Saracens, he would imagine becoming such a champion himself. A true
heart, he had told himself, and firm convictions could win great rewards on
earth besides in heaven. Childish fantasies, they seemed to him now.
Roland, he guessed, had never split his knuckles brawling in the dirt.
Godfrey de Bouillon had never been ordered to chop firewood either.
 Even to be knighted, Adam thought, was a near-impossible dream.
Knighthood had to be earned. And where were the opportunities for that, in
the packed clamour of Earl Humphrey’s court? He knew of men who had
served twenty years or more as squires and had never been granted the
accolade. That was his own likely fate, he told himself, and found a strange
grim pleasure in the bleakness of his mood.
Ralph’s nudge broke him from his thoughts. ‘The lord’s companions are
running short,’ the other squire whispered. ‘I’ll take the wine, you carve.’
Adam felt the heat from the fire on his back as he took up the knives
and carved the slices of pork. His senses were flooded with the scents of
roasted meat, and his empty stomach tightened. When the platter was filled
he dressed it with a ladle of peppery sauce and carried it up to the high
table. Lord Humphrey was listening to his wife, the countess, with his
chancellor leaning across to offer advice. Adam hung back, waiting for their
hushed conference to be concluded.
‘But I’d heard,’ a voice said across the hall, ‘that the King of France had
prohibited the sport – is that not so?’
‘He did, last year,’ another voice said, and Adam’s shoulders tensed. He
had been trying not to glance in the direction of the right-hand table, but he
knew to whom that bitter, cynical-sounding voice must belong. ‘At the
time, King Louis believed that the Pope was about to call a new expedition
to the Holy Lands. But now the Pope is dead, there is no new expedition,
and doubtless the ban will be lifted before long. It only covers the French
crown domains anyway – tournaments continue in the county of
Champagne, and in Flanders and Burgundy, and the Empire too of course.’
‘Well, I consider King Louis very wise in banning them,’ one of the
priests at the table primly declared, ‘and our King Henry likewise. As our
holy father the Pope says, tournaments are nothing but vanity for the
participants, and the cause of turbulence and unnecessary bloodshed too
. . .’
‘And the Pope knows more than most about causing turbulence and
unnecessary bloodshed, I suppose,’ Robert de Dunstanville said with a
smile.
Before the priest could summon a reply, Adam saw that the countess
and the chancellor had ceased their deliberations. He stepped up quickly to
the high table and began serving the meat onto the dish that Lord Humphrey
shared with his wife. After a few slices, the earl raised his hand, then
gestured to one of the side tables. ‘Sir Robert,’ he called. ‘Some meat from
my platter?’
Adam tensed, willing himself to appear unconcerned as he passed down
the right-hand table to stand before Robert de Dunstanville. He looked
down as he served the meat and caught the man’s narrowed eye. Then, as he
made to step back, de Dunstanville flashed out his hand and seized Adam’s
wrist in a clamping grip. He twisted his arm, turning Adam’s hand to expose
the battered knuckles.
‘So,’ he said, with a sneer in his voice. He was facing the fire, but
Adam’s shadow cloaked him in darkness. His large eating knife lay beside
his trencher.
‘I was sorry to hear of what happened to your squire, sir,’ Adam
managed to say.
‘Were you?’ de Dunstanville replied quietly, still gripping Adam by the
wrist. ‘Perhaps you were. But perhaps you revelled in it a little too, hmm?
Any man would, I think.’
Abruptly he released his grip, and Adam stepped back from the table.
‘Bring me wine,’ the knight told him, raising his empty cup. ‘And I want to
see you pour it yourself.’
Quickly Adam paced back down the hall and took the silver jug of wine
from Ralph. By the time he returned, the conversation had resumed along
the table.
‘Lord Edward is in France now, I believe?’ one man said. ‘Or he will be
soon – he’s been wintering in Gascony, I think. He’ll surely be in Burgundy
for the tournaments.’
Adam stepped up to the table once more; Robert de Dunstanville
ignored him as he poured the wine.
‘And you’ll meet with him while you’re overseas?’ another man asked
the knight.
‘If our paths should cross, I shall not avoid him, no.’
The cup was filled, and Adam made to turn away, but de Dunstanville
halted him with a raised finger, still not glancing in his direction.
‘And what of our other . . . friend, who is in France?’ Earl Humphrey
said from the high table. The other voices around the hall fell abruptly
silent. ‘Will you see him too?’
‘I cannot say, my lord,’ de Dunstanville said with a shrug. ‘I believe
Simon de Montfort is currently a guest of the King of France, and keeps to
his estates.’
‘Just be careful,’ Earl Humphrey said, with a vague circling motion of
his hand. Adam recalled the story the servants had told, that Robert de
Dunstanville was their lord’s bastard son. ‘Avoid becoming embroiled in
any schemes,’ the earl went on. ‘Avoid mischief, Robert. I can say no more
to you.’
The knight inclined his head in polite acknowledgement. Adam was
already backing away along the table, the wine jug clasped before him.
‘Well, you need not worry,’ de Dunstanville said with a laugh. ‘I shall
not be tourneying at all in my present condition! As you see, my lord, as of
today I have no squire. What use is a tourneying knight without a squire?’
‘A sad business,’ Earl Humphrey gruffly agreed. ‘Unfortunate! I feel, of
course, somewhat responsible. No, really . . .’ he went on, as a chorus of
dissenting voices came from the other tables. ‘Really, I would not allow a
guest to leave here inconvenienced or unprepared, after such a sad event.
That one – you there!’
With a tight shock, Adam realised that the earl was gesturing towards
him.
‘We might hold him too at least partly responsible,’ he said to Robert de
Dunstanville. ‘Would he serve as your squire in the place of the other?’
Adam turned in surprise and the knight’s searching gaze caught him
once more.
‘Maybe,’ de Dunstanville said. ‘He looks a little scrawny for his age.
But he bested my squire Gerard, who was no kitten. How clever is he at his
duties?’
‘Not for me to say,’ Earl Humphrey replied. ‘Marshal,’ he called down
the table, ‘how proficient is the lad?’
The marshal of the household gave Adam an appraising squint. ‘Oh, he
knows a horse from a hound,’ he said. ‘And his skill at arms is no worse
than the rest. Which is to say, good enough.’
‘Then maybe he’ll suffice,’ de Dunstanville said with a shrug.
And Adam stood motionless, conscious suddenly of the gathering
silence around him, the throng at the tables all staring at him, the faint crack
and hiss of the burning wood in the central hearth. And he knew, as the
pulse quickened in his throat and his chest grew tight, that his life was now
in the hands of Robert de Dunstanville.
OceanofPDF.com
 Chapter 2
They left Pleshey before daybreak and rode westwards on lanes of
frozen mud. The pale light of dawn exposed a flat landscape under
hoarfrost, bare black trees scratching the sky, mist rising from the thawing
fields. A few hooded figures in the middle distance gathered wood or
hacked at the soil, but otherwise the world appeared deserted. Robert de
Dunstanville rode at the head of his little retinue on a palfrey, with his iron-
grey destrier thudding along beside him. Adam followed, on a plain rouncey
that Lord Humphrey had provided from his own stable. Two sumpter horses
came behind him laden with baggage, led by a weaselly-looking servant
named Wilecok. At the rear upon a heavy cob was de Dunstanville’s
serjeant, a weathered man-at-arms of uncertain age called John Chyld. His
chin was thick with greying bristles, he wore a grimy linen coif pulled
down to his eyes, and as he rode he chewed on a roasted pig’s foot taken
from the kitchens.
There had been no ceremony to their departure. The castle had still been
in darkness when they left, most of the occupants wrapped in their bedrolls.
Only Natural John had come forth to bid Adam a stammering farewell –
fitting that Lord Humphrey’s fool was the only member of the household to
do so. Adam was strangely moved all the same. In the four days since the
Epiphany feast, he had felt himself frozen out of the community at Pleshey.
Even former friends like Ralph had seemed to avoid him, as if he were
already tainted by whatever curse or malediction Robert de Dunstanville
bore. As if his soul were already blackened.
Now Adam could observe him more closely, he saw that his new master
was around thirty years old, and as lean and hard as a rawhide strap. He was
dressed in cloak and tunic of common dark blue serge, but the sword belted
at his side had a silvered hilt and fittings. As he rode he tugged and teased at
his short beard, or stroked at his moustaches with his thumb, as if he were
lost in complex thoughts. He said nothing, to Adam or to anyone else, for
the first few hours. Only when they were passing through Roding did he
call a halt to rest the horses and break their fast.
‘So,’ he announced, as they sheltered in the lee of a blackthorn thicket
and chewed on their tough bread and smoked ham. ‘You’ll have heard folk
talking about me, back at Pleshey. What did they say?’
 Adam merely shrugged. He heard John Chyld make a kissing sound
against his teeth, and Wilecok was grinning to himself. But if the knight
could be taciturn, so could he.
‘You’re right to be wary of me, boy,’ Robert de Dunstanville said, in a
low tone. ‘I’m a man of fierce and bloody temper, and I do not like to be
crossed. But if there are lies being told of me, I want to know of them. So –
I asked you a question. Speak.’
I will not fear this man, Adam told himself. I will not let him intimidate
me.
‘They say,’ he replied, the words drying his mouth, ‘that you murdered a
priest. And you’re excommunicated.’
Sir Robert barked a laugh. ‘That priest deserved what he got!’ he said.
‘He disrespected my late wife’s memory. The excommunication I paid off
with a pilgrimage to Pontigny last year. What else?’
‘They say you were a captive of the Saracens. And they forced you to
deny Christ.’
For a moment Sir Robert appeared to consider this. ‘True enough, I
was,’ he said with a sniff. ‘But the Saracens never tried to break my faith.
The clergy of this very kingdom have tested it sorely indeed though.’
John Chyld let out a wheezing laugh and shook his head again.
‘And they say . . .’ Adam blurted out, feeling an angry heat rising
through him, ‘that your lands were seized from you, and you roam the earth
like . . . like a carrion dog.’
Robert de Dunstanville gave no reply. He stood plucking and teasing at
his beard, frowning. ‘A carrion dog, eh?’ he said at last. ‘Who says this?
The household knights? The other squires? Who?’
‘Everyone says it,’ Adam told him quietly, hoping that none would catch
the lie.
‘Well, damn them all to hell then!’ de Dunstanville said, baring his teeth
in a mirthless grin. ‘God’s death, let them say what they like! My lands
were seized unjustly, and against all laws and liberties – they know it, and
Lord Humphrey knows it too.’
Wilecok was already packing the food and adjusting the baggage. John
Chyld had swung himself back into the saddle. But Sir Robert was not
finished. ‘A barony I had of my late wife,’ he told Adam, in a strangely mild
tone. ‘But I lost it when she died. My own estate though, a sweet manor that
was my birthright, was taken from me by the connivance of the Bishop of
Hereford – a shepherd who devours his own sheep! – and William de
Valence, Earl of Pembroke, the king’s half-brother . . . You know of them?’
‘I’ve heard their names spoken,’ Adam replied, uncertain.
‘Foreign vermin, both of them,’ de Dunstanville said, ‘that infest the
court of our king, snatching whatever they can. Vermin, who should be
hunted with dogs! And yet good men are blamed for their wiles and ruses.’
Then before Adam could respond he gave an abrupt gesture and
mounted his horse. ‘Many miles to Ware yet,’ he declared, ‘and dusk falls
early.’
They rode onward, an hour and then another, their horses’ hooves
thudding on the road while the wind blustered around them and rattled the
thin branches of the trees. They were almost at Wydford before Sir Robert
spoke again.
‘You must be disappointed, I suppose,’ he said over his shoulder as he
rode. ‘You must have expected better prospects, eh? Maybe thought you’d
be squire to some great lord in time, one like your own father maybe, with
wide estates to inherit?’
‘I have no estates,’ Adam said bleakly. ‘My father died, and my mother
married Hugh de Brayboef. Now she’s dead too, and the lands my father
held of the king were granted to him and his sons.’
‘Brayboef?’ Robert frowned. ‘I know of him. A creature of Peter de
Savoy, is he not? Another foreign court favourite! Well, so we’re well suited
– a landless knight and a landless squire, quite alike.’
‘I’m not like you at all,’ Adam said, anger tightening his shoulders. ‘I
never murdered anyone, let alone a priest!’
‘I didn’t murder the priest – Christ’s bones! I said he deserved to die,
not that I’d killed him. His death was an accident, as the inquest found.’
Adam grunted, uncertain. He still could not tell whether de Dunstanville
was genuinely angered or just taunting him.
‘Anyway, what of my squire, Gerard?’ the knight said, a little further
down the road. ‘You murdered him, didn’t you?’
‘I did not!’ Adam said. ‘His death was an accident – everyone knows it
. . .’
‘But if you didn’t kill him directly, you’d have liked to have done, isn’t
that so? It felt good, didn’t it, beating him like that? Think of it – all those
years of anger and frustration breaking forth . . .’
 ‘No!’ Adam said, appalled by the suggestion. ‘It wasn’t like that at all!
He mocked me . . .’
‘Oh, he mocked you!’ Sir Robert said with a laugh. ‘And forbearance is
no longer considered a virtue?’
‘He mocked my father!’ Adam said. As the chill wind carried away his
words he felt a sudden remorse pouring through him. He should not have
allowed himself to be provoked. De Dunstanville had turned his head, and
Adam was sure the knight was laughing at him. But when he looked back
again a little further down the road, his face was grave.
‘Listen to me,’ he told Adam. ‘I don’t blame you for what you did.
Maybe I’d have done the same. I’m not much good at turning the other
cheek. But we’re more alike than you’ll admit, you and I. And there are
plenty more like us.’
His voice was bitter, every word sawing like a notched blade. ‘Justice is
dead in this kingdom,’ de Dunstanville said. ‘King Henry pours gifts and
favours into the hands of his family and his foreign courtiers, and squanders
the kingdom’s wealth on foolish schemes, while honest men must live in
shame . . .’
Sir Robert bit a curse between his teeth, then punched his fist into his
gloved palm. ‘There’s a fury growing in England now,’ he said. ‘A fury that
none shall suppress – and by God’s death, when it breaks forth it will shake
the throne. And the man who sits upon it.’
Adam sat upright in the saddle, surprised by the passion of de
Dunstanville’s words. He had heard such things said now and again by the
knights of Earl Humphrey’s household, but always in mutters and never
with such force and clarity. The political strife that had raged through the
kingdom these last four years, the struggles for supremacy and control
between King Henry and his barons and great magnates, had seemed far
above his head. But to speak such treason openly was surely reckless, even
dangerous.
‘Lord Humphrey was of a like mind once,’ de Dunstanville went on,
‘but he’s too canny to speak of these matters now. No, these days he keeps
his jaw clamped tight against anything that might sound like sedition. Only
fierce loyalty to the crown will pass his lips! The times are “too delicately
balanced”, he likes to say. But there are others with more fire in their
marrow.’
 And Adam recalled the talk around the tables at the feast of Epiphany –
of Lord Edward, the king’s son, and of the other ‘friend in France’, as Lord
Humphrey had called him. Just for a few moments, he sensed the distant
loom of great events and felt a nervous thrill pass through him. When he
glanced over his shoulder he saw John Chyld watching him with a hard and
calculating eye.
‘However,’ Sir Robert announced with a forced grin, ‘we shall see none
of this, as we’ll be far away overseas, eh! Now let’s get on, there’s only an
hour or so until dusk.’
Adam thought on his strange speech as they rode. The words stirred
something in him that he did not recognise, a yearning for something he had
never known and could not quite discern. But still there was a cold savagery
in Robert de Dunstanville’s attitudes, in his scorn for finer feelings, that
repulsed Adam. No, he told himself – the knight was a ranting fool, blaming
others for his mistakes and misfortunes. Never would Adam accompany
him to France, or anywhere else. Lord Humphrey had committed him to
indentured service as a squire, but at the first opportunity he would slip
away from de Dunstanville and his little retinue and take his chances alone,
far away from here. He had relatives in Hampshire and Wiltshire, and
during his time in Lord Humphrey’s household he had seen a lot of the
Welsh Marches – the marcher barons were always eager for trained men-at-
arms and would ask few questions about his background. Fate had made
him an outcast, but from now on he would make a new fate of his own.
*
The daylight was almost gone by the time they reached the town of
Ware, and a cold hard wind was buffeting in from the north. Adam had
passed through the place several times with Lord Humphrey’s retinue, but
never stayed the night there. The bridge at Ware spanned the river Lea and
carried the old straight road to London; Robert de Dunstanville took a few
moments inspecting it, muttering to himself, and then they rode on through
the marketplace towards the priory. In gathering darkness they turned off
the road and through a gateway, and Adam saw the shape of a large house
before him, a hall with a two-storey chamber at one end and kitchens and
outbuildings at the other. As they dismounted in the yard, men came from
the porch to greet them. There was firelight from within, and the smell of
food; but when he made to follow the others inside, Sir Robert snapped his
fingers and pointed towards the stables.
 ‘You’ll tend to the horses,’ he ordered. ‘You know how to do that?’
‘Of course,’ Adam muttered grudgingly, then gathered the reins and
followed one of the servants across the gloom of the yard. Wilecok was
already attending to the baggage animals, the cob and his own pony, but
Adam was left with de Dunstanville’s destrier and the other two
saddlehorses. In the gloom of the stable, lit only by a single covered lantern,
he unsaddled the animals, removed bits and bridles, combed and rubbed
them down, then saw to their feed and water. He had worked with horses
most of his life, and he knew enough to be careful around the destrier. The
animal seemed as restive and ill-tempered as his master, and it took some
time before Adam could win its trust sufficiently to complete his chores. By
then it was fully dark outside, and the wind was whining around the eaves
of the hall as Adam ran hunched across the yard to the warmth of the porch.
He found Robert de Dunstanville already at his supper, seated at the
long table at the far end of the hall, beyond the central hearth. There were
two young ladies with them – or girls, perhaps, Adam realised as he
approached. Both were well dressed, in fur-trimmed clothes, and he bowed
to them as he approached the table. A shield hung on the wall behind them,
painted with a device he did not recognise: red with a white cinquefoil.
‘This is Adam, my new squire,’ Sir Robert said to the ladies, with a brief
gesture. Then he motioned Adam to sit at the far end of the table and
ordered the servants to bring him food and drink.
A pair of friars, the steward, and the bailiff of the estate were already
seated, and shunted along the benches to give Adam room at the table.
There was an older woman as well, dressed like a nun in plain clothes and a
tight headscarf. The servants brought Adam a thick bread trencher, a white
roll, a dish of potage with pork and venison, and a heavy flagon of fresh ale.
Nobody spoke, and for a while Adam ate in glad silence, feeling the fire’s
warmth on his back and the food spreading comfort through his body.
‘The bridge is damaged again, I see,’ Robert said to the steward,
pushing his empty dish aside. The fire crackled behind them, and his voice
echoed slightly in the dark hall.
‘Yes, sir – it was the men of Hertford,’ the steward said, with an
apologetic wince. ‘They often come in the night and try to dig up the
roadway or collapse the parapets. They argue that our bridge drains all the
trade from theirs, and their tolls are suffering.’
 ‘Your bridge is far better placed, that’s why,’ de Dunstanville said. ‘And
this manor needs those tolls. I’ll ride over to Hertford in the morning with
John Chyld and pull their ears, and see they give you no further trouble.’
Now that his immediate hunger was sated, Adam turned his attention to
the two women that sat with Sir Robert at the far end of the table. They
appeared to be sisters. One was only a child, twelve or so, with flaming red
hair in a thick plait and an open, frank expression. The other was perhaps
two years younger than Adam. She wore her hair bound in a simple linen
fillet, with twin braids the colour of dark copper hanging to her shoulders.
There was something aloof and rather distant in the curve of her lips and
her hooded eyes. On one finger she wore a gold ring, enamelled with the
same white cinquefoil on red as the shield on the wall behind her. Clearly
neither girl was married, though both were of an age to be wed. There was
no sign of a senior man around the house, no father or uncle to watch over
them, and the older woman was apparently not their mother. What, Adam
wondered, were they doing here, living alone in such a place? And why was
the disreputable Robert de Dunstanville looking so comfortable at their
table?
He felt a spike of quick jealousy, and wished it were he that sat with the
women so companionably. He was watching the older girl, almost nervous,
hoping and fearing that she might glance in his direction. But instead it was
the younger one who spoke.
‘What happened to your other squire?’ she asked Robert.
‘Sadly he suffered an accident,’ the knight said. Adam could almost
detect the sneer in his voice. ‘He went on to his eternal reward, I’m afraid.’
The younger girl peered at Adam, lips pursed. ‘I didn’t like the old
squire,’ she said. ‘He resembled a pig, and made a panting sound through
his mouth when he breathed.’
Her sister turned, frowning, and flicked the girl on the shoulder.
‘My dear and well-beloved cousins,’ Robert said to Adam, in a weary
drawl, nodding to them both. ‘The ladies Hawise and Joane de Quincy.
Hopefully we will not have to abuse the hospitality of their house for too
long.’
Adam stood up, the bench shunting noisily from beneath him, and
bowed again. The younger girl, Hawise, stifled a laugh. Adam’s jealousy at
de Dunstanville’s ease and confidence redoubled.
 Shortly afterwards the servants came to clear the dishes from the table,
snuff the candles and lower the cover over the hearth fire for the night. The
two ladies climbed the stairs at the back of the hall to the solar; Adam
almost expected Sir Robert to follow them, but instead the knight kicked
out his bedroll on the floor beside the hearth and wrapped himself in his
blankets with his sword at his side. Soon enough he was snoring, with the
snores of Wilecok, John Chyld and the servants echoing from the far end of
the hall.
Adam lay a while in wakefulness, feeling the ebbing heat from the
hearth and the black cold seeping in from the winter night. When he closed
his eyes, he saw in his mind the young woman’s pale oval face, the hooded
eyes, the simple elegance of her gestures. She had not spoken a word, and it
grieved him that he had not heard her voice. Snapping back from the brink
of fantasy, he told himself not to be foolish. Weariness fogged his mind, and
he slipped down into sleep.
A screen of leaves opened before him like a curtain, and he walked from
dense darkness into sunlight. He was in a meadow beside a brook; a
moment later he recognised the place. Here was the mill, and the lower
paddock, the strip fields and the wooded flank of the hill dark above them.
Years had passed since he was last here, but Adam knew it all so well: his
father’s old manor, where he was born and grew up. Joy flooded through
him as he saw the path through the meadow leading him up towards the
moated enclosure. There was the manor house, the little chapel and the
dovecot, the stables and barn. And inside the house, Adam knew as he
hurried closer, his mother would be waiting for him. His father would be in
the upper paddock, perhaps, exercising the horses, or out hunting along the
valley, but soon he would return.
Adam’s mind stilled, and he noticed the silence all around him. No
figure moved in the sun-drenched countryside. No bird flew overhead. No
smoke curled from the thatch of the kitchen or the main house. All was
empty – all was dead. Gripped by sudden horror, Adam tried to turn back.
But the dream was carrying him onward, towards the dead house and the
darkness within, the scene of all he had lost . . .
He awoke with a cry choking his throat. Ware, he told himself – he was
at Ware, sleeping on the floor beside the dying fire in the hearth. The
strange surroundings had conjured the dream from his disturbed mind, that
was all. But his heart was beating fast, and he lay a long time in the cold
gloom before sleep engulfed him once more.

OceanofPDF.com
 Chapter 3
The tip of his nose felt frozen when he woke. He had rolled further
from the hearth in the night. Sitting up and stretching his limbs, he saw
Wilecok sitting beside the newly lit fire, warming the soles of his shoes.
‘Sir Robert’s already gone for Hertford,’ the servant croaked, then yawned
heavily. ‘Suffice it to say, we’ll not see him back before noon.’
Adam nodded, getting up and rolling his mattress and blankets. Of the
ladies, and the other servants, there was no sign.
Living in the Earl of Hereford’s household, Adam had become
accustomed to noise and activity when he woke, and to the preparations for
morning mass. The stillness of the manor house was uncanny. Throwing his
mantle around his shoulders, he went out into the yard. A bright day met
him, and he squinted as he made his way to the water butt, cracked the skin
of ice and splashed his face and hands. Gasping, he raised his head and
drew a deep breath. The sky was blue and the yard and surrounding land
glittered with frost.
He could not have wished for a better day to make his escape.
The door of the stable was open, but the grooms that usually slept
within had already gone. Robert de Dunstanville’s palfrey was gone too,
and the serjeant’s cob, but the destrier and the other horses remained. There
were other animals in the stalls, which Adam had not noticed in the
darkness the previous evening. An elegant-looking dappled jennet among
them, which he guessed must belong to one of the ladies of the house. The
warm and familiar scents of the stable were a comfort to his nerves, but he
had no time to waste. Robert would return in only a few hours, and he must
be long gone by then. Hertford lay to the west, and he could not go that way
without risking meeting the knight making his return journey. To the east
lay Pleshey, and to the south was the road to London that de Dunstanville
would take later that day. Northward, then, was the only option; Adam had
no idea what lay in that direction.
Putting the thought from his mind, he found the sack of bread and
smoked sausage he had managed to secrete the night before, and the leather
flask of watered wine. He had a short-bladed falchion slung on a baldric, a
change of clothes and a purse with three silver pennies. Hurrying, praying
beneath his breath that the grooms, or still worse Wilecok, would not make
an appearance, he lifted the saddle onto the back of his rouncey and began
fastening the girth straps. In the opposite stall the destrier stirred and
stamped, already sensing departure.
‘You are in haste to leave us, I see,’ a voice said.
Adam jerked upright, leaving the second girth strap hanging. The figure
in the stable doorway was a bar of shadow at first, then as he blinked he
saw the marten-trimmed mantle, the hood thrown back, and the sheen of
copperish hair in the cold light. One of her maids was with her, but hung
back from the doorway.
‘Robert told me that you’ll be away to Waltham as soon as he returns,’
Joane said, walking further into the stable. ‘It’s a shame you have to go so
soon, we see so little company here.’
‘I think he said he wants to reach the coast before the weather changes,’
Adam said, stumbling over the words. His tongue felt thick in his mouth.
Surely she had seen that he was preparing to flee? He turned away quickly
and finished fastening the rouncey’s girth strap. Joane had crossed to the
stall where the jennet was tethered. The horse whickered, stretching its neck
towards her, and she rubbed the nose and chin.
‘A bitter season to be journeying,’ she said. ‘But I suppose you’ll want
to be in Flanders for the beginning of the tournament season?’
Adam could only nod dumbly. He had very little experience of talking
to women, certainly of the higher classes; Earl Humphrey had forbidden
any of his young men to consort with them. He felt his lack of confidence
now, tangling his nerves. A hot breath over his shoulder and he tensed; the
destrier had leaned in to nuzzle at his back.
Joane’s face was silhouetted in profile against the light from the stable
door. ‘Have you attended many tournaments, yourself?’ she asked, rubbing
her horse’s neck. ‘I suppose they must be very spectacular occasions.’
‘No . . . very few,’ Adam managed to say. In truth he had attended none;
there had not been a full-scale tournament in England for years, as King
Henry fervently opposed them. But he had heard all about what they
involved: the initial jousts of the young knights wanting to make a name for
themselves, the great mass charge of the opposing teams and the shattering
clash of lances, then the swirling horseback melee spreading over miles of
country. Spectacular indeed, he thought, and had to remind himself that he
had no intention of attending any tournaments in the near future.
 But he sensed that Joane was merely probing forward in the
conversation. Adam refocussed his attention; he listened carefully, dreading
the sound of hoofbeats from the yard, the voices of the returning men.
‘I don’t know how much Robert has told you of our relationship,’ Joane
said, and again Adam’s pulse jumped, as the jealousy he had felt the night
before spiked inside him. She must have caught his expression, and she
smiled slightly. ‘No, it’s not like that,’ she said quickly. ‘But we think of
him as far more than a mere cousin, Hawise and I. In fact he’s more like an
older brother, or a second father. He’s been our protector these recent
years.’
Adam found it hard to imagine the bristling Robert de Dunstanville as
anyone’s protector, and tried to hide his expression.
‘Oh, I know how he appears,’ Joane said. ‘He can be coarse, and he
lacks gentleness . . . But he has a noble soul, even if he chooses not to show
it. Life has not been easy for him. Believe me when I say that.’
‘I do, my lady,’ Adam said thickly. Confused, he turned away and began
preparing the bit and bridle.
‘My father was killed at a tournament, did you know?’ Joane said, in an
altered tone. Adam turned and straightened, shaking his head.
‘Sir Robert was with him at the time,’ Joane went on. ‘They say, don’t
they, that anyone killed on the tournament field dies excommunicate, and
must be forbidden Christian burial. So the Pope once decreed, I think,
although it seems quite unchristian . . . But father remained alive long
enough for a priest to hear his confession and give him absolution, and his
soul is at peace now, with the Lord. Robert assured us of that.’
‘He’s told me nothing of it,’ Adam said, shrugging. ‘I’m sorry – he’s not
the most talkative of men.’
She laughed, dropping her head, then took several steps towards him. ‘It
would grieve me deeply,’ she said, ‘if Robert were injured or killed. Every
time he goes away overseas I fear the same thing happening to him, but
with nobody to attend him, and to make sure . . .’ Her voice caught
suddenly. ‘To make sure that he dies well, if it comes to it.’
Adam was very aware of her closeness in the dim light of the stable.
The horses stirred and blew around them, and he felt his heart grow still in
his chest.
‘I don’t know why,’ Joane said quietly, ‘but I feel I can put my trust in
you. As soon as I saw you yesterday, I felt it. Will you promise me
something?’
‘Of course,’ Adam said without thinking. He swallowed heavily as she
took his hand. ‘Take care of Robert, in the jousts and the melee,’ she said. ‘I
know he’s reckless and cares little for himself sometimes. Will you be
cautious for him? And if he falls . . . if he is injured, please care for him. For
his body . . . and his soul if it comes to it. Can you swear you will do this?’
‘Upon my oath, my lady. Upon the love of Christ.’
As soon as the words had passed his lips he burned with remorse. How
could he swear such a thing? Her voice, her presence, compelled him. For a
moment he could not breathe and felt his blood burning in his body.
‘Would you . . . pray with me?’ she asked quietly.
‘What – here?’ He imagined them both dropping to kneel on the stable
floor.
‘Of course not!’ She laughed, sounding nervous. ‘I have a Psalter and
breviary in the house, that my father left me. You can read?’
‘Latin and a little French, if the script is good.’
Adam cursed himself as he followed her from the stable into the chilly
blaze of daylight. A promise made under duress, to a woman he did not
know and would surely never see again . . . But an oath nevertheless. Could
he break it, and live with himself? His teeth were set against the cold, biting
back remorse.
‘It’s strange,’ the woman said as she led him to a heavy door of studded
oak at the far end of the house, ‘I’ve been several times to Pleshey while the
earl has been in residence, and I’ve never seen you, I think.’
‘I was seldom there myself,’ Adam told her, trying to unclamp his jaw.
‘Mostly I served at his other estates. In the Welsh Marches, and at
Caldicot.’
‘Then you’ll know his son, Humphrey the Younger?’ she asked, pausing
in the doorway. ‘He’s often in the Marches, isn’t he?’
‘Only by sight, my lady, and not for several years.’ Adam frowned,
remembering the earl’s son. A vain and haughty man, crude and arrogant in
his behaviour, and far too superior to pay any attention to junior squires.
Joane nodded, distracted, her features clouding for a moment, then she
visibly blinked away the thought. Pushing the studded door wide, she led
Adam into a dim stone-flagged room with heavy ceiling beams. She spread
a rug on the flagstones, then knelt and opened a leather-covered chest
decorated with brass nail-heads. From inside she took an object wrapped in
silk. When she drew aside the wrappings Adam saw it was a book, with
tooled leather covers and gold clasps. Joane kissed it, then laid it on a low
wooden lectern and gestured for Adam to kneel beside her.
‘I would never ask Robert to do this,’ she said with a brief smile, as
Adam knelt and crossed himself. For a moment he pictured the knight’s
mocking sneer, and tensed.
The book was old, the binding loose in places, but each leaf was
beautifully lettered and illustrated, with rich inks and gilding that caught the
light from the small barred window. Together they recited the Paternoster
and the Benedictus, Adam barely conscious of his own voice but hearing
only her words, the sounds of her breath. She turned the leaves, her fingers
smoothing the vellum, and together they recited the psalms, and the
itinerarium prayer from the breviary. Nihil proficiat inimicus in nobis . . . Et
filius iniquitatis non apponat nocere nobis.
As they sat in silent prayer Adam was all too aware of the warmth of her
body, so close beside him. His breath caught as she took his hand, and he
felt the subtle pressure of her grip. ‘Thank you,’ she said.
He turned to her, all words driven from his mind, but at that point there
came the sound of voices from the hall, the stamp of feet and whinnying of
horses from the yard outside. The two of them got up quickly, and by the
time Joane had wrapped the book and locked it safely back in the chest,
Adam had already left the room.
*
The whole household assembled in the yard to watch them depart. The
steward and bailiff, the priests and the elderly nun and all the servants stood
at a respectful distance as the ladies of the house, Joane and Hawise, said
their farewells. The day was still clear and bright, the air cold, and Adam sat
bundled in his cloak on the back of his restive horse. Robert de
Dunstanville embraced both women, then swung himself up onto the
saddle. Wilecok and John Chyld were already mounted, the baggage
packed. Adam noticed that the younger sister, Hawise, was sniffing back
tears.
‘I’ll send word from France, when I know the date of my return,’ Sir
Robert said. He had an evasive air.
‘You won’t be back for years, will you?’ Joane replied. She shivered and
drew her cloak tighter around her shoulders.
 Robert just shrugged and tossed at his reins. John Chyld nodded and
urged his cob forward, leading the way.
‘Wait,’ Joane said, and reached inside her cloak. A long glance at
Robert, but it was Adam’s horse she approached. Standing at his knee, she
took his hand and pressed the keepsake into his palm. A circular silver
medal on a leather cord. St Christopher: protector of travellers.
‘Remember,’ she said.
Adam did not dare look back as they rode away. John Chyld was
warbling a song, half beneath his breath, but Robert de Dunstanville rode
silently with his head down. Back through the town they went, then they
crossed the bridge and started down the long straight highway that followed
the Lea valley to London.
‘So it appears you’ve turned my cousin’s head,’ Sir Robert said after a
while, not looking back. Adam made no reply.
The knight laughed. ‘Not surprising, I suppose. The last young man of
any decent breeding that she saw was my old squire Gerard. As you can
imagine, he failed to impress.’
Adam remained unmoved. He could almost detect in Robert now the
same jealousy he had felt the evening before, and tried hard not to appear
too pleased with himself. He had already deposited the keepsake medallion
in his saddle bag. Even so, as he rode further an uncomfortable feeling
began settling over him that Joane de Quincy had entrapped him somehow.
He had believed what she had told him utterly; only now did he begin to
suspect that he had been subtly manipulated.
‘Her mother was a princess of the Welsh, you know,’ Robert de
Dunstanville said, glancing back at Adam and raising a sardonic eyebrow.
‘A daughter of Llywelyn the Great, and granddaughter of old King John too
– royal blood flows in my cousin’s veins. And she and her sister are wards
of our uncle Roger, Earl of Winchester and Constable of Scotland. So best
put any hot and wanton thoughts you might be entertaining far from your
mind!’
‘I never . . .’ Adam began, but outrage closed his mouth. He felt himself
blushing fiercely and heard the laughter of the two servants. Could it be, he
thought, that Joane had simply been mistaken about de Dunstanville?
‘No, she’s got a good soul, Joane de Quincy,’ the knight went on, after
they had ridden a way further. ‘Not like me. Mind you, they say her mother
poisoned her first husband . . . Luckily she takes after her father.’
 ‘She told me you were with her father when he died,’ Adam said,
wanting to shift the conversation away from Joane, and from himself.
‘I was. He was killed at a tournament at Blythe, a good few years ago.
In the first charge, it was – a lance struck his shield and slid up over the rim.
The point went under his helmet edge and broke his mail coif just beneath
the jaw – which goes to demonstrate that you should always keep your head
down behind your shield in the charge. Don’t flinch away from your
opponent’s lance . . . Anyway, it killed him instantly.’
‘You told her he had time to hear absolution!’ Adam said.
‘Sometimes,’ Robert said firmly, ‘you tell people what they need to
hear. Understand?’ He raised his hand and stabbed his finger at Adam. ‘If
that girl ever hears otherwise, you’ll suffer for it!’
Another mile passed before Sir Robert spoke again. The day had grown
darker, and a damp wind was hissing through the wiry bushes on the
riverbanks.
‘I was squire to her father,’ he said, ‘when I was around the age you are
now. I went with him to the Holy Land. He was the man who knighted me,
in fact.’
‘He did you a great honour,’ Adam said, wary of Sir Robert’s friendlier
tone.
‘Ha! Not really,’ de Dunstanville said. ‘We were prisoners of the
Saracens by then, and they were killing all the squires, so it seemed merely
humane. Mind you, once you’ve seen the flower of French nobility puking
and shitting themselves to death on the banks of the Nile, knighthood
doesn’t seem quite as glamorous . . .’
Adam made a noise of disgust. ‘Why must you drag everything down
into the filth?’ he exclaimed, before he could stop himself. ‘Since yesterday
I’ve heard you malign the Pope, the Church, the king and his courtiers, Earl
Humphrey . . . even knighthood itself! You abandon ladies who regard you
as their protector, and ride off to tournament . . . Do you hold nothing
sacred at all?’
De Dunstanville tugged at his reins, and with a swift sidestep his horse
closed on Adam’s, the knight reaching out and seizing the bunched cloak at
his shoulder. ‘Listen to me!’ he growled, all humour scoured from his voice.
‘I care for little in this world, true enough. But those two girls back at Ware
are more precious to me than my soul! Their father died quickly, as I said,
but he made me swear that if he fell I would protect them, and so I will. If
either were harmed, I would hunt the man who did it to the very deepest of
the seven hells and rend the flesh from his bones!’
Adam had flinched in the saddle. Now he took Robert’s hand and eased
it from his cloak. ‘Peace, sir,’ he said. ‘I give you my word, I do not doubt
you.’
‘Good!’ the knight declared, and grinned. He tugged at his reins and
started off along the road, then halted once more. ‘At least,’ he said,
‘whatever promises my cousin wrung out of you seem to have persuaded
you not to run away. Or are you just planning to do that later?’
Adam stared, wide-eyed, cursing his carelessness. Of course, Sir Robert
would have noticed the horse already saddled in the stable, the sack of
provisions laid ready. Adam had been so distracted, he had forgotten to
cover his tracks.
‘Listen, boy,’ de Dunstanville said, his tone hardening again as he
turned to gaze back at Adam. ‘I’ll have no unwilling followers with me,
understand? If you want to go, go now – no need for skulking and hiding.
I’m no easy master, I know that, and this is no easy road. Our way lies
overseas, to the tournaments. To the school of warfare. I can’t promise you
much – fame and glory, if you’re lucky. Pain and death, if not. And burial in
unhallowed ground. But you might at least win more than those three silver
pennies in your purse.’
The clouds shifted, and hard winter sunlight flooded the road. Adam
turned in the saddle and squinted back the way they had come. He looked at
Sir Robert again, and felt the promise he had made to Joane de Quincy
weighing heavy on his soul.
‘Choose, then,’ Robert said. ‘Go in peace, and I’ll not pursue you. Or
follow me, with a true heart and your eyes open.’

OceanofPDF.com
 Chapter 4
They entered London at noon the next day, to the clamour of bells.
Passing through the great arch of Bishop’s Gate, they heard the sonorous
chimes of the distant cathedral bell sounding the hour of sext, and a
heartbeat later the bells of St Botolph’s Without rang from behind them.
Then, as they rode on into the packed thoroughfare of Bishopsgate Street,
came the bells of St Ethelburga’s, St Helen’s and St Martin’s Otteswich, and
each of the hundred other churches in the city following the last at a slight
delay, until all the chiming notes rang together and the air reverberated with
metallic tumult.
‘Praise God!’ John Chyld cried as he rode, raising his arms to the noisy
sky. ‘His mercy upon London!’ And he let out a loud belch.
Earl Humphrey had come often to this city, and to nearby Westminster
Palace when the king was in residence there, but Adam had never
accompanied him through the gates. He had seen other cities and large
towns: Bristol and Gloucester, Salisbury and Hereford. But never had he
seen such a dense and teeming accumulation of people as he saw now. Fifty
thousand of them lived within the circuit of London’s ancient walls, so
Wilecok had muttered that morning as they were leaving the abbey lodgings
at Waltham. And Adam could almost believe that entire number were
packed into Bishopsgate Street, or in the narrow alleys that opened like
cracks between the gable-ended houses to either side. A blue haze of smoke
hung overhead, shot through with beams of winter sunlight.
‘Keep your wits about you, young sir,’ Wilecok said, riding alongside
Adam. ‘These Londoners are crafty folk. I should know, suffice it to say –
being as I was one of them!’
Adam nodded, reaching beneath his cloak to check the purse and knife
hanging from his belt. His eyes open, his heart true, he tried to digest all
that he saw around him, as Wilecok announced each new street and district
through which they passed. The smell alone was almost overpowering; a
fug of warm bodies and charcoal fumes and cooking food, and a stink of
rotting filth, with various unidentifiable sweeter scents rising through it all.
Robert de Dunstanville and his retinue were the only ones on horseback
among the crowd, and at the sight of his champing destrier and the mounted
men following him, the mass of people parted to let them through. Only the
dogs disputed their passage, barking and weaving around the hooves of the
horses.
They rode into the open area by the Stocks Market, where the ground
was runnelled with blood and piss and marshy with the trampling of beasts.
On into Poultry, and Adam saw wicker cages of chickens and geese stacked
high, the squawking and honking of the fowl adding to the cacophony. A
group of women were lugging wet clothes from a slopping basin, and as he
rode past, the prettiest of them smiled and winked at him, pulling up her
skirts to show her legs. She called out to him, but he did not catch her
words.
‘You’ve made another conquest, I see!’ said Robert.
Adam blushed, glancing away quickly.
‘Oh, not so fond of women, perhaps? Has my cousin wasted her favour
on barren soil?’ Robert laughed. ‘Or did Lord Humphrey have you all living
like monks, is that it? The sight of a woman makes you bashful?’
Wilecok was cackling to himself, leering and doffing his greasy hat at
any woman he saw, but Adam held his tongue and kept his head down as
they rode on through the crowded market.
They passed Mercers Hall and the tanners’ market, and came into
Westcheap, by far the widest city street Adam had ever seen and almost
filled with market stalls and booths. A short way further and Robert led
them aside into a much narrower thoroughfare, lined with buildings that
leaned close above them and almost shut out the daylight. After the tumult
of Westcheap it was like entering a cave. Near the end of the narrow street
Robert turned again, guiding his horse through an arched gate that led to a
covered passageway. Adam followed behind him, and they emerged into a
cobbled yard surrounded by brick and timber buildings. A wooden stairway
rose to the portal of a hall on the upper storey.
‘Master Elias of Nottingham, my man of business,’ Robert told Adam as
he dismounted, indicating the neatly dressed man waiting at the head of the
stairs. ‘We’ll stay here tonight, as there are matters I need to discuss with
him. You’ll go with Wilecok to buy provisions – be sure to return here with
them before vespers.’
He took a heavy pouch of coin from his saddlebag and tossed it to the
servant, who snatched it as it flew. Then, without another glance at Adam,
Robert turned and climbed the stairs towards Elias, who stood with arms
spread to greet him.
 *
They bought dried peas and smoked sausage, a wheel of hard cheese
and a tub of mutton grease, and a keg of English ale that Wilecok claimed
should last them till Dover. ‘After that,’ he said, ‘we’ll be drinking that piss-
and-water brew the Frenchies make.’
Adam quickly realised that his principal task was to make sure that
Wilecok did not slip too many coins into his own purse, and to manage the
laden packhorse that carried their purchases. Anything more would have
been beyond him, amid the confusion of thronging people and animals, and
the strange sights that surrounded them. Wilecok took him along Westcheap
and Poultry, and as far east as Leadenhall, then back again to the great
cathedral of St Paul’s, all the time haggling and chaffing in a bewildering
mixture of bad French, several English dialects, and half a dozen other
languages that Adam had never heard before.
‘Raisins,’ the servant declared, slinging a jar of them into Adam’s arms.
‘The master does love them so – his only luxury! If he’s ever at cross
purposes, just feed him raisins.’
They bought a sheaf of tallow candles, spare straps and buckles, fire
irons and a new cooking pot, a big canvas tent and a smaller one, with rolls
of rush matting to go inside them, bow-strings and arrow heads, needles and
thread, and several bolts of red and white cloth to make surcoats. They ate
hot meat pies from a huckster’s tray and washed them down with mugs of
fresh ale from a booth beneath the bell tower of St Paul’s.
‘I’d be careful what you eat tonight, young sir, if you catch my hook,’
Wilecok said, as he led Adam up Paternoster Street towards the city wall. ‘I
wouldn’t even stay beneath that roof myself!’
‘How do you mean?’ Adam asked, frowning.
Wilecok gave him a quizzical stare, then grinned. ‘Ah, you don’t even
know it! Well, I shouldn’t be the one to tell . . . Just take a look in the
screens passage, and use your head. I wouldn’t let anything pass my lips in
that place, suffice it to say!’
Adam blinked at the man, baffled. If Wilecok was playing games with
him, he would indulge the servant no further. They passed through the city
wall at Ludgate, and went down the slope and across the Fleet Bridge to
Farringdon Without. At an armourer’s workshop beside St Bride’s chapel
they collected a full mail hauberk, leg armour and a great helm that Sir
Robert had left there several months before to be repaired. Wilecok also
bought a selection of heavy iron lance heads. ‘Pointless to buy the staves,’
he explained. ‘They break so many of them in the hastiludes, we’re better
off cutting our own ash rods once we’re across the seas.’
Back over the Fleet with their laden packhorse, they were in the shadow
of Ludgate when Wilecok paused. He took out the purse and weighed the
few remaining coins within it, then stuffed it into his tunic and grinned. ‘I’ll
let you find your own way home, eh?’ he told Adam. ‘I’m off to acquaint
myself with the good women of Smithfield. Just go on through the gate and
keep the cathedral to your right hand – follow the road around to Westcheap
and you’ll see the way easy from there. And remember . . .’ He tapped the
side of his nose with a gnarled finger, then traced a cross over his sealed
lips.
*
It was getting dark by the time Adam found his way back to the house
of Master Elias, after several wrong turnings. Several times he had
wondered what Wilecok’s strange warning could mean, but the thought had
been driven from his mind as he tried to navigate the packed London streets
with a heavily burdened packhorse. Only when he had stabled the animal
and safely stowed all the day’s purchases in the locked storage chamber did
he think on those words again.
A servant opened the thick oak door at the head of the stairs. Once
inside the gloomy panelled passageway Adam took his time unfastening his
cloak and taking off his mud-spattered shoes, glancing around him all the
while. Nothing caught his eye. Voices came from the hall beyond the inner
door: Sir Robert and another. There were capes and outdoor mantles
hanging from pegs beside the door, and when the servant stepped outside
for a moment Adam shifted them aside, thinking they might conceal
something. He saw only the wood panelling, but as the capes dropped back
he noticed that each had a pair of rectangular linen patches stitched to the
breast. The servant returned and showed Adam into the hall.
Robert de Dunstanville was sitting beside the central hearth, drinking
wine and playing chess with his host. Master Elias of Nottingham was a
small man, with a quick confident smile and a beard teased into two forks.
Robert made the introductions, and both Adam and Elias made their bows.
‘An improvement, I think, on your last young man,’ Elias said. ‘And the
one before that – the Hainauter. Whatever happened to him?’
 ‘He fell sick and died in Flanders, when last I was there,’ Robert said.
‘But yes, I certainly hope that young Adam de Norton here makes a better
squire than either of my last ones.’
Adam tried to smile, but felt very uncomfortable. He had already
worked out that Gerard had only been with Robert de Dunstanville a matter
of months before his untimely end. The news that the previous squire had
also departed his life early deepened his unease.
A bell sounded in the passage, and servants began carrying the dishes
into the hall for the evening supper. They set them on a large table at the far
end of the chamber, with candles burning on tall iron stands to either side.
Once Adam had joined Robert and Elias at the table a woman joined them,
appearing from an inner room. She was in her mid-twenties, tall and
elegantly dressed, with very dark eyes and a married woman’s headcloth
covering her hair; Elias’s wife, Adam guessed. Sir Robert introduced her as
Belia.
The meal was roast goose in a rich-smelling saffron sauce, and they said
no grace before eating. Adam was sharing his mess platter with Robert, but
every time he glanced at the meat he thought of the honking fowl in the
Poultry market and his stomach contracted. Wilecok’s sly warning revolved
in his mind, and he sat sullenly picking at the bread roll beside him, which
was surely inoffensive enough.
‘I’ve had messages back from Jacob, and from Hagin,’ Elias said as he
ate, ‘and they’ve agreed to your request. They’ll come in with me on the
loan, and we can draw up the chirograph and the other documents and have
them witnessed tomorrow before you leave.’
‘From my heart, I thank you,’ Robert replied, inclining his head. ‘You’ll
be more than pleased with the repayment, I hope.’
‘I hope so too! And for that, we must pray to God for a keen lance and a
swift sword, eh?’ Elias mimed a couched lance, galloped a little in his seat,
then laughed and drank more wine. ‘And maybe,’ he went on, ‘if you are
lucky, you’ll meet with Lord Edward on your travels too? He could
certainly aid matters, I think.’
‘That remains to be seen,’ Robert said. ‘But I’ll drink to my chances.’
‘Certainly I would prefer him to the other one we mentioned,’ Elias said
with a frown. ‘We have heard no good reports about him.’
‘Earl Simon has learned from his mistakes, I’m sure,’ Robert said. ‘You
should have no concerns about him now.’
 Elias’s frown remained, and the silence lengthened.
‘Your squire must be eager to prove himself on the tourney field as
well,’ the woman, Belia, said from the far end of the table. She was sitting
with one of the candle-sconces behind her, so Adam could not make out her
expression, but he could detect the odour of her perfume. Sweet like roses,
he thought, or musk. Her voice was deeper than he had expected, and there
was a strange warmth to her tone.
Sir Robert turned to Adam and raised an eyebrow. ‘Yes,’ Adam said,
almost coughing the word. ‘I’m . . . very eager.’
‘Hopefully his appetite will improve by the time he reaches Flanders,’
Elias said, ‘or he’ll waste away before the first trumpet sounds!’
‘You must excuse my new squire,’ said Robert, with a touch of gravel in
his voice. ‘Until lately he has dwelt in the household of the Earl of
Hereford. Not a place known for its social finesse.’
Adam saw the flash of Belia’s teeth in the shadows as she laughed, then
she raised her wine cup again. ‘I’m sure you are the man to teach him, Sir
Robert,’ she said.
When the meal was done, Adam went to his bedroll hungry and
disturbed. Robert had described Elias as his man of business, but he was
clearly a moneylender. Hardly a respectable profession, but the knight had
spoken and joked with Elias as an equal, and with his wife as well. The
meaning of Wilecok’s warning was growing clearer to Adam now, although
he could not bring himself to put a name to his fears just yet. He lay down
beside the embers of the hearth, with Robert stretched on the far side and
the servants sleeping at the other end of the hall near the door. Elias and
Belia had retired to the inner chamber.
For a long time Adam lay in the darkness as the dying heat from the
hearth ebbed and the dark chamber filled with cold. He was listening for
Robert’s snore, but heard nothing; when he opened his eyes and craned his
head he caught the gleam of firelight reflected from the knight’s open eye.
Quickly he dropped his head, closed his eyes, and willed himself to sleep.
He must have dozed for a short while, but he snapped awake again
suddenly, disorientated in the dark. Lying motionless, he stilled his heart
and shortened his breath, listening into the midnight silence. The creak of a
door, then the sound of a tread on the floorboards. Opening one eye, Adam
peered into the gloom, and a moment later made out a shadowed form
crossing the floor. His breath stopped completely. The figure was wrapped
in a dark cape or blanket, and advanced as far as the hearth where Sir
Robert lay. Then Adam caught the smell of roses and musk, keen and
distinct, and he understood.
Eyes closed, he heard the rustle of cloth and the whispered words. The
straw of Robert’s bedroll rasped slightly. When he dared himself to look
again, Adam saw the woman kneeling beside Robert, then straddling him.
Her unbound hair tumbled in black curls over her naked shoulders, and the
last glow from the hearth lit the curve of her breast and the dark whorl of
her nipple. Then she lowered herself over him, and her hair covered them
both like a cloak.
Adam had heard the sounds that people made during sex often enough
before. Several times, sleeping in communal halls, he had heard the
servants rutting in the shadows, and sometimes one of the less scrupulous of
his fellow squires rutting too. But this was different. He closed his eyes,
tried to dull his ears, as if the sense of burning shame that flooded him
could be stoppered up. But still he heard the breathy sighs, the whispered
words and the gasps of urgent pleasure that sounded almost like pain.
When he opened his eyes at last the woman was gone, but the trace of
her scent lingered in the air, mingling with the smell of the cold ashes in the
hearth.
*
It was mid-morning before Robert de Dunstanville and his retinue
departed the house of Master Elias. A wet grey morning, with thin rain
slicking the cobbles and dripping from the low eaves. Sir Robert was
clearly in a foul mood, and neither Adam nor the servants said anything to
him as they saddled the horses and piled the baggage onto the sumpter
beasts. Elias bade his farewell from the head of the stairs, but Robert only
raised his hand and grunted. Of Belia there was no sign.
They rode along the bedraggled length of Westcheap and Poultry, then
moved onward through districts that Adam had not seen before, forging a
path through the crowds at the junctions and spattering mud from the
puddles with the hooves of their horses. Some time later they passed
through a gateway, and Adam spied brown water between the houses
packed on either side of the street. They were crossing London Bridge, he
realised. Only when they were on the far bank, riding on through
Southwark with open ground before them, did he jog his horse forward to
join Robert de Dunstanville.
 ‘You might have told me,’ he said.
Sir Robert flicked a glance from beneath his hood, but said nothing.
‘They were Jews, weren’t they?’ Adam went on.
‘Oh, you noticed? I thought you were picking at your food strangely.
What did you think – they’d poison you? Feed you unchristian goose?’
‘But . . . they were Jews,’ Adam said, baffled. For as long as he could
remember he had heard tales of the curse upon the Jewish people, of their
vicious customs and crimes, the hatred that all good Christians should feel
towards them. When he was a child his mother had told him of the wicked
things the Jews would do to him, if he did not say his prayers. ‘It’s a crime
even to associate with them,’ he said. ‘And they . . . they have the blood of
Christ on—’
‘On what?’ Robert demanded suddenly, reining his horse so hard it
almost reared. ‘Do you hear what you’re saying, boy? You dare to speak
like this to me, one who’s been signed with the cross? One who’s shed his
own blood in the Holy Land?’
Adam halted beside him, his face burning. He realised now that he had
never before witnessed Robert de Dunstanville’s true wrath. Only now was
he seeing a flicker of the man’s anger fully unleashed. Fear flowed up his
spine, and he tried not to quail.
‘Oh yes, you’ll have heard a few things,’ Sir Robert went on, grinding
the words and spitting them forth. ‘Up there at Pleshey, and in Earl
Humphrey’s hall. Things the priests have told you, eh? You have a few
notions, I’m sure . . . But I’ve seen the world, boy. I’ve seen things done by
good Christian men that would cause Christ himself to hide his face and
weep. And more noble things by far done by Jews, and by Saracens too,
than by any Christian!’
Adam tried to reply but could only stammer. From the corner of his eye
he saw Wilecok shrugging and shaking his head.
‘As for Master Elias,’ Robert went on, shaking himself like a dog
shucking off water, ‘I have known him many years. He’s written me bills of
exchange, to present to his colleagues overseas, that will grant me the funds
I need to support us. We trust each other, and he’s as good and true a friend
as any man I know.’
‘And yet . . .’ Adam went on, unable to hold back. ‘And yet you lie with
his wife?’
 ‘Ha!’ Robert cried, and drew a long, pained breath. ‘Belia’s not his wife,
you fool. She’s his sister. His widowed sister. And I have known her for
many years too, from when my wife and her husband both still lived. And
while they lived, I promise you, we laid not a finger upon each other!’
‘But now,’ Adam said, his words halting as he frowned. ‘Now, you’re
free to do as you please?’
‘If only it were so simple! By the laws of her people and mine we
cannot. If we were discovered, the harm would be greater for her than for
me. Elias is aware of it, of course, but he is a good man and says nothing
. . . And this, God knows, is why I have to go overseas. Go, and not return
for as long as I can, and hope that when I do she is safely married again and
far away, and this dangerous madness will die.’
‘Then you and she . . .?’ Adam began.
Sir Robert nodded, slumped in the saddle of his motionless horse. The
rain dripped from his hood and caught in droplets in his beard. He gave a
quick sour laugh, filled with anguish. ‘Did you think,’ he said, ‘that love is
like they tell it in the romances, and the songs of Arthur? That the good
knight rescues the Christian maiden from her tower, and all ends in
marriage? Life, you’ll find, is seldom so convenient.’
Then he jogged his horse forward once more, and they rode on towards
the sea.

OceanofPDF.com
 Chapter 5
‘God damn you, you great briny bastard!’ John Chyld yelled, raising
his fist to the waves. The stiff breeze blew his words back at him, and the
sea answered with a blast of freezing spray. Clambering up from the open
hold, Adam stood beside the serjeant, clutching the rail as the ship slid
across the crest of the wave and plunged downwards once more. A fresh
swell of nausea rose from his gut, and he fought it back. They had left
Dover at daybreak on the land breeze, with the promise of a swift passage
across to Wissant. But now, nearly eight hours later and with the light
fading, they were still battling against heavy currents and shifting winds as
they tried to beat south-eastwards towards Boulogne instead.
Adam had seen the estuary of the Severn, where the waters stretched to
the horizon, but his first sight of the open sea at Dover had been daunting
all the same. It was particularly daunting in this winter season, when the
gales blew up and down the straits with seldom a calm, whipping the cold
grey waves into spumy whitecaps. It had taken Robert de Dunstanville four
days to locate a ship which was preparing to make the dangerous winter
crossing. The St Bride the Virgin was an aging half-decked nef; when Adam
had first seen her in the harbour at Dover he had thought her a sturdy and
substantial craft, with her broad clinker-built hull, towering single mast and
timber castles at bow and stern. Now, wallowing in the open sea, she
seemed as fragile as a bean pod. Down in the open hold the horses rolled
their eyes and hauled against their tethers as the bilgewater slopped around
their hooves, and with every rise and fall of the deck the other passengers
cried and groaned, wailing prayers for their salvation.
Adam felt the icy sting of the breeze on his face, and his fingers went
instinctively to the St Christopher’s medallion he wore around his neck,
hanging just inside his tunic. Both he and John Chyld had tin pilgrim
badges pinned to their cloaks as well, bought at the shrine of St Thomas
Becket in Canterbury. Robert had paused there for a day to hear Sunday
mass in the cathedral, and they had all visited the martyr’s tomb and prayed
for a safe crossing of the sea. Adam had no idea whether St Thomas had any
power over the elements or the billowing of the open water; putting his trust
in St Christopher seemed the better option.
 Keeping a grip on the slippery windward railing, he made his way aft
towards the sheltered area beneath the stern castle. Robert de Dunstanville
was sitting in the gap between two kegs, with his cloak pulled tightly
around him and his sword across his knees. His mood had been so foul ever
since arriving at Dover that only John Chyld had dared speak to him. He
made no response now as Adam greeted him and lowered himself to squat
against the keg beside him.
‘The shipman says we may yet reach Boulogne before nightfall,’ Adam
said, his jaw aching from the cold. ‘But we may have to put back to
Winchelsea if we cannot get any further east.’
Robert flicked a glance at him from beneath lowered eyebrows. ‘Is that
so?’ he said in an ironic tone. Obviously he had heard exactly the same
news.
‘I believe I should apologise to you properly,’ Adam said, clearing his
throat. ‘For the things I said as we were leaving Southwark last week. I
know you implied the matter was settled, but—’
‘You’ve been thinking on your mortality, I suppose,’ Robert broke in,
‘and want to make amends, eh? If it’s absolution you want, talk to them,’ he
said, gesturing to the little knot of Franciscan friars who knelt in fervent
prayer on the aft deck, their wet grey cassocks billowing in the wind.
‘There’s much I do not know about the world, I realise that,’ Adam went
on, undeterred. The ship gave a lurch, the deck plunging, and his stomach
plunged with it. Another chorus of anguished cries came from the
passengers. ‘I’m eager to learn,’ he said queasily, mastering himself, ‘if I
get the chance.’
Sir Robert joined his hands in a gesture of prayer and raised his eyes to
the angry sky. Adam took a few moments to settle himself more securely
against the kegs. Although he was now committed to following the knight,
he still could not fully trust him, or warm to his grim attitudes and sardonic
humour. Even so, despite himself, he was becoming strangely fascinated by
Robert de Dunstanville. There was far more, he suspected, that he still did
not know about the man and his shadowy past.
‘Back in London,’ he said, raising his voice against the whine of the
wind and the deep groaning of the timbers, ‘Master Elias suggested that you
hoped to meet Lord Edward in France. Somebody at Pleshey mentioned his
name as well, I remember. But I do not understand why.’
 ‘Edward is a great lover of tournaments,’ Robert said with a dismissive
shrug. ‘He often spends half the year overseas. It’s not unlikely we shall
meet him, and perhaps he might permit me to join his retinue.’
‘But Master Elias seemed to give it a special significance,’ Adam said.
‘As if it would be important for you in particular.’
‘By the head of St John!’ the knight exclaimed. ‘Can you not work it out
for yourself? Lord Edward is the king’s eldest son, his heir. And he has
been, at certain times, far more inclined towards reform and justice than his
father will ever be. But he is a dangerous man, mercurial and proud. He is
known to reward those close to him, and punish any who fail to give him
respect.’
‘So by joining his tournament retinue you might gain him as a patron?’
‘Something like that, if luck is with us.’ Robert shrugged again. ‘We
might better help our prospects in France than by staying in England.’
‘We, you say?’ Adam asked, startled. He had not considered that he too
might have a part in Sir Robert’s plans.
‘Of course,’ the knight replied. ‘You want to claim your lands back too,
don’t you? By placing ourselves in Lord Edward’s good graces, we both
might prosper. But if Edward cannot help us, there could perhaps be another
who can.’
Robert’s expression clouded, as if he were unwilling to say more, but
then he raised his head, suddenly alert, and peered along the deck. The prow
of the ship rose and crested the next wave, and along the grey horizon
appeared the smudged shape of the coastline, and the distant breakwater of
Boulogne harbour.
‘Land, sweet God be praised!’ one of the friars declared, raising his
hands to the heavens, before a spray of cold spume blew across the deck
and almost knocked him off his feet.
*
From Boulogne they rode east and then south for the town of Arras. The
early tournament season, Robert said, would begin at any moment; it was
the last week of January, and already the heralds would be carrying word of
the dates and venues from one town to the next. At Arras they would wait
and prepare themselves, training for what lay ahead, until the
announcement of the first tourneys reached them.
Since boyhood Adam had been schooled in the exercises of arms: riding
and fighting from horseback, charging with couched lance against the
quintain, jousting against another rider, and taking falls from the saddle. But
never had he trained as hard as Robert directed, during that journey to Arras
and in the week that followed. Every evening he staggered to his bed with
aching muscles and bruised limbs, only to rise before matins and begin it all
again. Robert de Dunstanville himself had changed since arriving on the
continent; his mood had lifted, just as his temper had shortened. Like a
battle-trained horse, he seemed to sense the proximity of violence.
‘What are the principal virtues of knighthood?’ he asked Adam after
supper on their first evening at Arras, swigging the sour gritty wine in the
gloomy hall of the inn. There was a chessboard between them, and he had
already won two games.
‘Courage and prowess,’ Adam said promptly, ‘loyalty and honour . . .’
He had spent his youth listening to tales of chivalry, and knew the virtues
well.
‘Exactly!’ Robert declared, raising a finger.
‘Generosity of spirit, courtesy, a frank and honest bearing . . .’ Adam
went on, scratching at the flea bites on his arms.
‘Yes, yes, that’s enough,’ Robert said, before he could continue further.
‘And where would one best find these virtues displayed?’
‘On . . . a tournament field?’ Adam suggested. He picked up one of his
pawns, frowned, and set it down on the board again.
‘Yes!’ Robert said with a grin. He took another swig of wine. ‘The
tourney,’ he went on in a didactic tone, propping his elbows on the table, ‘is
the ideal venue for the perfection of knightly virtue. The initial jousts
display the courage and skill at arms of the younger men. Then the cry of
the trumpets, the shattering of lances when the lines converge, the glorious
frenzy of the melee . . . all display fortitude and loyalty to one’s team and
leader. And, of course,’ he said, raising a finger, ‘honour in acknowledging
defeat and paying ransom, should it come to that.’ He casually moved his
bishop across the board, trapping Adam’s king in échec.
‘So if tournaments are such displays of virtue and nobility,’ Adam
asked, ‘why do the kings of England and France so often try to ban them?
Why does the Church anathemise them?’
‘Kings fear any gathering of armed men that do not follow their own
banner, and owe allegiance solely to their rule,’ Robert said with a shrug.
‘They believe that the tournaments breed pride and independent spirits in
their subjects. Which is true enough. As for the Church – they fear that on
the tournament field men might see something more glorious even than
God!’
And Adam, his ears burning from the blasphemy, poured more wine
from the jug. Despite his misgivings, he felt the lust for glory stirring within
him.
But he did not feel at all glorious the following morning, his head thick
as he tramped out to the frosty paddock behind the inn dressed in an ill-
fitting quilted gambeson. The body armour had belonged to Sir Robert’s
former squire, Gerard; it was far too big for Adam and hung down past his
knees. Wilecok could only do so much with shears, needle and twine, and
the gambeson stank of mildew and old sweat. Gerard’s sweat, Adam did not
doubt, and probably the sweat of many other former squires as well.
An hour later, plenty of his own sweat was soaking into the grimy linen
of the garment. He was sparring against John Chyld, both of them armed
with quarterstaffs. The serjeant fought with a slow grunting ferocity,
effortlessly driving Adam back across the stiff turf before knocking him
down again and again. Adam’s knuckles were skinned and bruised, blood-
red and white as he gripped the staff and hauled himself back to his feet to
begin once more.
‘I see the Earl of Hereford’s master at arms is an old woman, as I’d
suspected,’ Robert said, strolling across the paddock to join them. He was
already dressed in his full mail hauberk, with the groom from the inn
stables leading his horse. ‘He’s taught you to stand your ground, defend
yourself to a point, but nothing about attack. I’ll need more than that from
you if you’re going to be useful to me.’
‘What more could I give you?’ Adam asked bitterly. His nose was
bleeding, and he wiped it with the back of his hand. As far as he was aware,
squires were not expected actually to fight in the tournament. But he had
been hiding his ignorance of what was required of him for so long, he did
want to appear foolish by asking questions now.
‘I need aggression,’ Robert said. ‘I know you’ve got the fighting spirit –
you beat my old squire Gerard with your bare hands, and he was a bully of
a lad. That was why I chose you to replace him! Now all we have to do is
draw that spirit out of you again.’
‘You didn’t choose me,’ Adam said. ‘Lord Humphrey offered me to you,
at the Epiphany feast . . .’ His words died away as he saw the look of
amusement passing between the knight and his serjeant.
 ‘Oh, I chose you, don’t worry,’ Robert said over his shoulder, as he
walked towards his horse. ‘It was all agreed, before the feast even began.’
‘But . . .’ Adam began to say, his brow furrowing. He turned to follow
Robert, but before he could speak another word John Chyld’s quarterstaff
struck the back of his knee and knocked his legs out from under him.
Sprawling once more on the turf, Adam blinked away the tears of
humiliation as he heard the laughter of the two men.
‘Lesson for you,’ John Chyld said. ‘Never turn your back on an
opponent with a weapon in his hand.’
That night, plunged into exhausted sleep on his bed of straw, Adam
dreamed that a shadow stood over him, and he quailed beneath it. The
shadow was his own, he knew, formed of his shame and his sense of
weakness, his fear of failure. He awoke suddenly, well before dawn, and lay
in the darkness scratching at his flea bites as thoughts spun in his mind.
Why had Robert de Dunstanville taken him on as a squire? John Chyld
could do all that was needed as an armed servant on the tournament field –
did Robert want merely the appearance of knightly dignity that a squire
would provide for him? Adam had no way of telling, but he knew that he
could not continue to live in ignorance. He knew what he had to do.
*
As the first daylight streaked the sky, Adam was waiting at the inn door.
Robert descended the wooden stairway from the upper chamber, blinked at
him and then frowned, yawning heavily. ‘John Chyld is not with you?’ he
asked.
‘He’s still snoring,’ Adam told him. ‘I want you to teach me instead.’
‘I have my own business today,’ Robert replied curtly, and motioned for
Adam to move aside.
‘All I learn from being knocked over again and again is humility,’ Adam
said, standing his ground. ‘If that’s all you want, then I’d understand. But
you say you want more – so show me. That’s your task, isn’t it? The duty of
knight to squire?’
Robert inhaled sharply, affronted. For a moment he stared at Adam in
the dawn light, his wrath kindling. Adam made an effort not to flinch. Then
abruptly Robert shrugged and laughed. ‘So be it then,’ he said. ‘After
matins, we begin.’
An hour later, Wilecok led Adam to the muddy stable yard at the back of
the inn. In the open doorway of the wagon shed there was half an animal
carcass hanging from the beam. Adam stared at the mass of old meat,
clotted blood and bone. Already flies were circling around it in the chilly
morning air. ‘What was it?’ he asked.
‘Sheep,’ Robert replied, striding across the yard. ‘An old one. It would
have been chopped up for dogmeat, so I got it for a couple of silver bits.
Hopefully worthwhile.’ He shoved the carcass, and it swung heavily on its
hook.
‘Hit it,’ he said.
Adam glanced at him. He clenched his fist, and Robert nodded.
Drawing back his arm, Adam punched at the carcass. His bruised knuckles
slammed into the cold hard flesh and he felt the shock of the blow up his
arm. The carcass swung, creaking.
‘Again,’ Robert said. ‘This time show some force. Imagine the carcass
is Gerard, eh? Imagine he’s mocking you – or mocking your father . . .’
Adam set his jaw, knowing that he was being goaded but feeling the
anger building inside him anyway. He struck again, then a third time,
catching the carcass as it swung back towards him. His fists ached in the
cold.
‘Stop.’ Robert exhaled, hooking his thumbs over his sword belt. ‘You’re
flailing,’ he said. ‘Your attacks come from your shoulders, and from your
arms.’
He stepped closer, then raised his hand and planted his palm in the
centre of Adam’s chest, below his breastbone. ‘From here,’ he said, pressing
slightly. ‘You attack from the core of your body, using every muscle.’
Stepping away again, he drew his sword, then reversed the blade and
presented the hilt to Adam. ‘Now do the same with this,’ he said.
Adam took the sword and weighed it in his hand. He had used such
weapons since he was a boy, but this one was different, a true fighting
blade. The grip felt worn and somehow alive, despite the cold. Drawing a
deep breath, trying to feel the energy gathered beneath his sternum, he
raised the sword and struck. The tip gouged the meat and rebounded.
Circling, Adam struck again.
‘Think of how you use the blade,’ Robert was saying as Adam
continued his attacks. ‘The tip, the upper span near the tip, the lower span
nearer the hilt. You’ve seen the unmaking of a stag or hind, after the hunt?’
‘Yes,’ Adam said, pausing.
Robert took the sword from his hand.
 ‘You go about the human body in the same way,’ the knight said,
gesturing with the blade, tapping Adam’s collarbone, his upper arm, his hip.
‘Directed cuts, knowing the weak points, the bones and the cleavages of
muscle—’
‘But you don’t seek to kill your opponents in the melee?’ Adam asked,
slightly unnerved at the cold touch of steel against his body.
‘Of course not – one cannot get a ransom from a corpse! The object is to
unhorse them, take them alive. But in order to do that you must beat them,
and quickly, before they can evade you. The method of attack,’ he went on,
swinging the sword wide, ‘is to direct all of your force and fury against
your opponent, immediately. Do not spar with him or defend yourself –
attack, as if you mean to kill.’
He pivoted on his heel, sweeping the sword round in a rapid cut. The
honed steel seemed almost to sing in the air. ‘Even if your weapons are
bated – blunted, that is, as they should be in tournament,’ Robert went on,
‘you must assure your enemy in his heart that they are facing imminent
death and dismemberment. You must appear to him,’ he said, bringing the
blade up level to Adam’s throat, ‘as a spectacle of utter violence and
destruction. Then his bowels will turn to water and his muscles to lead, his
limbs will be unstrung, and you will have beaten him before he can raise his
arm against you.’
Robert turned once more on his heel, and with a sudden roar of fury he
slashed at the hanging carcass, the tip of his sword opening the meat from
top to bottom. Wheeling his arm, he delivered a second scything blow with
the centre of the blade, hacking through flesh and bone and splitting the
carcass entirely in two.
Adam had flinched instinctively, his heart skipping, and taken two steps
back. The severed chunk of meat dropped to the ground. The top half, sliced
open, was still swinging wildly.
‘Usually I prefer to use the axe in the melee,’ Robert said, wiping his
blade. His eruption of killing fury seemed to have entirely burned away. ‘It
creates still greater fear in an opponent. But now,’ he said, reversing the
sword hilt towards Adam once more, ‘you have a smaller target!’
Taking the sword once more, Adam tightened his hand around the grip
and swung it, feeling the energy coursing through him, from the core of his
body to the extremities of his limbs. But what, he thought, if your enemy is
not overcome at the first blow? What if he returns your attack, and all your
force is spent? He aimed a cut, then paused and stepped back.
‘There’s something I feel I should tell you,’ he said.
Sir Robert raised his eyebrow, quizzical.
‘You were right that your cousin, Joane de Quincy, made me swear an
oath before we left Ware,’ Adam went on, letting the blade fall. ‘She made
me promise . . . that I would protect you in the tournaments. And that if you
were mortally injured, I would ensure that you heard the sacraments before
you died, for the preservation of your soul.’
For a few moments Robert just stared, his expression shifting. Then he
threw back his head and laughed. ‘Truly,’ he said, ‘neither of you has the
first notion of what happens at the tournament! You, boy, are going to have
more than enough to do, without looking out for me!’
Abruptly he took a stride towards Adam, his mirth dying instantly. ‘If
Joane de Quincy – or you – have any care for my immortal soul, you can
keep it to yourselves,’ he growled. ‘Once we get out there onto the
tournament field, you must look to your own duties and let me look to
mine, understand?’
Adam nodded as Robert de Dunstanville paced away from him, heat
still flowing through his blood but mingling now with the chill of remorse.
‘And if the Lord God should decree that I meet my end on the melee
field,’ Sir Robert said, turning once more and stabbing his finger at Adam,
‘then you’ll go back to Ware and you’ll tell that girl whatever she needs to
hear. And you will think it no sin to lie.’

OceanofPDF.com
 Chapter 6
‘Preudhommes!’ the herald cried, advancing before them through the
crowd. ‘The one who will take your measure has arrived. A mighty
challenger, all the way from Angleterre. A champion admired by all, loved
by all. Roger de Dunstanville, lords and masters!’
‘Robert,’ Adam hissed, following at his heels. ‘His name is Robert de
Dunstanville!’
‘Worthy contenders, gird up your courage and look to your arms! The
champion Robert de Drostanville has arrived in Lagny!’
‘Be quiet,’ Sir Robert ordered, tossing a shiny coin. The herald snatched
it from the air, then bowed and melted into the throng.
The little town of Lagny on the Marne was, Robert had explained, an
old and famous site for tournaments. Only a few miles east of Paris, it
belonged nevertheless to the Count of Champagne and was therefore
exempt from King Louis’s ban on the sport. News of the event had reached
Arras only a week before, and Robert had readied himself at once and
departed without delay. Now it was Sunday evening, an hour after their
arrival. The tournament was set for the following morning and the town was
thronged with combatants and their retinues.
The vespers bell had already been rung, the liturgical day was over, and
none of the people in the streets and squares had any religious scruples
about enjoying themselves. As they crossed the bridge and approached the
town gate, Adam had seen men sparring in the meadow outside the walls, or
riding jousts with untipped lances in the gloom of dusk. Inside the town, the
streets were packed with revellers, musicians, stamping horses and women
in sumptuous gowns, all lit by the wavering glow of torches and braziers.
Already it was clear that Sir Robert and his retinue were too late to find
accommodation in Lagny itself; he had left Wilecok and John Chyld to
pitch the tents and tether the horses in the camping ground spreading along
the riverbank, and only Adam had accompanied him into the town.
Smells of spiced wine, roasting meats and perfume lingered in the air
with the smoke from the torches. Robert de Dunstanville walked with a
nonchalant swagger, one hand resting lightly on the hilt of his sword.
Adam, following behind him, could not resist glancing to left and right,
taking in everything. There were shields mounted above the doors of inns
and private houses, where knights had established their retinues. Despite the
February chill, tables stood in the streets, laden with cups and jugs of wine
and platters of food. These were the receptions, Robert had told him, where
the great lords and magnates competed to attract followers for the next
day’s combat, and to outdo each other in lavish expense. But Robert paid no
attention to any of them, until he reached the main square of the town and
found a table larger than most, surrounded by glowing braziers and a great
pack of armed men, musicians and laughing ladies.
‘Edward?’ Adam whispered, noticing the banners that hung overhead:
the three golden lions on a field of red, surmounted by a blue bar with three
points. He caught Robert’s curt nod.
Lord Edward, the eldest son of King Henry of England, lounged in a
padded chair, his long legs crossed, a golden goblet dangling from his
fingers. He was in his early twenties, barely five years older than Adam, but
when he got to his feet he stood a head taller than most of those around him.
His surcoat was of quilted velvet, lined with black fur. His thick curling hair
was the colour of dark honey, and his downy beard and moustache were
golden. His face was broad and fine-featured, and would have appeared
handsome but for a drooping eyelid, which gave his expression a
contemptuous look.
‘De Dunstanville is here, I see,’ he said, pointing. His voice was
powerful, but a lisp dragged at the words. ‘The demon of the melee has
arrived! We are assured a good day’s sport tomorrow, my friends!’
‘My lord,’ Sir Robert said, bowing. ‘I bid you greetings, in God’s
name.’
‘The demon of something,’ said a knight in a red surcoat. ‘Is he even
here for the melee, or is he searching for another priest to murder, or
another dying heiress he can marry?’
‘Maybe he hopes to rob the sons of Lagny of their patrimony as well,
eh?’ another said with a sneer.
‘And my greetings to you too, L’Estrange,’ Robert replied tersely,
bowing his head to the knight in red and then to his companion. ‘And to
you, de Leyburne.’
Many of those around Edward were knights of his own household,
while others were his friends and companions, some great lords in their own
right, or the sons of lords. About the women Adam was less certain; they
appeared far freer and merrier than any ladies he had seen at the court of the
Earl of Hereford, and dressed with much more verve as well.
Robert remained standing at the margin of the group around the raised
table, glaring with fixed eye at Edward. But the king’s son appeared to have
lost interest in him, or was making a show of ignoring him entirely. Instead
he laughed and exchanged witty remarks with the two knights who had
spoken earlier, and with the other younger men who thronged around his
chair. Adam saw the muscle flexing in Robert’s jaw. Then the knight turned
abruptly and stalked away through the crowd. As Adam followed he could
almost feel the simmering heat of rage flowing in his wake.
‘How I detest this empty chaffing talk,’ Sir Robert said through his
teeth, once he reached the far side of the square. ‘I’ll find another
opportunity to speak with Edward. When he is less amused.’
‘Was it true, what they said?’ Adam asked, lowering his voice.
‘Was what true?’ Robert replied, halting and turning so suddenly that
Adam almost walked into him.
‘About your wife,’ Adam said, stammering slightly. ‘I didn’t quite
understand, but—’
‘No, you did not,’ Robert said, baring his teeth. ‘But you should
understand enough by now not to pay heed to the words of lying dogs, eh?’
For a few heartbeats they stood facing each other, the crowd eddying
around them. Adam was about to ask more, sensing the shape of some
greater mystery, but he feared the knight’s wrath, and the urge died. It was
dark by now, and the air was filled with the smoke of the braziers and
torches. From somewhere along the street came the voice of the herald once
more: ‘Preudhommes! A redoubtable challenger indeed – Philippe de
Bourbourg is here, lords and masters! A knight to rank with the heroes of
old . . .’
Adam flinched as a hand fell on his shoulder and he pulled away,
startled. A figure appeared beside him. ‘Robert de Dunstanville!’ a familiar
voice said. ‘Unless I’m mistaken, you’ve stolen one of my father’s squires!’
‘Only after he killed my last one,’ Robert replied, twitching a smile. ‘He
may look like a mild and gangling youth, but he is a bloody-handed savage,
this Adam de Norton.’ He clasped Adam’s other shoulder, his grasp
tightening.
‘Is that so? . . . Then perhaps I’ll get to see him in combat one of these
days.’
 It had taken Adam a few moments to recognise the newcomer. Several
years had passed since he had last seen the Earl of Hereford’s son,
Humphrey de Bohun the Younger, Lord of Brecon and Baron of Kington.
The man had appeared fleshy and rather indolent then; now he was harder
and fitter-looking, red-faced and smiling, with a glint in his eye.
‘You’ve only just arrived?’ Sir Humphrey asked.
‘And already been insulted,’ Robert said.
De Bohun laughed. ‘What more should one expect from Edward’s
friends?’
‘They don’t insult you, I dare say.’
‘They don’t insult the son and heir of the Earl of Hereford and Essex,
no.’
But the earl’s bastard son, Adam thought, remembering what the
servants at Pleshey had told him, was surer game. Hard to believe that the
lean, dark Robert de Dunstanville could be the half-brother of this man.
Joane de Quincy had asked about Sir Humphrey too, Adam remembered,
but he had never discovered why.
‘Is the White Lion here?’ Robert asked, lowering his voice.
Humphrey de Bohun shook his head. ‘No, de Montfort abides with the
French king. But his sons, Henry and Simon the Younger, are with Lord
Edward. They’ll ride in his company tomorrow, in the Duke of Burgundy’s
team. You too?’
Robert coughed a laugh. ‘I think not. Edward scorns me, though I don’t
know why. He pays too much heed to the yapping of his dogs, perhaps. And
his company seems large enough.’
‘He has over thirty knights with him,’ Sir Humphrey said. ‘I myself
have only nine – I’d be happy if you joined them.’
Adam thought back to what Robert had told him at Arras, and during
the journey: riding in the retinue of a great lord or magnate on the melee
field provided greater security, but one’s first duty was always to protect the
leader, who took a third part of any ransoms gained. Robert de Dunstanville
preferred a more perilous, and lucrative, independence.
‘I thank you for the offer, but I’ll keep to my own company,’ he told de
Bohun, clapping him on the shoulder.
‘Well, may God give you strength, and guide your lance well!’
They returned to the camping ground in darkness, and after a brief
supper Adam crawled into the tent he shared with Robert. He lay for a while
on his mattress, all that he had seen and thought that day still whirling in his
mind. He was surprised when Robert spoke.
‘You asked about my wife,’ he said quietly. ‘I despise a lie, so I would
have you know the truth. Sure enough, she was already sick when we
married. And yes, she was heir to considerable estates, but I did not wed her
for her fortune. After her death the estates were claimed by the sons of her
first marriage. I do not deny that I fought their claim, albeit without
success.’
Adam made a sound in the back of his throat. He had feared exactly
this.
‘You might think me the same as de Brayboef, the man who wed your
mother and took your inheritance. Others would say that, certainly.’
‘I might,’ Adam said in a whisper.
Robert did not speak again for some time. ‘These things happen in the
world,’ he said finally. ‘I wish it were otherwise. Now sleep – tomorrow
will be long and hard for us both.’
*
Adam woke in the cold darkness before dawn, convinced that he had
not slept a moment. He heard men and horses moving, hushed voices, the
chime of bells. Throwing aside his blanket, he scrambled up from his
mattress and crawled towards the tent door. Sir Robert had not stirred.
Adam thought he was still sleeping, but then heard the whisper of breath
and realised he was praying to himself, lying flat on his back with his hands
clasped over his chest.
Outside, the dimness swirled with woodsmoke and the scents of damp
turf and horses. Wilecok was already getting the fire started. Adam dressed
hurriedly, flapping his arms around his chest to try and work some heat into
his body. By the time he had laid out Robert’s armour and equipment, men
were already assembling and thronging towards the chapel for Morrow
Mass. When Adam joined them the little building was packed, hundreds of
knights and their squires and attendants gathered within and crowding
around the doors, even kneeling in the muddy square outside, craning and
peering for the glimpse of the Elevation of the Host, that would preserve
their bodies from death and their souls from imminent damnation.
Adam knelt with them, crossing himself fervently, and his right hand
reached beneath his tunic and touched the pendant of St Christopher that
Joane de Quincy had given him. Protect him, if you can. Protect him in the
melee. Save his soul if not his body . . .
Robert de Dunstanville was already preparing himself by the time Adam
returned to their camp. Wilecok thrust a wooden bowl of hot potage into his
hands and gruffly told him to eat. ‘You won’t want it, but you’ll need it
later.’
Adam ate as best he could, though his stomach was drum-tight and his
nerves jumping. Sir Robert seemed unnaturally calm and composed as
Adam helped him into his mail leg chausses and the iron greaves that
covered his shins, then the long padded linen aketon and the mail hauberk
over the top. A surcoat went over the mail, red on one side and white on the
other. Robert laced a padded arming cap onto his head and then drew the
mail coif over it, but left the ventail that would cover his lower face
dangling. All of it performed in terse silence, with only muffled grunts of
effort. Then Wilecok led up the horses, Adam’s rouncey and the iron-grey
destrier already primed for battle with ears twitching and veins standing
proud. The two men swung up into the saddle. John Chyld, already
mounted, followed behind them.
The sun was just coming up, the wintery glow lighting the gulfs of mist
that lingered in the hollows and along the river. On the rise ahead of them
the old stone walls of Lagny were ochre brown in the sunlight, and the
parapets were lined with people gathered to watch the day’s spectacle.
‘Pay close attention to the ground,’ Sir Robert said as they rode. ‘If the
melee spreads out, there may be fighting here – check for the wooded areas,
the ditches and hollows, the places where ambushes might be laid . . .’
Adam nodded, staring all around him, but he was so distracted by the
mass of riders that he could pay attention to little else. Horsemen were
converging from all directions, spilling from the gates of the town and
riding from the village of Torcy where the opposing team was quartered. All
were armoured and dressed in bright surcoats, and many rode horses
covered in mail and leather, or flowing caparisons bearing their heraldic
devices. Never had Adam seen so many men armed for combat. In the cold
morning sun they were a river of silk and steel, streaming pennons and
flashing lance-points through the mist.
They converged on the meadow before the town walls, where the
tournament field was prepared and the lists stood ready for them. Two
fenced enclosures, one at either end of the broad field, would hold the
opposing teams. Between them, below the wall of the town where the
spectators gathered, stood wooden viewing stands for the ladies and older
noblemen to sit in comfortable shelter. And all around the perimeter there
were carts drawn up, also covered in people sitting and standing and calling
out the names of the famous champions. Booths and stalls held farriers’
smithies and armourers’ workshops, leatherworkers to mend saddles and
tack, horse dealers standing ready to buy and sell.
‘It looks to me that the Count of Anjou’s team has fewer men,’ Robert
said, standing in the stirrups and peering across the meadow into the pale
gleam of the sun. ‘It would be chivalrous, I suppose, were I to join their
number.’
‘But . . .’ Adam said, perplexed. He glanced at the nearer lists, where the
Duke of Burgundy’s team was already gathering beneath his red gonfalon.
Lord Edward’s banners were proudly displayed there, and those of his
companions, and Adam saw the blue and white of Humphrey de Bohun, son
of the Earl of Hereford. Robert had already set off across the field.
‘You intend to ride against Lord Edward?’ Adam called after him. ‘To
ride against all the other English?’
Robert turned in the saddle and gave him a wolfish smile. Unbelievable,
Adam thought: did the knight intend to avenge his insult of the evening
before by trying to take Edward’s men in the melee? Or just demonstrate his
worth to the prince who had scorned him? He hunched his shoulders to trap
a shudder, then took a deep breath and spurred his horse onward.
Trumpets blared and drums beat a steady pulse as the riders packed into
the enclosures, their horses stamping the turf and steaming in the cold air.
At the centre of the lists, beneath the blue gonfalon studded with the golden
fleur-de-lis, was the Count of Anjou surrounded by his household knights.
Robert made his way forward between them, with Adam trotting along
behind him. As they neared the count, Robert stood in the saddle and called
out something in a strange and guttural language that Adam did not
recognise. The count heard it and scanned the crowd around him until he
picked out Robert de Dunstanville. Adam, watching carefully, saw the
French nobleman’s expression cloud for a moment, almost as if he had
taken offence. Then he spurred his horse forward to greet Sir Robert,
seizing him by the hand. Adam stared, amazed. The Count of Anjou was the
brother of the King of France, and one of the most prominent aristocrats in
all of Europe.
 ‘What language was that?’ Adam asked, when Robert returned from his
brief conversation.
‘Arabic,’ Robert told him. ‘The count and I were prisoners of the
Saracens together for a time.’
‘And what did you say to him? It caught his attention . . .’
‘I merely said bring me a cup of water please.’
Adam frowned for a few heartbeats more, then laughed in wonder. But
Robert had already ridden forward to the fence that closed the front of the
lists. Flags were waving from the stands and the walls of the town, and to
the brassy notes of the trumpets and horns and the rolling of drums the
contestants of the opposing team were beginning their grand review.
Parading forth, some as individuals and others in massed companies, they
turned a circuit between the stands and the opposing lists. Squires rode
behind every knight, carrying their lances, shield and helmet, yelling out
names and war cries, while the marshals and adjudicators strutted with their
long batons. Heralds, some gorgeously dressed and others barefoot and in
rags, checked their lists of names and cried out their praises of the
combatants.
Adam had assumed that all the contenders would be either French or
English, but among the companies there were men of Flanders and Hainaut,
Brabazons and Germans from the Empire, Spaniards and Scots, a vaunting
company of Italians from Lombardy and even a group of knights from
distant Denmark.
‘Watch carefully,’ Robert said in a hushed tone, leaning from the saddle.
‘See if you can pick out some fitting prey. They look proud enough now,
but remember – we are the wolves who will shear them of their pretty
fleeces, once the lances shatter and the ironwork begins!’
Adam, squinting into the low sun, tried not to be distracted by the
glittering cavalcade of riders and all their finery. He tried instead to judge
them with the hard appraising eye of a predator.
‘What about that one?’ he asked. He indicated a young knight, only a
year or two older than himself, in silvered mail with his long blonde hair
streaming loose, riding a prancing horse caparisoned with bold stripes of
blue and white.
‘The son of the Count of Luxembourg,’ Robert said. ‘Only knighted this
last year. He’s rich enough to make a splendid prize, sure enough. But also
rich enough to surround himself with other knights to protect him. Men like
that ride onto the tourney field like they’re entering a pageant.’
‘So he couldn’t be taken?’
Robert pursed his lips. ‘It would be a great deed of arms to do so. Then
again, in the melee, anything can happen!’
But Adam was distracted by the next band of riders, led by a pair of
proud young men whose shields bore a fork-tailed white lion, rampant on a
bloody field. ‘Montfort! Montfort!’ the heralds cried. ‘What about them?’ he
asked.
Robert snorted a laugh. ‘Capturing the sons of Simon de Montfort on
the tourney field might be a fine deed too, depending on how it was done,
but perhaps not a wise one,’ he said. ‘I would not want to make an enemy of
the Earl of Leicester. Not at this moment in time. Their household knights,
though – their pawns, we might say. Well, they could be fitting game.’
Soon enough the Duke of Burgundy’s team had completed their parade,
and now the Count of Anjou led his own men out. Adam glanced around at
the bright colours of the painted shields and caparisons, the polished armour
and glinting horse trappings. He was very conscious that he was wearing
only a shabby sweat-stained gambeson, barely concealed beneath his red
and white surcoat. Hefting Sir Robert’s shield and lance, propping the
blued-iron barrel of his helm on the pommel of his saddle, he nudged his
horse forward and rode ahead of the knight out through the gap in the lists
and onto the tourney field.
‘Dunstanville! Dunstanville!’ he heard the heralds shout, and joined his
voice to theirs. ‘Dunstanville!’ he cried over the cheering of the crowd, the
brassy thundering of the horns and the churning beat of the drums, and he
raised the lance so the pennon streamed in the breeze. For the first time, he
felt a surge of pride that lifted him in the saddle, and found that he was
grinning.
As they passed the opposing lists, he noticed the knight called
L’Estrange and his friend de Leyburne gesturing and hooting abuse. He
heard Robert’s cruel laugh, and then they were gone. The two teams had
begun mustering in front of the lists, and Robert took his place in the line.
All around were stamping horses tossing their manes; everything seemed
primed for imminent action, but first came the initial jousts.
Riders emerged from the lines, galloping before the stands until a
challenger came forth to oppose them. Most were younger men, Robert had
earlier explained, recently knighted and eager to display their prowess.
Breathlessly Adam watched the charges and clashes, rising in his saddle as
the moment of impact approached, his chest tight with anticipation. At
every moment of collision, every blow of lance against shield, every
shattered shaft and staggering horse, a great cry went up from the stands
and the assembled onlookers. The two rows of opposing knights sat before
the lists, calling out their comments – ‘faultless!’ or ‘good lance!’ if a
jouster performed with valour, hissing and tutting if he flinched and veered
at the last moment, or failed to strike hard and true.
Wild cheers from the stands as the final challenger rode forth: the young
son of the Count of Luxembourg, with a woman’s sleeve pinned to his
gilded helm. Silence as he turned his blue and white caparisoned horse at
the opposite end of the field to his opponent. Then the trumpet sounded, the
contenders dug in with their spurs, their horses springing forward at once
and rapidly stretching out into a careering gallop. As the lances dropped to
the couched position and the riders closed to impact, Adam imagined
himself as the charging knight, plumes on his helmet, nothing but courage
in his heart. Clear in the cold air he heard the thunderous bang of lance
against shield, the splintering of wood. Then a gasping cry rose from the
spectators as the young knight of Luxembourg was smashed backwards out
of his saddle and hurled, loose-limbed, almost falling beneath the hooves of
his opponent’s galloping horse. The watching knights let out a vast
exhalation of breath, filled with the sound of tongues against teeth.
‘God’s bones, he won’t survive that,’ somebody said. ‘Do you see the
blood spew from his helmet vents?’
As the other rider came cantering back, the fallen man’s attendants ran
to help him. A few moments of confusion, then one of them raised a flag. A
moment more, and the stands erupted in applause as the young knight
clambered to his feet to be guided, staggering, back to the lists. Such a
courageous display, the spectators agreed, was almost as worthy as a
victory.
The sun was high by the time the jousting was concluded and the lines
had reformed, ready for the main event. ‘Lace up!’ the marshal cried, and
the knights pulled on their constricting great helms and tied the chinstraps.
Adam dismounted and took his place before the fence of the lists, two spare
lances gripped tightly. Still he felt the nerves twitching and flickering
around the pit of his stomach, where his morning’s breakfast lay like a
stone. The day was cold, but beneath the horrid gambeson the sweat was
pouring down his body. At least, he thought, he was not alone in his
discomfort; ahead of him, one of the younger knights leaned from the
saddle, made a choking sound, and vomited. The others around him laughed
as he wiped his mouth and put his helmet back on.
‘You know what’s expected of you, right?’ John Chyld said, standing
beside Adam with another couple of lances. The grizzled serjeant was
chewing something as he spoke, and Adam’s gut contracted. The rich scent
of fresh horse dung came from the lists behind them.
‘I know, don’t worry,’ he said with a brusque shrug. ‘We hand Sir
Robert new lances for as long as he needs them, and then when the melee
breaks up and spreads I go out onto the field and . . . secure the captives.’
John Chyld nodded. ‘Some places nowadays,’ he said, still chewing, ‘let
the squires ride onto the field. Not here – you’ll have to leg it. Make sure
you don’t get ridden down or get your head knocked off by somebody else’s
squire . . . And you know how to secure the captives, right?’
‘Tell them the name of their captor and demand that they yield,’ Adam
said, trying to sound more confident than he felt, ‘then conduct them back
here to the lists and hand them over to you.’
‘That’s the way,’ John Chyld said, and spat out a fragment of bone. ‘Just
make sure they give you their oath of surrender, then bring them in nice and
douce-like.’
Out on the open field the heralds and marshals were still dashing back
and forth, brandishing their rods and lists of names, but now the opposing
lines appeared to be properly arranged. They did indeed resemble the pieces
on a chess board, Adam thought, set out for the game to commence. The
heralds retreated to the safety of the stands, and five hundred paces of open
ground separated the two lines. Horses shifted and blew, pawing the rutted
turf, primed for the sound of the horns.
The flash of a flag, a blaze of brassy noise, and two thousand mounted
men in armour surged into motion. Adam felt himself stretching upward,
staring wide-eyed as Robert de Dunstanville vanished into the mass; he
tried to pick out the red and white colours, but in the dazzle of horses and
men and banners and caparisons he could not. The advancing line receded
from him towards the centre of the field, the pace gathering from a trot to a
charge. Five rapid heartbeats, then six. Pater noster, qui es in caelis,
santificetur nomen tuum, adveniat regnum tuum . . .
 Then, out in the middle distance of the field, the charging lines met. An
explosion of thunderous noise; lances on shields, shattering wood,
screaming men and horses, the roar from the stands and the surrounding
spectators. Craning upward, Adam saw a score or more riders pitched
immediately from the saddles, others clinging on as their mounts stumbled
and staggered. Many horses down too, kicking as they rolled, their riders
trapped beneath them. Desperately he tried to pick out Robert de
Dunstanville’s colours, but the centre of the field was lost to a milling
chaos. Then, just as suddenly the mass of men split apart as the charging
line broke through and began to turn and wheel for the second attack.
Chaos in front of the lists too, the squires and serjeants pressing
forward, raising their spare lances and yelling the names of their masters.
Adam felt himself jostled, and shoved back with his elbows. ‘Dunstanville!’
he shouted. ‘Dunstanville!’
Mounted men rushed from the fray, their horses kicking up the turf,
riders snatching lances from the waiting squires. Then Robert was right
there in front of Adam, leaning from the saddle and bellowing from inside
his helm. Adam lurched forward, and the knight snatched one of the lances
from his grasp. Already Robert was turning once more, the destrier’s front
legs off the ground, hooves swinging dangerously close to Adam’s face.
Another knight cantered past, hanging semi-conscious from the saddle as
the blood streamed from beneath his helmet and spattered his horse’s
haunch, and his squires ran to assist him.
‘Go, boy, go!’ John Chyld was shouting in Adam’s ear. Out across the
field Robert was charging again, lance lowered; as Adam stared, he clashed
with another rider, his lance bending at the point of impact. His opponent
was reeling, almost unhorsed, his shield destroyed, only the high cantle
keeping him in the saddle. John Chyld was still yelling. Gripping his second
lance in both hands like a pike, the padded skirts of his gambeson flapping
around his knees, Adam ran.
The whole field was in motion now, the melee swirling outwards half a
mile or more from the stands, breaking up into fierce jostling knots of
combatants. Keeping clear of the kicking hooves and swinging blades,
Adam stumbled forward, searching for a glimpse of Robert. Already a few
dozen men were being led back to the lists as captives, their horses trailing
behind them. A few dozen more were being carried from the field; injured
or dead, Adam could not tell. Over the constant bleat of horns and roll of
drums, the roaring and cheering from the distant stands, there was a sound
like nothing Adam had heard before. The ironworks, Robert had called the
melee – now Adam understood why. The air reverberated with the clash and
grate of metal, like a hundred smiths wildly pounding at their anvils, a
hundred armourers beating steel. Louder even than the yells of combat, the
crack of shattering shields and the panicked din of the horses, the metal
thunder pulsed with its own savage intensity.
A horse crashed to the ground in front of him, and Adam veered to
escape its thrashing hooves as it rolled. Beyond it he saw a knight, his lance
gone, reach from the saddle and grab another rider by the helmet rim,
hauling him back over the cantle until his feet slipped from the stirrups and
he toppled over his horse’s tail. Two squires in red surcoats came running in
fast, barging Adam aside, yelling ‘Montfort! Montfort!’ The tip of the lance
Adam was carrying buried itself in the turf, and he lost his grip on the shaft.
He turned to grab it but leaped back quickly, neatly avoiding a charging
rider – he felt the hot breath of the horse on his back as it passed, and when
he looked again the fallen lance was gone.
As the two Montfort squires secured the fallen man, Adam saw the press
of combatants shift and break, and caught sight of a white caparison with a
red lattice. Robert was circling another knight, standing high in his stirrups
to deal smashing downward blows with his long-handled cavalry axe. His
opponent crouched in the saddle, a battered shield raised over his head,
unable to turn his horse and get a cut at Robert. As Adam ran closer, empty-
handed, Robert’s destrier lunged and bit at the neck of the opposing knight’s
horse; at the same moment Robert swung his axe upward, catching the man
under the arm and toppling him from the saddle.
The blued-steel helm turned, silvered sights scanning the field, and
Adam waved. Robert gestured at the fallen man with his axe, then turned at
once and spurred his destrier forward again, in quest of further victims.
The fallen knight was lying on his back, one leg twisted beneath him,
struggling to rise. Adam grabbed the dangling reins of the horse, dragging it
after him as he approached the downed rider. Keeping the horse on a long
rein he dropped to the ground beside the knight, then threw his weight onto
the man’s armoured chest, pinning him down. The man’s helmet rotated to
face him. Adam saw the gleam of widened eyes through the sights, and
heard the thudding of breath through the vents.
 ‘Yield!’ he cried, his voice cracking. ‘You are a captive of Robert de
Dunstanville – yield and give your oath!’
Something like a groan came from within the helmet, and for a moment
the fallen knight’s body fell slack, his mail crunching. Then he reared up,
his right arm swinging, and drove a blow with his armoured fist into the
side of Adam’s head.
Adam felt the explosion of pain, the flash of hot lightning that blinded
his senses, then he toppled backwards into plunging dark.

OceanofPDF.com
 Chapter 7
Her name was Eloise. She had told him that, before he first saw her
face.
But he was aware of her voice before anything, the music of her words
coming and going as he lay in pain and darkness. She talked to herself as
she tended his wounds, when she believed he was insensible, and sang as
she sat beside the open window; he heard the sounds from the street
outside, and imagined she was sewing, perhaps. How long he had lain in the
upper room, flat on his back on a straw mattress with his eyes and the top of
his head bound in coarse linen, he could not tell. His skull felt as fragile as
an eggshell, whenever he tried to move or speak jagged shards of agony cut
through him. The woman changed his dressings, wiped the wound with a
warm damp cloth, and fed him broth that tasted of nothing at first, then
tasted of rusting metal. As sensation returned to him, he could recognise her
by her scent, the warmth of her body when she sat beside him, the feel of
her breath and the touch of her hands on his bruised flesh.
But when the dressings and bandages were peeled from his face and he
opened his gummed eyes, it was a man’s face that he saw before him. An
old man with a bristled chin, who moved his finger from side to side and
then chuckled. The light from the window pained his eyes, and Adam was
happy when the man left and he could close his lids and lie still once more.
John Chyld appeared at his bedside next, sitting in the glow of a
stinking tallow candle. ‘Seems you’re not dead then,’ he said, and wheezed
a laugh. ‘And not blinded either, though we thought you might be. Crack
like that, and blood all down you. Could almost see the pattern of mail links
stamped into your face! Your skull’s thicker than it looks. Your first tourney,
and you’re carried off the field insensible – who’d have thought?’
‘What happened . . .’ Adam managed to say, dredging the words up
from the pit of his throat. ‘What happened . . . to the knight?’
‘The one who hit you? Oh, he scuttled off, but another took him shortly
after. Sir Robert argued over the capture, but since you’d let him go there
was no case. Sir Robert wasn’t best pleased by that, but he says we should
remain here till you’re well enough to ride – he’s already lost one squire
after a bang on the head . . .’
 They were still in Lagny then, Adam realised, and only a day or two
could have passed since the tournament. Yes, an inn in Lagny town – he had
a vague pained memory of them carrying him up the narrow stairs.
‘He’s unhurt then?’ he asked. ‘Robert?’
‘Certainly. He took another capture, with his own hand, and lost
nothing. But he could have done more.’
‘But he should have yielded – the knight . . . he was rightly downed,
everyone saw it. He should have given me his oath and yielded!’
John Chyld laughed again and leaned in closer until Adam could smell
his garlicky breath. ‘That is why,’ he said, ‘you must be careful with
knights. They talk mightily of honour and oaths, and respect and courtesy
and such, and display them to each other when they’ve a mind, like rare
treasures they possess. But to anyone else, they’re like beasts in the wild.
Get too close to them, and they’ll rend your flesh. You may think you’re
one of them, and maybe one day if God preserves you, you might be – but
get between them and their desires and they’ll ride you down without a
thought. Even our Sir Robert, if he’s crossed. You’ll know that, next time.’
Adam could not recall hearing John Chyld speak at such length before.
He was unaware of sleeping again, but when he next opened his eyes
the room was full of morning daylight. He lay still and stared up at the
worm-eaten beams and the mess of dirty thatch angled above him, until he
heard Eloise enter the chamber.
‘Lord, he lives again!’ she said, setting down a tray with a basin and a
cup. ‘Half the night I was listening to you mumbling and groaning, like the
devil had a grip upon you . . .’ Now he could look at her clearly, Adam saw
that Eloise was around his own age, with a tanned face, straw-coloured hair
escaping from her headcloth, and a gap between her front teeth that showed
when she smiled.
‘I was talking in my sleep?’ he asked, frowning and blearily ashamed.
‘Not that I could understand half of it,’ she said. ‘What a funny style of
speech you have! Do all the men of your country talk in such a way?’
‘You’ve heard Englishmen before,’ Adam said, closing his eyes again.
‘We don’t talk so very strangely. Your accent sounds strange to me too – it’s
natural.’
‘I heard the Lord Edward,’ said Eloise, and smiled. ‘He and his
chevaliers came to this very inn! A real preudhomme he is – like a paladin!
And he speaks perfect French, as good as King Louis himself.’
 ‘They’re still here in Lagny then, Lord Edward and his retinue?’
‘Oh no, they left the day before yesterday, for Paris and then to
England, so they say. Your master de Dunstanville went with them.’
‘He’s gone?’ Adam cried, starting up from the bed. ‘When —’
‘Gently, my sweet!’ Eloise said, laying a hand on his chest and pushing
him back onto the mattress with surprising force. ‘He’s not gone far – only
to Paris to meet with some Jews.’ She made a face, and mimed spitting over
her left shoulder. ‘He said he’ll return in two days, or maybe three,’ she
said, smiling again, ‘to find if you’re fully recovered or not.’
Adam groaned: the exertion had made his wound flare with pain. Lying
still, he drank from the cup that Eloise held for him. Wine, spiced and
flavoured with herbs. It spread heat through his body, and he took the cup
from her and drained it to the dregs. Next she soaked a cloth in the basin
and wiped at his wounded head, then cleaned his face and shoulders. At
some point during this process Adam realised that he was naked beneath the
blankets. Had John Chyld or Wilecok stripped him of his clothes? The
thought that Eloise herself may have undressed him brought the warmth
back to his face.
‘Who is Joane?’ she asked, as she dabbed with her cloth. Adam tensed,
and her eyes met his. ‘You were saying her name as you slept,’ she said. ‘Is
she your lady love back in England?’
‘No,’ Adam told her hurriedly. His hand went instinctively to the St
Christopher’s pendant that lay against his breastbone. He had not been
stripped of that at least. ‘No, she’s . . . someone I once met. I doubt I’ll meet
with her again.’
‘A mystery,’ Eloise whispered, smiling.
She squeezed the cloth over the basin, and the water turned pale brown
with the last traces of blood. Another few dabs: the wound was clean, it
seemed. ‘He’s a strange one as well, your master, de Dunstanville,’ Eloise
said. ‘Such tales they tell of him! Are they true?’
‘Some, I think,’ Adam told her, feeling guarded once more, and still
obscurely jealous of her praise for Lord Edward.
‘He has a sorrowing look in his eyes sometimes,’ the woman said, then
paused with her cloth and appeared wistful. ‘Maybe he regrets all the sinful
things he’s done? Or there’s a wound inside him that he tries to conceal?
Now – lie still and rest if you can.’
 She took her tray and basin and got up, pulling the rough shutter over
the window before leaving the room, and Adam lay in the dimness and tried
to sleep once more. He thought back to what John Chyld had said, and
wondered what else he might have muttered unawares. Laying his palm
over the holy pendant, he tried to picture Joane’s face, but found himself
thinking of Eloise instead as he dropped into a troubled sleep.
It was late afternoon when she returned, and the shadows were
gathering beneath the low ceiling of the chamber. She brought food: bread
and hot leek potage, with salted ham and soft cheese, and a flask of wine.
‘Your master, Robert de Dunstanville, has sent tidings from Paris,’ she told
him, sitting on the edge of the bed as he ate. ‘He’ll be away for another few
days, or so that filthy servant-man of his says. But says he’ll return here by
the eve of St Valentine’s feast. So – you have plenty more time to rest and
recover yet!’
Adam just nodded, his mouth full. He had not realised how hungry he
had become, and his wounded head no longer ached as he chewed or
swallowed either. Eloise smiled, helping herself to a slice of ham and a
mouthful of wine from his cup. ‘Though it looks to me,’ she said, dropping
her voice slightly, ‘as if you’ve recovered very well already.’
Swallowing heavily, Adam brushed the crumbs from his hands and then
took the cup from her and drank. He felt the effects of the wine moving
through him, his whole body beginning to glow. Or was it more than just
the wine? He thought of the many sermons he had heard, the lectures he had
received in the Earl of Hereford’s hall, concerning the wiles of women, and
the snares and traps they set for the virtuous.
Eloise raised her hand and lightly brushed the scar on his scalp, then
stroked her fingers down his cheek and neck. ‘So how are we going to fill
all this time until he returns?’ she said, cocking her head and smiling. She
pressed the tip of her tongue into the gap between her front teeth, then made
a soft kissing sound. ‘Perhaps we could play a little, hmm?’
Adam frowned, wondering for a moment if she was about to produce a
chess board and pieces from somewhere. His breath was very tight, his
pulse very fast. Eloise took the platter of food and drink and placed it on the
floor, then stood up quickly and drew her tunic off over her head. In a
moment she had shed her headcloth, shaken out her long yellow hair, and
then untied the laces at the neck of her linen chemise and let it fall to the
floor. Naked, beaming, she stood beside the bed. Adam stared at her,
terrified but enraptured, all self-control rushing from him.
‘I don’t . . .’ he began to say. ‘I mean to say, I never . . .’
‘Shush,’ she told him, and stripped the blanket from him. ‘You don’t
need to say anything now.’ Climbing onto the mattress, she straddled his
hips, and for a moment he had a memory of Belia doing the same to Robert
at the house in London. Then she pressed herself down onto him, her
unbound hair falling over them both, and he was engulfed in the sensations
of her body, all thought banished from his mind.
*
‘It’s a good thing,’ Robert said, several days later, ‘that you spent so
much time languishing in bed. If we’d left Lagny when I’d originally
intended, we would never have heard tidings of this tournament at
Épernay.’
‘I was not languishing,’ Adam replied.
Robert laughed. They were riding eastwards, down the valley of the
Marne, and the day was bright and clear. ‘No,’ he said. ‘I heard you were
engaged otherwise.’
‘Yes indeed,’ said John Chyld, who rode behind them. ‘Manfully
engaged!’
Adam felt the heat rise to his face and tried to hide his smile. He had
been enduring taunts like this since leaving the inn that morning, half in
guilt and half in glory. He did not care. The memory of the hours he had
spent with Eloise was still fresh inside him, printed on his mind and his
body. He could still smell the scent of her on his skin. The tournament at
Épernay, to be hosted by the Count of Champagne on the eve of Shrove
Tuesday, had only been proclaimed a few days beforehand; afterwards,
Robert had declared, they would spend the season of Lent in training at
Soissons. But after Easter, Adam had told Eloise as he left, he would surely
return to Lagny once more and they would be together. His heart was filled
with her.
‘At least now you’re not encumbered with that great weight of virtue,
eh?’ Robert said to him. ‘Think what Earl Humphrey would say about that!
Attende, Domine . . . quia peccavimus tibi. But I couldn’t really have a
maiden boy as my squire, could I – so I must presume the silver was well
spent?’
‘What?’ Adam said, jerked abruptly from his warm reveries.
 ‘Oh come now,’ Robert told him, and laughed with cruel relish. ‘Surely
you don’t think that the girl merely jumped into bed with you of her heart’s
desire? An inn servant from a market town, a tournament town? Was her
head turned by your nobility, do you think? By your virtuous and manly
bearing? Or by the coins I paid her to strip you of your chastity?’
Adam felt ice water pouring through him. He struggled to breathe, anger
rioting with a sickening anguish inside him. ‘That’s . . . not true,’ he
stammered.
‘A hard bargain she made too,’ Robert said with a shrug. ‘But worth it,
then? What do you say, John?’
‘Oh yes,’ the grizzled serjeant said, and made a lewd kissing sound.
‘That gap between her front teeth, eh? You could just vanish into it!’
‘No!’ Adam exclaimed, his despair shifting to horror and disgust.
‘Naturally,’ Robert said, ‘I had to ensure she was a good teacher, so I
ordered John Chyld to determine her worth beforehand.’
‘She learned him right enough, I’d say!’ John Chyld added, with a
gnarled grin. ‘There’s not much she didn’t know, that one.’
‘Enough!’ Adam said, restraining himself from reaching for the sword at
his belt. For a few moments anguished fury consumed him. He wanted only
to beat and kill John Chyld, to murder Robert de Dunstanville, to
exterminate them utterly . . . Both of them stared back at him, and there was
a cold, hard wariness behind their mirth. Adam knew that any move he
made against them now would only add to his humiliation. He pulled his
mantle closer around him, swallowing down his angry despair.
‘Anyway,’ Robert said, nudging his horse on down the road. ‘I’m sure
that handful of silver will be of great use to the girl, when the child comes.’
Adam jolted upright in the saddle. ‘But . . . how?’ he managed to say.
‘Oh,’ said Robert, and made a rueful face to John Chyld. ‘He didn’t
notice?’
‘He did not notice!’ John Chyld replied.
‘I see you were taught as much of nature as you were of swordplay in
Earl Humphrey’s household,’ Robert said, seeing Adam’s baffled stare. ‘I
don’t mean your child, you fool. She had one of them already, and another
on the way.’
‘About three or four months gone, I’d say,’ John Chyld confirmed.
‘I . . . could not tell,’ Adam said. He was blushing hotly. They were
quite right – he knew nothing of nature. Nothing of Eloise either, for all his
fantasies of love. In all the hours they had spent together he had asked her
almost nothing of herself, and thought only of his own pleasure. He had not
even noticed her pregnancy. He felt foolish, boorish, and cruelly used, and
could not meet anyone’s gaze.
Robert and John Chyld were still chuckling to themselves. Robert
tugged on his reins and rode up alongside Adam, reaching over to cuff him
on the shoulder. ‘There’s no shame in it, boy,’ he said, with a gruff
tenderness. ‘No shame in love, however it is taken. Think of it as a gift, and
soon we’ll laugh about it together, eh?’
*
They rode on for the rest of that day, following the winding river valley
through a gentle landscape of vineyards, the ranks of bare vines scaling the
slopes above the road. There was a softness in the air that was almost
springlike, and after a few hours Adam felt his spirits rising from the depths
of hurt despair. Robert’s mood too seemed lighter; the days he had spent
with Lord Edward in Paris had not yielded any result, but he had shrugged
off the disappointment; now, he explained, they would hunt other game.
That night they camped beside the road amidst the vine bushes, and as
he lay shivering in the gloom of the tent Adam touched the St Christopher’s
pendant on his chest, summoned a memory of Joane de Quincy, and swore a
silent oath that he would never disgrace himself with intimacy again as long
as he was in Sir Robert’s service. He was unsure how sincere his oath
would turn out to be, but it calmed his soul in the darkness, and calm
brought sleep.
In the morning they broke camp in the dawn mist and rode on east
towards Épernay. Their little travelling company had increased in number
since the stay at Lagny. There were six riders now, with two extra
packhorses, Robert’s destrier, and a second warhorse that he had taken, with
the rider’s armour, during the tournament. Wilecok had been joined by a
dark and entirely silent woman from Gascony; he did not bother telling
anyone her name, if he knew it himself, but he claimed she was now his
wife. The Gascon woman helped with the cooking and dealt with the
laundry, and had been accepted without question. Adam had gone beyond
being surprised at such things.
The second new arrival was a plump young Welshman named Hugh of
Oystermouth, who Robert had taken on as a herald and treasurer. Whether
he had any skill or aptitude in either heraldry or keeping accounts remained
to be seen, but he was a very merry young man, sitting high in the saddle of
his ambling pony, dressed in a dark mantle with a big leather satchel slung
behind him. Upon his wide-brimmed hat he wore a pewter pilgrim badge
from Santiago de Compostella, shaped like a shell.
‘You should beware of Adam here,’ John Chyld had told the newcomer,
on their first day together. ‘A Welshman killed his father!’
Hugh of Oystermouth had regarded Adam carefully from beneath the
brim of his hat, pursing his lips. ‘A particular Welshman, I am sure,’ he said.
‘Certainly not all Welshman can have killed his father. Therefore, by logic, I
should not fear him!’
Adam frowned at that, uncertain whether to be insulted or amused.
There was something sly and evasive about Hugh of Oystermouth, but the
man behaved with such good spirits that it was hard to take him seriously.
He spoke and sang Latin beautifully, while his French was barbaric. Only
when he removed his hat for a moment did Adam guess the truth: his hair
showed the signs of a partially outgrown tonsure. Robert confirmed the
suspicion later; the newcomer had been in holy orders, a student at the
University of Paris, and had abandoned his studies to try and make a living
on the tournament road.
By the afternoon of the second day they were passing through a wilder
district, where the road twisted and turned around wooded slopes. At the
summit of one rise Robert abruptly reined his horse to a halt and leaned
forward, shading his eyes from the low sun.
‘What do you see?’ Adam asked as he rode up alongside. Robert
grabbed his bridle, holding him back.
Below them the road descended through the trees to a clearing where a
ford crossed a shallow river. On the far bank was a strip of level open
ground, where a lance stood with a pennon and a shield hanging from it.
Beyond them, Adam could make out the blue haze of smoke from a camp
fire, tents set up among the trees, the shapes of tethered horses.
‘It’s a challenge,’ Robert said.
‘He’ll be one of the knights from the tournament at Lagny,’ said Hugh
of Oystermouth, joining them and peering down towards the ford. ‘Thinks
himself a hero from the romances of Arthur, I suppose! He must know this
is the only road to Épernay, and anyone travelling on to the meeting there
must pass here. He intends to contest the passage.’
‘Could we not just find another way over the river?’ Adam asked.
 Robert winced at him.
‘It would be a great dishonour to evade combat,’ Hugh explained. ‘Soon
enough, everyone would discover it, and then, you know . . .’
Robert nodded briskly, then asked Hugh if he could identify the shield
device.
‘Or, billety sable,’ said Hugh. ‘A lion rampant sable. I would guess . . . a
vassal of the Count of Flanders?’
Robert winced again. ‘Pull back down the road a hundred paces,’ he
said. ‘We’ll prepare ourselves there, out of sight. Adam – saddle the second
destrier.’
‘You intend to fight him, then?’ Adam asked.
‘No,’ said Robert. ‘I intend you to fight him.’
‘But I’ll lose!’
‘Of course you’ll lose. We don’t know his name, but he’s surely a
trained knight and you’re a green and gadling youth.’ Robert had already
turned his horse and was riding back down the slope. Adam followed him to
the stand of trees where Wilecok, John Chyld and the Gascon woman were
waiting with the pack animals. ‘You’ll lose,’ Robert went on as he
dismounted. ‘But you’ll take your time losing. You’ll put up a good fight,
and leave him wearied. And then I’ll fight him.’
‘But that’s . . .’ Adam swung down from the saddle. ‘Is that not against
the rules?’
John Chyld snorted a laugh. Robert wore his thin sardonic smile.
‘Rules?’ he said, and laughed. ‘There are no rules here. Only victory and
defeat.’
Still troubled, Adam got on with saddling the second horse while John
Chyld removed the equipment and armour from its ox-hide wrappings.
Then he stood stiffly as Wilecok and Hugh of Oystermouth dressed and
armed him in the spoils of Robert’s capture at the Lagny tournament: a full-
length mail hauberk and leggings, and an iron skullcap beneath the mail
coif that covered his head. The horse was younger than Robert’s charger
and not as powerfully muscled, but strong and trained for battle. Adam was
still resentful about Robert’s comment on his youth and inexperience. But
he was more troubled by the deceitful stratagem.
‘He will discover soon enough that I’m not a knight,’ he said. ‘What
then?’
 Robert, who had been standing nearby eating a handful of raisins with
deliberate nonchalance, turned abruptly. ‘What, you don’t want to fight?’ he
asked.
‘No! No, I mean . . . It seems unchivalrous . . . Even unchristian.’
‘Listen to me!’ Robert broke in, cutting off any further objections. ‘I am
a tournament knight. Victory is my meat and drink. I have no lands to which
I can return, no wealth that would support me in hardship. My sole fortune
is my horse, my armour, and my honour. If I fight that man down at the ford
and he beats me, I lose the tools of my profession. And then, you see, I can
no longer be a tournament knight. And then, you see – I would have no
need of a squire, would I?’
Adam shrugged, feeling the mail bunch heavily at his shoulders.
‘So, do you care to walk back to Boulogne? Back to Pleshey? Care to
beg Earl Humphrey to take you into his household once more?’
‘No,’ Adam said.
‘Then we fight. And we use every stratagem we possess. And we win,
understand?’
*
Barely an hour had passed, by the position of the sun, before Adam
walked his horse back to the summit of the rise and began his descent
towards the ford. Hugh of Oystermouth was riding ahead of him on a
palfrey, in the guise of his squire, carrying a lance with a red pennon.
Steadily they rode, watching the activity among the trees beyond the river.
‘You’ll need to cross the ford there, look, and strike the shield they’ve
mounted with your lance,’ Hugh said over his shoulder. ‘That means you
accept the challenge.’
‘I know what it means,’ Adam said. His voice was muffled by the
ventail laced across his nose and mouth. Sweat dripped into his eyes, and he
blinked it away. He had ridden in jousts before many times, although only
with squires of his own age. He had ridden in full armour too, and on a real
warhorse. But never had he done all three at the same time. And never had
he faced a fully armed and properly mounted knight. He rode out from the
shadow of the trees into the bright sunlight of the riverbank, feeling the
horse beneath him already stirring for combat, neck arching and ears
twitching. Nervous tension flowed through his own body too.
A rider cantered out from the camp on the far riverbank. A squire,
obviously, older and better dressed than Adam in a yellow and black surcoat
and feathered hat. He rode across the open ground and descended the
riverbank into the ford, his horse splashing up water, then reined in and
called in a strong Flemish accent, ‘Philippe de Bourbourg holds this
crossing! Who challenges him?’
‘Adam de Norton!’ Hugh cried in response. He glanced back at Adam
and winked, then gestured him forward.
‘The first to unhorse his opponent is victor, you agree?’ the squire
called, as he turned to ride back. Hugh of Oystermouth signalled his
agreement.
Nudging his stallion forward, Adam passed Hugh and entered the ford.
Water churned beneath him. Adam could sense the cold freshness of it, and
suddenly yearned to stop and drink; his mouth was parched, his body
flushed beneath the heavy mail. He rode on across the ford and climbed the
far bank to the shield mounted on the road’s verge. Raising his lance, he
struck one blow with the socketed tip. A hollow thud and a clatter. When he
looked up the road once more, Adam saw that his adversary had appeared.
The Flemish knight was in full mail, an iron great helm covering his
head and a lance in his hand. On his shield, and on the caparison that clad
his powerful black horse, a black lion stood rampant on a field of golden
yellow freckled with black rectangles. Philippe de Bourbourg. Adam
remembered the name. The first knight he would ever face in combat. His
opponent was walking his horse slowly back and forth in the shadows
beneath the trees. Then his squire reached him, calling something from the
saddle, and he cantered forward into the pale sunlight of the riverbank and
took up his position at the far end of the strip of open ground.
Adam was struggling to draw breath. He felt the weight of his armour
pressing down on him, crushing him into the saddle. The weight of dread
like a stone in his chest. He stuck his mailed legs out straight, heels down,
pressing his feet into the stirrups and his rump firmly against the high cantle
of his saddle. He felt the horse pawing the ground with its wet hooves,
flexing its neck. His arm was leaden as he raised his lance, signalling that
he was ready.
A shout from his left, a flag flourished in the air. Immediately his
opponent sprang forward, spurring his powerful black horse into a charge.
‘Ride, man, ride!’ Hugh of Oystermouth yelled. ‘Ride, or he’ll take you
standing!’
 Adam shook at the reins, digging in with his heels, and his horse
erupted beneath him like a bolt shot from a crossbow. Four long strides and
his gait was heavy, jolting Adam hard against the saddle, then the horse
stretched out, his body flowing forward into a careering charge. Jaw set,
Adam tried to remember all that he had learned about the joust: keep your
head down behind your shield rim, do not flinch or veer, aim for a point a
horse’s length behind your opponent’s shield . . .
He had been carrying his lance upright, holding it clear of his body.
Now he swung the socket tip down, feeling the shaft pivot upwards into the
couch of his armpit. He gripped it tight, angling the weapon across his
horse’s streaming mane and aiming it at the approaching rider.
Suddenly all thought was gone from his mind. He was flying, faster
than he had ever ridden before, armour-clad and unstoppable, half a ton of
muscle and steel behind one speeding lance-tip. He was invincible. Elation
flooded him. He could ride straight through anything that came at him.
Then, a galloping heartbeat later, he saw his opponent – previously a
distant speck of motion – double in size, and then treble. Philippe de
Bourbourg was coming at him like a thunderbolt, a charging monolith, the
hooves of his steed vibrating the earth, the caparison billowing around the
horse’s legs so the black lions appeared to prance and rear, flickering
tongues of red flame . . . And Adam felt all his joy turn to stark clenching
terror.
Everything in him wanted to drag at the reins, to veer aside from the
death bearing down on him. Nerves screaming, jaw tight – keep going! Just
keep going! – he lowered his head behind his shield rim and bunched his
shoulder behind the lance.
De Bourbourg hit him like a toppling wall. Adam felt the impact
through his entire body, the wrench of pain lifting him from the saddle.
Eyes open, he saw his opponent’s lance slam against his shield and bend,
the shaft flexing like a bowstave until it shattered into flying splinters. Then
the other rider was gone in a blast of black wind, and in his panic Adam felt
himself falling, spinning from the saddle. His feet were still in the stirrups
. . . he was trapped, he would be dragged and trampled . . .
Realisation burst through him. He was still on the horse, the saddle’s
high cantle barely holding him in place. Dropping back down into his seat,
he also realised that he was still holding his lance. He had missed his aim
completely – but now he had a weapon, and de Bourbourg did not.
Dragging in lungfuls of air through the soaked padding of the ventail, Adam
hauled back on the reins and tried to turn his horse. The animal backed so
fast that it almost reared, then staggered sideways into a crabbed turn.
But de Bourbourg was on him immediately. His horse must have spun
like a dancer . . . Before Adam could couch his lance the other rider had
crashed against him, swinging a sword blow that glanced off his mail coif
and rang in his head like a bell. Adam felt the blade grate down his mailed
shoulder as colours burst before his eyes. He had no room to use the lance;
de Bourbourg was pressing against him, the black destrier ramming his own
horse and trying to force it down.
Again the sword fell, and Adam managed to parry the blow with the
shaft of his lance. Screwing at the reins, throwing aside the useless weapon,
he turned his horse and tried to draw the falchion from his belt scabbard.
The knight’s black destrier lashed out again, snapping powerful teeth, and
Adam’s horse screamed and tried to rear. He was slipping in the saddle and
could not feel his feet in the stirrups. Then, from the depths of his panic,
rose a sudden murderous rage. Just as he felt when he fought the squire
Gerard at Pleshey, he was consumed with a fury that eclipsed all pain, all
conscious thought. Ripping the falchion free, he aimed a flailing blow and
managed to clip the bottom of de Bourbourg’s shield.
The riders separated, horses circling and pawing. Adam heard his
opponent shout something, but the words were muffled inside his helm. De
Bourbourg lifted his sword high, and for one desperately relieved moment
Adam thought he was declaring a truce. But then, with a savage shout, the
Flemish knight spurred his horse forward into the attack once more. Adam
managed to turn so his left side was towards his enemy. He raised his shield
at the last moment, and de Bourbourg’s blade slammed into it and hacked a
notch from the upper rim. Twisting in his saddle, Adam turned the shield,
the sword still stuck in it, and dragged it to one side, then slashed low and
hard across his saddle pommel. He felt his falchion strike his opponent’s
armoured torso, the steel sliding and grating over the mail links. Bellowing
from inside his helm, the Flemish knight released his grip on his sword,
then leaned from the saddle, grabbing Adam around the neck with the crook
of his arm and dragging him. His horse backstepped, head tossing high, and
Adam felt himself slipping helplessly forward. His sword arm was flailing,
but his opponent was too close to strike.
 Then it was over. His feet slipped from the stirrups, his horse fighting its
way backwards, and he was tumbling down into the gap between the two
animals. De Bourbourg released him as he fell, and Adam slammed down
onto his back with the hooves stamping and kicking around him. His head
was still ringing, his shield and falchion were gone, and his mouth was full
of blood. But he was grinning. He was alive. He had done his part.
*
‘It was quite easy, really,’ Robert de Dunstanville said later that same
day. ‘I’d already made my way down to the riverbank while you were
preparing your charge, so I got to watch everything from a place of
concealment. I saw how he fought, his style, his strengths and where he was
weak. So when I came to challenge him myself, I could overcome him
without difficulty.’
Adam gave a rueful smile. His felt bruised and battered in every limb,
and wounded in places where he did not even remember being hit.
‘Of course, your own efforts tired him a little too,’ Robert conceded.
‘You managed to get a few good blows in. Impressive, really, for a mere
gadling youth.’
What was truly impressive, Adam and everyone else knew, was the
speed and surety with which Robert had overcome Philippe de Bourbourg,
when he fought him less than an hour after Adam’s own defeat. After
almost unhorsing him on the first pass, he had hacked the Flemish knight
out of the saddle with three swift blows of his axe; no doubt, Adam thought,
he could have beaten him unaided. But he knew that Robert had been
testing him, throwing him into the fight to see how he fared, before
finishing the job himself. And they had won. Together they had won: behind
them now trotted the powerful but nimble black destrier that de Bourbourg
had named Papillon – ‘Butterfly’. Philippe de Bourbourg’s armour and
weapons too had fallen to the victors. De Bourbourg himself had not taken
the stratagem amiss, once he realised how he had been played. They had
left him on the roadside with his squires and spare horses, and a promise to
fight a return bout at their next encounter.
‘And now, friends, we ride to Épernay!’ Hugh of Oystermouth declared,
for all the world as if he had won the battle himself. It was hard, Adam
thought, not to share his high spirits. The road lay before them, with months
of hard travelling and hard fighting to come, but God had favoured them
thus far.
 Throwing back his head, the Welshman began to sing as he rode. A song
from his student days in Paris, he told them. A song of youth and rejoicing,
before death took them all. He had a fine voice, and after a few verses the
rest of them began to join in with the chorus, Robert in a deep rolling bass
tone, even Wilecok in a cracked warble and his Gascon woman in a sweet
high treble.
Gaudeamus igitur, they sang, as they rode on down the valley.
Gaudeamus igitur, Juvenes dum sumus . . .

OceanofPDF.com
 Chapter 8
The brazen roar of trumpets sounded across the field of Épernay, and
all along the line knights lifted their helms onto their heads, took lances
from their squires and nudged their chargers forward into formation. A
damp noon, beneath a grey sky, but a mist of steam rose from the closely
packed bodies of the horses.
Adam had almost retreated to the fences of the assembly area when he
heard hoofbeats behind him and turned to see Robert de Dunstanville
walking his horse slowly back towards the lists. His big grey destrier was
moving strangely, stepping short on the rear right leg. Already the drums
were rolling to announce the grand charge, the estor, that would begin the
tournament.
‘What’s wrong?’ Adam cried, running to help Robert dismount. The
knight pulled off his helmet and propped it on the saddle bow. ‘Lame,’ he
said, nodding down at his horse’s rear leg. ‘Or about to be. I could feel it as
I rode.’
‘But I don’t understand – how can that be?’ Adam asked. ‘I checked
everything just moments ago . . .’ He cast a glance over the horse, which
walked with head bobbing, ears down, blowing at the turf through flared
nostrils. They were back at the lists now, where John Chyld and Hugh of
Oystermouth were waiting beside the fence. From behind him Adam heard
the single trumpet blast, the cry of massed voices, and felt the first thunder
of the charge as a tremor through the earth.
‘Wait,’ Adam said, stooping to look at the rear hoof of Robert’s horse.
‘Perhaps there’s a st—’ A palm clipped the back of his head, and he
straightened up quickly, heat rushing to his face. John Chyld hissed through
his teeth.
The pulse of noise from the stands gained in intensity, drums and pipes
competing with voices shouting the names of the contenders, but Robert led
his limping horse along the line of the fence until they were out of the direct
view of the spectators.
‘Watch carefully,’ he said to Adam, pointing away across the field.
Adam could see the knights turn and charge once more against each other,
some of them already galloping back to the lists to fetch fresh lances from
their squires, others injured and crouching in the saddle. Those remaining
on the field were meshing into the swirl of the melee, casting aside their
broken lances and sweeping out their swords.
Up on the embankment behind the palisade fence, a herald in bright
motley was crying out to those gathered in the stands. ‘See him there,
preudhommes! The champion Jean de Grailly! He rides like a tower, like a
titan . . . Now he strikes – see him launch himself! And yes, already he
makes a capture! . . . Now, mesdames, see to the right my lord Enguerrand
de Coucy! . . . Witness his skill, his prowess!’
Across the field the melee was spilling away into the mist of light rain
that had moved up from the river, and Adam struggled to make out the
details of the combat.
‘Look over there on the far side of the field, opposite us,’ Robert said
quietly, chewing a sprig of grass between his teeth.
‘The opposing team’s lists?’ Adam asked, following his gesture. ‘The
refuge?’
Robert nodded. Only a moment passed before Adam saw a rider make
for the opening in the opposite fence. A wounded knight, perhaps, or an
exhausted one. Just after him came a second, dragging a captured horse on a
long rein.
‘Once they’re inside the refuge they’re safe, of course,’ Robert said, and
Adam glanced at him as he caught the note of cold suggestion in his voice.
‘But only once they’re inside . . . Sometimes there are infantry stationed to
guard the refuges, but not today it seems. So where might be a good place
to make a capture, would you say?’
‘Isn’t that against the rules?’ Adam asked, before he could stop himself.
He was rewarded by a scoffing laugh from John Chyld. ‘But it’s
dishonourable surely?’ he went on, undeterred. ‘They’re already leaving the
field . . .’
‘In battle, no man is safe,’ Robert said. ‘And so it is here too.’
Up on the fence the herald continued to cry out his commentary,
gesticulating wildly. ‘See him there, messires – the brave Sir Hugh D’Oisy!
Like a hawk he attacks, striking to left and right . . . Oh, but he falls! A
capture, mesdames . . . To the bold Sir Baldwin de Bazentin!’
Robert shrugged himself away from the fence and spat out the stem of
grass he had been nibbling. For a moment or two longer he stared at the
field and the swirl of the melee, then he sniffed in apparent satisfaction.
‘Check my horse over again,’ he told Adam. ‘Give particular attention to the
rear right leg.’
Adam found the stone quickly enough, a smooth round pebble wedged
into the hoof beneath the rim of the shoe, and prised it free with his clasp
knife. The destrier stirred at once, head tossing, and pawed the turf. ‘Now
get across the field and wait for me, close to the break of the opposite
fences,’ Robert said. He was smiling as he swung himself up into the saddle
and took his helmet from John Chyld. ‘Let’s see what pretty birds might fly
into our net.’
As Adam began to run he heard Hugh of Oystermouth scrambling up
onto the fence of the lists, then his voice crying out across the field. ‘Robert
de Dunstanville, messires and mesdames! A new challenger has entered the
fray, come to perform great feats of arms! Robert de Dunstanville is here –
prepare to witness his skill!’
*
Two days later, at an inn outside Soissons, Adam watched as Hugh
calculated the takings, recording them in tight little columns of inked
numbers. A certain sum for a horse, another for saddle and tack, another
sum again for each weapon and piece of armour. Robert de Dunstanville
had left the field at Épernay unvanquished and with two more captures,
swiftly exchanged for cash ransoms. The second man had a capture of his
own that he had taken moments earlier on the field, and Robert took a half
share of that prize too.
For all Adam’s misgivings about the stratagem they had used, watching
Robert in action had been thrilling. The knight had made both his captures
almost at the mouth of the opposing refuge, swooping down upon the riders
as they retreated from the field. The first had tried to flee, but his wearied
horse was no match for Robert’s freshly rested charger. At the last moment
the man had panicked and tried to turn, to fight, only to fall at once to
Robert’s battering onslaught. So swiftly, so violently did it happen that
Adam laughed in amazement, even as he began to run to seize the fallen
man. Already Robert had turned again, his horse rearing, to take his second
victim. Neither had put up any resistance to Adam; both had yielded at
once. It was almost as if they too had been stunned by the speed and naked
aggression of the attack.
But how sordid it seemed now, Adam thought, to see all that daring and
skill at arms reduced to columns of figures on a parchment scroll, every
capture transformed into exact sums in livres tournois, and to little heaps of
silver deniers on the scarred wood of the tabletop. Hugh of Oystermouth sat
hunched over his work, scribing intently with the tip of his tongue between
his teeth. Wilecok and John Chyld leaned over him, eyeing hungrily the
little heaps of coin.
‘Could have been we got more, of course,’ John Chyld said, ‘if we’d
asked the full ransoms.’
‘What do you mean?’ Adam asked. He peered from John Chyld to
Hugh, then at Robert, who sat at the head of the table. ‘Tell him then,’ John
Chyld said.
‘As you’d had some trouble, back at Lagny, in securing the captive,’
Robert said in a mild tone, ‘I had John and Hugh circulate a rumour before
the fighting began at Épernay that I would only ask two thirds of the
ransom of any capture I made. It seemed a worthwhile compromise.’
Adam looked from Robert to John Chyld and back as sour realisation
soaked through him. ‘There was no need,’ he said, hot with embarrassment.
‘You should not have made things easier for me.’
‘Oh, don’t worry,’ Robert told him with a wry smile. ‘Next time we
won’t. And if anyone still thinks I’m asking reduced ransoms, they’ll be
bitterly surprised.’
*
They remained at Soissons over the penitential season of Lent, training
hard in the meadows outside the old walls of the town. Once more they
fought with quarterstaffs, and by the end of the first week Adam no longer
had to endure the taunts of John Chyld, or the stifled mirth of Wilecok and
his Gascon woman. By the second week he had learned not only to hold his
ground but to press the attack, and even to win. He learned to draw from
inside himself a tightly focussed anger that felt almost like joy, an
aggressive charge that he could direct outwards into action.
When the quarterstaffs were splintered and broken they changed to
sword and falchion, first John Chyld and then Robert himself schooling
Adam in close fighting. This was not the combat he had been taught at
Pleshey, always at sword’s length, shield up, feet braced. Adam learned to
rush his opponent, using the pommel of the sword to punch at the exposed
face and throat, using the crossguard to gouge and hook, the whole length
of the blade to turn and to trip, to overwhelm. The shield too was a weapon,
a blunt instrument; he learned to use the leading edge and corner to ram and
strike, to batter his opponent down. It was fast and bruising, but he emerged
from each bout stronger, breathless and elated, and often victorious.
Between fights, Adam rode. Robert had given him Papillon, the black
destrier he had won from the Flemish knight at the ford, and Adam took
him out over the surrounding countryside, riding with an open rein. He
found the horse surprisingly docile for a trained battle-steed, but with only a
light saddle, rather than the heavy padded war seat, he could sense the
animal’s flowing strength, the quickness of muscular reflexes. Already the
horse was coming to know and trust him.
He rode at the quintain, slamming his lance repeatedly into the shield
mounted on the swinging crossbar until he could aim straight and true
almost without conscious effort. Then he rode practice jousts with John
Chyld, hurtling up and down the long strip of meadow until the grass was
worn to a hoof-scarred rut of earth, littered with the shattered wood of
broken lances.
‘Young men love the joust, it’s true,’ Robert de Dunstanville said one
evening, after he had watched them ride. ‘Easier to make a bold show to the
ladies, I suppose. Only the melee teaches the true skills of warfare,’ he said,
and sighed, ‘but I expect soon enough it’ll die out completely, and real
chivalry with it.’
Adam was rubbing his horse’s neck and flanks with a cloth, wiping
away the lather of sweat. He was becoming accustomed to Robert’s
grumbles about the changing culture of the tournament circuit. ‘Harder to
cheat at the joust as well, of course,’ he said with a grin.
‘Oh?’ Robert said. He had a dangerous look in his eye suddenly, and
Adam regretted his words. ‘You believe it is cheating, then, to use
cleverness in war?’
‘No, I . . .’ Adam began, but Robert was already striding towards his
horse.
‘Saddle up,’ Robert said, snatching one of the unbroken lances that lay
in the grass. ‘And ready yourself.’
Adam caught John Chyld’s wincing expression, then looked away. He
took a lance, then swung himself into the saddle. Robert had already ridden
to the far end of the meadow. Neither he nor Adam were wearing mail, only
padded linen aketons, and their lances were mere untipped shafts, but
Robert had a tensed vigour to his movements that Adam recognised from
the tournament field.
 As soon as he reached his position and turned, Adam saw Robert raise
his lance and then spur his horse forward, his hair whipping out behind him.
Papillon responded with only a touch of the spur, and a moment later they
were galloping, Adam holding his breath tight, trying to pretend this was
John Chyld he was jousting against, or the quintain, or . . .
With only a horse’s length between them, Robert gave a wild cry and
threw his lance, hurling it underarm like a clumsy javelin. Adam reeled
back, swinging his own weapon upwards to deflect the missile. The horse
beneath him buckled, almost stumbling, and Adam realised as he dropped
his lance that he was no longer holding the reins. The black destrier reared,
spinning so fast that Adam was almost thrown from the saddle, and before
he could regain his balance he found himself galloping in the other
direction, dragged behind a triumphant Robert de Dunstanville.
‘Seize the reins and they’re yours,’ Robert shouted over his shoulder.
‘Just don’t try it yourself,’ he went on, as they slowed to a canter and then
to a walk once more. ‘A squire with a broken neck is no use to me!’
*
They arrived at Senlis one Sunday in early June, when the wheat was
ripening in the fields. King Louis of France had dropped his ban on
tournaments shortly after Easter, and had now gone so far as to sponsor one
himself. He had sent out heralds to summon all the greatest and most
chivalrous knights in Christendom to his town of Senlis, north of Paris, to
contend for martial fame and glory, on the second Monday after Pentecost,
the feast of St Boniface.
Already, as the vespers bell rang, the narrow square before the cathedral
was awash with colours and heraldic blazons. Everywhere was the blue of
the French king and his brother, the Count of Anjou, covered with golden
fleur-de-lis. There was the black and the yellow of Brabant and of Flanders,
and the blue and yellow of Burgundy. There were eagles and there were
fishes, there were bears and boars and stag’s heads. But most of all there
were lions. Lions rampant, passant and gardant, in all the glorious colours
of heraldry, flourishing through the narrow stone streets as if the whole
town had been transformed into some exotic menagerie from the pages of
an illustrated book.
From the open window of an upper chamber that overlooked the square,
Adam stared into a sea of red. The deep royal red of England, where three
golden lions prowled with paws upraised and tongues flickering. And the
brighter sanguine of Simon de Montfort, Earl of Leicester, where a single
white lion with a forked tail danced rampant on a bloody field.
‘Here he comes now,’ said Hugh of Oystermouth, perched on the
wooden bench below the windowsill. ‘The great man himself, like a king in
his glory.’
Flanked by his household knights, with his sons riding before him,
Simon de Montfort entered the square on horseback beneath his own huge
streaming banner. From all sides men ran to assist him as he halted and
began to dismount, crowding to hold his stirrup. Then, at his glance, they
fell back and formed a lane before him, across the square towards the
cathedral, where Lord Edward waited to greet him.
‘Strange, isn’t it?’ Hugh said under his breath, as the crowd below them
fell into an expectant hush. ‘They could almost be father and son.’
Quite true, Adam thought. De Montfort was old enough to be the young
prince’s father. As old, perhaps, as King Henry himself, although he did not
look it. And his sons were Edward’s age, or a little younger. But as he
strode across the cobbled square, Simon de Montfort did not appear in any
way an old man. He stood straight, broad-shouldered, and walked with a
prowling muscular assurance. His face was square and rather rawboned,
with a jutting clean-shaven jaw and deep-set eyes. His hair was iron grey,
and hung thick and straight to his shoulders. Beneath his red surcoat with its
rampant white lion was the glint of mail, and he wore a broadsword belted
at his side.
Compared to him, even the formidable Lord Edward resembled a boy.
‘Is it true what they say, do you think?’ Hugh muttered, leaning on the
low sill of the window.
Adam’s brow creased.
‘You know . . .’ Hugh went on, dropping his voice even further. ‘That de
Montfort planned to overthrow King Henry a twelvemonth past, and put
Lord Edward on the throne in his father’s place, and Edward was set fair to
go along with it . . .?’
Adam raised a hand, hushing him. He had heard rumours of such things
but they were best not spoken about, and certainly not here. If Lord Edward
had been turned against his father at one point, his loyalties had swung
firmly back again now. He had only just returned from a dutiful visit to the
royal court in England, drawn back to France once more by the promise of
tournament glories. ‘He flits about the narrow sea like a gull, that one,’ John
Chyld had said.
Simon de Montfort, meanwhile, remained the king’s principal
adversary, the leader of the baronial faction that opposed Henry’s will and
wished to curb the power of the throne. As far as Adam knew, this was the
first time that de Montfort and Edward had met face to face, since the
sundering of their alliance.
Now the two men approached one another, ringed on all sides by their
massed supporters. For a long moment they stood face to face, a sword’s
length apart. Then de Montfort raised his arms, and Lord Edward stepped
forward into his embrace. The roar of voices from the men in the square
rattled the shutters and startled the birds from the rooftops. Reconciled, the
two leaders clasped each other by the shoulders and turned to face their
supporters, both of them grinning widely. But how real, Adam wondered,
was their friendship? He remembered what John Chyld had said to him,
back in the inn at Lagny. Get too close to them, and they’ll rend your flesh.
Yes, he thought, Edward and de Montfort were the real lions. Prouder
and more ferocious by far than any heraldic beast, and never to be trusted.
‘I can’t say I favour either of them myself,’ Hugh of Oystermouth was
saying, as the gathering in the square broke up into knots of rowdy
comradeship. ‘Although they do say that Earl Simon is a close ally of
Llywelyn, and I am inclined to support him, obviously, for the prestige of
my nation—’
‘Who is Llywelyn?’ Adam broke in, frowning. A memory came to him
that he could not place. Something Robert had told him . . .
Hugh stared at him, wide-eyed. ‘Llywelyn, of course, Prince of Wales!
You’ve never heard of him? Llywelyn son of Gruffudd son of Llywelyn the
Great, who was Prince of Gwynedd in our grandfathers’ day? Sir Robert
claimed that some of his cousins are his descendants too, in fact.’
‘Joane de Quincy and her sister,’ Adam said, remembering the
connection.
‘I believe that was the name, yes. You’ve met them then? Do they have
hair the colour of dark copper and eyes like the sea?’
‘They do.’
Hugh nodded. ‘Ah yes, that would be a true sign of the lineage,’ he said.
He had gone back to the table in the corner, where he was drawing up his
list of all the contenders he had so far been able to identify, with notes of
the arms and colours they bore and the numbers in their company.
Adam remained by the window, looking down into the square again.
Nearly five months had passed, he reckoned, since he had left Joane de
Quincy at Ware, but for a few long moments as he stared into the swirl of
the crowd below him, thinning now that the principal men had departed, he
saw only her face and form in his mind, and heard her voice as clearly as if
she stood beside him.
‘If you’re looking for our master down there, he’s already gone,’ Hugh
said from his desk. ‘No doubt he followed Simon de Montfort’s men, and
Lord Edward. And no doubt he’s already laying his plans to approach one
or the other on the matter of his seized lands and estates. Which of them do
you think holds most power now? To which of them might he give his
support, to overturn the king’s judgements?’
‘What are you saying?’ Adam asked, turning abruptly from the window
as his vision of Joane faded. But he had not forgotten Robert’s bitter
outburst on the road from Pleshey to Ware, the great fury that he claimed
would soon shake the throne.
‘Only what you already know,’ Hugh said, looking back at him with a
sly smile. ‘Which would prove stronger, do you think: the three golden
lions or the single white lion? Which would prove fiercer, if it came to open
war?’
Adam frowned, curling his lip. Surely things had not gone so far?
Decades had passed since Englishman had last fought Englishman in civil
conflict. No worse fate could befall the realm . . . And yet, he could not
deny – his blood had quickened at the idea of it. He thought again of that
menagerie of roaring beasts he had seen in the square a moment before, and
pictured them brought to bold and violent life, and himself thrown among
them.
‘You too,’ Hugh said, ‘have suffered an injustice, so I hear.’
‘You hear too much,’ Adam told him.
‘And you should open your ears a little more and hear what’s happening
around you!’
Adam gave a rueful smile. It was true enough. But now he had work to
do – he needed to check that the horses had been properly stabled, with
adequate fodder for the night. John Chyld and Wilecok had already melted
into the crowded lanes of the town, and would not reappear before nightfall,
no doubt. Outside the light was fading to dusk, and flights of starlings were
whirling about the rooftops of the town.
On his way out of the room he paused a moment beside Hugh’s desk,
glancing over the rows of inked names and the few crabbed little drawings
of shields. ‘My father bore a lion on his arms as well,’ he said. ‘Granted to
him by the king’s herald.’
‘A noble beast,’ Hugh replied, bent over his work. His hair, Adam
noticed, had grown out into a dense brown clump, entirely concealing the
last traces of his clerical tonsure. ‘In what style did he bear it?’
‘Vert, a lion rampant or,’ Adam told him. A golden lion on a field of
green. ‘I hope to bear those arms myself one day,’ he said.
‘Choose wisely,’ Hugh said with a wink, ‘and with God’s grace you
will.’

OceanofPDF.com
 Chapter 9
The grooms had almost finished with the horses by the time Adam
entered the familiar warmth of the stables, although he noticed that they
were giving Papillon a wide berth. Taking the currying comb from one of
them, he rubbed the black destrier down himself.
‘That one belongs to Robert de Dunstanville, doesn’t it?’ one of the
grooms said, peering around the end of the stall. ‘Fitting mount for the
devil’s knight, so they say.’
Adam glared back at him. ‘The horse is mine,’ he said, and enjoyed the
man’s quick dismay and stammering apology. Once the groom had
retreated, Adam rubbed Papillon’s nose and blew into the horse’s flaring
nostrils. The destrier had served him well over the recent months. At La
Fère, in the week after Easter, Adam had ridden in a round-table jousting
contest beneath the walls and towers of the Lord of Coucy’s fortress. He
broke three lances and remained unhorsed, and on the third pass drove his
opponent out of both saddle and stirrups and toppled him back over his
horse’s rump. He had ridden cleanly, tried no tricks or ruses, and Robert
merely nodded his approval. By the time they travelled north once more,
Hugh’s ledger was inked with fresh rows and columns, and the strongbox
held another purse of silver deniers. Adam had felt the warmth of victory
rising through him like the fumes of strong wine.
The following month, as the first apple blossom appeared on the trees,
he and Robert had attended a three-day tournament at Valenciennes in the
County of Hainaut. Adam had acquitted himself well, supporting Robert on
the melee field and securing another captive, and he had twice ridden in the
joust. Now it had been announced that the whole of the following morning
at Senlis would be devoted to a round-table contest, with one event set aside
for squires and young noblemen who had not yet attained knighthood;
Adam knew that he would need his horse to be in the finest possible
condition. Ignoring the muttering of the grooms, he went back over
Papillon’s hooves and mane with a coarse brush and worked down the
animal’s coat once more until the blackness shone in the glow of the
lanterns.
As he was leaving the stable a messenger came for him: there would be
a reception in the town later that evening, given by Lord Edward for Simon
de Montfort and his sons, and Robert wanted Adam to attend him as his
squire. He made the boy repeat the directions to the hall where the feast
would be laid – a large inn on the other side of town, just outside the old
walls – then sent him on his way. As he paced back up the lane to the town
square, Adam recalled Earl Humphrey’s warning to Sir Robert, back at
Pleshey. Surely attending a reception feast given by the king’s own son
could not be considered mischief? And what could de Montfort do to help
Robert anyway, living as a virtual exile in France?
A shout broke Adam’s thoughts, then a sudden crashing noise and a
woman’s scream. Breaking into a run, he doubled the corner into the square
and turned swiftly into the passageway leading to the upper room where he
and Robert were lodging. Hugh of Oystermouth was sprawled at the bottom
of the stairs, clasping his face as he scrambled to stand.
‘What’s happening?’ Adam demanded.
‘Vile sneaking bastard threw me down the steps!’ Hugh cried. He took
his hand from his face and stared at it. His palm was smeared with blood.
‘Called me the son of a Welsh bitch!’
He dragged himself back into the corner as Adam pushed past him and
climbed the stairs to the upper floor. Footsteps shuffled on the boards above
him, then something was flung from the door of the chamber onto the
narrow landing: his own mattress roll, and half of Robert’s travelling
luggage was already dumped beside it.
‘What is this?’ Adam cried, running up the last flight of stairs to the
open door of the room. ‘This chamber’s already taken!’
‘By whom?’ said the man just inside the doorway. He spread his hands
and mimed a searching glance around the room. ‘I saw nobody here, except
that swiving Welshman and his slut – and I had to drag him out by his
heels!’
Adam took in the room: the baggage strewn across the floor, the bed
disordered, the tousle-haired woman crouching in the corner with
frightened eyes.
‘I’m sorry,’ said Hugh from the stairs. ‘I thought you’d be away longer
. . .’
‘This chamber is already taken by Sir Robert de Dunstanville,’ Adam
said, setting his jaw and hooking his thumbs in his belt. ‘You’ve no doubt
seen his shield hanging in the window there. Who in the name of Christ are
you?’
 The young man standing before him was about a year older than Adam
himself, with curling black hair, a sallow complexion and strangely
protuberant eyes. He wore a tunic and hose of fine scarlet, with a knife in a
tooled leather sheath hanging from his belt.
‘I am Richard de Malmaines,’ the man said with an eloquent gesture,
‘squire to Sir Henry de Montfort, son of Simon, the Earl of Leicester, and a
far greater and more worthy occupant of this chamber than your master,
whoever he might be. But doubtless Sir Henry will be grateful to him for
surrendering it without complaint.’
Just for a moment, Adam wondered whether Robert really had given up
the room – was he intending to ingratiate himself with the de Montforts?
No, he would surely have told Adam if he had. But Richard de Malmaines
had noticed the brief flicker of doubt. He took one long stride and blocked
the door, reaching out to grip the frame and lintel and bar Adam’s way. He
gave a sneering smile. ‘Perhaps you might assist me by removing the last of
your things,’ he said.
Adam had taken an involuntary step back, and now felt the rough
plaster of the wall behind him. In his mind he heard Robert’s words: direct
all of your force and fury against your opponent, immediately. He knew he
could not risk another moment’s hesitation. Throwing himself forward, he
drove the heels of his palms against the man’s shoulders and shoved him
from the doorway. Richard de Malmaines let out a cry, caught off guard,
and staggered several steps back into the room.
‘You lay hands on me?’ de Malmaines said. He looked down at himself
in a pretence of disbelief. When he looked up again, Adam saw the glint of
madness in his strange eyes. With a swift movement he drew the knife from
his belt. The short stiff blade was sharpened to a wicked point. ‘I’ll slice
your nose for that,’ he said.
The woman in the corner of the room let out a keening wail, and just for
a heartbeat de Malmaines glanced at her. Immediately Adam took another
stride into the room, reaching down to grab the three-legged stool that Hugh
had been using earlier. Whipping the stool up from the floor, he smashed it
into the other man’s wrist.
De Malmaines shouted in pain, the knife falling from his grip, and
before he could defend himself Adam spun the stool and rammed the heavy
wooden seat against his chest. Reeling, the man took three staggering steps
backwards and tripped over the bench just inside the window. With a gasp
of surprise he stumbled against the low sill, flailing his arms to grab at the
frame. His fingers caught only air, and he toppled backwards out of the
window. The woman screamed again, and took the opportunity to dart from
the room.
‘Christ’s teeth!’ Hugh said from the doorway. ‘Did you murder the
bastard? Have you killed him?’
His heart banging in his chest, Adam walked as slowly as he could
manage to the window and peered downwards. For a moment he saw only
the crowd of men that had already gathered around the body sprawling on
the muddy cobbles ten feet below. Some of them were laughing, others
calling out angrily. Then the crowd parted and Adam saw Richard de
Malmaines roll onto his side and sit upright. Men hastened to assist him,
taking his arms and lifting him to his feet. Amazingly, he appeared to have
survived unhurt – Adam felt the pent breath rush from his chest – but he
gasped as he managed to stand and limped as he tried to walk. Some of the
bystanders were shouting encouragements to him, others were hooting
abuse. Several large men appeared to be restraining him.
Adam picked up the knife from the floor, reversed it, and tossed it from
the window. ‘You dropped that,’ he called after it.
*
‘You have a habit of attacking your fellow squires, it seems,’ Robert de
Dunstanville said an hour later, as they entered the packed and rowdy hall.
‘Only when they look like they’re about to attack me,’ Adam replied.
Robert twitched a smile. ‘Yes, a pre-emptive attack is often the best
defence – even with a three-legged stool. Still, it was a matter of honour
and no murdering was done, so I approve. The matter will not lie, though –
best be ready.’
‘I will,’ Adam said. He had been ready all evening, expecting to be
assaulted in some narrow alleyway of the town as he made his way to join
Robert. A knife in the dark would have come as no surprise. But Richard de
Malmaines had not yet struck back at him – and here he was in this very
chamber, lurking darkly behind his master Henry de Montfort, who in turn
sat at the left hand of his father, Earl Simon. His eyes met Adam’s across
the crowded room and narrowed with a palpable lust for reprisal.
But there would be no violence here at least. The hall was a long
vaulted chamber, more like a crypt or a storage cellar than a feasting place.
Some of the men at the two central tables were Burgundian or Flemish, but
the vast majority of them were English, crowding along the benches
drinking and shouting, boasting loudly of the great deeds they would
perform the following day. If any were nervous, they did not show it.
Serving boys weaved between them, bearing pitchers of wine and baskets
of bread, fruit and cheese, and beneath the tables dogs slunk and prowled.
Above the roar of voices a trio of minstrels tried to make themselves heard
on vielles and tabor. There was even a troupe of tumblers, crowded into one
corner performing their leaps and turns while the onlookers yelled
encouragement.
Lord Edward sat at the high table, with Simon de Montfort and his sons,
and appeared far more restrained and dignified than the knights thronging
the central tables. The air was thick with the smeech of candles and lamps.
‘Watch carefully what happens here,’ Robert told Adam. ‘There is more
going on than might be obvious.’
He leaned and whispered something to one of the serving boys, slipping
him a silver coin, and the boy nodded and darted away towards the high
table. Picking his way across the room, Robert lowered himself into a free
place at the end of one of the benches. Adam noticed the others at the table
shifting away from him, some with expressions of disdain or suspicion.
Robert grinned at them, then took a cup of wine and drank it to the dregs.
A stir ran through the room as another figure approached the table.
Adam guessed his identity at once: Sir Henry de Montfort, the son of Earl
Simon, the master of Richard de Malmaines. A younger and slighter version
of his father, with less of the dominance but all the assurance.
‘De Dunstanville,’ Sir Henry said, halting before Robert and leaning
closer, one foot propped on the bench beside him. ‘My squire tells me that
he was grievously misused earlier this evening. He claims your own squire
was responsible.’ He flicked a quick glance at Adam, who was standing at
Robert’s shoulder.
Robert merely shrugged. ‘So I heard,’ he said. ‘What of it?’
Sir Henry smiled coldly. ‘I’ve forbidden my man from taking vengeance
directly, to respect the peace of our hosts. But he will challenge yours at the
individual jousts on the morrow.’
Robert shrugged again, as if Adam were none of his concern. ‘So be it,’
he said.
‘Your squire is a keen lance?’ Sir Henry asked.
‘I’ve never seen him bested.’
 ‘Tomorrow you may. My man is good.’ Henry looked directly at Adam
for the first time. ‘Prepare yourselves,’ he told them both. Then he
straightened up again, and gestured curtly. ‘Come, then,’ he said to Robert,
‘if you wish for an audience with my father.’
Adam felt the flare of blood in his face as Robert gestured for him to
follow, and together they made their way after Sir Henry towards the high
table. He was relieved that the matter was out in the open now, and that his
conflict with de Malmaines would be concluded in the open as well, rather
than by a sudden strike in a back alley. But his nerves were taut; tomorrow’s
match would be no simple demonstration of prowess. Honour was at stake,
and perhaps his life as well.
The men at the high table were seated in high-backed chairs, with their
squires and other servants waiting attendance. Dishes of food and cups of
wine littered the board between them, along with an arsenal of silver eating
knives and spoons. Lord Edward sat at the far end, in the tallest chair, but
seemed subdued and watchful tonight. Simon de Montfort had taken the
central place, and seemed effortlessly to command the scene. His second
son, Simon the Younger, sat at his left hand. The others at the table were
young noblemen, only a year or two older than Adam and not yet knighted.
‘Robert de Dunstanville,’ de Montfort said. ‘A long time since last we
met! I was sorry when I learned of your recent misfortunes.’
‘I try to bear the slights without complaint, my lord,’ Robert said.
‘Many, after all, have suffered worse.’
‘Indeed so,’ de Montfort said, and his smile turned grave. ‘You know
that I will always uphold the rights of honest men. If there is ever anything I
can do to assist you, just come to me.’
Robert bowed his head, but Adam had caught the quick stir of interest
around the table. The two young noblemen at the far end exchanged a
glance, then turned together to de Montfort, as alert as scent hounds picking
up a spoor. ‘If you truly wish to assist the realm, Lord Simon,’ one of them
said, ‘you should return to England – the people cry out for leadership!’ He
was a hulking dark-haired youth, heavy and brutal-looking.
‘My father would be only too pleased to have you at his side,’ the
second said. He was lean, almost delicate, with flaming red hair and a
tufting beard of orange down. ‘Surely the king would listen to reason, with
two such advisors?’ Adam recalled seeing this young man earlier in the day;
his name was Gilbert, and he was the son of the Earl of Gloucester.
 All eyes turned to Lord Edward, the king’s son, who remained sitting
silently at the head of the table, running stiff fingers through his beard. ‘It’s
true,’ he said at last, his strange lisping voice filling the silence around the
table, ‘that the communitas regni has been solely disturbed by these recent
disputes, and many have suffered. My father knows it well. But he will
always be the first recourse for justice. And the noble Earl Simon can return
home whenever he likes – the king would embrace him as a brother.’
‘He would honour me by doing so,’ de Montfort said, raising an open
palm. ‘But as for returning, there are so many false and fickle men in
England, I prefer to be here, with my friends.’ He turned his smile to left
and right including them all, and once more Adam had the impression of a
lion sizing up its prey, waiting for the moment to pounce, to rend. De
Montfort raised his goblet for the serving boy behind him to refill. ‘By the
arm of St James,’ he said, ‘let us drink from one cup, as brothers, and pray
God sends justice to us all one day!’
The others growled their agreement, and de Montfort passed the
brimming goblet to Robert. All of those at the table, Adam thought, were
the sons of great and noble houses. Most were the descendants of those men
who had followed William the Bastard across the narrow sea nearly two
centuries before. Robert de Dunstanville too was one of them, for all his
scorn for the aristocracy of his own country. He took the goblet, drank
deeply, and then placed it before Lord Edward. Without glancing in his
direction, Edward drank too. Adam, the son of a commoner raised to
knighthood, descendant of nobody, was not included.
‘But how can there be justice in England now?’ the dark-haired young
man was muttering, through the noise of revelry behind them. ‘Half the
nobility are in debt to the Jews! And the Jews are the property of the king
—’
‘These are not matters for this time or place, FitzJohn,’ de Montfort’s
son broke in.
Adam had been standing behind Robert all this time, trying to ignore the
murderous stares that de Malmaines was directing at him over the heads of
their masters. Now he became suddenly aware that Simon de Montfort’s
roving gaze had fastened upon him. For a heartbeat he thought that de
Montfort had asked him a question and was awaiting an answer. Then he
realised that it was the question, not the answer, that was required of him.
 ‘Will you ride in the tournament tomorrow, my lord?’ he asked abruptly,
and felt the attention of the men at the table shift towards him.
‘Not I,’ de Montfort replied, with the slightest hint of a wink. ‘No, I am
too old for such pursuits – I leave them to the young bucks!’ He gestured
once more to Lord Edward, and to his sons. All of them appeared relieved
that the conversation had once more shifted. ‘And you are . . .?’ Simon
asked Adam.
‘My squire, lord,’ Robert told him. ‘Adam de Norton.’
‘De Norton – your family come from Herefordshire, I think?’
‘My father held land in Hampshire, my lord,’ Adam said, his mouth dry.
‘East of Winchester, by the forest of Blakemore.’
‘I know that country well,’ de Montfort said. ‘You must be close to
Odiham, and to the fine abbey of Waverley.’
‘It’s been many years since I was last there,’ Adam told him. ‘Since my
father died, that is.’
‘Adam de Norton too has been unjustly dispossessed of his inheritance,
lord,’ Robert added.
Simon de Montfort nodded, his jaw tightening as he tapped at the table.
He fixed his eyes on Adam once more. ‘Then I hope you too gain justice
soon enough,’ he told him. ‘And I will do anything in my power to aid you.
I have a good memory for faces, Adam de Norton, and I will not forget
yours.’
Adam bowed, feeling the heat rise through him. Robert was already
backing away from the table, but Lord Edward raised a hand.
‘You’ll ride in my company tomorrow, de Dunstanville?’ he asked, with
a casual gesture. ‘I would not like to think any honest Englishman felt . . .
unjustly excluded.’
‘With your permission I would be honoured, my lord.’
They moved away from the high table together, back into the noise and
revelry of the hall. Adam only had time to catch Robert’s quick smile of
satisfaction before he sensed a presence behind him. Turning, he saw
Richard de Malmaines stalking after him, still limping heavily.
‘Adam de Norton, is that your name?’ de Malmaines said, when only an
arm’s length separated them. Adam could almost smell the anger burning in
him, the desire for violence.
‘Let there be no misunderstanding between us,’ de Malmaines said, his
eyes gleaming. ‘You have shamed and injured me, so I give you proper
challenge. I intend to destroy you tomorrow.’
‘You intend to try,’ Adam told him. At the margins of his vision he could
make out the men around them turning to listen, giving them room.
‘Oh, make no mistake of my purpose,’ de Malmaines said. ‘I swear
upon the holy blood of Christ, I will tear the bones from your flesh and the
soul from your body.’
Adam just smiled back, nodded once, then with an effort of will turned
his back on the man and began to walk away from him.
‘Hear me well, Adam de Norton!’ de Malmaines called after him. ‘I will
unmake you!’

OceanofPDF.com
 Chapter 10
To the west of the town of Senlis lay a broad four-mile expanse of
open pasture, bracketed on three sides by forest and marsh. On that land the
afternoon’s grand melee would take place. But the venue for the morning
jousts lay closer to the town itself, in the fenced enclosure of the lists. Many
days had passed since the last rain, and the ground was hard and dry, the
hooves of the horses kicking up a scrim of dust that hung in the air and
hazed the distant landscapes.
Adam waited in the saddle, raising his leg while John Chyld tightened
the girth strap. It was still early, but already the heat was gathering. The
jousts for the squires and others who had not yet attained knighthood were
almost concluded; next would come the jousting of the young knights,
before the field was cleared for the day’s main event. In the stands and
around the lists the crowds were forming, although most of those assembled
were knights themselves, studying and assessing the skills and courage of
their juniors and trying to pick out the future tournament champions among
them.
Already they had seen Gilbert de Clare, the red-haired son of the Earl of
Gloucester, blast a squire of the Count of Soissons from the saddle with his
first lance. His friend John FitzJohn, de Montfort’s other companion from
the evening before, had ridden too, although he had only managed a draw
against his opponent. Adam had watched them both, and a score of other
riders as well, through glazed eyes. Now, finally, the moment had come to
confront his challenger, Richard de Malmaines.
He had slept badly the night before, the taunts of his opponent revolving
in his mind, surges of anger and terror startling him back from the brink of
exhaustion. So many times had he pictured the confrontation, the galloping
charge and the clash, that he felt now that he was once again dreaming.
Blinking rapidly, tightening his grip on the reins, he tried to focus his mind
and slow the rapid beating of his heart.
He could see his opponent at the far end of the dusty course. De
Malmaines was mounted on a bay stallion that appeared half maddened
already, sidestepping and tossing its head as it champed at the bit, spattering
foam from its mouth. De Malmaines himself wore a mail hauberk and
carried a red shield with the white lion blazon of his master. Adam was
dressed in a padded linen gambeson faced with leather, a coif over his head,
and on his white shield was the red lattice of de Dunstanville. He was
mounted on Papillon; the black charger was placid enough as John Chyld
checked the bridle and tack for one last time, but Adam could feel the solid
muscle of the horse’s back beneath him, the power in the haunches and the
massive heart, ready to be unleashed.
Glancing to his right, Adam saw Robert leaning on the fence of the lists.
The knight appeared relaxed, unconcerned. Surely, Adam thought, he must
be feigning such nonchalance?
John Chyld passed Adam his first lance. Each rider was allowed three,
one for each pass. At each end of the course the marshals had raised their
flags. Adam only had to touch Papillon’s flank with the spurs and the horse
instantly moved up to the starting line, primed and ready for the charge.
A pause, a long breath. Dust settled. Then the flag went down, the
trumpet roared, and at once the big destrier began to move. Adam leaned
forward in the saddle, the muscles of his right arm bunched as he held the
reins short and tight. The horse wanted to stretch out into a run but he
needed to hold back the full power and momentum of the charge until the
last moment. He could see de Malmaines approaching down the worn dirt
strip of the course, the dust billowing up behind him.
Adam swung his lance down, couching the shaft beneath his arm. The
blunt socketed tip wavered, and he gripped the shaft and aimed. Nerves
tight, he felt the power of the animal beneath him compressed into its
haunches, into the muscles of its rear legs, ready to surge forward as soon as
he let out the reins. De Malmaines was coming on at a full gallop, the
socket of his lance aimed straight at Adam’s shield.
Heartbeats before contact, Adam released the reins and felt Papillon
spring forward, one leaping stride bringing his lance against the opponent’s
shield hard and true. He felt the blow through his hunched right shoulder
and down his side, then a moment later the other man’s lance glanced off
his shield and skated away. A blast of dust, and de Malmaines was gone.
He had struck cleanly, and his lance was cracked in the shaft, but de
Malmaines had remained in the saddle. Adam saw him cantering by as they
returned up the course for their second pass. De Malmaines had discarded
his own lance as well, although Adam was sure he could only have clipped
him. For a moment he wanted to laugh; after all his bluster the evening
before, Richard de Malmaines had not proven to be all that adept a jouster.
 Back at the end of the course, Adam turned Papillon, keeping the horse
moving and fiery. Hugh of Oystermouth was running from the fence of the
lists as John Chyld brought the second lance.
‘He’s using a warhead!’ Hugh cried as he arrived, breathless, at Adam’s
side. ‘I saw his groom holding it. Sharpened steel tip. I believe he means to
murder you!’
Of course, Adam thought. The first pass had been only a bluff. Now
Richard de Malmaines was aiming to maim or kill, with a real weapon.
Easy enough to claim afterwards that he had taken the wrong lance by
mistake. Such things happen often enough, in the heat and turmoil of the
tournament.
‘If it’s true,’ John Chyld said, squinting down the course into the haze of
sunshot dust, ‘we must get the marshal to halt the challenge.’
‘No,’ Adam said. He hefted his lance, with its blunt socket tip. ‘This
matter must be decided, here and now.’ And let God be my witness.
Again the marshals raised their flags, and again the merest touch of spur
brought Papillon up to the starting line. Adam tried to slow his breathing,
but sweat was tiding down his body and soaking into his waistband, and
when he shifted in the saddle he felt the leather beneath him dampened and
slippery. He shoved his feet more firmly into the stirrups, circled his gloved
fingers with the reins, then saw the flags drop.
The second charge was faster and less controlled than the first. De
Malmaines was approaching with uncanny speed, and Adam could make
out the glinting steel tip of his lance with a strange clarity of vision. For one
terrified moment he could almost feel that speeding point, with all the
weight of man and horse behind him, glancing upwards off his shield rim
and spearing his unprotected face, driving in through his eye or his cheek,
smashing teeth and splitting flesh and bone, shattering his skull . . .
Then his enemy was upon him. Adam saw the lance head coming
straight for him, and at the very last moment tugged the reins and twisted in
the saddle. Papillon jinked to the right, nimble as a dancer, then veered left
again. Leaning, Adam swung his lance, cracking the shaft against the head
of the oncoming weapon and shoving it aside. The steel point of de
Malmaines’s lance passed a hand’s breadth from his face, and then the two
charging horses rammed together, Adam slamming the forward edge of his
shield into his opponent’s body.
 The impact of the collision almost lifted him from the saddle, but Adam
trod down hard on the stirrups and forced his rump against the cantle. Both
horses reared together, each turning with the momentum of their charge,
and Adam released his grip on his lance and grabbed for his opponent’s
head. His fingers hooked the edge of de Malmaines’s mail coif and he clung
on, keeping his shield pressed against the other man’s body as their horses
pulled apart once more. For a speeding heartbeat the two riders were locked
together, de Malmaines trying to push back with his own shield as Adam
hauled at him. Then, with a scream of rage, he slipped sideways out of the
saddle and plunged into the dust threshed up by the horses’ hooves.
Adam rode on halfway down the course, still uncertain whether his
desperate stratagem had worked. Slowing, he shortened the reins and turned
his horse, and only then did he see Richard de Malmaines lying sprawled in
the dust, his legs flexing as he tried to roll onto his back. Marshals were
running from the sides of the course, and Hugh of Oystermouth stood
pointing at the fallen man’s lance, crying outrage for all to hear.
*
‘. . . and you’ll get the hound’s share, as usual,’ Hugh was saying, as
Adam raised his head from the bucket and drew breath. Water streamed
down his face and shoulders, and he grabbed a linen towel and rubbed at his
hair. Hugh had already arranged the sale of Richard de Malmaines’s horse
and armour with one of the many dealers who thronged the margins of the
tournament ground. ‘No great sum, all the same,’ he said with a shrug.
‘That horse was in very poor condition, sad to say.’
Richard de Malmaines himself had been carried from the field long
before, with a broken collarbone that would put him out of any further
participation. With luck, Adam thought, the matter was now settled and he
would never encounter the man again. His victory had been uncontested –
several men, in fact, had congratulated him on his daring in grappling his
opponent and wrestling him from the saddle. His left arm still felt wrenched
and tender, but he was struggling to hide his jubilation. Robert de
Dunstanville, though, had said little about it. Perhaps, Adam told himself,
his master had never doubted that he would win? He felt a shadow over his
accomplishment nevertheless. All his life he had been overlooked and
treated as a servant. Now, in this moment of his triumph, it would have been
satisfying to be recognised as something greater than that.
 But already the second round of jousting had been concluded, and the
two great teams of knights were assembling for the grand melee. Quickly
drying himself, Adam pulled on his tunic and gambeson and tightened his
belt. As the field at Senlis was so large, it would be permitted for squires to
accompany their knights on horseback, and John Chyld had already saddled
and exercised one of the rounceys. As he swung himself onto the animal’s
back, Adam was keenly aware of the change from the big destrier he had
ridden in the joust. But a smaller, lighter horse could keep up with the
movement of the melee just as well and would not be too valuable to lose.
Besides, Adam would not be mistaken for one of the contending knights.
Riding up behind the line of assembled riders, Adam picked out Robert
de Dunstanville’s colours and went to join him. The English were all riding
together, grouped around the red and gold banners of Lord Edward’s
company. To their left was the blue and gold of the Count of Anjou’s
household knights. Away across the rutted turf, the opposing team were
arrayed beneath flags of yellow, black and red; the Flemish and the
Brabazons, the Germans and the men of Hainaut were united under the lead
of Duke Frederick of Lorraine. This time, Adam knew, there would be no
ruses or wily stratagems; Robert was riding for the king’s son and needed to
make a show of valour. Trumpet calls wailed in the distance, and drums
rolled and rattled as the horses shifted in the lines.
Then the signal went up, all the horns blared as one, and the two huge
bodies of knights spurred their mounts forward, first into a walk and then
into a canter, building steadily to the charge that would bring them crashing
together at the centre of the field. Dust plumed upwards, obscuring the
riders, and Adam craned forward in the saddle, squinting. He heard, rather
than saw, the moment of collision: the rending clatter of lances against
shields, the thunder of metal, the screams of men and animals.
Already the line of mounted squires was jostling forward, horses
champing and pawing the turf. Already the first riders were galloping from
the dust cloud, turning swiftly for the return pass, some of them dragging
captures. Adam felt his rouncey’s twitching impatience and let out the rein.
The horse started forward and he raised the spare lance, shouting out
‘Dunstanville! Dunstanville!’ But everyone around him was shouting too,
their voices sucked into the surrounding clamour.
Robert appeared from the haze ahead of him, empty-handed as he
slowed his big grey destrier. He snatched the lance from Adam’s grip. ‘With
me!’ he bellowed from inside his helmet as he sawed at the reins. ‘With me
– now!’
Back into the dusty chaos of the melee they rode, Adam spurring his
rouncey hard to keep up with the bigger horse. The fighting had spilled
away quickly to the westward, out of the reeling dust and confusion and
into the wide open pastureland. Knots of mounted men in combat turned
and clashed on all sides, and Robert rode a wavering course between them
with lance raised, his helmeted head turning as he hunted for a victim.
Another rider careered in from the left, his mount slamming against the
forequarter of Adam’s rouncey, leaving the smaller horse staggering and
whinnying. A moment later another knight knocked the rider from the
saddle with a single blow of his mace. Once his horse had recovered, Adam
slung the shield from his back and drew his falchion: where was Robert?
Mounted men crashed and reeled on all sides, figures on foot darting
between them, and for several long heartbeats Adam was lost in the press of
the melee.
Then the pack ahead of him parted and he saw Robert de Dunstanville
with another rider, a knight wearing the black surcoat of the Duke of
Brabant’s household, galloping up behind him. As Adam watched, Robert
reversed his lance over his left shoulder and tugged at the reins, his destrier
rounding on the Brabazon knight with trained agility. His pursuer tried to
evade him, but was too slow: Robert’s lance speared in below his shield
rim, shoving him up from the saddle.
Already Adam had closed with them. He turned his horse around the tail
of the Brabazon’s mount and came up on his right, ready to leap down and
seize the man as soon as he fell. But the knight was still clinging on,
halfway across his horse’s mane with his feet kicking to find the stirrups.
Before he could reach out to grab at him, Adam was struck from behind, a
blow with a blunted sword across the small of his back that sent a jolt of
pain into the pit of his stomach. The Brabazon knight’s squire had ridden up
in support of his master; Adam twisted, slashing backwards with his
falchion, and his blade clashed against the other squire’s shield. His horse
shied as the squire slashed at its head, and Adam felt rage erupt inside him.
He yelled, turning in the saddle and stabbing directly for the other man’s
unprotected face. The Brabazon squire flung himself back in the saddle,
dragging on his reins, and Adam struck him across the chest with the flat of
his blade. Then he was gone again, his master too riding clear as the
billowing dust hid them from view.
Robert was gesturing, shouting words too muffled to distinguish. Adam
glanced around, struggling to breathe as the dust soaked into the ventail
covering his mouth. A burst of motion from his left, and a horse staggered
and fell, throwing its rider from the saddle. One of Lord Edward’s men,
Adam thought as he saw the flapping red and gold caparison . . . No, he
realised as he saw the gold harness trappings – it was Edward himself. The
big charger rolled on its back, legs kicking, the broken stub of a lance
jutting from its neck. The fallen rider struggled to get clear before the
animal crushed him in its dying frenzy.
Where were Edward’s household knights, the men who were supposed
to protect him? Lost in the surge of the melee, Adam realised. Only Robert
de Dunstanville was with Edward now, circling his horse around the fallen
man and striking out at the opposing knight who had felled him. He
bellowed at Adam again, and this time Adam understood.
Cantering as close as he dared to the stricken horse, which was still
rolling and kicking, struggling to get up, Adam slipped from the saddle and
ran to where Edward lay. Robert circled, holding off the other mounted men
who tried to approach and claim their prize, but the foot squires of the
opposing team were swarming forward out of the dust. Quickly, Adam
dropped to one knee beside the fallen man. One glance told him that
Edward had injured his leg, and possibly broken his arm too. His helmet
had been twisted, either from a blow or from the fall from his horse, and the
eye slits were wrenched round to the side. From the vents came a spume of
bloody froth as the fallen man gasped for breath.
‘Lie still!’ Adam shouted. ‘Don’t try to get up!’ Pointless even to try and
make him understand. Adam could barely hear his own voice for the
thundering of blood in his head.
But Edward was struggling, trying to get his legs beneath him, his
uninjured arm thrashing and stretching. The sound of his breath inside the
twisted helmet was like a wheezing bellows, cut through with high-pitched
sobs. As Adam stood over him, Edward seized his belt at the back and tried
to pull himself upright. Two footmen rushed from the dust cloud, both of
them in padded gambesons and gripping staves with a determined look.
Adam planted his feet on either side of the fallen man, twisting to shake off
his grip, then took the first blow of the stave on his shield. The second
cracked onto his shoulder, and he felt the bloom of pain red and raw in his
chest. His throat felt scorched; he was shouting, but could hear nothing.
Beneath him the fallen man – the son and heir of the King of England, but
he could not remind himself of that – the fallen man writhed and kicked, his
outstretched hand grasping now at Adam’s surcoat.
Holding his position, Adam slammed his shield at one of the attackers
and drove him back. A hammering blow with his falchion dropped the
second to his knees. A squire screamed, ‘Yield! The man is ours!’ Then a
galloping horse knocked him off his feet and trampled him.
Adam was hurt himself, cut somewhere – blood was in his eyes. No, it
was sweat. He blinked it clear. The heat was a furnace, consuming him.
Another strike from behind, pounding through the wadded linen of his
gambeson, and he half turned and thrust backwards, feeling his blade thud
against a raised shield.
Then Edward’s men were all around him, their horses blocking the light,
hooves kicking dust. One leaped from the saddle and shoved Adam roughly
aside. A second was already kneeling beside their fallen leader. Between
them, as he staggered free of the press, Adam saw Robert de Dunstanville
beset by three other riders, hacking with his axe to right and left. He began
to run, the strength draining suddenly from him. Like running in a dream,
his legs were too weak suddenly to support him. Through the glassy haze of
despair he saw Robert beaten down, two men closing on him, both standing
in their stirrups to strike at him. Before the dust rose, he saw Robert buckle
and plunge from the saddle, the opposing squires running in to seize him.
He was too far away; he could do nothing. The choked cry of anguish died
in his throat.
*
Lord Edward’s grand pavilion had been raised upon a grassy sward to
the north of the town of Senlis, far enough from the melee ground that the
dust and havoc would not disturb the occupants, but close enough that it
could serve as a convenient place to rest and take refreshment at intervals in
the fighting. Beneath the patterned linen canopy the ground was laid with
rush matting sprinkled with freshly cut flowers and fragrant herbs, and set
with couches that would not have disgraced a lord’s hall.
Now it was a scene of confusion. A crowd of men – knight, serjeants
and servants – pressed around the entranceway, shoving to get a glimpse
within. Lord Edward had been carried from the field, near insensible from
the pain of his wounds. He would not die, so everyone claimed, although
with tournament injuries one could never tell. Fear and anxiety, mixed with
a strange excited anticipation, charged the air. Would the King of England’s
son and heir lose his life, right here before them?
By the time Adam arrived at the pavilion, the initial shock had passed.
He was stumbling, breathless, still caked in dust and runnelled with sweat,
his blistered hands bloody from the fighting. By sheer momentum he
pushed his way through the throng around the entranceway, dragging aside
the painted linen drapes and forcing his way inside. A mailed arm blocked
him, shoving his back, and then men were all around him gripping his
shoulders.
‘I must speak with Lord Edward!’ Adam cried. He raised his voice,
calling over the heads of the men that blocked his way. ‘My name is Adam
de Norton, squire to Sir Robert de Dunstanville, and I must speak with Lord
Edward!’
A word of command from within, and the wall of bodies parted.
Edward lay reclining on one of the couches, propped on cushions with a
silk gown draped around his shoulders. His arm and upper body were
wrapped in linen bandages, and one side of his face was raw and swollen
with contusions. He had lost a tooth at least, and there was a row of ugly
black stitches over his left eye. But he was alive, conscious, and drinking
wine while two physicians attended his wounds and a third dabbed at his
face with a sponge. A chaplain and a pair of friars waited upon him.
‘My lord,’ Adam said, stumbling to kneel before the couch. He
recognised some of the men around him from the evening before. Gilbert de
Clare was there, and FitzJohn too. ‘My lord,’ he said again, breathing hard,
‘my master, Robert de Dunstanville, was captured in the melee . . .’
‘By a couple of Savoyards, so I heard,’ one of the bystanders said.
‘A great many men have been captured in the melee,’ Edward replied,
the injury to his mouth making his lisp more pronounced. His mail hauberk
and coif, leg armour and helmet still lay on the ground where they had been
stripped from him, flung down with his bloodstained aketon.
‘My lord,’ Adam went on, staring up at the young man on the couch,
‘Robert de Dunstanville was riding in your company. He was defending you
when he was taken . . .’ He felt the heat of many eyes upon him, the weight
of their judgement.
‘It’s true,’ somebody behind him said.
 ‘The squire here was defending him, I heard,’ said somebody else. It
was Gilbert de Clare, the red-haired son of the Earl of Gloucester.
‘And how was it that I needed defending?’ Edward asked lightly, then
winced as the attendant mopped at his stitches. ‘Where were my own
knights, hmm, that were pledged to watch over me on the field?’
He glanced around the circle of men filling the tent, but for a moment
none dared to answer. Adam heard once more the ghastly sobbing sounds
the young prince had made when he was lying injured. He felt once more
the scrabbling hands gripping his surcoat and belt, the panicking grasp.
‘Too many of them taken, lord,’ said an older man, a clerk in a patterned
robe, leaning over the couch. ‘Taken, and needing ransoms paid.’
‘And my own horse lost too,’ Edward said, and a spasm of grief twisted
his features. ‘Anyway, I suppose de Dunstanville sent you here?’
‘He did not, lord,’ Adam said. Robert was still in the Duke of Lorraine’s
camp, held hostage, his best horse and best armour forfeit to his captors.
No, Adam thought, Robert would never have told him to come here and beg
for favours. That was his own decision.
‘He wants me to pay his ransom?’ Edward said in a musing tone, as if
Adam had not spoken. He peered back at the clerk, who pursed his lips and
shook his head. ‘No, no, quite right,’ Edward said. ‘With my own losses and
those of my household I’ve had to give out too much already. Tell de
Dunstanville he will have to pay his own way or accept the loss. All of us
here know what’s at stake in this business, heh?’
But some have more to lose, Adam thought. Edward had already turned
his attentions to the next man, and Adam felt hands gripping his shoulders
and urging him to stand. He got to his feet, neglected to make his bow, then
turned and stalked from the tent.
The light outside glared in his eyes. Hot resentment burned inside him,
and for a terrible moment he found himself blinking back tears. Anger, he
told himself, not disappointment. Not despair.
‘Adam de Norton,’ a voice said. He turned, and in the brightness he saw
only the rough dark russet of a tunic, and assumed that one of the lower
servants had followed him from the pavilion. Then he raised his eyes,
shading them with his palm. Simon de Montfort’s broad face creased into a
smile, but his eyes had a searching intensity.
‘Lord Edward has yet to learn the value of loyalty,’ de Montfort said,
gripping Adam by the shoulder and steering him away from the pavilion.
‘Perhaps in time he will. You are de Dunstanville’s squire, yes?’
Adam could only nod.
‘I heard you did well, defending your leader like that. Quite a deed of
arms, in itself. He’s churlish to dismiss it. I saw you unhorse my son’s
squire earlier today as well.’
‘I was sorry to injure him, lord,’ Adam said, knowing that his tone did
nothing to hide the lie.
De Montfort’s smile twitched, and he squeezed Adam’s shoulder tighter.
‘No matter,’ he said. ‘It was neatly done. And you may tell your master,
Robert de Dunstanville, to send the demand of his captors to me.’
‘You’ll pay on his behalf?’
Simon de Montfort nodded, and in his eyes Adam caught a quick
predatory gleam. He tried not to shudder.
‘Some of us,’ de Montfort said, ‘know what a debt is worth.’

OceanofPDF.com
 PART TWO
Eighteen Months Later
OceanofPDF.com
 Chapter 11
They came boiling out of the alleyway at a run, feet skating on the
cobbles as the fog swirled around them. Adam was leading; he had no idea
how many were at his back. They were Flemish and French mostly, all of
them with their blood up. Charging onto the town square, they cried out in
cracked voices, Flanders! Flanders! Their enemies turned, howling in
dismay as they saw themselves assailed from the rear. Adam grinned as he
charged; the flanking attack through the alleyways had been his idea.
Smashing his shield into the first opponent, Adam knocked him off his
feet and swung his way deeper into their formation. He was dressed in a
well-fitted gambeson, his skull protected by an iron helmet with a broad
flaring brim, and he was wielding an iron-headed mace. Even with the
flanges blunted, it was a brutal weapon. He fought by instinct, letting the
attack flow out from the core of his body, fury guiding his arm. One
cracking blow brought a man to his knees; the backswing sent another
dancing backwards, terrified. Adam brought up his shield just in time to
deflect a swinging sword; he shoved forward, keeping the shield raised and
ramming it against his attacker until the man fell back, then lashing out with
his mace. At the margins of his vision he could see that the enemy were
breaking, turning to flee into the narrower alleys. Already the battle looked
to be won.
This was only a buhort, a skirmishing foot melee for squires and
serjeants. It was supposedly a side event to the tournament held at Ghent
between the Dukes of Flanders and Brabant, on this wintry afternoon of St
John the Apostle, two days after Christmas. A mock battle, but real enough
to the young men fighting in the heavily boarded streets of the town. The
traditional rivalry between the Flemings and the Brabazons only stoked
their aggression even further. Many of the local people liked to join in as
well; the teams were more than half made up of town burghers who would
never get to wear the gilt spurs. It was less glorious than the knightly
tournaments of France and the Empire, but no less vicious, and with a purse
of silver for the winners no less lucrative either.
His breath steaming, Adam paused and peered around him at the reeling
shapes in the fog. Most wore the yellow armbands or headscarves of the
Flemish team. The few that wore the black of Brabant had already flung
down their arms, although some of them were still warding off the blows
and kicks of the victors. Sounds of fighting came from the narrower streets
nearby. Adam was beginning to feel the cold again now, the damp cold that
soaked into his bones even during the rush of combat.
‘On, on,’ he called, gesturing to the men who had followed him from the
alleyway. His foot slipped as he ran; righting himself, he caught a blur of
movement ahead of him. A scrawny figure rushed at him from the fog,
barely a boy, dressed in an oversized linen gambeson and coif and swinging
a falchion. Lifting his shield just in time, Adam blocked the blow. The blade
skated off the shield to collide with the shaft of Adam’s mace and slide
down to strike his right wrist. Adam snatched his arm back, then brought
the mace up in a cracking blow to the boy’s chest that almost lifted him off
his feet. The boy reeled back to trip and fall sprawling on the muddy
cobbles. Good Christ, Adam thought, that could have been me two years
ago.
The eighteen months of hard fighting and travelling since the events at
Senlis had changed him. He was twenty years old now, agile and strong,
and his spare frame had filled out with taut muscle. The tournament road
had taken Robert de Dunstanville and his little company from southern
Burgundy and Gascony to the lands of the King of Aragon and the Count of
Savoy, then across into Bavaria and Saxony and as far north as the Baltic
shores. They had been mostly successful, and had covered their losses well.
Adam had fractured his ankle falling from a horse at Châlons, and
suffered broken ribs in Mainz. He had lost two teeth from his upper jaw at
Barcelona, and at Würzburg he had taken a cut across his brow that had
flooded his eyes with so much blood he had feared he was blinded. He had
unhorsed men in Mâcon and in Lübeck and in a dozen other places. He had
fought on the melee field and in mock battles like this one in a dozen places
more. And in all that time he had neither seen nor heard anything of Lord
Edward, or of de Montfort and his sons. Certainly nothing of Richard de
Malmaines. He and Robert had met very few other travelling knights from
England at all. Adam preferred it that way – Robert had said nothing of the
outcome at Senlis, though he had accepted de Montfort’s largesse without
complaint. If he missed the company of his fellow countrymen, he did not
show it. As for Adam, he had learned not to think too much about the
future.
 In the main square of Ghent the last skirmishes were ebbing away, the
few remaining Brabazon fighters either captured and subdued or fled to the
sanctuary of their barricaded inn. Already the victors were cheering,
banging their weapons on the wooden boards that closed off the houses, as
if to summon the quailing occupants to come out and witness their triumph.
A few places had opened up already; a knot of men had formed around one
open doorway, passing around hot spiced cider. Adam went to join them,
taking a mug to warm his hands.
‘Flanders! Flanders!’ the men in the square were shouting, brandishing
their blunted weapons. Already Adam was feeling the strange emptiness
that so often came to him after combat. As if, he thought, there was a crack
in him, and all the strength and surety he had felt during the fight – the joy
of battle, he could not deny – leaked from it and left him hollow. His bones
ached, his grazed and battered hands stung in the cold air, and the blow he
had taken to the wrist had already raised a darkening welt. Ignoring the
flare of pain, he lifted his wooden mug and drank back the hot sourness of
the cider.
*
‘Philippe de Bourbourg is here, did you know?’ Hugh of Oystermouth
said, over the supper table of their inn that evening. ‘He arrived at noon,
while you were still breaking skulls in the main square. Robert is with him
now.’
Adam just nodded. He was sitting on a bench with his back to the
hearth, the warmth easing the aches in his bones. They had met Philippe de
Bourbourg several times since the day he beat Adam at the riverbank. The
Flemish knight held no grudge against Robert, and for a while the two of
them had ridden as a team in a series of tournaments in the Rhineland. De
Bourbourg still longed for the return of his black destrier, but Papillon was
devoted to Adam now.
‘What news does he bring?’ Adam asked, massaging his wrist. He
meant news of forthcoming tournaments; that was the only news that had
any meaning for him.
‘He says that the King of England will be coming to Amiens, on the
morrow of St Vincent,’ Hugh replied, looking up from the sheets of creased
parchment he was studying by the light of a guttering candle.
‘Why would the King of England be coming to Amiens?’ Adam asked.
 ‘Because,’ Hugh replied, with an air of patience, ‘he wants to meet with
the King of France, and seek his arbitration! Apparently King Henry, Simon
de Montfort and the barons of England have agreed to let King Louis settle
their dispute, and they have sworn upon the Holy Gospels that they will
abide by his decision.’
‘How does Philippe de Bourbourg know about that?’
‘Adam de Norton, everyone knows about it!’ Hugh gave an exasperated
grimace. ‘I sometimes think, you know, that your stubborn ignorance of the
doings of the great world is quite wilful. I think you are intending to vex
me.’
Adam smiled ruefully. Hugh was easy to provoke. But in truth he had
made an almost conscious effort to remain deaf to all tidings from his native
land.
‘Do you even know that England has been in flames these last six or
eight months?’ Hugh asked, leaning forward over the table and jabbing his
stubby finger on the boards. ‘Lands ravaged, castles seized and plundered,
even churches despoiled . . . I wonder that this can have escaped your
notice!’
Adam did know that Simon de Montfort had returned to England back
in the spring, to rally the barons against the power of King Henry, but the
affairs of England had seemed far away, like distant thunder over the
western horizon.
‘Aye, it’s true, what he says,’ John Chyld broke in. He was sitting at the
far end of the table, munching his way through a boiled knuckle of beef.
‘There’s anarchy in England now, even the Flemings and Brabazons say it,
and they are usually too busy fighting each other to notice anything else.’
‘They say Lord Edward has raised an army of Gascons and
Burgundians,’ commented another man, further along the bench, ‘and taken
them to England to force the barons to yield to the king’s authority. And
Lord Simon de Montfort has made a pact with the Welsh to resist him.’
‘Good man, by God!’ Hugh said, thumping his fist on the tabletop. ‘I
like this Earl of Leicester more every day, I swear. And I hear he’s been
sweeping through the land like a hurricane, talking of justice and reform,
and when he speaks towns and castles throw open their gates, and even the
heavens applaud!’
Adam took a sip of heated wine. His memories of Simon de Montfort
were still conflicted. He recalled only too well that predatory gaze, that air
of command, and the assurance with which he had stepped in to pay
Robert’s ransom. Some of us know what a debt is worth. The logs in the
hearth behind him crackled and softly collapsed into embers.
‘Well,’ Hugh said, ‘you can be sure that Philippe de Bourbourg’s news
hasn’t escaped Sir Robert’s notice. And he was very interested to hear what
he had to say about King Henry and Lord Simon going to Amiens. No
doubt he hopes their amicable meeting may lead to a change in his own
fortunes.’
Adam frowned more deeply, shrugging, and Hugh’s round face twitched
into a smile, as he realised that this time Adam genuinely did not
understand.
‘Because,’ the Welshman said, bending close over the table and
dropping his voice to a whisper, ‘part of the dispute between the barons and
the king involves dispossession without trial, on the arbitrary judgement of
the king and his court, do you see? So if the king is made finally to abide by
the rulings of the Magna Carta and the provisions made at Oxford, that he’s
sworn so many times to uphold, then he would have to restore any lands
improperly seized . . .’
‘Which would mean that Robert’s estates were restored?’
‘Some of them, perhaps. That would be for the men of law to decide.
No doubt they are eagerly sharpening their quills and consulting their rolls
as we speak.’
And perhaps, Adam thought, his own lost inheritance too. He had never
truly believed that it was possible, that Robert’s plan somehow to gain the
influence of some great man in restoring his fortunes would ever bear fruit.
Had it come to that, at last? Would the prospect of open war in England
finally bring some hope of justice?
For a moment he remembered the manor in Hampshire that his father
had held. He would be twenty-one this coming summer, and would have
been of age to inherit if the lands had not been given as a gift to another
man. Once more he pictured the steep wooded hills to the west, the rolling
meadows cut by the stream where three mills stood – although one
belonged to the priory – and the open fields that spread eastward all the way
to the scrub woodland of Blakemore. He saw them now as if in a perpetual
glow of harvest sunlight, a time of freedom, without want or hardship.
Memories so sweet to him that he barely ever dared indulge them.
‘Do you ever miss home?’ he asked Hugh abruptly.
 ‘Home? Ah well. I would be ashamed to return there, to be honest,’
Hugh told him. ‘My family believe I am still a student in holy orders, you
see, at the University of Paris. If only they knew what a mighty sinner I
have become, they would tumble into their graves in dismay. But that is
Wales though, not England. And things may be changing – see here!’
He turned the sheets of parchment he had been studying in the
candlelight to face Adam, tapping them intently. Adam leaned closer, seeing
circles and lines, and rows of tiny inked numbers and letters.
‘What is it?’ he asked. ‘Some strange new heraldry?’
‘Hah, in a way. But this is not the heraldry of the earth, but of the
heavens! It’s a description of the sphere of the cosmos, which surrounds and
contains the sphere of the earth, do you see? And the cosmic sphere moves,
it revolves – the machina mundi, you know – and as it does it exerts
influences upon the earth and the affairs of men, which if we are skilled we
can read, and even predict.’
‘It helps you read the stars then?’ Adam asked, baffled. He had known
an old woman who did that.
‘Yes, but in a philosophical way, a mathematical way . . .’ Hugh replied.
‘And here, from what I can tell, the cosmic sphere is suggesting great
changes in the world of men. A revolution in the fortunes of all, like nothing
we have seen in an age! Kings will be turned upon their heads, crowns and
thrones will fall. Perhaps it refers to the east, where as you doubtless know
the great horde of the Tartar Khan is causing such upheaval?’
Adam had seen the Tartar Khan at a tournament at Ingelheim, or a man
dressed as the Tartar Khan at least; he had been jousting against another
knight, who was dressed as the devil. But he merely nodded, peering at the
drawings upon the parchment.
‘The planets of the cosmos bear upon us all,’ Hugh said earnestly,
tapping the sheets once more. ‘Turmoil is coming, I think. Great strife and
great change. We must try our best to see that we come out on top!’
That night as he lay on his mattress, trying to ignore the mumbles and
grunts and farts of the other men in the darkness all around him, Adam
thought back over what Hugh had said. For so long now he had submerged
himself in the world of the tournaments, the long road of fighting and
contending, winning and losing. Or rather, he thought, he had allowed
Robert de Dunstanville to submerge him in it. But when he remembered
England, he remembered the youth he had been before that strange accident
at Pleshey had thrown him into Robert’s company. A far more noble spirit
he had been then, with all his dreams of glory still idle fantasies ahead of
him.
Rolling to one side, he reached blindly into his haversack, moving his
fingers around until he felt the cold touch of silver and the leather thong.
The medallion of St Christopher that Joane de Quincy had given him was
still there, tucked away with Adam’s few possessions. He drew it from the
haversack, and lightly rubbed the silver disc between his fingertips. Nearly
two years had passed since he saw her last. The vow of chastity he had once
sworn to himself had not stood up long on the tournament road; Adam had
lain with a string of women since Eloise. But Joane de Quincy remained
apart from them all. She was surely married by now, Adam knew, perhaps
even the mother of children. But in his memory she remained just the way
she had been that morning. Perhaps, he thought . . . perhaps if they went to
Amiens, and the king and Lord Simon settled their differences and justice
was restored, then one day soon he might return to England, and see Joane
again? He touched the pendant lightly to his lips.
*
‘No, there’s nothing to be gained for us in Amiens,’ Robert de
Dunstanville said a week later, as they walked their horses along the road to
Aalst, across the flattest greyest country Adam had ever seen, beneath a
cloud-tumbled January sky.
‘The Earl of Leicester . . .’ Adam began.
‘Yes, well, there’s the problem,’ Robert broke in, turning in the saddle.
‘Since your little negotiation at Senlis last year I’ve been feeling beholden
to Lord Simon de Montfort. I wouldn’t like anyone to think I was going to
Amiens to support him merely because I owed him an obligation.’
‘But you do owe him an obligation,’ Adam said, his face bunching.
Robert’s perverse attitudes had never failed to baffle him. ‘And what better
way to repay it than by loyalty? Isn’t that the point?’
‘Ah, still the chivalrous one after all this time!’ Robert said with a sly
grin. ‘Well, true enough such things are not repaid in coin. But if I show
myself in support of Lord Simon, and the decision goes against him and his
party, then I lose all hope of regaining what I’m owed. And if Lord Simon
takes the judgement amiss, and matters should come to war in England –
real red and bloody war, I mean – then we would have to be careful whose
faction we supported then too.’
 ‘The faction who fights for justice, surely?’ Adam said. He could feel
the annoyance rising inside him, and tried to restrain his ire. ‘The barons
who want to uphold liberty and the rights of all men – didn’t you yourself
talk of that once? There is a fury growing in England now, you told me, I
remember it well . . .’
Robert looked back at him again, with a glance of withering
condescension. ‘Words!’ he said. ‘These are mere words, Adam, and many
men prate them that have nothing in the balance. All these great barons and
earls, these magnates who follow the Earl of Leicester – they are too
wealthy and powerful for even the king to bring low. If they are defeated,
they’ll still have their estates, their manors and their castles, their household
men. But the likes of me – the likes of us . . . If we are defeated, we lose
everything! We would be exiled forever, with no hope of gaining justice or
forgiveness.’
‘Then we do nothing?’ Adam replied, his voice rising. He dared not turn
and seek the gaze of Hugh of Oystermouth, or of John Chyld and Wilecok.
He had no idea if any of them would back him now. ‘This is not the way
you have taught me,’ he went on, trying to level his words. ‘Always attack,
with immediate force. Defeat your enemy before he can raise his hand
against you . . . How are things different now?’
Robert exhaled, shrugging. He rode on in silence for a short while.
Adam was still glowing with the fervour of his outburst, but he felt the cold
seeping through him once more.
‘I want to be in Lille by the end of February,’ Robert declared, changing
the subject very deliberately. ‘There’s a big jousting festival there, you
know – the Fête de l’Epinette. It begins on Quinquagesima Sunday and
stretches on into Lent. You’ll like it, I think – the good burghers of Lille like
to play at being men-at-arms, and consider it a great honour to be knocked
off a horse and ransomed by a real knight, or even a real squire.’
‘So we go to Lille and make ourselves rich,’ Adam said glumly, ‘and
simply ignore what’s happening in England?’
‘We seem to have been following that philosophy very successfully thus
far,’ Robert said, smiling once more. ‘So yes, we shall!’
*
Nearly eight more weeks passed before they heard what had happened
at Amiens. How Simon de Montfort had suffered a riding accident back in
England and had failed to attend the meeting with King Henry. How the
churchmen and lawyers he had sent to argue his cause had failed to
convince the French king who sat in judgement. How Louis had ruled that
the power and authority of the King of England was to be restored in full,
all agreements and provisions were to be abolished, and that any man who
dared oppose the full might and majesty of the throne would be declared a
rebel. And how de Montfort’s supporters had replied that the whole meeting
was a farce and a lie, and the oaths they had sworn upon the gospels were
void, and all had returned across the sea to take up arms. England’s fury
was about to erupt, and everywhere men were preparing for war.
By then it was the end of February, and Robert de Dunstanville and his
band of followers were already at Lille, preparing only for the lavish round
of tournament festivities. There was plenty there to occupy Adam’s mind:
the parades of beautiful horses and brilliantly armoured riders, the flash of
colourful heraldry and painted lances, the finely dressed ladies, and the rich
feasting. A torrent of worldly pleasures, ahead of the sparse Lenten season
to come. But all the while Adam felt his mind and his heart drifting
westwards, towards that thunderstorm over the horizon. Its distant roar was
almost drowned out by the hawkers’ cries, the laughter of the women, the
trumpets and the stamping of the horses, but he knew it was there.
At dawn on the Saturday, before the official beginning of the festival,
Adam awoke to find Robert de Dunstanville sitting fully dressed on a
folding stool beside the open flap of their tent. ‘Get up, as quick as you
can,’ Robert said. ‘We need to be on the road.’
‘We’re leaving?’ Adam said, groggy from sleep but his mind already
sharpening. It was cold, the meadow outside still misty in the early light.
Robert made an impatient gesture. ‘We need to be away,’ he said. ‘I was
talking to Philippe de Bourbourg and some of the Frenchmen here – they
could not imagine why an English knight was in Lille when England itself
is in such turmoil. I think they’re right. There’s a chance to make a
difference, to take a grip on fortune . . . Maybe throw our swords into the
scale, hey, like in that old Roman story?’
Adam stared at him, blinking and bleary. Robert de Dunstanville was
gazing out of the tent door, unwilling to meet his eye. Never would he
admit that he had been wrong. But that did not matter now. Outside, the
horses were whinnying and stamping as John Chyld brought them from the
paddock.
 ‘We can be in Boulogne in three days, and England in four,’ Robert said,
the last trace of misgivings tugging at his words. ‘After that, may God help
us.’

OceanofPDF.com
 Chapter 12
It was the first Friday of Lent when they crossed the narrow sea, the
feast of the martyrs Perpetua and Felicitas, and in England the war had
already begun.
Their ship was once again the St Bride the Virgin, the same craft that
had carried them two years before, and the shipman remembered Sir Robert
well. ‘I had some of the king’s own royal court aboard my boat not three
weeks gone,’ he said in a proud shout, as the prow of his ship rose and fell
across the bright waters. ‘Bore them from Wissant to Dover. Bad weather in
the straits that day, not like now, and all of them puking and spewing from
the moment the wind picked up! But the blessed martyrs have sent us clear
skies and a prosperous breeze, goodsirs, and we shall be in England before
noon!’
They learned more when they reached Dover. There was fighting in the
Welsh Marches, where Lord Edward and his followers were plundering
manors and taking castles. But de Montfort’s son Henry and the Earl of
Derby had attacked and captured Worcester and put the city to the sack, and
now both were marching on Gloucester. The king had been in Canterbury,
they heard, but had departed for Windsor, or perhaps Oxford. Everywhere
men were armed and angry, ready at any moment for battle, even if they
knew little of who was fighting against whom.
By the following day they were in Canterbury themselves, and Robert
sent Hugh of Oystermouth and John Chyld out into the town to gather
tidings and gain what intelligence they could about the contending factions
and the movements of the leaders.
‘I suppose you should know,’ he told Adam as they shared a Lenten
meal of pickled herrings and coarse bread, ‘that the Earl of Hereford has
declared his full support for the king and is summoning knights and
footmen to his service. His son, Sir Humphrey, however, remains devoted to
Simon de Montfort. Apparently he’s been scorching a trail across the
Marches and the western shires, burning villages, even attacking and
robbing priories and churches. My own crimes appear mild indeed by
comparison . . . But let us pray they never meet on the battlefield – it would
be a great impiety for a son to slay his father, or a father his son.’
 Adam crossed himself quickly, hoping that matters did not come to
battles at all. Now that he was here in England the prospect of war seemed
suddenly very real, and quite daunting. It took him only another moment to
remember that Robert too was the son of Earl Humphrey. Had he been
speaking about himself?
‘Even in war, men are seldom slain, isn’t that true?’ he asked.
Robert gave him a wry glance. ‘Men of high standing are seldom slain –
they are ransomed, as on the tournament field. The commoners are cut
down like grass, of course. But once the ironwork begins . . .’ He shrugged,
and wiped his mouth on a cloth. ‘Most of these fine men of the land know
little of real combat, and nothing of war. Few have spent as long in the
tournaments as I have, either. If God is good, perhaps this whole thing will
be settled at first blood, heh?’
It occurred to Adam that Robert had not yet declared upon whose side
he would fight. If the king had still been in Canterbury when he arrived,
would he simply have offered his sword to the royal faction?
‘What about your cousin, Joane de Quincy, and her sister?’ he asked,
trying to phrase his question casually. ‘Will they be safe, living alone at
Ware?’
Robert smirked and rubbed his beard. ‘Don’t worry, my cousins are safe
where they are for now,’ he said. ‘Our uncle, the Earl of Winchester, still
appears undecided in the struggle – nobody would want to provoke him by
threatening his wards or family. We shall visit Ware soon enough, once we
have more secure intelligence.’
But there was no more news to be had at Canterbury, and after hearing
mass the next morning they were on the road again, passing through
Rochester that afternoon and crossing the old timber bridge over the
Medway in a thin grey rain that blurred the looming bulk of the castle keep.
A day later they rode on through Southwark, and heard the bells of St Paul’s
pealing a strange and clamorous alarm.
As they passed St Olave’s church and approached the southern gateway
of London Bridge, they saw a mob gathering in the street ahead. Most were
men, with a few women mingled among them, and many were armed with
cudgels, axes and even short swords. The crowd drew back as Robert and
his party rode closer, noticing his gilded spurs and the belted sword at his
side, the four warhorses that walked behind him, the sumpter horses
carrying weapons and armour and the red and white colours of the shield
slung across one of them.
‘Lord Simon!’ a woman cried from the narrow doorway of a house. ‘It’s
Lord Simon, the Earl of Leicester! Montfort! Montfort!’
‘That ain’t Lord Simon, you daft kettle,’ replied a stocky man in a
butcher’s apron. ‘That’s just some tourneying knight returned from overseas
. . .’
But the cry had now been taken up by the mob, more aggressively, like
a challenge. ‘Montfort! Montfort!’ they yelled, brandishing their crude
weapons.
‘A Montfort!’ Robert called back, raising his hand in salute. ‘And the
Community of the Realm!’
Some of them cheered, pushing a lane for the horsemen to pass, while
others still appeared dubious and hostile. Adam kept his gaze locked on
Robert’s back as he rode through the crowd towards the bridge, not wanting
to meet anyone’s eye. He was still unaccustomed, after two years abroad, to
hearing so many English voices around him. But the passion in those voices
was stranger still. He had assumed, when he heard about the trouble in
England, that it was all a matter for the barons and great magnates,
concerning their dispute with the king. Not something the common people
would care about at all. But here they were, the common people of London,
armed in the street and shouting Simon de Montfort’s name like a battle-cry,
while the distant bell of the great church kept clanging its unfamiliar
discord. It was unnerving.
As they rode through the press of people around the gate arch, Adam
saw the trails of dark smoke rising from the city on the far riverbank. They
paid the toll, then crossed a drawbridge and continued through a second
gateway, and the tall narrow buildings that crowded the bridge on either
side shut out the view of the river. The horses were anxious and alert,
twitching their ears and tossing their heads, as their hooves clashed on the
roadway.
Halfway across the bridge, a chapel dedicated to St Thomas Becket
stood perched above the flowing waters. More people were gathered outside
the open doors, a woman among them in a dirt-spattered apron shouting
wildly above the voices of the throng. ‘To hell with King Henry!’ she cried,
in a cracked screech. ‘To hell with Richard of Cornwall, and all the king’s
evil counsellors! To hell with the foreigners, and to hell with the Jews! Let
the flames take them all!’
‘We’ll be staying with Master Elias again tonight?’ Adam asked Robert,
riding up beside him as soon as they were over the bridge and the street
widened.
‘Yes,’ Robert replied, tight-lipped. ‘He’ll need our protection, I believe.
Besides, he has the best network of intelligencers I know – if anyone can
tell us what’s happening in the kingdom, he can. However,’ he said with a
bitter smile, turning in the saddle, ‘if your prejudices rebel against the idea,
you are free to find accommodation elsewhere.’
‘My prejudices are long gone, you know that,’ Adam told him.
‘We shall see,’ Robert replied lightly, and spurred his horse on up the
street.
There was another mob gathered in Westcheap. The people here were
wealthier, and carried better weapons: spears and crossbows. Some wore
gambesons, or even mail, and flourished banners as if they were an army
preparing for battle. The smell of burning was strong in the air, and Adam
felt the nervous tension rising inside him as they rode, the heat in his blood;
he almost expected to see the entrance to the lane leading to Elias’s house
beset by a riotous throng. But they passed through the crowds and into the
lane, and found the gateway to the moneylender’s premises well guarded by
a gang of determined-looking young men with staves and cudgels. By the
time Adam dismounted in the cobbled yard, Wilecok and his Gascon wife
had already absented themselves, as if by prior arrangement.
At the top of the wooden steps, Master Elias stood waiting with his
accustomed look of confident ease. Clearly he had been forewarned of their
arrival. He greeted Robert with an embrace and ushered him into the house.
Adam followed them; with John Chyld’s help, he was lugging the pair of
heavy saddlebags and the brass-bound chest containing Robert’s portable
wealth, most of it exchanged into silver and gold bullion. It was the fortune
of two successful years on the tournament circuit, and more than enough to
pay back Elias’s loan with interest.
But there was no sign of Belia, Elias’s sister. Robert had said nothing
about her since last they departed England, and Adam had not wanted to
ask. In all their time overseas Robert de Dunstanville had not as much as
glanced at another woman. His chastity had been quite remarkable, but
nobody had mocked him for it. Perhaps, Adam thought, the Jewish woman
had already remarried and left London? Perhaps Robert had learned of it
beforehand, from one of Elias’s contacts in France?
In the passageway they shed their travel-stained cloaks and shoes; Hugh
of Oystermouth and John Chyld remained there, while Adam followed
Robert and Elias into the main hall. A fire burned in the hearth, and once
they were seated at the table servants brought cups of wine.
‘So,’ Robert said. ‘Interesting times.’
Now that he was indoors, Elias appeared far less confident. His face
was pouched with the signs of anxiety and fatigue, and he tugged nervously
at his forked beard. ‘You have heard the news from Worcester?’ he asked.
‘We heard that Lord Simon’s son Henry and the Earl of Derby took the
town, yes.’
‘Took the town and sacked it. And they attacked the Jews, Robert. They
attacked the synagogue and the records house, murdering anyone who
opposed them. Scores of our people cut down in the street, while their
Christian neighbours celebrated! What is happening, Robert? What is this
madness in England now – can you tell me?’
‘That bell ringing,’ Robert said, craning his neck as the distant clang
sounded once more. ‘What does it signify?’
‘All day they’ve been doing it. An alarm, I suppose, by order of the
mayor. I hear that Hugh Despenser, the constable of the Tower, has put
himself at the head of the mob and attacked properties belonging to the king
and the royal clerks. The houses of Earl Richard of Cornwall too, the king’s
brother. Despenser is Lord Simon’s man, I think?’
Robert nodded. ‘De Montfort is not in London then?’ he asked.
Elias spread his hands. ‘Nobody can say where he is! Kenilworth,
perhaps? He was injured back in January, while he was travelling to France
– his horse fell and rolled on him, and he fractured his thigh. But everyone
believes he will recover imminently, and appear here any time, like a comet
of righteousness from the heavens. And meanwhile King Henry has gone to
Oxford, to gather his loyal barons. Lord Edward, we hear, is currently
besieged in Gloucester Castle . . .’
Robert snorted a laugh. ‘Besieged? – him?’
‘Yes! By the same Henry de Montfort who slaughtered our people in
Worcester. What is next, Robert? Is what happened in Worcester going to
happen here too? Will they call us the King’s Jews, and burn us out? I fear
this man Simon de Montfort, I can tell you. He is fierce in his faith, so they
say. And no friend of ours.’
‘Earl Simon is . . . a subtle man,’ Robert said, fluttering his hand. ‘He’s
made mistakes in the past, certainly, but he knows truth from lies.’
Elias cut him off with a mirthless guffaw. ‘Does he?’ he asked. ‘Was it
not Simon de Montfort who expelled the Jews from Leicester, back in our
fathers’ day? The first thing he did, upon coming to this country! Easy
enough for you to say that he’s changed. Harder for those whose families
must suffer if he has not.’
‘Have faith, I beg you,’ Robert said, raising his palms. He looked pained
by Elias’s words. ‘Once Lord Simon gets here, I think, all these
disturbances should be quelled soon enough. Meanwhile, I put my sword at
your service, my friend.’
But Elias just shrugged and grimaced, and did not appear at all
convinced of his safety.
Belia joined them for their meal, and if Robert was surprised to see her,
he was careful not to show it. Nor did he show any sign that there had been
a connection between them. Adam watched them both carefully, alert to the
silent language of their gestures, the tones of their words, but could detect
nothing. Almost, he thought, as if he had imagined it all. The main dish was
a plump bream, roasted in a crust of herbs; Adam was pleased that Elias
observed the Lenten fast, despite not being Christian. He had not been sure
what to expect, and had not wanted to embarrass himself again, or Robert
either. But the food was excellent, the wine excellent too, and with the
benefit of years he could appreciate what he had failed to enjoy before.
‘Sir Robert,’ Belia said from the far end of the table, ‘I was about to ask
who this handsome young man you’ve brought to our house might be. I did
not recognise him!’
Adam choked slightly, and tried not to blush. Her face, framed by the
white linen of her headscarf, had a playful expression, and her voice had the
same rich depth he remembered from his last visit. He swallowed thickly.
‘He’s improved slightly,’ said Robert. ‘At least now he knows how to
eat his dinner.’
When he looked up again, Adam met Belia’s gaze. Her eyes held him
trapped, and he felt a warm nervous discomfort rising through him. He
swallowed again and looked away. But now Elias was talking once more,
telling Robert of all that had happened in the last tumultuous year. England,
it seemed, had been turned upside down, and all natural order overthrown.
‘Last summer was the worst of it,’ Elias said, dabbing at his mouth with
a cloth. ‘The king was at the Tower, and the queen tried to take a boat
upriver to Windsor, where Lord Edward was staying. Whether her boatmen
misjudged the tides I don’t know, but her boat was unable to breast the rush
through the bridge piers and became trapped there. When the mob on the
bridge saw the queen below them they became maddened – they started
throwing down bricks and rotting filth on her, turds and brimming pisspots
even!’
‘The things they shouted to her, as well,’ Belia added, and shivered with
disgust. ‘Calling her a putrid slut, a witch and a sorceress. It was vile. These
men must hate any woman who holds power over them.’
‘It was the mayor, FitzThomas, who rescued her in the end,’ Elias went
on. ‘He’s de Montfort’s man, as everyone knows, but he’ll have laid in
some stock with the king’s side that day too. They won’t forget it.’
‘And the king won’t forget the insult either, I expect,’ said Robert. ‘Or
Lord Edward.’
‘Him in particular. The queen, I believe, is a most phlegmatic lady. But
her son Edward, we hear, thirsts for the blood of the Londoners like a
sweating beast pants for water. He has sworn to break the bones and rip out
the eyes and organs of everyone that abused his mother that day. A threat he
has yet to act upon.’
‘Well, first he must escape from Gloucester Castle!’ Robert said, raising
his cup.
‘In part, I wish he would,’ Elias replied. ‘Men say that Henry is a tyrant
and must be taught to behave. Maybe so, but to me those that oppose him
seem as bad, or worse. At least the kings of England are pledged to protect
our people, though they so often hold us in contempt. We are caught
between ravening animals.’
‘When the Earl of Leicester returns to London he’ll restrain his
followers, I’m sure,’ Robert said. ‘This sort of disorder does nothing for his
cause.’
‘But it helps those of his followers who are indebted to us,’ Elias told
him, with a level gaze. ‘Some of them, I think, believe they might erase
their debts simply by erasing the Jews. And Simon de Montfort has many
young and reckless friends.’
 That night Elias lodged Robert and his followers in the wing of another
building adjoining his own. There was a connecting door and an enclosed
wooden gallery between the two properties, and each had a separate
entrance that led to the street, but they would be easy to defend if required.
Adam unrolled his mattress on the floor beside the cold hearth in the main
chamber, where he could see the doorway. John Chyld and Hugh of
Oystermouth were sleeping in the next room, and he could already hear
their snores.
‘Elias is a good man,’ Adam said quietly, as he lay on his mattress. ‘I’m
sorry I thought ill of him before.’
Robert made a gruff sound in the darkness.
‘And his sister, Belia. She is . . . I mean, you . . .’
‘Best say nothing,’ Robert told him sharply. ‘Think nothing, and if you
can, see nothing. May God judge me for it, but this is something I cannot
control.’
Adam made no response. He lay for a long time, his mind still. Only
when he was on the edge of sleep did he open his eyes slightly, hearing a
noise from across the room. Robert’s form rose in the darkness, and the
boards creaked as he crossed to the door, opened it, and slipped through into
the next house. Adam closed his eyes again, but for a long time sleep did
not come.

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 Chapter 13
Sunday, and the people of London were pouring from the doors of St
Paul’s cathedral. Adam had gone there to hear mass with John Chyld and
Hugh of Oystermouth, the three of them packed together at the back of the
crowded nave, barely able to see anything of the service. Now they moved
through the worshippers seething out into the cathedral yard. This was the
second Sunday they had attended St Paul’s since their return to the city, and
Adam was still amazed by the size and raucous energy of the crowd.
‘I notice that Sir Robert de Dunstanville does not hear mass these days,’
Hugh said, glancing around him. ‘Perhaps, do you think, he is turning
Jewish?’
Adam hushed him with a sharp hiss and a nudge. Such things were
better not discussed. ‘If he had any mind to do such a thing,’ he said, in a
stern whisper, ‘he would have done it when he was in the Holy Land,
fighting for Christ, don’t you think?’
Hugh merely widened his eyes and shrugged. Besides, Adam thought,
there were a dozen other churches much closer to Master Elias’s house
where Robert could hear mass in greater peace and serenity. Perhaps he
went to one of them? Adam himself mainly came to St Paul’s to mingle
with the throng and see if he could pick up any firm news on what might be
happening beyond the circuit of the city walls. There were plenty of tidings,
passed among the congregation in excited cries or panicked whispers: had
the king really summoned an army of savage Scots to join him at Oxford
and crush the rebellion? Was Lord Edward dead, or had he somehow
escaped from Gloucester Castle and ridden to join his father? Had the king
really been struck blind after penetrating the holy sanctuary of the virgin St
Frideswide? And where was Simon de Montfort, the Earl of Leicester?
The crowds knew the answers to all these questions, or thought they
did. They sang songs about their hero Simon de Montfort too. About how
he loved truth and hated lies, and would return and drive out the king’s evil
counsellors, and restore justice to England. ‘What’s his name?’ they
chanted. ‘He’s called MONT-FORT!’ they chanted back, as they danced in
circles in the streets. In the midst of Lent, the dread of war was turning to a
frenzy pulsing through them all, and de Montfort’s name alone was a
talisman of victory.
 ‘Not that I hold anything against the Jews, you understand,’ Hugh of
Oystermouth was saying, as they emerged from the great cold shadow of
the cathedral into the weak spring sunlight. ‘A most fascinating people!
Brave too, I would say. And we should recall what St Augustine said of
them, that their scriptures herald the coming of the Redeemer, and they
were the first to witness Christ . . .’
Yes, Adam thought as they circled the cathedral and walked towards the
gateway that led to Paternoster Street, Elias and his household were
certainly brave. He had seen them often enough leaving the house, Elias in
his pointed yellow cap and both he and Belia wearing the mantles with twin
patches of pale cloth sewn upon the breast that identified them as Jews.
How simple it would have been for them to assume the same clothing as
their neighbours, to hide their faith and feign Christianity, for a quieter and
safer life. But they did not.
‘I’ve often wondered, in fact,’ Hugh was saying, ‘if there might be an
ancient connection between the Hebrew people and the Welsh . . .’
Adam paused in his steps, and Hugh fell abruptly silent. There was
something happening ahead of them, a thickening of the crowd in
Paternoster Street, before the church of St Michael le Querne, and a roar of
voices raised in anger and abuse. Adam glanced back and checked that John
Chyld was still behind him. The grizzled serjeant had already seen what
was happening, and his thumb was hooked in his belt, close to his dagger.
There was a man standing on the brick plinth before the church doors,
Adam saw as he shoved his way through the crowd. A friar, in the white
habit and black cloak of the Dominicans. In a thin high voice he was calling
out to the mob that surrounded him.
‘Who are the fools who say, There is No God?’ he cried. ‘They are the
same fools who say that the word of His Holiness the Pope means nothing!
Who mock at the penalty of excommunication, and do not fear the fires of
purgatory!’
‘No!’ the crowd shouted back. ‘No! You are no true friar!’ ‘MONT-
FORT!’ others chanted, clapping and stamping their feet.
‘And yet you exalt the sinners who oppose the king, when His Holiness
has ruled that royal authority shall not be challenged!’ the friar went on.
‘What will you do when the cross stands over you? Will the sinner Simon
de Montfort save you from damnation?’
 A figure broke from the crowd, a heavily built man in a fine tunic and
hose of deep blue, with his cloak thrown back to reveal a knight’s sword
belted at his side. With three strides he closed with the friar. Then with one
long reaping blow of his fist he knocked the holy man from his perch. The
crowd bayed and cheered.
The friar had fallen to the ground, but the man in blue grabbed him by
the arm and hauled him to his knees, then punched him twice more on the
head. Adam clearly heard the friar’s nose break, and he saw the blood
spatter down his face. Letting his victim drop, the attacker turned to the
crowd and dusted his palms, and as he did so Adam recognised the man.
‘To the stocks with him!’ the crowd were yelling, surging forward. ‘To
the pillory with the false friar!’
Adam had not seen Sir Humphrey de Bohun the Younger, the son and
heir of the Earl of Hereford, since the tournament at Lagny two years
before. But he remembered him well enough. And Sir Humphrey
remembered him too.
‘Adam de Norton!’ he cried, as the crowd thinned around him. He had
three of his own squires and a pair of serjeants at his back, Adam noticed;
his gesture of outrage had been well supported. Sir Humphrey threw his
arm across Adam’s shoulders, as if they were old friends.
‘You’re still de Dunstanville’s squire?’ the nobleman asked. Adam could
smell the wine on his breath. ‘Is he here in London then?’
‘He is,’ Adam replied, careful to say no more. Robert had insisted that
nobody reveal where in the city they were staying.
‘Then tell him he must visit me soon,’ Humphrey replied, glancing at
his bloodied knuckles and then idly wiping them on Adam’s tunic. ‘I’m
lodged at the Abbot of Waltham’s Inn, by St Mary’s de la Hulle. Tell him, if
he’s sick of herrings and salt pork, that the kitchens there have the broadest
possible interpretation of Lenten restrictions. There is a species of goose
they classify as seafood, you know . . .’
‘I’ll tell him that,’ Adam replied quickly, disengaging himself from the
man’s embrace. He had yet to break his fast, and the thought of food
brought a swell of hunger. ‘You’ve come to London recently?’ he asked,
before Humphrey could enquire any further about Robert.
‘Arrived two days ago, from Kenilworth. I’ve been with Lord Simon
this last week, laying our plans against the king and Lord Edward – you
know he’s escaped from Gloucester?’
 ‘That’s true then?’ John Chyld asked.
‘All too true,’ Humphrey told them, his face reddening. ‘Henry, Lord
Simon’s son, foolishly agreed to a truce! Edward took the chance to escape
the castle, seize the town and hang de Montfort’s chief supporters. Now
he’s ridden for Oxford with all his knights . . .’ Sir Humphrey hissed
through his teeth. ‘He’s a cunning one, Edward. Men have started calling
him the Leopard.’
‘That’s the proper name, you know,’ Hugh of Oystermouth broke in,
raising a finger, ‘for the lion passant gardant, which Lord Edward bears on
his arms, of course.’
Sir Humphrey shot him a withering glance. ‘Well, of course,’ he said.
‘But he’s a subtle and sinuous beast, to be sure, and fierce as any great cat
. . . Oh yes,’ he said, turning to Adam again as a thought occurred to him,
‘when you see Robert de Dunstanville, you might ask him about his cousin,
Joane de Quincy.’
‘What about her?’ Adam replied, ice flowing suddenly through his
veins.
‘Robert agreed to support my bid to marry her,’ Humphrey said,
lowering his voice. ‘I visited her at Ware only yesterday, in fact, to seek her
betrothal. But her uncle, the Earl of Winchester, refuses to wed her to me.’
Humphrey smiled again, tightly. ‘Please do remind Robert to speak to the
earl on my behalf.’
*
Robert de Dunstanville was in the stable when Adam found him,
checking on the condition of the horses. They went together into an inner
workroom, where saddle leathers and bridle tack were spread on a
workbench, and Adam told him all that he had just heard.
‘What of it?’ Robert said, twitching a shrug.
For a moment Adam could not speak. On his journey back to the house
his mood had shifted from cold desolate despair to hot anger and back
again. ‘Humphrey de Bohun is a vicious drunkard, that’s what,’ he managed
to say, grinding the words. ‘Only moments ago I saw him punch a holy friar
in the street and then beat him senseless! But I knew him well enough,
once. He is dissolute, arrogant, cruel . . . How could you support his
intention to marry Joane de Quincy?’
‘I too know him well,’ Robert replied. ‘We’re of the same blood, after
all . . . though we were not exactly raised together. Your description fits half
the noble young men of England – who would you have my cousin marry
instead, hmm?’
‘Then it’s true?’ Adam said, feeling the grip of despair tighten inside
him. ‘You really want this to happen? Didn’t you say to me – I remember it
well – that your cousin was more precious than your soul? That if anyone
harmed her, you would hunt them to the deepest of the seven hells, you
would rend their flesh? And now you would simply hand her over to a man
like Humphrey de Bohun? . . .’
‘What a keen memory you have for things I’ve said,’ Robert replied,
toying with a leatherworker’s awl on the workbench. ‘If I’d known what an
impression I was making, I’d have minded my words better—’
‘She considered you her protector!’ Adam snarled. He was aware that
his fists were clenched, his nails digging into his palms.
‘Oh, and you’re her protector too now, is that it?’ Robert said, rounding
on him with sudden scorn. ‘Listen to me – Joane de Quincy is the niece of
the Earl of Winchester, who has no male heirs. When he dies – and he is not
a young man, my uncle – any legitimate female relations could claim a
share in his vast estates. She is also the granddaughter of Llywelyn the
Great, who is still revered among the Welsh. A woman like that would make
no mean prize, wouldn’t you say? Anyone might be grateful, if such a sweet
cherry fell into their lap.’
‘So that’s it?’ Adam cried, revulsion tightening his throat. ‘You’ve made
an agreement with Humphrey de Bohun? You’ll back his plan to marry
Joane de Quincy if he helps you regain your lands?’
‘And what would you arrange for her instead? Should she take holy
orders and retreat to a nunnery, like her older sister? Or – aha, yes, I see it
now!’ Robert said, snarling. ‘You think she would make a fitting wife for
you instead, is that it? A mere squire, a serjeant’s son, with no land and no
fortune?’
‘Who are you to speak to me like that?’ Adam shouted, raising his fist as
he took a step forward. The last time Robert had insulted him, he had been a
raw youth, but now things had changed. ‘Where are your lands, and your
fortune? Where is your honour?’
Robert moved first, lunging from the bench. Adam swung at him, but
with startling speed the older man had trapped his forearm in a punishing
grip and slammed his body against the heavy wooden post behind him. The
leatherworking awl was in Robert’s right hand, the steel spike only a
finger’s breadth from Adam’s eye.
‘Speak to me like that again,’ Robert breathed, holding Adam pinned
against the wooden post, ‘and I’ll blind you.’
For a moment he maintained his grip, then with a swift intake of breath
he released him and stepped back. As Robert tossed the awl back onto the
bench Adam slumped into a squat, his back to the post.
‘You’re right,’ Robert said, with quiet bitterness. ‘Humphrey de Bohun
would not be a good match for my cousin.’ He stared towards the pale light
from the barred window. ‘But he’s known her for a long time. After their
father died, she and Hawise were sent to live in our uncle’s household.
Humphrey holds the castle at Kimbolton, close to Earl Roger’s estate at
Eynesbury – it was there he first met Joane, I think, one winter soon
afterwards. He became besotted with her, though she was barely more than
a child and he was twice her age and married already.’
Adam glanced up quickly, his expression tightening, but Robert shook
his head.
‘No, no, he did not touch her,’ the knight said. ‘He has some self-control
at least. And his love, as he explained it, seemed genuine. But the matter
came to the ears of Earl Roger, and his own father, and Humphrey was sent
away to the Marches and forbidden to see Joane again. I knew nothing of it
at the time – he told me when last we met, after the tournament at Lagny. I
recall you were attending to other matters.’
Adam just shrugged. He had not forgotten Eloise, but he refused to feel
guilty about his dalliance with her.
‘Anyway, after the recent breach with his father, Humphrey must feel he
can renew his attentions. But Earl Roger loathes him, and refuses to
sanction the match.’
‘And he wants you to persuade him? Would you do that?’
‘It may be out of my hands,’ Robert said bleakly. ‘One day soon
Humphrey will be Earl of Hereford and Essex, and could become powerful
even before that, if he stands with de Montfort. I want the best for my
cousin, but she needs a husband, and perhaps Humphrey de Bohun is as
good as she will get.’
Adam drew a breath between his teeth. ‘And she would feel the same
way, do you think?’ he asked scornfully. He expected a vicious reply, but
the knight merely scrubbed at his beard.
 ‘Perhaps . . . he is a better man than he appears,’ Robert said.
‘Sometimes we must swallow compromises that stick in our throats.’
He stepped away from the bench and paced towards the door, leaving
Adam slumped miserably at the base of the wooden post. At the door he
paused and glanced back at him. ‘You’re still my squire, by the way,’ he
said. ‘Don’t think to question me again. And clean that tack and harness
properly before you eat – it’s filthy.’
Seething with humiliation and anger, Adam sat at the bench for the next
hour scrubbing at the harness buckles and the saddle leathers, scouring
them of rust and dirt and then oiling them until they shone and his fingers
ached. He was painfully aware that nothing he could ever accomplish
would raise him to the level of a man like Sir Humphrey de Bohun, who
had been born into wealth and prestige. Adam might move among the
powerful men of the land, but he could never be one of their company. Such
had it ever been, of course, and he would have been foolish to imagine
otherwise. But it was Robert’s betrayal that really sickened him. He had
traded Joane de Quincy’s future for his own personal gain. What, he
wondered, must she herself think of what was happening? Would her
opinions, her feelings, even be considered at all?
A shadow fell across him, and he turned sharply. A woman stood in the
doorway, holding a tray with an earthenware dish and spoon. Only when
she placed the tray down and drew the scarf from her face did Adam
recognise her.
‘Something to break your fast,’ Belia said, with the shadow of a smile.
‘I thought I would bring it myself, so the servants do not tell Robert.’
‘Thank you . . . mistress,’ Adam said. He was unsure of the correct way
to address her. His stomach pinched and rolled at the smell of the food.
‘Please forgive him if you can,’ Belia said, lowering her voice as she
stepped towards him. ‘He is . . . intemperate at the moment. But he cares for
you a great deal, you know that.’
‘He does?’ Adam said. It seemed highly unlikely.
‘Yes.’ Belia stood with her hands clasped before her, smiling once
again. ‘He told me what happened,’ she went on, moving closer. ‘About this
cousin of his, the de Quincy girl. You have feelings for her?’
‘I barely know her,’ Adam said quickly, conscious of how uncouth he
must sound. Remembering himself, he stood up and made a belated bow. A
memory crept into his mind, a vision lit by fireglow, and he quelled it.
 ‘Well then,’ Belia said. ‘We must hope for the best. And pray, I think,
that the Lord God bestows wisdom on us all.’ She reached out and touched
his cheek, her fingers tracing his skin lightly. Then she turned and left the
room.
Adam lifted the lid from the earthenware dish: stewed leek potage with
salt cod. Eating slowly, his hunger dissipating, he tried not to think about
Sir Humphrey de Bohun at the Abbot of Waltham’s Inn, enjoying the plump
roast goose set before him.
*
Simon de Montfort, Earl of Leicester, arrived in London two days later,
on the feast of the Annunciation of the Blessed Virgin. The streets were
packed as he rode in through New Gate, and the bright sunlight held the
first real promise of spring. Trumpets blared, the crowds cheered, and de
Montfort rode in full armour upon a champing white horse with his blood-
red banners raised, the rampant white lions dancing in the air above him.
Two days before, de Montfort had left Northampton, where his son
Simon the Younger had seized the castle and the town and was holding it
with more than fifty knights and bannerets and all their troops. King Henry
was still at Oxford, boasting of his desire for peace while gathering his
forces for war. Now Lord Simon had come to London, to meet with the
barons and powerful men of the city. With firm jaw and stern expression he
rode on through the meat market, cheered all the way, a cavalcade of
knights and armed retainers behind him.
Waiting with Robert in the broad expanse of Westcheap, which was
specially cleared to receive the newcomers, Adam picked out the banners of
the magnates and barons assembled to greet de Montfort. He saw the red
chevrons on gold, and beneath them the red-haired Gilbert de Clare – Earl
of Gloucester now, following the death of his father, so Hugh had learned –
sitting on horseback surrounded by his household knights. The golden fish
swimming on a blue field were the arms of the Kentish baron Ralph de
Heringaud, while the black cross on yellow marked out John de Vesci, only
nineteen years old and already Baron of Alnwick. Adam had learned to
identify most of their heraldic insignia in the preceding days, with Hugh’s
assistance. But he needed no help in recognising the familiar blue banner
slashed with white and ornamented with little golden lions; except for the
three fleur-de-lis on the white diagonal, Humphrey de Bohun used almost
the same arms as his father, the Earl of Hereford, who was at Oxford
preparing to raise them for the king.
Among them all, Robert de Dunstanville had no banner, wore no
armour and carried no shield. He sat patiently in the saddle, plainly dressed,
stroking his moustache with his thumb and watching everything.
Simon de Montfort rode to a halt before the assembled barons. In a
ringing voice that all the crowd could hear, he greeted them in perfect
French.
‘Together, my friends,’ he declared, ‘we will uphold the cause of justice,
as I have sworn to do, for the honour of the Church and the good of the
realm. I would have you all remember,’ he went on, addressing the
magnates but including everyone around him, ‘that we do not aim to deny
King Henry his sovereign rights, but only to compel him to respect and
observe the rights and customs of England, under the ancient law, the
Oxford Provisions and the Magna Carta! If God grants us peace, then we
shall rejoice – but if it must be war, then we are ready, and the Lord of
Hosts stands with us!’
‘And may He bring us victory in our just cause!’ Humphrey de Bohun
cried, and the crowd roared their assent. Adam heard the earl’s statement
being swiftly translated into London English, for the benefit of those who
did not understand courtly French.
The assembly broke up as de Montfort moved on along the street in the
direction of the Tower. As he passed, the earl glanced in Robert’s direction,
then paused and looked again. ‘De Dunstanville,’ he called through the
throng. ‘Have you decided to join us at last?’
Robert merely inclined his head. ‘My sword is yours, lord,’ he said.
But de Montfort raised himself in the saddle, peering past Robert.
‘Adam de Norton,’ he said, and just for a moment Adam felt the man’s
powerful gaze locked on him alone. ‘I remember you from Senlis! And I
hope you will find justice yet.’
Speechless, the heat rising to his face, Adam bowed from the saddle as
the great man moved on. Moments later, Simon de Montfort had been
swallowed by the crowd.
‘He never forgets a name,’ Robert muttered. ‘It’s a way of winning
men’s trust, certainly.’
But Adam’s gaze had been drawn to the column of men following along
behind the earl. More banners, more flashing shields emblazoned with
heraldic arms. One stood out in particular: on a red field, three white hands
displayed, palm outwards. Adam had not seen it before. Then he raised his
eyes, and drew a quick breath. The young man that carried the shield had
curling black hair, a handsome hawk-like profile, and an expression of utter
contempt on his face.
He was a knight now, with a sword belted at his side and gilded spurs at
his heels, and riding in de Montfort’s retinue. But Adam could not fail to
recognise Richard de Malmaines.

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 Chapter 14
‘Look at them,’ John Chyld said with a sneer. ‘Like they’re off to the
Hocktide revels! If Lord Edward and his gang of ironclad bastards catch
this lot in the open, they’ll be splayed, split and gralloched before they can
draw breath!’
The collected host of the baronial army and the militia of London were
marching north-west along the broad straight road from the city in high
spirits and a distinctly festive mood. The militiamen in particular seemed to
be enjoying themselves, hefting their spears and axes and crossbows as they
ambled along in a rough column behind their appointed marshal and
constable. The Londoners sang as they marched, some playing on bagpipes
and hand-drums, others chanting verses in praise of Simon de Montfort and
in mockery of the king and Lord Edward. It was the eve of Passion Sunday,
but many had decided that the rules of the Lenten fast no longer applied in
times of war, and munched on dried sausage and strong cheese as they
went, while others swigged from leather flasks of fresh-brewed ale. The
colourful standards of their wards and guilds stirred the air above them,
together with the banners of the bishops of London, Chichester and
Worcester, who rode with de Montfort in the vanguard.
Even with John Chyld’s scornful mutterings, Adam found it hard not to
be gripped by the mood of the troops. Only the day before they had heard
that King Henry had finally raised his royal banner at Oxford. In another
few days they would be at Northampton, to join the earl’s second son,
Simon de Montfort the Younger, and defend the town against the royal
forces. The April breeze was fresh and revitalising, and after so long
trapped within the circuit of London’s walls and the warren of the city
streets it felt wonderful to be out under the sky once more, back in the
saddle and riding to war.
And war it would be, Adam thought as he rode in the spring sunlight,
listening to the roaring songs of the Londoners. A nervous prospect, for all
his training and experience. In all his months on the tournament circuit he
had never yet killed a man, to his knowledge at least. It seemed a terrible
and sinful thing to take a life. But Lord Edward, they had heard, had
gathered a powerful force of knights from the Welsh Marches, cold-blooded
men who knew how to fight, and how to kill. All of them with sword in
hand, and no doubt sworn to as mighty an oath as de Montfort’s troops.
At least the barons and their retinues looked prepared for what lay
ahead. Two hundred knights, more or less, had followed Simon de Montfort
from London, all of them in armour, and many on armoured horses. Robert
had joined his own small company to the larger force led by Sir Humphrey
de Bohun. Adam tried to quell his dislike of the nobleman and forget his
tormented thoughts about Joane de Quincy. Sir Humphrey, meanwhile, was
in a fine mood, laughing and calling out to men he knew from the
tournament fields. He too acted as if he were attending a festival of some
kind. Could he really, Adam wondered, feel this sanguine about riding to do
battle against his own father?
Adam had managed to avoid Richard de Malmaines since their
departure from London; as far as he knew, the young knight was not even
aware of his presence. De Malmaines was riding in the company of the
mastiff-like Sir John FitzJohn. Both of them, Hugh of Oystermouth had
reported, had been knighted after the fighting on the Welsh borders. Both
had played a prominent part in the attack on the Jews at Worcester as well.
They were approaching Edgware, and the end of their first day’s march,
when the news passed down the column that Henry de Montfort, Earl
Simon’s eldest son, had redeemed himself of his disgrace at Gloucester by
capturing Warwick Castle, and the Earl of Warwick too. The militiamen
cheered and hooted, and soon they were singing songs about the bold Sir
Henry, and how he pulled the nose of the coward Warwick . . .
‘Ach, they’re like children, they are,’ said John Chyld, and spat from the
saddle of his lumbering cob. ‘They won’t be singing when they’re looking
at their own guts hanging round their knees!’
*
Passion Sunday dawned cold and grey, and the army stumbled from
their tents at Edgware under a lowering sky to hear mass. By the time they
were on the road the hour of terce had come and gone, and the rain was
falling. The feet of the men and the hooves of the horses churned the road to
mud, and the wheels of the baggage carts and the wagons that carried the
tents soon began to drag and stick. There was no sense of festive enjoyment
now, as the army trudged heavily onward, bent-backed, towards St Albans.
‘I hear, you know,’ said Hugh of Oystermouth, breaking his fast on a
chunk of bread as he rode, ‘that among the defenders of Northampton are
many of the students from the University of Oxford. The king threw them
out of the town, you see, afraid that they would fight and riot with the fierce
Scotchmen he was bringing down to join his army. And now there they are
at Northampton, manning the walls with their slings and catapults. Strange
days these are, when even scholars must learn to fight!’
‘About time they did something useful, I’d say,’ John Chyld added. ‘I’m
sure they will terrify Lord Edward though, with their fearsome drinking and
puking.’
By mid-afternoon they were at St Albans, and the column straggled to a
halt in a meadow outside the town. Already men were throwing themselves
down, some of them gathering wood for fires and others beginning to erect
tents as a shelter from the rain, though there were many more miles left of
their day’s march.
‘No good water, and too damp for fires,’ Wilecok complained as he
struggled to tether the sumpter horses. His Gascon wife added something in
her own incomprehensible dialect.
‘Why have we halted though?’ Adam wondered out loud, but the only
reply he got was a shrug. Robert had already ridden on ahead, and had sent
no message back. Remaining in the saddle, Adam stood in the stirrups and
peered across the meadow towards the main body of the army, which had
shifted closer to the abbey walls. Blinking the rain from his eyes, he tried to
make out where Simon de Montfort and his commanders might be. Then he
kicked with his spurs and urged his palfrey on between the knots of muddy
footsore militiamen.
He did not have much longer to wonder. News was spreading through
the halted army like a racing tide. King Henry and Lord Edward had
already reached Northampton; they had already attacked it, seized the town
and harried the defenders back into the castle.
‘But the castle could hold out,’ Adam said, once Robert had told him the
news. ‘It’s well provisioned, isn’t it? Why doesn’t Lord Simon push ahead
and try to reach it anyway?’
‘This news is a day old at least, and we’re two days’ march away,’
Robert explained, his face drawn and anxious. ‘Even if we rode ahead of
the infantry, we’d not arrive there with enough strength to make a
difference. It sounds like they were driven back to the castle in a rout, and
routs seldom lead to valiant defences. All we’d do is share in their defeat.’
He hissed with frustration, baring his teeth and cursing at the chaotic
confusion of the stalled advance. Already the promise of an easy or
conclusive victory had been snatched from de Montfort’s forces.
‘Wait here,’ Robert ordered, swinging down from his horse and passing
the reins to Adam. ‘I’ll gather what tidings I can, and decide what action we
should take.’
Before Adam could ask him what he meant, Robert was stalking away
towards the abbey gatehouse, where a knot of knights and barons had
gathered around Earl Simon and the three bishops who accompanied him
for a council of war. Adam stared after him for a moment, then dismounted
too.
‘Senlis!’ a voice cried, and he turned sharply.
‘It is you, isn’t it?’ Richard de Malmaines said, smiling coldly as he
advanced. ‘I’d wondered what had become of you. You’ve crawled back to
England at last! I did not see you when we left London – were you hiding
with the baggage train all this time?’
There were people all around them, and any confrontation could easily
summon a crowd. But de Malmaines was still smiling, and to anyone who
did not know them, they might appear to be old friends united after a long
separation.
‘I have no reason to hide from you, or from any man,’ Adam said
quietly.
‘Nor should you,’ de Malmaines said, coming to a halt a sword’s length
away. He opened his cloak and spread his arms, displaying the knightly belt
and sword that he wore over his mail and red surcoat. ‘As you see,’ he said,
still smiling, ‘I occupy a different station to you now. It would be
undignified for a dubbed knight to raise his hand to a mere squire. But if
you should ever win the gilded spurs, watch for me. I will find you, and I
will be the death of you, I promise you that.’
‘Why continue with this mad rivalry?’ Adam said, holding his ground.
He had a sword scabbarded at his hip, but wore no armour and carried no
shield. ‘We’re both on the same side now. There are greater matters at hand,
surely.’
‘Oh, but this is a matter of honour,’ de Malmaines said, frowning.
‘And honour was satisfied, at Senlis. You challenged me, I defeated
you.’
‘But I am not satisfied!’ de Malmaines roared, taking a step forward and
grasping the hilt of his sword. ‘You defeated me by a stratagem, and I will
not tamely accept it!’ Heads turned, the angry words instantly attracting
attention, and at once a circle of onlookers began to form.
Adam made no movement to oppose him. If he did so, he knew, de
Malmaines could claim provocation and strike first. Breathing slowly,
keeping his hands on the reins of the two horses behind him, he looked de
Malmaines in the eye and held his gaze steady.
For several long moments Richard de Malmaines stood with his hand on
his sword, a glinting anger in his narrowed eyes. Then he shrugged his
cloak back around him and paced away towards the abbey gateway. The
little circle of onlookers broke apart, shrugging and muttering with
disappointment. Adam felt the cold flush across his brow, and released a
breath he had not realised he was holding.
It was some time before Robert returned. He approached with
Humphrey de Bohun, the two of them locked in debate; they halted before
getting close enough for Adam to make out their words, but he saw de
Bohun gesturing emphatically. Then he clapped Robert on the shoulders
and walked away.
‘Nobody knows anything.’ Robert said as he joined Adam once more.
‘Whether we advance or retreat, it’s not going to happen quickly, and
probably not tonight. We need to get the horses fed and watered and find
some lodgings in the town before everyone else starts crowding in there.’
Adam nodded his agreement, relieved to be doing something at least.
They led the horses back to where Wilecok had managed to get a fire going,
and Adam left them with John Chyld while he crossed the meadow towards
the nearest houses. By now the stalled army had spread itself around the
side of the abbey grounds and into the streets of St Albans. Woodsmoke
hung in the damp air, and women had flocked from the town to hawk
provisions to the soldiers. Dogs barked and ran in circles, horses whinnied
as their owners fed and dressed them. The sense of being at war was
dissipating utterly, and as the rain stopped and a low evening sun washed
the meadows, the scene began to look like a bedraggled sort of fair.
He had almost reached the main street when Adam saw the lone rider
galloping across the bridge in the distance. Something about the man’s
haste caught his attention at once. He wore a black cloak and surcoat, but
the light flashed on his horse harness and buckles, the links of his armour.
Before the rider had cleared the bridge and crossed the meadows, Adam had
turned to run.
 By the time he arrived at the abbey gatehouse, the rider had dismounted
and was surrounded by men. Adam could hear the cries of despair and
lamentation as he approached. It was not difficult to determine the news
that the rider had brought: Northampton had already fallen to the king’s
forces.
‘And how did you alone escape, de Segrave?’ a voice demanded. It was
Gilbert de Clare, Adam noticed as he pushed his way through the throng.
‘Did you run away before the attack?’
‘Or did your old friend Edward let you go, Nicholas, is that it?’
Humphrey de Bohun called angrily.
‘Peace, let him speak!’ Hugh Despenser broke in, raising his palms.
Nicholas de Segrave was a tall lanky young man. One of the midland
barons, Adam remembered; his black surcoat was emblazoned with three
white sheaves of wheat. His long face and thinning hair gave him a look of
desperate anguish as he stood wiping his brow. ‘I rode clear after the castle
fell,’ he said. ‘My horse leaped the ditch, and I cut my way through the
enemy . . . If any man doubts me, he may look upon the proof!’ With a
flourish he drew his sword, holding it displayed above his head so all could
see the notched and pitted blade, and the smear of drying blood near the
hilt.
‘No one doubts your valour, de Segrave,’ said Simon de Montfort,
appearing from the shadow of the abbey gateway. His face was grave, but
he appeared resolute. ‘And though we grieve this defeat,’ he said, raising
his voice so all could hear, ‘and I can only pray that my son and all our
friends still live unharmed – this is not the end of our struggle. This is
merely the fortune of war, as God directs. But I promise you this – we will
not see Pentecost before all the joys of our enemies are turned to pain!’
A hand fell on his shoulder, and Adam found Robert beside him. ‘Come,
quickly and quietly,’ the knight said in a low whisper. ‘We need to be away
from here, before anyone notices us leaving. We wouldn’t want anyone to
think we were deserting too openly.’
*
They rode through the dusk in a straggling line, Robert in the lead and
Wilecok bringing up the rear with the laden baggage horses. As the sun set
the clouds had cleared to show a waxing half-moon, and while there was
still enough light to pick out the roads and trackways ahead of them they
rode as fast as they dared. Then, once darkness had fallen, they kept the
horses to a steady walk, and the noise of the hooves was loud in the
hollowness of the night.
After skirting the Bishop of Ely’s game parks at Hatfield they came to
the valley of a river, which Robert said was the Lea. Adam could smell the
water and could hear the rills as it flowed, but by then it was too dark to see
it. They rode in silence, and Adam had the strong sensation that he had
slipped into a dream.
A brook crossed the path, and they paused to rest and let the horses
drink. Adam found Robert in the gloom beneath an overhanging tree. ‘What
was it that Humphrey de Bohun told you, back at the camp?’ he asked
quietly. ‘I’m guessing it was the reason for our swift departure.’
‘Sir Humphrey was talking very fervently of my cousin,’ Robert replied,
in a musing tone. ‘He seemed to believe she was in some danger at Ware.’
‘So . . . he’s sending us to fetch her?’ Adam asked, and noticed the quick
gleam of Robert’s eye in the darkness. There was something more here, but
he knew that Robert would not reveal it too easily.
‘Sir Humphrey spoke of sending men to Ware, yes, to find Joane de
Quincy and take her to some safer place – he suggested his own castle at
Kimbolton.’
Adam waited, frowning. He could hear Robert sucking his cheeks.
‘But I suspect,’ Robert went on, ‘that his intention is to hide her away
and marry her privately, while all are distracted by the confusion of war.’
‘And so you’re doing his bidding?’ Adam said. His horse tugged at the
rein, unnerved by the darkness.
He caught the curt shake of Robert’s head. ‘I told him to give me a few
days, and I’d go to Ware myself and see what might be done. That should
give us time to take Joane and her sister somewhere they can be protected,
for now at least. I told Hugh of Oystermouth to stay with the army until he
could determine where they were going next, then to ride and find us, at
either Ware or Pleshey.’
‘Pleshey?’ Adam asked, startled. He had not expected to see that place
again, especially now that the Earl of Hereford was with the king’s army.
‘The castellan is no friend of mine,’ Robert said, ‘but he might take the
girls. And then we shall see what fortune brings.’
Adam was speechless for a moment. ‘You changed your mind then,
about supporting Sir Humphrey?’
 ‘Consider,’ Robert told him, ‘that your impassioned outburst a few days
back might have given me some thoughts. Consider that perhaps it caused
me to recognise I was on the wrong path.’
‘It did?’
‘Of course not,’ Robert said, tutting. ‘I am not swayed by such things.
But consider it possible, is all I will say on the matter.’
They climbed back into the saddle, and without another word they
resumed their nocturnal journey along the river valley. The moon was low
over the north-eastern horizon when they slipped past Hertford in the dead
of night. Robert sent John Chyld galloping on ahead to announce their
arrival, and an hour later they crossed the bridge at Ware, five riders each
with a spare horse and three baggage animals behind them. Through the
silent streets of the town they passed, the noise of the hooves waking the
dogs in the yards. By the time they entered the yard of the manor house
there was a light glowing in the porch and another showing through the hall
window.
Robert dismounted and waited. Servants came loping from indoors,
startled from sleep and still bleary. Adam climbed down from the saddle
too, his thighs and back aching after a long day and half a night on
horseback. Rubbing the nose of his weary palfrey, he watched the
silhouetted shapes moving around the door and the porch. So many times he
had imagined his return to Ware, and his meeting with Joane. Never had he
imagined anything like this strange dreamlike scene.
She came from the house in a fur-trimmed robe, a deep hood thrown
over her head. Adam knew her at once even so.
‘I must apologise for the late hour, cousin,’ Robert said, hushed but
smiling.
Joane de Quincy drew the hood back and looked him in the eye. She
stepped towards him, as if to greet him with a kiss.
Then she raised her hand and slapped him hard across the face.

OceanofPDF.com
 Chapter 15
With a flurry of beating wings, the falcon scaled the bright morning
sky. Leaning back in the saddle, Adam tracked it as it flew. Below and
ahead of him, the dogs were coursing along the riverbanks, forging through
the stands of reeds and bracken.
‘There,’ Joane said, pointing. A moment later Adam saw the brace of
waterfowl burst upwards, startled into motion by the dogs. But Joane was
watching her falcon. Adam glanced up again, and saw the bird of prey
wheel and fold its wings, stooping instantly into a plummeting dive. Almost
faster than his eye could track, the bird fell on the second of the waterfowl,
fanning its wings at the last moment and stretching out its talons. Joane
drew a quick hissing breath as the falcon struck, its prey snatched from the
air and propelled earthwards by the killing blow.
‘Come on!’ she called, leaning forward in the saddle and kicking with
the spurs. She rode like a man, astride the horse with her feet in the stirrups,
and wore a hunting cap with a brim to shade her eyes. Ahead stretched a
grassy downhill sward, and Joane rode fast with Adam only a horse’s length
behind her. The falconer and the dog handlers were already closing in on
the kill, striding through the reeds.
By the time they reached the falcon it was standing on the dead fowl,
letting out shrieks of triumph as it bent to hack and pluck at the downy
breast-feathers and the flesh beneath. It was a young peregrine, still in
training, but when Joane reined in her horse twenty paces away and
extended her gloved hand, the bird rose from its prey and swooped across to
her, wings spread as it came to a perch. One of the dog handlers came
running with a bit of meat torn from the dead fowl, and Joane pinched it in
the fingers of her glove and let the falcon feed, its curved beak ripping at
the hank of bloodied flesh.
‘Fortunate creatures,’ she said with a smile, ‘that do not know the
Lenten fast!’
‘There is no sin in them, only nature,’ Adam replied.
She looked at him, still smiling, not flinching as the hunting bird fed
and then preened and stretched its wings. ‘Unfortunate humans then,’ she
said, ‘with our sinful natures.’
 They rode back towards the house, the hooded falcon secured to her
glove. ‘Imagine,’ she told him. ‘For two years I hear nothing, and then only
a few days ago Humphrey de Bohun, the son of the Earl of Hereford,
appears at my home intent on betrothal, and telling me that Robert de
Dunstanville, no less, is going to help press his claim to my uncle. And
then, after hearing nothing more, Sir Robert himself appears suddenly from
the depths of night with some message that I must be ready to leave
imminently, for an unknown destination. Would anyone not be angry?’
Adam said nothing as he rode.
‘And now he has gone to Pleshey,’ Joane said with a sigh, gazing into
the low morning sun, ‘to persuade them to give me refuge. It seems my
virtue is to be once more protected by castle walls.’
Robert had left that morning soon after dawn, after only a few hours’
sleep. He hoped to ride to Pleshey and return that same day, he had told
Adam before his departure. Remaining in the house until he got back
seemed sensible, but Joane had insisted on taking her falcon out for
exercise, and Adam had felt compelled to accompany her.
‘What did Sir Humphrey say to you, when he was here?’ Adam asked.
Joane sniffed back a laugh, and the bird on her glove twitched, the bells
on its jesses chiming. ‘He tried to recite love poetry. It was quite baffling.’
Adam smiled wryly as he tried to picture the blustering de Bohun
attempting such a thing.
‘My sister could barely conceal her mirth,’ Joane went on. ‘Sir
Humphrey has children already, you know, by his late wife – one of them is
older than Hawise! But he hopes I might become a good mother to them . . .
He left soon enough for London, talking mightily of Simon de Montfort, the
Earl of Leicester. I rather wondered whether he might recite love poetry to
him too. You’ve met him yourself?’
Adam nodded. ‘He’s a forceful man,’ he replied. ‘I’ve heard it said that
he is too fond of wealth and fame. But he always seems to know what must
be done, and how it should be done. Almost as if he has already seen the
shape of the future.’
‘We hear a lot about him,’ Joane said. ‘There’s no real company here,
but the travelling friars bring us all the news of the wide world. This Simon
de Montfort seems like a great wind sweeping through the land, shaking all
the trees. Bringing down the rotten fruit and the ripe all together.’
 Adam looked at her from the corner of his eye. Hugh of Oystermouth
had said something similar once, he remembered, although he had not
expressed it so well. Joane was handing the falcon and glove across to the
falconer, who had ridden up beside her.
‘A race,’ she called to Adam. ‘Back to the stables!’
At once she let out her reins and set the spurs to her horse, and the
animal surged forward into a canter. Adam dug in his heels and set off after
her, his bigger palfrey gaining fast. Joane had taken off her jaunty hunting
cap, and her hair whipped out behind her in dark auburn braids. Over the
years since last they had met, Adam realised, his idea of her had remained
static, like a painted picture in a church or on the pages of an illustrated
manuscript. But the quiet, nervous girl who had asked him to read with her
from the Psalter and pray for Sir Robert’s protection was gone. He had
feared he would be disappointed to find her changed; instead he was
awestruck. Never had he expected this wry dancing intelligence, this
confident vitality. As they rode neck and neck towards the house, he saw
her grinning back at him and knew that she could reads his thoughts
exactly.
‘I didn’t recognise you either at first, you know,’ she told him, as they
walked the horses back into the stable yard. ‘I believed that Sir Robert must
have lost another squire, and that rather awkward gangling youth I knew
once had met his end on some tournament field in France.’
‘I think he did,’ Adam told her.
She slid a glance at him. A half-smile. ‘Perhaps so,’ she said, and swung
her leg to dismount. ‘But I’m sure it was all very chivalrous, and you had a
great many stirring adventures.’
He thought of Eloise and tried not to smile. Was that what she meant?
‘There were many . . . great deeds of arms,’ he told her. She almost laughed,
but stifled it quickly.
They walked together across the yard towards the house, as the grooms
led the horses to the stable. ‘And now you’re a follower of Simon de
Montfort as well, I suppose?’ Joane asked, changing the subject abruptly.
‘You believe what he says of the king, that he’s the enemy of his people?’
Adam took a moment to compose his reply, sure that in some way he
was being tested. ‘If you mean that the king should be bound by the law,
then yes I believe it,’ he said. ‘If you mean that the king should rule with the
consent of his parliament, as he swore to do, then certainly. And if he does
not, then yes . . . the king is the enemy of the people.’
‘And so you would make yourself the king’s enemy?’ she asked lightly.
‘The enemy of the sovereign anointed by God?’
‘If that’s what justice demands, then yes,’ Adam said, trying to sound
more confident than he felt. ‘Besides,’ he went on, ‘it is the king’s advisors
who lead him astray . . . And if it comes to a trial by battle, God will judge
the outcome.’ He realised as he spoke that he had never made such a certain
declaration before, and neither had Robert. He realised too how much he
was risking. Was this what he truly believed? Yes, he thought. Yes, it is.
Joane had turned to look at the stable, perhaps to hide her expression.
For a moment Adam wondered if she doubted him, and felt offended. Was
she impressed by his resolve, his bold attitude, or simply amused?
‘I envy you,’ she confessed as they walked on towards the house. She
did not seem eager, suddenly, to go back inside. ‘To feel so active in the
world, to hold chivalry as something real, not just an ideal . . . It must be
glorious.’
Adam could not answer. Her words made him feel more humble than
enviable.
‘Sadly,’ she went on, ‘women are condemned to passivity in these
matters. Still, I can imagine . . . I too dream of going on pilgrimages and
adventuring in foreign lands.’ She gazed towards the horizon, narrowing her
eyes, as if she might see rising there the spires of Lyonesse, or the towers of
far Antioch.
‘Perhaps, if you were married to Humphrey de Bohun . . .’ Adam forced
himself to say. The words were clumsy and bitter in his mouth, but he
needed to see her reaction.
‘Oh, so you’re his advocate too now?’ Joane said sharply.
‘Not at all. And neither is Robert, as you must surely know.’
‘Then I’m glad I have some support,’ she said, pausing in the porch
before the doors to the hall. ‘Too often nowadays I feel like hunted game.’
‘You have other men hunting you as well then?’ Adam asked, feeling a
prickle of renewed jealousy.
Joane glanced at him, her smile returning. ‘My uncle,’ she said, ‘has
threatened to cut the arms and legs off any man who touches me. He would
have sent both Hawise and me to a nunnery years ago, like my older sister
Anne, had he not sworn to my father he would see us wed. But he resents
us, you see, and he’s gone out of his way to surround us with thorns.’
*
Later that day they dined with Hawise, the chaplain and steward, and
the elderly nun whom Adam had seen during his last visit. Wilecok and his
Gascon wife had joined the bailiff and the manor servants at the trestle table
at the far end of the hall. The chaplain pronounced grace before the meal,
and read from the Liber de Contemptu Mundi of Pope Innocent III as they
ate.
‘The sky grows very dark to the east, and there’s a wind rising,’ the
steward said to them, once the dishes were cleared. ‘I am afraid Sir Robert
will have a wet ride back from Pleshey.’
‘That’s if he returns today at all,’ Joane said, under her breath. She
waited until the steward and chaplain had left them and the nun had gone to
pray, then exhaled loudly. ‘They only joined us because you’re here,’ she
told Adam. ‘And if Robert doesn’t return, they’ll surely be back for supper.
They need to watch over you, you see.’
‘He’ll return,’ Adam said. The shutters were banging at the windows,
and he could hear the trees whipping in the gale outside. As he listened
further, he heard the tap of hail against the roof overhead.
‘I don’t think he means to come back today at all,’ said Hawise, with a
sly smile. She was fourteen years old now, and sleek as an otter. She kept
the falcon beside her as she ate, fixed to its perch with a slim gold chain,
and stroked its breast feathers. The bird rotated its head, large eyes open
and alert, as if the upper corners of the hall might at any moment fill with
starlings.
‘Whatever do you mean?’ Joane asked her.
‘Well, is it not obvious?’ her sister asked. ‘Robert has intended to throw
you two together! Why else would he leave you both here and ride off to
Pleshey? Surely he means that you should fall in love, and be . . . married in
the sight of the Lord.’
‘Hawise!’ Joane cried, blushing suddenly. ‘Be quiet . . .’
‘Married how?’ Adam asked, keeping his composure.
‘In the flesh, you know,’ said Hawise with a diffident shrug. ‘If there is
consent and love, then there is union. And no man could sunder you then.
Not even Uncle Roger, or Humphrey de Bohun!’
 ‘Hawise – that’s enough!’ Joane hissed. ‘You have no idea what you’re
talking about . . .’ She was staring down at the tablecloth. Adam cleared his
throat lightly.
‘Well, you don’t want to marry Humphrey de Bohun, do you?’ Hawise
said, getting up from the table. ‘And who else is there? Anyway, I’ve seen
the way you keep looking at each other.’
And with that she left the hall and went up to the solar.
Adam and Joane sat in silence for a few moments after the girl had
gone. Joane snorted a laugh suddenly, and Adam grinned. ‘Married in the
flesh,’ said Joane, then gave a long sigh and stared down the room. She
could not meet Adam’s eye.
‘Do you think she really knows what it means?’ Adam asked.
‘Oh, I think so. As do we all. But she cannot be wed before I am, so it
matters to her, I suppose.’
‘And not to you?’
Joane looked at him directly. Her pale grey eyes caught and held the
light. ‘I would rather be free to live as I please, if I had the choice,’ she told
him.
*
With the wind and hail gathering force, Adam went out to the stables
with Wilecok to secure and feed the horses, in case the night proved
tempestuous. With his cloak pulled up over his head Adam stood in the
gateway of the stable yard and stared off down the rutted road to the town,
in the direction of Pleshey. Nobody was in sight, and he knew that few
travellers would risk the roads in such weather. If Robert had left Pleshey
already, he would need a pressing reason to continue his journey.
‘He’ll get here if he can, I’m sure,’ he told Joane. ‘But we might have to
wait until tomorrow.’ They were sitting together at the high table once
more, drinking wine as the hall was slowly engulfed by darkness. Only the
glow from the hearth and the single candle on the table illuminated their
end of the chamber, where Joane’s father’s shield hung on the wall, the
white cinquefoil radiant in the darkness. A notched old sword was mounted
below it, and a hunting crossbow. At the other end of the hall, Wilecok and
his wife and a couple of servants were eating a late supper at the trestle.
Hawise had already gone to bed for the night. The storm thumped and
wailed around the eaves of the hall, rattling the shutters.
 ‘It’s strange how much you’ve come to resemble Sir Robert,’ Joane
said. ‘You’ve taken on some of his mannerisms. You’ve even come to look
like him at times.’
‘I have?’ Adam said, unsure whether this was praise or criticism.
‘You must have changed your mind about him,’ Joane said. ‘You didn’t
care much for him when you came here before, but I think you admire him
now.’
‘I suppose I do,’ Adam replied, careful with his words. ‘He’s a hard man
to like. A man of twists and turns. If you could only see him on the
tournament field – I know you hate such things, but even so, he is . . .
magnificent. But I think he is struggling to be just and true, and to get what
he desires from life.’
‘And you?’ Joane asked, dropping her voice a little and swirling the
wine in her cup. ‘What is it you most desire in life?’
‘To be knighted,’ Adam said without hesitation. ‘And to regain the lands
my father once held . . .’ He hesitated, unsure how to express himself. ‘But
more than that,’ he went on, ‘I want to be found worthy. Not to fail or be
weak, when the test comes. Whatever the test may be.’
‘I believe we all desire that,’ Joane said, gazing at the flickering flame
of the candle. ‘Many people don’t have the awareness to recognise it
though.’
At the far end of the hall, Wilecok and the others at the trestle had
finished their meal and were playing dice by rushlight. Intent on their game,
they appeared oblivious of Adam and Joane. Adam was fighting to still his
mind and concentrate on the moment. Those women he had known before
were like Eloise, simple and direct in their affections, and he had taken a
simple and direct approach to them. Joane de Quincy, he knew, was
different. But he found their conversation so easy that he felt no need to try
and summon the eloquence of poetry, or to remember lines from the
romances he had read or heard. It seemed enough to be direct and simple
with her too.
‘You’ve really never had another suitor?’ he asked her, guarding his
nerve.
Joane laughed to herself, then took another sip of wine. ‘With my
uncle’s threat of murder and dismemberment, and Humphrey de Bohun’s
threat of additional murder, and then the surety of murder by Robert de
Dunstanville for any who survive, is it any surprise that none have been
foolish enough to try?’
‘It would surprise me,’ Adam said.
She gazed at him for a long moment, twisting the ring adorned with her
family emblem, then drank again. ‘It may shock you,’ she said, ‘but there
was one. Not a suitor, exactly . . . One of my uncle’s squires – this was on
his estates in Scotland, three years ago. We were both little more than
children, and it started in play, but we became lovers in time. My uncle
discovered it, and sent the squire away. He died soon afterwards, the squire,
and it was said that I had poisoned him out of spite. Then my uncle said I
was a putrid little slut and the spawn of a Welsh witch, and if I ever looked
at another man, he would seize me by the ears and fling me off the sea
cliffs. That was when he sent me and Hawise to live here, in solitude.’
Adam waited a moment, digesting what she had told him. He tried not
to be shocked, and found that he was impressed instead. ‘What was he like,’
he asked quietly, ‘this squire you loved?’
‘Perhaps a little like a gangling youth I once met, who read from the
Psalter with me,’ she told him.
Hardly daring to breathe, he reached across the table and laid his hand
over hers. She turned her wrist, and their fingers met.
A crash on the outer door resounded through the hall, followed by the
banging of a fist. Adam got to his feet at once. His sword lay scabbarded on
the floor beside his chair, and he reached down and grabbed it.
‘Robert?’ he asked.
‘No,’ Joane said. ‘He would not beat at the door like that . . .’
One of the servants was already running into the passage to look
through the sliding opening in the front door and see who was outside in the
porch. Before he reached it there was another crash, a splintering of wood,
and the servant staggered back into the hall with a cry of alarm.
Three figures followed close behind him, heavy-set men bundled
against the storm in thick cloaks, sodden wool coifs on their heads. Two
carried drawn swords, while the third had a crossbow, spanned and loaded.
As he entered the hall he raised it and aimed directly at Adam’s head.
Joane screamed, and the falcon woke and burst upwards from its perch,
wings flapping. Adam drew his sword and flung the scabbard aside, but the
crossbowman was tracking him as he moved, his fingers curling around the
trigger.
 It was Wilecok’s Gascon wife who moved first. With a shriek of fury
she flung a wooden mug at the man with the crossbow. He turned, his
weapon swinging, then released the trigger and shot the bolt wildly towards
the ceiling beams. Adam was already closing on him, sword raised to cut
him down before he could reload, but the two other men surged forward
with their blades. From the corner of his eye Adam saw Joane bend sharply
and then straighten; he thought for a moment that the bolt had hit her, but
then he realised that she had taken the hunting crossbow from the wall and
spanned it, and now held it loaded in her hands.
The first swordsman lunged at him, a clumsy stab, and he knocked the
blade aside and slashed back. The man danced away from him, weapon
swinging. Behind him the crossbowman was bent over his weapon as he
spanned it, a fresh quarrel clamped between his teeth. The second
swordsman was craftier. He slid along the wall to Adam’s left, then aimed a
chopping blow at his shoulder. Adam turned on his heel, dodging the man’s
sword and then bringing his own blade slicing along his forearm. The man
fell back against the wall with a howl, bleeding from a long cut. The noise
filled the hall in echoes.
Wilecok and one of the servants were holding the first swordsman at
bay with a fire iron and a cleaver. But now the crossbowman had spanned
and reloaded his weapon, and was raising it to take aim.
‘Stand clear!’ Joane cried. Adam chanced a quick look over his
shoulder, then dropped to a crouch as she shot her own bow from the far
end of the hall. He heard the meaty thwack of impact, and saw the
crossbowman stagger and reel, his loaded weapon falling. The trigger
released, the bolt shot forth and deflected from the floor beside the hearth,
striking sparks off the flagstones before burying its head in the wall.
The injured swordsman let out a roar as he surged to his feet; Adam
stepped quickly back and dodged the blow, knocking aside the man’s
swinging weapon. Then he drew back his hand and punched the iron
pommel of his sword into the man’s forehead, dropping him like a stunned
beast.
He turned just in time to see the last of the attackers give up the fight
and fling himself into the passageway leading to the door. A moment later
the sound of his running footsteps came from the yard outside. Breathing
heavily, Adam surveyed the room. Joane stood white-faced and staring. The
falcon was still shrieking from its perch. The crossbowman was lying flat
on his back, Joane’s bolt projecting from his eye.
‘Christ’s nails!’ Wilecok said, staring at the dead man. ‘That was some
shot!’

OceanofPDF.com
 Chapter 16
Robert de Dunstanville returned to Ware the following morning. He
had left Pleshey at first light and ridden hard; John Chyld was still on the
road behind him. In the porch he gave the corpse of the dead crossbowman
a long look: the grimy sheet that covered the body was tented grotesquely
over the jutting bolt, which nobody had cared to remove. Drawing a hissing
breath between his teeth, Robert paced through into the hall.
‘You’ve been keeping yourselves amused while I was away, I see,’ he
said, rubbing at a spatter of blood on the wall that Adam had not noticed.
‘It was Earl Roger that sent them,’ Joane said from the high table. She
had been sitting there most of the night, a crossbow laid ready before her.
They had all spent the hours of darkness in nervous vigil, convinced that the
man who had run away would return imminently with reinforcements. ‘Earl
Roger, our own uncle,’ Joane went on. She gestured to the wounded captive
who sat in the corner, securely tied and with his arm bound in blood-soaked
linen. ‘Ask him if you don’t believe me.’
But Robert had no need of corroboration. The wounded man, in any
case, was unlikely to tell them much more. Once he had recovered from the
blow on the head that Adam dealt him he had been quick enough to confess
everything, much to Wilecok’s disappointment. The weaselly servant had
been heating a variety of implements in the fire for some time, just in case
persuasion was required.
‘Of course,’ Robert said, pressing his fingertips to his brow. ‘Earl Roger
will have heard that Humphrey de Bohun was planning to seize Joane, and
sent his own men to stop him. They’ll have seen the stable full of strange
horses and guessed that de Bohun’s men were already here . . . They used
the oaken bench from the porch as a ram to break the door, by the way – the
latch must have rusted. It’ll need repairing.’
‘The steward’s already sent for a carpenter from the town,’ Adam told
him. The steward and the chaplain had both appeared before first light,
ready to read the matins of the day, and both had been genuinely appalled at
what had happened in their absence. They would testify that the attackers
were mere brigands, taking advantage of the confused state of the kingdom
to prey upon defenceless ladyfolk in their homes. There would be no
trouble about the dead man, at least.
 Adam nodded towards the captive, who was already looking pale and
feverish. ‘What do we do about him?’
‘Best give a drink of water and turn him loose,’ Robert said. ‘That
wound’s likely to kill him if it gets infected, and he’ll just be one more to
bury. If he lives long enough, he can run back to Earl Roger and tell him
what happened.’
Once the captive had been sent staggering off into the noon daylight and
the carpenters had repaired the door, the kitchen servants appeared with hot
vegetable broth and bread fresh from the oven. Adam ate hungrily, noticing
with a guilty pang that the cooks had used marrowbone to thicken the stock.
But surely, he thought, God would forgive the lapse after such a night?
Hawise joined them to dine, very disappointed that she had slept through
the attack on the house, and particularly that she had missed the spectacle of
a man being shot in the eye right there in her own hall.
Joane, though, was silent and distracted, and ate little. All knew that she
bore no guilt for the death of the intruder, but it was a killing all the same,
and the shock of it weighed upon her. She had not slept at all, and her face
was waxen pale with dark patches below her eyes.
‘What happened at Pleshey?’ Adam asked Robert as they ate. Perhaps,
he thought, that might draw Joane from her grim reflections.
‘The countess was in residence, worse luck,’ Robert said, dunking bread
into his broth. ‘She was first inclined not to allow me through the gates, and
was then inclined to hang me from a gibbet as a traitor and rebel.’
‘She’s been after the opportunity to do that for many a year,’ John Chyld
added.
‘Fortunately,’ Robert went on, chewing bread, ‘the castellan persuaded
her that they had no evidence I had joined Simon de Montfort’s cause. So I
was able to convince her that for the sake of Christian charity alone she
should give shelter to Joane and Hawise de Quincy, until the current warlike
state of the land is changed and order restored.’
‘I won’t go,’ Joane said. She had not spoken for so long that the sound
of her voice made all pause.
‘You will go, certainly,’ Robert replied sharply, poised with his spoon
raised. ‘I have not just ridden all the way to Pleshey and back on flooded
roads for you simply to refuse.’
‘I will not go,’ she said again. ‘I will not seek charity from the Countess
of Hereford, or from you, or from anyone.’
 ‘God’s brains!’ Robert swore, throwing down his spoon. ‘Can you not
see the danger here? Did last night’s escapades not reveal it? Tomorrow or
the day after, Humphrey de Bohun’s men will be here, if Earl Roger’s men
do not return and take you first. They’ll drag you and your sister out by
your hair if they need to!’
‘No!’ Joane cried, standing up suddenly, her knuckles white. ‘This is my
home. You cannot simply order me out of here against my will – you are not
my father, or my guardian! I never asked for your help in any of this!’
‘No, but I gave it for your father’s sake!’ Robert yelled, standing up so
abruptly that his stool toppled to the floor. The two of them glared at each
other across the table.
‘She’s right,’ Adam said, standing as well. ‘This is her home. She is
mistress here.’
‘Oh, is that so?’ Robert said, turning to Adam wide-eyed and
incredulous. ‘You’re fighting for her cause now then? Is this what happens,
when I leave you two alone for a night?’
‘At least I was here to protect her!’ Adam snarled, feeling the heat rise
to his face. He saw that Robert’s teeth were bared, and his hand had strayed
instinctively to the knife at his belt.
‘I need no protection from either of you!’ Joane shouted, banging her
fist on the table.
The banging was echoed from the far end of the hall, and all heads
turned towards the passageway that led to the door. A moment of poised
silence, then the banging came again, and the sound of a voice calling for
entry.
‘It’s that Welshman,’ said Wilecok. ‘What’s he doing back so soon?’
‘Let him in,’ Robert growled, and one of the servants ran to open the
door. ‘My apologies,’ he said quietly, fists braced on the tabletop. He
glanced first at Joane and then at Adam. ‘I have not rested for some time.’
‘None of us have,’ Joane said.
Hugh of Oystermouth almost collapsed in through the door to the hall.
He dropped onto one of the benches, seized a mug of ale from the trestle
table and sucked it dry. Then he sagged forward onto his knees, groaning at
the ache in his back and legs. The servant who answered the door had
already gone to fetch the grooms and attend to the Welshman’s lathered
horse.
 ‘I galloped here most of the way from London,’ Hugh said, wincing.
The cook’s boy was already refilling his mug. ‘And that was after riding the
distance back from St Albans yesterday.’
‘What’s happened?’ Robert demanded, striding down the hall to stand
before him. ‘Where is de Montfort? Where is the king?’
Hugh drank again, then stifled a belch with the back of his hand. ‘The
king,’ he said, ‘has marched north from Northampton, and the latest word
says he’s taken Leicester, and probably Nottingham too. Lord Edward has
gone with him, and is ravaging the northern shires. Earl Simon trailed in his
wake a while, but now he’s gone to Kenilworth to meet with his oldest son,
Henry.’
‘And the army he led from London?’ Robert said, with a pained look.
‘What’s happened to them? Who is in command now?’
Hugh shrugged heavily. ‘Nobody rightly knows,’ he said. ‘The Earl of
Gloucester, maybe, or Nicholas de Segrave? Or Humphrey de Bohun?
They’re falling back on London anyway. There’s a lot of dark talk about
treachery and conspiracy among them. A lot of dark talk about the Jews as
well, and the money they’re supposedly hoarding for the king.’
‘What?’ Robert said. He dragged up a stool and dropped to sit facing
Hugh, elbows braced on his knees. ‘Tell me, how did you hear this?’
‘Just the talk among the soldiers as they were passing through
Edgware,’ Hugh said. ‘Some of the knights too. They seemed to think the
Jews have hidden gold in tunnels under the city, and have copies of the keys
to all the main gates, and they’re planning either to shut the gates against
the returning militia or to open them when the king arrives with his army.
Oh, and a few believe that the Jews have got Greek Fire stored away, and
are planning to burn all of London to the ground.’
‘Holy Name preserve us!’ Robert groaned, and pressed his fists to his
brow.
‘I rode straight down to London, when I saw the way the wind was
blowing,’ Hugh said, ‘and paid a lad to carry word to Master Elias of what
was bearing down on him, then I turned and rode out of Bishop’s Gate and
straight back up here.’ He paused, as if he might expect some thanks or
reward. But Robert just answered him with a louring black gaze.
‘We have to go,’ Robert said, almost as if he were muttering to himself.
‘If de Montfort’s not around to control his soldiers and the city mob, they’ll
open the pits of hell itself . . . How long till the vanguard reaches London?’
he snapped.
‘They should be at New Gate by around this time tomorrow, I’d say,’
Hugh replied, a little crestfallen. ‘They’re not moving with any fixed
purpose. I think some still believe Simon de Montfort will return and take
charge of them once more.’
Robert was up on his feet again and pacing, scrubbing his fingers
through his beard and mumbling to himself.
‘We can’t go anywhere now,’ Adam told him. ‘We’re all exhausted.’
‘True, yes,’ Robert said, nodding. He snapped his fingers. ‘We leave at
daybreak tomorrow. If the roads are clear, we’ll be in London well before
vespers, and without tiring the horses. Have everything packed and ready to
go beforehand,’ he told Adam.
‘I shall come with you,’ Joane said.
‘What?’ Robert yelled, exasperated. ‘Of course you will not!’
‘You said yourself, it’s dangerous to stay here, and I won’t go to
Pleshey. Let Hawise go and stay there with the countess, and I shall go to
London with you.’
‘Child,’ Robert said, with withering scorn, ‘if there is danger for you in
this land, then it’s at its greatest in London. The city is mad for de Montfort,
and Earl Roger is looking very like his enemy at the moment. Humphrey de
Bohun, the man who you may remember wants to seize you and marry you,
is currently leading an army there. I cannot watch over you when there are
greater dangers all around me.’
‘I’m sure I will be safe enough,’ Joane said. She flung a glance of
challenge at Adam.
‘Let her come,’ Adam said. ‘We have no choice, do we?’
Pressing his fist to his temple again, Robert let out a long growl of
exasperation. ‘Tell the steward he is to conduct the lady Hawise to Pleshey
at matins tomorrow,’ he told one of the servants. ‘John Chyld will go with
him, and ride back to report to me when she is safe. Then,’ he said, turning
to Joane with weary resignation, ‘we ride for London. And you, my lady,
may come or go as you please!’
*
The sun was bright and the air clear the following day, but noon had
already passed by the time John Chyld came trotting back from Pleshey
with word that Hawise was safely within the protection of the castle walls.
The grizzled serjeant showed no sign of fatigue after his repeated journeys,
and neither did his stout lumbering cob. Robert gave the order to leave
Ware without further delay.
‘What is Greek Fire?’ Adam asked him as they rode.
‘A burning potion, made out in the east, around Constantinople,’ Robert
told him. ‘Like liquid flame, so they say, that burns everything it touches
and can never be extinguished, even by water. Nobody knows how to make
it, though I once heard it comes from a substance that bubbles up from the
ground in certain eastern places and burns with a pretty blue flame.’
‘Why would anyone think the Jews of London possessed such a
potion?’
Robert snorted a laugh. ‘Because they think the Jews are cleverer than
them,’ he said, ‘and so they must know all the secrets under heaven!
Although,’ he went on a few moments later, ‘men tend to call anything that
burns hot and fierce Greek Fire – I believe something like it can be made of
nut oil and hemp flax. Though it’s not the true stuff, you understand.’
Behind them, Adam could hear Hugh of Oystermouth talking with
Joane in Welsh. The herald had been delighted to discover that she had
picked up a little of the language from her mother – the daughter of
Llywelyn the Great, as Hugh often reminded Adam – and her maids. Adam
had often heard Welsh when he was living at Earl Humphrey’s estates in the
Marches, but the language was incomprehensible to him, and alien to his
ears. ‘She speaks it sweetly enough,’ Hugh reported. ‘But somewhat in the
manner of a seven-year-old, which does sound odd at times from the lips of
a woman grown.’
Joane herself had brought only a single maidservant with her from
Ware, a Flemish woman of her own age named Petronilla, who rode
sideways upon a packsaddle. Joane had given her younger sister a lingering
embrace before they parted that morning at first light. She had bidden a
tender farewell to her hunting falcon too, as it sat hooded and chained on
Hawise’s gloved hand – London, Sir Robert had stressed, was no place for a
barely trained bird of prey – but she had seemed unmoved as they left Ware.
She gave no parting glance to the house, the orchards and water meadows.
Adam noticed that she had taken with her the illustrated Psalter her father
had given her, and from which they had read together so long ago, carrying
it carefully in one of her saddlebags.
 Shortly before vespers, they crested the last rise and saw London
spreading before them. When they reached the church of St Mary Spital,
Robert led them off the road and ordered the armour unpacked from its
cases and coverings. ‘We enter like warriors,’ he told Adam. ‘So
troublesome folk will know we’re not to be meddled with.’
In a grove of trees beside the road Adam shrugged into the grease-
stained linen aketon and mail hauberk with its coif hood. Then he helped
Robert dress in his coat of mail, with chausses beneath it to protect his legs.
John Chyld was content with his usual padded gambeson, but he and Adam
wore wide-brimmed iron helmets. They fastened their sword belts and
shield straps, then swung back up into the saddle, both Adam and Robert
mounting their warhorses rather than the weary palfreys. Then, with Hugh
of Oystermouth carrying Robert’s lance with his red and white pennon, they
rode on into London in full martial array.
There were cheers as they came in through Bishop’s Gate, people
thinking they were the vanguard of some newly arrived magnate’s retinue.
But nobody challenged them or tried to bar their way. There were other
armed men in the streets already, Adam noticed. The army that had marched
forth with Simon de Montfort only five days beforehand had flooded back
into the city after the retreat from St Albans. But they had neither disbanded
nor disarmed. Everywhere there were spears and short swords, militiamen
carrying crossbows over their shoulders, others in gambesons and leather
jacks lounging outside the alehouses. Plenty of shields and banners too. A
seething energy held London in its grip, leaderless and unbridled,
threatening at any moment to burst forth into violence. Adam glanced back
at Joane a couple of times, the mail links crunching as he turned, and caught
the mingled fear and excitement in her eyes and her tautly alert posture.
In Westcheap the mob parted before them as the iron-shod hooves of
their horses rang off the cobblestones. The lane leading to Elias’s house was
a gulf of darkness, and they heard voices shouting challenges before they
reached his gate. Elias had doubled his guard, and his young men were
nervous and primed to fight; this time, clearly, they had received no
warning of any visitors. By the time Robert had assured them that he came
in peace, and a message had been sent to the house and an answer returned,
twilight had engulfed them all. They dismounted in the courtyard, the
horses skittish. Adam could hear Wilecok whispering avidly to Joane’s
maid; he turned and saw the woman gasp in trepidation, pressing her hand
to her throat. Robert had told Joane that they would be staying with friends,
and that was all.
‘Robert de Dunstanville,’ Elias said, appearing in the lit doorway at the
top of the steps. ‘You are becoming a harbinger of ill tidings, I find.’
‘I’m here, am I not?’ Robert said, spreading his arms. He mounted the
steps, gesturing for Adam to follow him. Below them, Wilecok and John
Chyld attended to the horses.
‘There’s blood in the air out there, you can almost taste it,’ Robert said
as they paced down the passageway to the hall. Adam was uncomfortably
aware that both he and Robert were still wearing their mail hauberks and
surcoats, and carried weapons belted at their sides.
‘Yes, and whose blood?’ Elias demanded, turning on his heel. Now they
were in the candlelit chambers, Adam could see how angry the man was, his
face darkened with anguish and despair. ‘Not the king’s blood, no!’ Elias
cried. ‘Not the blood of his evil ministers – strange sort of rebellion this
one, eh, that targets only those that have offered no threat, no insult!’
Robert made a fanning gesture. Later. Behind him, Joane and the others
came through from the passageway, and Adam saw Belia enter from the far
end of the hall. Quickly they made the introductions, Elias quelling the
flames of his anger with practised courtesy and welcoming the lady Joane
de Quincy to his home. Adam glanced sidelong at Joane as she took
everything in; he saw the swift flicker of realisation, of calculation, of
adjustment. They would be accommodated, Elias said, in the adjoining
building, where they had stayed before; immediately he ordered his servants
to carry hot embers through from the hall and kindle a fire in the hearth of
the main chamber. Even in the turmoil of his distress, Adam thought, he
was an admirable host.
The others filed quickly along the passageway and through the
connecting door, carrying their baggage and chests, Joane’s maid Petronilla
almost holding her breath and rolling her eyes in fear of the unchristian
things that might be revealed before her. Adam made to follow them but
Robert gestured for him to stay.
‘So,’ Elias said, once they were alone. ‘Do you know what’s been
happening in this city, this very evening? My good friend Hagin has been
turned out of his home by a mob, beaten and abused, and dragged to prison.
The documents, chirographs, showing who owes what to whom have
already been seized and burned on a fire . . . And this is your Simon de
Montfort, your Earl of Leicester, who gives the mob licence to do this!’
‘He does not, I am sure of it,’ Robert said.
‘Oh, you deny it,’ Elias said, taut with fury. ‘You deny that he is telling
his followers that he will cancel all debts owed to the Jews, that he will
beggar the Jews?’
‘I have never heard him say any such thing,’ Robert said, his voice
rising. ‘If his followers say this, then they are culpable for it, not him.’
‘Or perhaps, perhaps,’ Elias said, spitting the words, not even listening
to Robert, ‘perhaps you wish for this yourself, eh? Perhaps you too want to
be rid of your debts to us?’
Adam stepped forward. ‘Robert has already repaid his debt,’ he said.
‘He repaid it from what he won at the tournaments . . .’ He fell silent
abruptly, noticing Robert’s grimace and Belia’s warning gesture. Of course,
he thought. There was more than he knew. Such things are not repaid in
coin.
‘It would please me more,’ Elias went on, chopping at the air with his
hand, ‘if you forsook this de Montfort and gave your support to the king.
He may be a fool and a spendthrift who delights in squeezing us for every
penny he can get, but at least he has the law on his side!’
‘King Henry?’ Robert said, with a scornful laugh. ‘He cares nothing for
the law. Five years I’ve been begging the king for the return of what is
rightfully mine. Begging him, and his son too, and his councillors and
ministers. Nothing have I had in return but insults and sly abuse! If Simon
de Montfort offers the possibility of change, and real reform, then I am his
man.’
‘Then we are at an impasse, my friend,’ Elias said, his voice dropping
sadly. ‘I no longer know what to say to you, if you would sacrifice all that is
right, all those who have helped you and supported you, and sheltered you
when you had nothing, for the chance of gain.’
‘I’m here, aren’t I?’ Robert growled. ‘Here, standing beside you?’
Elias made a fluttering gesture, then turned and paced towards the rear
door. Belia remained, hands clasped and head lowered demurely, her white
headcloth glowing in the dimness. Only when her brother was gone did she
look up.
‘Forgive him,’ she said quietly.
 Adam caught Robert’s slight gesture. He glanced at Belia and saw her
nod, then he retreated, silent and discreet, to the passageway, and pulled the
hall door closed behind him. He went through to the other building, took
some food and drink, but did not remove his armour or sword belt. Joane
and Petronilla had been given a separate chamber, and he did not wish to
disturb them. But he knew he had to remain vigilant.
After about an hour he went back into the passageway of Elias’s house.
The door was still closed, and there was silence from the hall. Lowered
voices, perhaps; Adam leaned a little closer, listening, but then the sense of
intrusion felt shameful and he backed away. He went instead to the main
door and walked out onto the steps above the yard, meaning to check on the
horses.
The night air smelled of smoke. Not the peat and wood fires of houses
and hall, but real arson, and none too distant. Shouts came from the street,
echoing between the close-packed houses, and when Adam peered up over
the low eaves of the hall and the buildings surrounding the courtyard, he
saw a pulse of dull orange light in the sky. From the stables he could hear
the sounds of horses whinnying and stamping; they would have smelled the
smoke already, and heard the angry voices from the city outside, and their
nerves were primed and tense.
Dropping down the steps, Adam paused a moment in the yard, staring
into the black gullet of the entranceway. Noises of men shouting, coarse
laughter. The closed walls and shutters, the cobbled alleys, bounced the
sound and made it impossible to say from where it came. He thought he
heard the voices of the guards out in the narrow street beyond the heavy
sealed gates.
Drawing a long breath, Adam crossed to the stables. In the warm
darkness he did what he could to calm the horses, but they could sense his
own agitation. The noise of turmoil from the streets was louder now.
A sudden banging came from outside, and every horse in the stable
flinched and stamped. Adam darted out into the courtyard again. Drawing
his sword, he advanced into the dark passage of the entranceway. Four
steps, then six, and he was almost at the gates. They were solid oak, bound
and studded with iron and locked shut with a heavy bar. But any gate can be
destroyed, given time.
There were men in the lane, he realised as he listened carefully. Where
were the guards that Elias had posted there? Fled, he guessed, or already
overcome. He saw the flare of torches gleaming through the cracks around
the closed gates. Then another crash sounded against the wood, and a surge
of pressure from the far side that shunted the gates back against their
locking bar. Adam stepped away, raising his weapon. ‘Who’s there?’ he
yelled, his voice echoing in the confined passage.
Shouts from outside, raw and jagged in the smoky darkness. Open,
open, they were yelling. Another flurry of bangs – kicks, perhaps, or the
pommel of a sword battering the woodwork. Then another surging blow,
shuddering the gates in their mountings; the men outside were throwing
themselves at the studded oak, trying to burst the locks. ‘Break them down!’
the voices yelled. ‘Bring out the Jews!’
Retreating into the yard, Adam saw something flash above him, and
skipped aside as a burning torch dropped to the cobbles. He peered upwards
and saw a figure outlined briefly against the dark sky.
‘They’re on the roof!’ he shouted.
Already figures were spilling from the house, dark rushing shapes
against the glow of inner light. Again the shuddering crash came from the
gates, then a hacking chop and a coarse cheer. The men outside had
hammers and axes, he realised. They were going to break the gates down,
then surge into the yard and storm the house.
Robert was beside him, lit by the guttering torch that lay on the cobbles.
He hefted his war axe.
‘So,’ he said, and bared his teeth. ‘The dogs have caught the scent of
blood!’

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 Chapter 17
‘Never!’ Elias cried. ‘Absolutely not . . . I will not be driven from my
home by a mob . . . by the scum of the gutters!’
‘You’re not safe here,’ Adam said again. ‘Neither of you are.’
They were in the main hall, Elias pacing furiously and clasping his head
in anguish. They could all hear the sounds of the mob in the street now, the
thunder at the gates. Two of the servants were busy gathering the silverware
and draperies and bundling them into chests. Belia appeared to be directing
them. She flung a glance at Adam. ‘And where would we be safe, do you
think?’ she said, and it sounded like an accusation. ‘Where is there safety in
this city now? Where, in this whole country?’
‘The only safe place is the Tower,’ Adam told them, standing in the
doorway dressed in mail, with his hand on the hilt of his sword. ‘Hugh
Despenser is constable there, Robert says he’s to be trusted—’
‘Trusted, hah!’ Elias broke in. ‘This is the same Hugh Despenser who
not a month ago led a mob around the city burning and plundering the
properties of the Earl of Cornwall? The same Hugh Despenser who acts as
de Montfort’s lieutenant in London? Him we should trust? Better to trust
the devil himself!’
‘Yes, Hugh Despenser, the justiciar,’ Adam said, keeping a tight rein on
his voice. In truth he knew nothing of Despenser, and would not be inclined
to trust him either. But this was what Robert had decided. ‘Please, I beg
you,’ he said, directing his words now to Belia. ‘You must think of your
own preservation. Your own lives.’
‘You think I’m going to throw away everything that I’ve built in this
city, everything I’ve achieved after years of effort?’ Elias demanded,
stabbing his finger at Adam.
‘Elias, please,’ Belia said in a low voice.
‘No. I say again no!’ Elias yelled. ‘I will stay here, and die here if the
Lord God directs it. I’m not a fighting man but I swear to you I will not go
meekly!’ He crossed to the table and snatched up a short thick-bladed
falchion.
Ignoring her brother, Belia came to the doorway and took Adam by the
arm, her fingers clasping the links of his mail. ‘What of Robert?’ she
demanded. ‘Will he stay if Elias refuses to leave? If we all refuse to leave?’
 ‘He’ll stay if he needs to,’ Adam told her. But he knew that Robert had
no intention of leaving; his horses were in the stables, his armour and
possessions inside the house, and all the wealth he had gained in the
tournaments was secured in Elias’s strongroom. There was no time to
remove it all safely now, and no way he would surrender it without a fight.
But Elias and Belia were a different matter; their lives at least could be
saved by a swift departure.
‘Let me talk to my brother alone,’ Belia whispered, her eyes large and
black in the shadows. Adam nodded, and turned away at once.
Out in the yard the crashing blows against the gate had doubled in
volume. It sounded like the mob outside had brought something to use as a
ram. Between each blow came the battering noise of axes and hammers, the
cheers and yells of the angry throng.
‘I swear to you,’ Robert said between his teeth as Adam joined him, ‘if
they harm any of my horses I’ll lay every one of them in his grave, God
help me.’
‘Elias won’t come,’ Adam told him. ‘Belia might – she’s making an
effort to persuade him.’
‘There’s no time for that,’ Robert told him, his gaze not shifting from
the gateway. ‘Take the lady Joane and the other womenfolk. Leave through
the neighbouring building – with luck those fiends outside won’t have
turned their attentions to it yet. Go to the Tower by the shortest route.
Wilecok will lead you, he knows the streets. When you get there, find Hugh
Despenser and tell him he must send men to aid me.’
‘How long could you hold out, if they bring down the gates?’
Robert shook his head, hefting his axe. His shield was slung from a
strap over his shoulder. ‘Not long enough,’ he said under his breath. Then
he turned to Adam and seized his arm. ‘Take Belia with you at least,’ he
said. ‘Take her, and get her to safety! Go now. And may God’s light guide
you in this darkness!’
Adam found Belia and one of her maids already waiting in the
passageway. Before he could ask about Elias, he caught the brief shake of
her head. Then he led both women through the doorway into the adjoining
building. Joane was in the next chamber, with her own maid Petronilla, and
Wilecok and his Gascon wife. Even here, inside the building, they could
hear the noise from the street outside. Petronilla was gasping with fear, and
Joane was trying to comfort her.
 ‘You’ll be certain to come back soon, won’t you, and bring plenty of
men with you?’ Hugh of Oystermouth asked, with a nervous waver to his
voice.
Adam answered with a nod; he had no idea what would happen when
they got outside. He passed Hugh the iron-headed mace. ‘If anyone comes
up those stairs after we’re gone,’ he told him, ‘hit them with that as hard as
you can.’
Joane had a leather satchel over her shoulder, which Adam knew
contained her Psalter and a few other precious possessions. Some of the
others carried bags and sacks too. But all were dressed in dark cloaks and
mantles with hoods, and ready to move quickly if required.
‘Wait,’ Joane said, as Belia moved for the far door and the narrow
wooden stair that led to the street. With one quick gesture she gripped the
panel of pale linen sewn to the woman’s mantle and tore it off.
‘I’d forgotten!’ Belia said, wide-eyed. ‘Thank you . . .’ Then she turned
and removed the identifying marking from her maid’s cloak as well.
‘Here, take mine instead,’ Joane said, ‘in case anyone sees the marks of
the torn stitches.’ Swiftly and silently she exchanged cloaks with Belia, and
ordered Petronilla to do the same with the Jewish maid.
‘That’s her, isn’t it?’ she whispered to Adam, as the others began to
descend the stairs. ‘Robert’s lover? He’s never said anything about it to me,
but somehow I knew.’
‘She is,’ he told her. In the dimness of the stairway they stood close
together, and he tried to discern any condemnation in her voice, any
judgement. But there was none. Lightly she took his hand, squeezed his
fingers for a moment, then descended to the street doorway.
Wilecok led the way, out of the house without a word and across the
narrow street to the dark crack of an alleyway opposite. Adam went last,
checking that every hurrying figure had reached the shelter of the alley
before crossing himself. He risked a glance to his left, towards the gates of
the courtyard, and was horrified by the size of the mob gathered before
them. Fifty or sixty men at least, all of them pressing forward with burning
torches and cudgels, some with spears and blades. The noise was a steady
growling roar, cut through with angry shouts, loud in the narrow street.
People were leaning from the windows of the houses opposite as well, some
shouting encouragement while others merely watched in fearful silence.
 Adam’s blood chilled, but there was nothing he could do. Before anyone
in the crowd noticed him, he hurried on after the others into the welcoming
darkness of the alleyway. Reaching out to touch the grimy bricks and timber
walls to either side, they guided themselves towards the faint glow of the
next street. As they reached the far end of the alley Wilecok paused and the
rest bunched behind him, pressing themselves against the wall to allow
Adam through.
‘What’s happening?’ Belia demanded in a harsh whisper, taking his arm.
Adam shrugged, then joined Wilecok and peered around the corner. He
drew a hissing breath. Belia hurried up behind him, and he heard her stifle a
cry as she saw what lay ahead. ‘Hell has broken loose,’ he said quietly.
To the right, the street widened as it met the broader expanse of
Westcheap. The glow of fire came from that direction; somebody had
kindled a great blaze out in the market area, and the flames threw orange
light and huge reeling shadows along the street. There were bodies lying on
the cobbles, amid a black tracery of spilled blood. One was a woman; a
couple more appeared to be children.
Adam’s attention was dragged to the left, where the street narrowed
between tilting walls of plaster and laths, and another mob had gathered.
Torchlight blossomed in the darkness, silhouetting the figures in the street
and the broken doorway of the grand-looking house in front of them. The
shutters of the upper windows had been flung open, and men inside were
hurling out furniture and possessions. A chest fell, shattering on the cobbled
street, and the mob cheered. ‘Christ killers!’ a woman shrieked. ‘His blood
is on them all!’
With a shock of recognition, Adam saw that the leader of the gang was
Sir John FitzJohn, the young nobleman he had first seen with de Montfort’s
retinue in France years before. There were other knights with him, and
armed serjeants too; the realisation gripped Adam with a steely sense of
horror. He had assumed that the rioters, the killers, were faceless members
of the urban mob. But there were knights and squires among them, men just
like Adam himself. Shame twisted in his gut as he remembered the stories
he had heard and believed about the Jews, only a couple of short years
before. Would he have condoned such violence once? Might he even have
participated in it? The idea was sickening.
‘What are they doing?’ Joane demanded, pushing past Wilecok and
leaning around the corner of the alleyway. Adam took her arm to draw her
back.
‘That’s Koch’s house,’ Belia whispered. ‘Koch, son of Abraham . . . Oh
God, please don’t let them take him . . .’
Her prayers were too late. The gang before the house had seized their
prey and were dragging him between them into the circle of their torches.
The victim was a man of Elias’s age, clad only in a linen nightshirt. One of
the persecutors ripped it from his shoulders; others struck at him with sticks
and ox goads. John FitzJohn was pushing through the throng, and Adam
could see the knife gripped low in his hand. In the warping light flung by
the torches, the faces of the surrounding men were hideous masks, distorted
with hatred.
‘I’ve come to pay my debts to you, as you asked!’ FitzJohn snarled.
‘Here they are, paid in full!’ With his left hand he gripped the man by the
throat and slammed him back against the wall. Then he stepped in closer
and drove the knife several times into his victim’s belly, his elbow pumping
as he stabbed.
Belia let out a wailing cry and flung herself from the alleyway, as if she
were about to run to the dying man’s aid. Adam blocked her with his arm,
clasping her tightly and dragging her back into the sheltering dark. Joane
was still watching, her hands pressed over her mouth. She took a step
forward, out into the street. ‘Mistress, be careful!’ Wilecok told her,
gesturing for her to get out of sight.
‘We have to go, we have to go quickly,’ Belia’s maid was saying in a
fervent whisper. ‘There are men coming behind us, in the alleyway – we
have to move!’
‘She’s right, there’s nothing we can do here,’ Adam said, feeling the
helplessness pooling inside him like cold oil. Belia was still struggling in
his arms, but abruptly her body slackened and he released her. The alleyway
was black behind him, but he could hear the noise of approaching footsteps.
Retreat was impossible. There was no way they could evade the crowd to
their left, who were now pushing through the broken doors and into the
house of the murdered Koch.
Wilecok was staring back at the broken doorway, the bodies sprawled
on the ground, his mouth slack with disgust. Several of the rioters were still
kicking and beating the body of the murdered man. Adam gripped him by
the shoulder.
 ‘We have to get to the Tower, as quickly as we can,’ he said. ‘Which is
the most direct route from here?’
‘That way,’ Wilecok said, pointing to the right, towards Westcheap.
‘Open streets all the way, but it’s faster than skulking in alleys.’
Trying not to run and draw attention to themselves, they paced quickly
towards the fiery glow of the market, skirting the bodies and the blood that
ran in runnels between the cobblestones. Joane slipped as her shoe slid
beneath her, and Adam took her arm and helped her upright. But they had
only gained half the distance to the next corner before the opening into
Westcheap filled with the dark shapes of men, weapons in their hands.
‘What’s this?’ a loud voice cried. ‘More of the vermin trying to flee!’
The figures were all around them now, made huge by the shadows they
threw ahead of them. One of the men, barely more than a youth, carried a
flaming brand, and he flourished it at Belia and her maid as they pressed
themselves against the brick wall behind them. Another man, stout and red-
faced, seized Petronilla by the arm, and the Flemish woman cowered away
from him and let out a shriek.
‘Take your hands off her,’ Joane demanded, throwing herself between
her maid and the man who held her.
‘That’s a Jewish cape she’s wearing!’ the youth with the torch cried,
bringing his flame closer. ‘See there – she’s ripped off the tabs!’
‘Take them all! They’re all Jews!’ another man yelled. ‘Make them say
the Paternoster!’ growled another. ‘Strip them!’ shouted a third, his voice
slurred by drunkenness. ‘Strip them and whip them!’
The red-faced man flung Petronilla away from him and seized Joane
instead, gripping her cloak and screwing it into his fist as he dragged her
towards him. His teeth were bared in a snarl – but already the tip of Adam’s
sword was at his throat.
‘Release her,’ Adam said, holding the naked blade extended. ‘Release
her now or you die.’
The red-faced man’s mouth fell slack, and for three heartbeats the sight
of the long blade gleaming in the torchlight stilled the men around them
too. Joane tugged at her cloak and freed herself from the man’s grip.
‘Adam de Norton,’ someone said from the darkness. He had not spoken
before, but his voice was instantly familiar. Adam stepped back, keeping his
sword raised and at the ready. The red-faced man who had seized Joane was
backing away from him.
 Then the youth with the torch moved his arm, and the guttering light fell
on the figure of Richard de Malmaines. ‘They’re Jews, sir,’ the youth said
to him, the torch in his fist scattering sparks as he brandished it. ‘Some of
them are at least, I know it!’
‘We are good Christian folk, just like you,’ Wilecok replied. He was
pressed back against the wall with Petronilla and his Gascon wife. ‘You
must let us pass!’
‘I believe Adam de Norton is a Christian at least,’ de Malmaines said.
‘Although at times he does not act like one.’ He too had a drawn sword,
Adam noticed. In the fiery glow, the blade shone dark with blood.
‘Best let them proceed,’ de Malmaines went on. ‘But they should hurry
to safety, I think – this is no time to be admiring the stars.’
Adam kept his gaze on de Malmaines. He took a long step back,
lowering his sword, then slipped it back into his scabbard. With a gesture,
he ordered Wilecok to lead the party on down the street. ‘I don’t know what
you think you’re doing,’ he told de Malmaines, ‘but I see nothing Christian
here.’
Richard de Malmaines made a dismissive gesture, then ordered his men
on up the street to join the mob engaged in plundering the house of Koch.
Adam saw him wiping his blade on a rag and tossing it aside, then he and
those with him were lost in the swirl of milling bodies, the flickering light
of the torches and the reeling smoke.
There were more fires burning on Westcheap, broken furniture and torn
fabrics heaped together with the charred remains of document chests and
rolls of records, and left to blaze. More dead lay here too, laid out in neat
lines on the greasy paving stones or sprawling one upon another where they
had been thrown by their murderers. Men, women and children lay
together; whole families wiped out by the fury of the attackers. Many of the
dead had been stripped naked, either before or after death.
Joane stood by the street corner, eyes wide, aghast at what she was
seeing. ‘Who ordered this?’ she asked Adam, her voice catching. ‘Surely
not Simon de Montfort? Who is leading these people?’
Adam shook his head. ‘I think only the devil rules tonight,’ he said.
Joane pressed a fold of her cloak over her mouth and nodded. Belia and
her maid had already hurried on towards Poultry, their hoods pulled up to
cover their faces; by the time Adam and Joane caught up with them, they
had been joined by a hunched boy of twelve or thirteen, dressed only in
linen braies.
‘His name is Mosse,’ Belia told Adam. ‘He’s the apothecary’s son – if
they catch him, they’ll kill him . . . he must come with us!’
‘Of course,’ Adam said, reaching for the brooch at his shoulder. ‘Here,
he can cover himself with my cloak.’
‘No, he can use mine,’ said Wilecok, his voice sounding choked. He
threw off his voluminous grey mantle and tossed it to the boy. Adam
realised that the servant had been deeply affected by what he had seen.
Once Mosse had covered himself they formed up once more and set off
again, eastwards into the city.
Even here, outside the set limits of the Jewish district, there were angry
shouts in the street, weaving torchlight and the sounds of running feet and
violent struggle. The night air was charged with smoke, the glow of the
flames fogged, and the streets had a gaudy nightmarish quality as they
passed through them, like a painting of the inferno. Crossing the greasy
cobbles around Stock’s Market they entered Langburn Street. Wilecok was
leading them along at a jog, halting at every few cross-streets to check the
way ahead and ensure they were taking the right path. Beyond St Mary
Woolnoth the crowd in the street thickened once more, and again they heard
shouts of anger and whoops of savage mirth, the crash of breaking shutters.
‘They’re attacking the foreigners,’ Wilecok said over his shoulder.
‘Attacking the Cahorsins and the Lombards, the money-men. Silly
bastards!’
Sure enough, the crowd ahead were busily engaged in sacking one
wealthy-looking property. A boy in a ragged tunic was leaning from an
upper window, yelling into the night. ‘Kill all the foreigners! Death to the
Jews and the Lombards!’
‘Who are you?’ a tall rawboned man in the street demanded, as Adam
and Wilecok approached. ‘Speak English?’ he barked. ‘Identify yourselves!’
Adam was in no mood for discussion. He threw back his hood, then
drew his sword and raised it before him. ‘This is all the identification I
need,’ he said.
At the sight of the blade, and the mail armour exposed beneath his
cloak, the crowd parted. The women followed quickly behind him, and
Adam heard the gang in the street mutter and hiss as they passed. He had
spoken to them in English, the local dialect too, but he knew they still
suspected him. This was not a night to be a stranger on the streets of
London.
*
They moved faster after that, breaking into a run whenever the streets
were clear enough, and the noise of their footsteps was an echoing clatter in
the darkness. Then abruptly the houses fell away to either side of them and
they were running in bright moonlight along a dirt track that crossed open
ground. The breeze carried the scent of the river’s mud, and ahead rose the
vast white keep of the Tower of London with its ring of walls and drum
towers, ghostly beneath a near-full moon.
A wooden trestle bridge spanned the moat. At the far end was the
sentinel tower that stood before the main gatehouse, and before its arched
entrance the drawbridge was raised. Adam ran out onto the wooden
planking of the bridge, calling to the sentries that he knew must be
watching him from the blank slits above the gateway.
‘Lower the drawbridge!’ he cried, near breathless. ‘Lower the
drawbridge and allow us entry – my name is Adam de Norton, and I have
an urgent message for the constable, Hugh Despenser!’
No reply came from the tower. Adam stood at the brink of the wooden
bridge, the muddy water of the moat lost in a gulf of blackness beneath him.
He could see a light moving inside the tower, the glow reflected by the
archway. Joane and Belia followed him onto the bridge, their cloaks
wrapped around them, and their footsteps made a hollow thudding on the
planks.
‘How many are you?’ a voice called from the sentinel tower.
‘There are seven of us,’ Adam replied. ‘No – eight,’ he said,
remembering Mosse. ‘Some of my companions are Jews from the city –
they need sanctuary.’
Even as he spoke, the dread mounted inside him, cold and sickening.
What if Elias had been correct? What if the slaughter of the Jews really had
been ordered by Simon de Montfort? Taking Belia and the others to the
Tower would be a death sentence. Just for a moment he pictured them
dragged away beneath the gate arches and butchered, their bodies flung in
the moat . . .
A cry came from behind him, and Adam looked back to see torches
moving in the dark streets surrounding the tower. As he stared he saw
running figures appearing in the moonlit open ground, and heard their angry
shouts. ‘They have a child with them!’ a voice called out. ‘The Jews have
stolen a child!’ There were many of them, some with weapons in their
hands, and they were closing in fast.
Adam turned again and stared up at the sentinel tower. No light showed
from within it now. The great fortress beyond was silent under the moon.
Joane stepped up beside him and threw back her hood. ‘I am Joane de
Quincy, niece of Earl Roger of Winchester!’ she cried. ‘Hugh Despenser is
my cousin – open the gates at once!’
There was a gruff shout from inside the gatehouse, and a moment later
the drawbridge groaned, cables straining against counterweights, and began
to descend.
‘Is everyone your cousin?’ Adam asked, mystified.
‘Most people turn out to be, in some way,’ Joane replied.
As the heavy timbers dropped into place, Adam glanced behind him at
the mob of pursuers – some fell back in dismay, while others began to run
faster, yelling as their prey escaped them. Adam waited until his small band
had crossed beneath the arch of the sentinel tower, and then followed them
along the short causeway to the main gatehouse. Behind him he could hear
the drawbridge already shuddering upwards once more. There was a knight
commanding the gatehouse, a grim-faced man in a white surcoat scored
with a black diagonal, and Adam repeated his statement.
‘Jews, eh?’ the knight said, peering dubiously at Belia, Mosse and the
maid. ‘There’s a fair few of them in here already. Don’t see that three more
would cause difficulties. Bring them!’ he ordered, gesturing as he strode on
beneath the double arches of the gatehouse and the raised teeth of the
portcullis. ‘We’ve sent a runner to find Sir Hugh, my lady,’ he told Joane, in
a far more respectful tone.
Through the echoing blackness of the gate passage, they entered the
moonlit expanse of the outer ward. Ahead of him Adam saw the keep, the
White Tower, larger and more formidable than any castle fortification he
had ever seen. They were following a dirt path towards the inner gatehouse,
which huddled beneath the flank of the great tower itself.
In the shadow of the inner gates the knight paused, raising his hand.
There were men gathered beneath the arches, several wearing mail and
carrying shields. Adam and Joane halted, enveloped by the blackness. The
others were bunched behind them, all of them waiting in tensed
anticipation.
 ‘I would not have said anything back there,’ Joane said in a hurried
whisper. ‘I would have preferred to remain anonymous if I could – but it
seemed the only way.’
‘I understand,’ Adam replied. ‘You did the right thing.’ He was aware
that they were standing very close, and the darkness hid them completely.
Adam sensed her movement towards him, then the distance closed between
them. She kissed him, and for two stilled heartbeats he felt lifted, suspended
in that breathless pause. Then a shout came from the inner gateway, the
noise of footsteps, and quickly they slipped apart from each other.
Torches flared, throwing wheeling shadows around the stone-lined
passageway, and the guards parted as a trio of men came striding through
from the inner ward.
‘Joane de Quincy!’ a voice cried, booming beneath the arches. ‘It’s been
years since I saw you last, cousin – I pray to God your uncle is here with
you!’
‘I’m afraid not, Sir Hugh,’ Joane replied, drawing herself upright and
shrugging back her dark cloak. ‘Earl Roger remains on his estates. It was
Adam de Norton here who escorted me.’
‘A shame, a shame.’ Hugh Despenser was a middle-aged man with a
look of stern assurance. His flinty gaze fell briefly on Adam, then veered
away. ‘We have need of Roger de Quincy’s support,’ he said to Joane, ‘and
of his men.’
‘Is this really Adam de Norton I see?’ another voice said. A figure
appeared in the gate passage, silhouetted for a moment against the glow of
the torches. ‘God’s blessings upon you!’
The newcomer stepped from the darkness, and Adam saw the face of Sir
Humphrey de Bohun, the son of the Earl of Hereford, gleaming in the fiery
light. ‘I thank you,’ he said to Adam with a glad smile, seizing Joane by
both hands, ‘for delivering my betrothed to me!’

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 Chapter 18
They rode out through the gate and crossed the moat at a canter, the
hooves of their horses drumming on the bridge timbers. Humphrey de
Bohun was in the lead, armoured in mail and mounted on a caparisoned
warhorse. Adam rode behind him, on a borrowed rouncey. Three other
squires of de Bohun’s retinue followed, with four mounted serjeants
bringing up the rear, all of them armed and equipped for battle. Across the
bridge the nine riders spread out into a column, crossing the moonlit open
ground and plunging into the darkness of the city streets.
Sir Humphrey had been adamant that he would lead the expedition
himself. ‘Besieged by a city mob, eh?’ he had said, once Adam had repeated
his news. ‘Robert de Dunstanville was never one for the more ordinary
dangers!’
Joane de Quincy could only watch, blank-faced, as they prepared to
depart. Adam could not bring himself to meet her eye. Belia had vanished
into the darkness even before Hugh Despenser had made his appearance;
Adam saw her shortly afterwards, amid a crowd of other Jewish refugees
from the city who had thronged around her desperate for news. Their groans
and wails filled the night as Adam followed Humphrey to the stables. De
Bohun’s own horse and those of his men were already saddled and bridled;
he had heard word of trouble in the city and taken due precautions.
‘I do not ask, you understand,’ he said to Adam, as his squires dressed
him in his mail hauberk and surcoat, ‘why it was that you and Robert
brought Joane de Quincy to London. Or how it was that you came to be
sheltering in the Jewry, or that you came to escort her here to the Tower. I
do not ask these things.’
Adam had merely frowned in the darkness, as he checked the saddle
girths and tack of the horse that had been allotted to him.
‘I merely thank God that she is safe,’ Humphrey went on, buckling his
sword belt. ‘And hope that I can prove myself worthy of her approval.’
‘You’re doing this to impress her?’ Adam asked, pausing with his foot in
the stirrup.
‘No, I’m doing this to deserve her,’ Humphrey replied. With a creak of
leather and a crunch of mail he swung himself up into the high-cantled
saddle of his warhorse. ‘We all must strive to be worthy of great rewards!’
he declared boldly, as the horse stamped and pawed the ground beneath
him. ‘Lord Simon has shown me this – his is the path of virtue and
righteousness. Only by following that path, and daring to become a better
man, can I deserve to win the hand of a woman like Joane de Quincy.’
Amazed and appalled, Adam turned his face away as he climbed into
the saddle. Had Humphrey de Bohun really transformed himself into a
chivalric champion? Was the reckless and cruel-tempered nobleman that
Adam remembered from his youth now utterly dispelled? He could not
bring himself to believe that the change was as deep or as sincere as it
appeared. But his heart was crushed at the thought that Joane was now
delivered entirely into this man’s power, and into his possession. And that
he himself had been the agent of that delivery.
But as they rode out from the Tower, the night air loud in his ears and
the feel of the powerful horse beneath him, Adam felt his anguish charged
with a new and fervent energy. He may have failed Joane, but he could yet
rescue Robert. Sir Humphrey was keeping his horse to a steady trot as they
moved through the narrow streets, ensuring that their column did not
become split up or too bunched together in the confined spaces of the city.
Adam wanted more than anything to set spurs to his horse and thunder
forward, but he knew that Humphrey was doing the right thing. In places
they found crowds gathering in the streets, but the people shrank back
against the walls at the noise of the hooves.
Along Candlewright Street they rode in their tight column, keeping to
the wider thoroughfares wherever possible. Adam felt the anticipation of
confrontation, of violence, like a heat through his body. A fierce anger too:
if anyone stood against him he would strike them down without hesitation.
If Richard de Malmaines or John FitzJohn dared confront him, he would do
everything in his power to destroy them.
Humphrey signalled to the right and they swung into a narrower lane,
pedestrians shrieking as they flung themselves back against the walls in
terror of the hooves and the clash of armour. A few moments of speeding
darkness, walls and shutters flying by only a hand’s breadth from his head,
and suddenly Adam found himself bursting forth into the open expanse of
Westcheap. The fires were still burning, and the bodies still lay strewn on
the cobbles. Knots of men lingered in the mouths of streets, most with
weapons in their hands, and they cheered and waved as they saw the
horsemen and the bright caparisons.
 ‘Which way?’ Humphrey bellowed, circling his horse in the centre of
the market area.
Adam stared around him, confused for a moment in the darkness and
the wavering firelight. ‘There!’ he cried, pointing to the mouth of the
familiar lane, then without waiting for Humphrey and his men he rode on
towards it. Reaching down to his hip, he drew his sword.
As he approached Elias’s property, he thought for a terrible moment that
all was lost. The gates were broken, battered from their hinges and dragged
aside, and the mob that had gathered before them had pushed forward into
the entranceway and the yard beyond. Enough of them still remained in the
street to raise a cheer as Adam came riding towards them, and then to
scatter in sudden panic before his charge.
‘Get back! Stand clear!’ Adam was yelling, hauling on the reins and
circling his horse before the broken gates, his sword levelled. He doubted
anyone could hear him above the baying roar coming from the entrance
passage, where men stood packed together like a bung in the neck of a jar.
That at least was cause for hope – they had not yet pressed their attack into
the yard, or the house itself.
One of de Bohun’s serjeants rode up alongside, and Adam handed the
reins to him and threw himself from the saddle. As the rest of de Bohun’s
company came to a champing whinnying halt in the narrow lane, Adam
plunged forward into the mob blocking the yard entrance. He hoped that
there were others at his back, but his sole desire was to break through and
find Robert. Yelling inarticulately, brandishing his sword above his head, he
forged forward with elbow and fist, trusting to his armour to keep him safe
and give him the weight and momentum to break through.
Blows hammered at him from either side. The darkness was packed
with screaming faces, bared teeth and flying spittle. Adam brought the
pommel of his sword cracking down on one piglike face, and it dropped at
once into the thresh of bodies and stamping feet. Jabbing with his blade, he
goaded the men ahead of him, stumbling after them as they shoved to
escape him. These were Englishmen, he told himself – in theory, he was on
the same side as them. But the thought vanished at once, and he surged
forward with murderous rage in his blood. And suddenly he was through,
into a flare of lamplight and a sea of milling bodies.
Robert was on the steps of the hall above him, fully armoured with his
shield raised, his axe gripped in his fist. John Chyld crouched beside him, a
loaded crossbow resting on the wooden railing and aimed down into the
press of men filling the yard. Adam saw Elias behind them in the doorway,
clutching his falchion. The tide that had poured in through the gateway had
broken at the foot of the stairs and fallen back in angry confusion. Several
bodies lay sprawled in the cobbled yard; several other men were wounded,
crying out for aid. The smoke of the torches fogged the air, and from the
stables came the noise of panicking horses.
How long the situation had been this way Adam could not tell. Robert
had the stolid look of a man who had been holding his ground for some
time. The mob packed into the courtyard surged and ebbed, some of them
pushing forward up the steps with spears and cudgels and then falling back
as Robert lashed at them with the flat of his blade. Others had dug up
cobblestones and were hurling them; Adam saw one crack off Robert’s
shield, another strike the wall behind him. Every window in the hall was
broken already.
Beside him, Adam saw a man raising a bow, arrow nocked. He jammed
his left arm forward, seizing the bowstave and pushing it upwards. The
bowman released his arrow with a jerk, and it sailed off over the roof of the
hall. Then Adam rammed his elbow back into the man’s face and knocked
him down.
‘Robert!’ he cried, raising his sword. ‘A Dunstanville! A Dunstanville!’
Standing halfway down the steps, swinging his axe at anyone who dared
advance against him, Robert heard the cry and glanced up. Adam saw a
grim smile light his face.
From behind him he heard the tumult from the entranceway. The
bellowed voices of the serjeants, ‘A Bohun! A Bohun!’
Then screams, and a panic of bodies scrambling for safety. Iron hooves
rang in the confined passage, and Humphrey de Bohun came riding on
through into the yard, his mail armour gleaming gold in the torchlight, the
blue and white trappings of his horse swirling as he circled and came to a
halt. He raised his sword, threatening to strike. But the men in the yard were
flinching away from him, pushing against the walls and sliding towards the
entranceway before bolting back out into the street against the incoming
rush of de Bohun’s serjeants and squires. Adam scrambled up onto the stairs
to stand beside Robert. But the battle was already won.
*
 ‘You didn’t see it,’ Adam said. ‘You didn’t see it, and I did, and so of
course you think differently.’
‘I saw enough,’ Robert replied. ‘I saw that mob pouring into Elias’s
courtyard, intent on all the world’s rage and fury. I held them off myself for
half the night, until you and de Bohun finally showed up. Broke more than
a few heads too.’
Four days had passed since the night of violence. And for those four
days, Robert had sat alone, drinking Elias’s wine in sullen silence, as if he
had wrapped himself in a dark cloak. Now it was the afternoon of Palm
Sunday. They had been out exercising the horses on St Giles’ Fields, north
of the city walls, and as they rode back towards Cripplegate Adam was
determined to take this opportunity finally to speak about what had
happened.
‘But you didn’t see the killings,’ he said, leaning from the saddle to rub
his horse’s neck. ‘You didn’t see corpses lying in the streets – men and
women, children too . . .’
‘You think I don’t know what blood and slaughter looks like?’ Robert
snarled, rounding on him. ‘You think I haven’t lived in the world? The
things I’ve seen would surprise you, boy.’
‘And you were not at St Paul’s this morning,’ Adam went on,
undeterred. ‘You didn’t see Simon de Montfort with John FitzJohn.’
Lord Simon had returned to London the day before, and he had taken
the place of greatest honour in the Palm Sunday procession that morning.
And there beside de Montfort, walking beneath the swaying willow
branches as the priests carried the sacramental altar towards the church
doors, was John FitzJohn, whom Adam had last seen knifing an elderly
Jewish moneylender to death with his own hand.
Upon his arrival in the city, de Montfort had issued a proclamation that
the Jews of London were not to be further harmed or assaulted, and those
who had taken shelter at the Tower were free to leave and return to their
homes. Few, Adam believed, had taken him at his word. Only that day they
had heard news from Canterbury that Gilbert de Clare’s men had attacked
the Jewish community there too, plundering and burning records, killing
any who got in their way. Elias himself had gone to the Tower in a grim
mood, to celebrate the Jewish festival of Passover with Belia and the others
of their community still sheltering there. He had barely spoken to Robert
before leaving, so great was his anguish.
 All this, Adam thought, and still there had been no condemnation for
FitzJohn, nor for Richard de Malmaines or any of those others who had
joined them on their cavalcade of bloody destruction and murder.
‘None can be ignorant of what those men did,’ Adam went on, more
forcibly. ‘Hundreds of innocent people slain – and Lord Simon embraces
them as friends—’
‘And what else would you have him do?’ Robert broke in, exasperated,
as he turned in his saddle. ‘He needs all the support he can get.’
‘Even bloody-handed murderers and thieves?’ Adam demanded. ‘And
that’s not all – Hugh of Oystermouth says—’
‘Oh, Hugh of Oystermouth is a sponge for every vicious rumour,’
Robert said, interrupting again. ‘I’m thinking I should be rid of him, and his
prattling tongue.’
‘Hugh of Oystermouth says,’ Adam repeated, ‘that Lord Simon forced
FitzJohn and the others to hand over most of what they’d stolen from the
Jews to him. And so he not only forgives them, but makes himself culpable
in their crimes.’
‘And if he’d cut off their heads instead, what then?’ Robert cried,
reining his horse to a stand. ‘Who would have cheered him?’
Over to their left, in the open ground between the track and the city
wall, a mob of young men were running and struggling together, hurling
and kicking a ball between them. For a few moments the sounds of their
riotous laughter drifted across the field. Quite possibly, Adam thought,
those same young men had joined in the attacks on the Jews a few nights
beforehand. Sure enough, they would not have relished anyone exacting
justice on those responsible. But whenever he closed his eyes, Adam saw
the flickering torchlight and the hate-filled faces, the knife in the hand of
John FitzJohn as he stabbed again and again . . .
‘Listen,’ Robert went on. ‘Earl Simon has a diverse set of supporters.
We don’t have to call them our friends, certainly. But neither do we have to
make them our enemies. Not yet.’
‘But what is Lord Simon’s cause, if not truth and justice?’ Adam cried,
the heat rising to his face. ‘How can any cause, any man, be worth fighting
for if you must fight alongside murderers and thieves?’
‘I’m not fighting for Simon de Montfort!’ Robert replied, his voice close
to a shout. Adam saw his fists clenching as he gripped the reins. ‘Maybe it’s
true what they say about him – maybe he really is a seducer and a deceiver,
and will lead us all to hell with his fine words. No, it’s not for his glory or
fame that I’m doing this, but for my own!’
‘And your honour?’ Adam demanded, unable to hold back. ‘What about
that?’
‘Honour!’ Robert scoffed. He flung out a hand towards the mob playing
their ball game. ‘Do you think they care about our precious honour? Do you
think Elias or Belia care about it?’
Adam bit back a reply. Suddenly the anger mounting in his throat made
it hard for him to speak, and he did not trust himself to curb his bitter rage.
‘If you wanted to be truly honourable,’ Robert went on, with a sour grin,
‘you would take yourself away from this world and live like an anchorite,
where nothing can corrupt you. Honour is worth nothing when you have
nothing, do you understand? What use is it, if nobody knows of it?’
‘You really believe that, after all you’ve told me?’ Adam managed to
say.
Robert shrugged heavily. ‘Glory and fame, now – that is worth
something. To be renowned in the eyes of one’s peers, and rewarded for
one’s great deeds – that,’ he said, raising a finger, ‘is the only true victory in
this world. You win a good name for yourself, and everything else follows.
Lands and security, wealth and prosperity.’
‘And love?’ Adam said. ‘The respect of your friends?’
He saw the barb cut deep. Robert flinched slightly, and turned away
from him.
Adam watched him ride on along the path, but for a moment he held
back from following. Something caught his eye, away to the right. A
whirling scrap of darkness in the air, falling in a swooping dive. Two young
men, sons of city burghers Adam guessed, were training a young kestrel
with a lure. Abruptly his thoughts veered, and he recognised that his black
mood had not been provoked by Robert alone.
Joane de Quincy had been in the congregation at St Paul’s that morning
too. She had remained at the Tower these last four days, a guest of Hugh
Despenser and his wife, and Adam had not heard a word from her. He had
not seen her during the procession either, but once they were inside the
cathedral he had searched for her as he stood among the crowd of lesser
men at the back of the nave. He glimpsed her at last as the priests were
singing the Passion; she was kneeling with a group of other ladies, the
wives and daughters of barons and magnates, all of them dressed in their
finest clothes of silk and samite and fur-trimmed velvet. As he stared she
glanced back and their eyes met across the packed bodies of the
congregation. At that moment he felt a pulse of feeling, of deep
understanding, pass between them, then she mouthed something silently
and shook her head.
Outside the cathedral, he had waited in a place where she could not fail
to see him, and as she passed with her group of ladies he saw her eye glide
over him and catch for a moment. But then she looked away, as if she could
not bring herself to acknowledge him again. Had she surrendered to her
fate, Adam wondered, and inured herself to marriage with Humphrey de
Bohun? Or was she merely avoiding him to protect them both from the
wrath of her uncle? Either way, the distance that had grown between them,
after their brief unexpected intimacy beneath the gatehouse of the Tower,
ached in his heart.
Robert had paused on the track ahead of him, and as Adam rode to catch
up he turned in the saddle and addressed him once more.
‘Very well,’ he said. The heat had died out of his voice. ‘I have not lived
a good life. I confess it. You think I’m a cynic but I’m worse than that – I’m
a liar.’
Adam halted beside him, fighting down the urge to reply. He could see
how difficult Robert was finding it to speak, how choked with bitter feeling
he was.
‘I lie to myself and to everyone close to me,’ Robert said, grinding the
words in his throat. ‘I make love to a woman who is not my wife, knowing
that it could bring shame on her, and I can offer her nothing in return . . .
But I swore an oath,’ he said, rounding on Adam with sudden passion,
‘before we returned to England. I swore that I would not hear mass, nor
make confession or accept absolution, until I had regained possession of the
lands that were taken from me. I would live in a state of sin, at the peril of
my soul.’
Adam drew a sharp breath. He opened his mouth to speak, but Robert
raised a hand to silence him. ‘Because only then, if I win what I seek,’ he
went on, ‘can I help those I love. If I had my lands back again – my own
home, my own roof and hearth – then Belia could come with me and live as
my wife. None would know she wasn’t Christian, and she could feign it if
needed . . .’
 His words broke off, and he looked away. Adam felt sure that he had not
explained this plan to Belia herself, and certainly he would never have
mentioned it to Elias. Embarrassment coursed through him. For the first
time in all the months and years he had known him, Adam found himself
pitying Robert de Dunstanville.
‘So, there you have it,’ Robert said briskly, as if shrugging off the
weight of difficult feelings. ‘I fight to regain what’s mine, and for what I
love, and that is all. And I’m set too far down that road to turn back now.
But if you no longer wish to follow then say the word and I’ll release you.’
‘Release me?’ Adam asked, his brow creasing. He felt a sour wash down
his throat.
‘From your oath to me, your indenture,’ Robert said, flinging out his
hand. ‘You no longer need be my squire. I told you once before that I
wanted no unwilling followers – I can’t compel you to fight for de Montfort
if your conscience will not abide it.’
‘You’d simply release me, just like that?’ Adam asked him. He was
fighting with a sense of painful disappointment that he had never expected
to feel. From somewhere behind him he heard the whoops and yells of the
ball players, and they sounded like mocking laughter. ‘After everything
we’ve done?’
Robert looked at him, his gaze flat and empty. ‘What more can I give
you?’
‘You know what I want!’ Adam cried, his voice catching in his throat. ‘I
want to be a knight – you could offer me that at least!’
‘Knighthood?’ de Dunstanville said, narrowing his eyes. ‘You think it’s
really such an easy gift? You have to earn it, boy!’
He spurred his horse forward, and Adam started angrily after him. ‘You
don’t think I’ve earned it already?’ he called.
De Dunstanville rode on a short way, then reined in his mount and
circled back. Adam glared at him; he was surprised to see the look of
intense concentration on his face, something close to anguish.
‘Understand this,’ Robert said. ‘The day you are knighted is the most
sacred of your life. More sacred than marriage. It should be done right. In
public, where all can see and accept it and none can ever dispute the right.
And you should be knighted by a man of honour. A man you can truly
respect and follow, to whom you can give your sword.’
 He turned his horse again. ‘I haven’t earned the right to bestow that on
you,’ he said with grim emphasis. ‘Until my war is won, and I have what is
mine restored to me, I cannot do anything for you, or for Belia and Elias
either. I cannot bestow honour on anyone. I have none of my own to give.’
Adam was unable to look him in the eye. The older man’s outburst had
left him feeling hollow and strangely ashamed, as if he had provoked it.
Words he wanted to say shaped themselves in his mind, but he could not
give them speech. Robert was walled with pride, and Adam knew that
anything he said would summon only furious scorn in response.
But there was more that he wanted to express. Even as Robert spoke,
Adam had realised how much he desired the noble chivalrous struggle that
Simon de Montfort had so often promised. Even after all that he had seen
and done over these last two years, still he desired the shining prize of
knighthood, not as a mere transaction but as something truly won. In his
mind he heard Humphrey de Bohun’s words, that night they rode from the
Tower; yes, he thought, he too wanted to strive to be worthy of great
rewards. Even if he had to fight alongside monstrous men like John
FitzJohn and Richard de Malmaines, this was the fight he desired, the
challenge he wanted to take up. But, like Robert, he would not be fighting
for the glory of Simon de Montfort. For what’s mine, and for what I love.
And that is all.
The bells of London were ringing, and when Adam glanced in the
direction of Cripplegate he saw Hugh of Oystermouth trotting along the
path towards them, his face shaded by his broad-brimmed hat. He wore a
little cross of willow sticks pinned to his tunic.
‘I come with tidings!’ the Welshman called out, reining his pony to a
halt beside them. ‘No, real tidings this time,’ he added, noticing Robert’s
dark look. ‘The sort you might wish to know as soon as possible, I thought
. . .’
‘Go on,’ Robert told him. Adam felt the heat of their argument still
lingering in the air around them, but Hugh appeared completely oblivious to
it.
‘The king is still at Nottingham,’ he said, slightly breathless, ‘but he’s
ordered the Earl of Surrey and Roger de Leyburne to seize the castle at
Rochester and hold it in his name . . .’
‘The Earl of Surrey?’ Robert said. ‘That’s John de Warenne. And de
Leyburne’s with him too? They know how to fight, at least, and they know
the ways of war.’
‘Gilbert de Clare,’ Hugh went on, ‘has already marched against them
with his Kentish men and Henry de Hastings, and now Simon de Montfort
has called a general muster in Southwark for tomorrow morning, just after
matins. He’s declared that he’ll march to support de Clare, and together
they’ll take Rochester.’
Adam flicked his attention between Hugh and Robert, watching the
older man’s expression harden, his gaze sharpen. Roger de Leyburne, he
remembered, was one of the knights who had accompanied Lord Edward,
and mocked Robert before the tournament at Lagny years ago.
‘Then by God, we’ll have some fighting soon enough,’ Robert breathed.
‘Real fighting, I mean – with honed steel, and an enemy in front of us.’
‘And we’ll be joining Lord Simon, I suppose?’ Hugh asked, with a
hopeful lift in his voice.
Robert turned to Adam, his saddle creaking beneath him, a question in
his eyes. Adam took only a moment to consider. But the answer was already
clear.
‘Yes,’ he said. ‘Yes, we will.’

OceanofPDF.com
PART THREE
OceanofPDF.com
 Chapter 19
It was the morning of Good Friday when they stormed the bridge for
the second time. Across the river, the keep of Rochester Castle was ashen
against a smoke-black sky. All night and half the previous day the town
beyond it had burned, until the dawn rain dampened the fires. None could
say who had set the blaze; it was either Gilbert de Clare’s men attacking
from the south, or the defenders trying to repel them. Now half of Rochester
was a smouldering ruin. But the castle still held strong within its circuit of
powerful walls, and Simon de Montfort’s army was trapped on the wrong
side of the river.
A single bridge spanned the tidal reach of the Medway, and the king’s
men had torn the wooden superstructure from the middle of it, leaving two
of the old stone piers jutting up like rotten teeth from the water. With the
timbers, they had fortified the remaining spur of the bridge on the Rochester
side of the river, surrounding it with bulwarks and garrisoning it with
archers, slingers and crossbowmen to command the crossing. Already the
projecting end of the bridge opposite them bristled like a thornbush with
arrows and bolts.
From the lee of an abandoned building, Adam watched the assault party
forming up in a dense column. Most were men of the London militia,
stiffened with serjeants and spearmen of the baronial retinues, and a band of
Simon de Montfort’s own troops. Leading them was John FitzJohn,
distinctive in his red and yellow quartered surcoat.
‘He might be the devil’s own bastard,’ Hugh of Oystermouth said,
narrowing his eyes, ‘but there’s no doubting his courage.’
Adam said nothing. Many of the men in the assault party had been
drinking all night, while others laboured with adze, saw and mallet, and in
the bleary light of dawn they appeared half crazed. They had seen the
previous attempt to storm the bridge fail the evening before, and knew what
they faced. Courage was not lacking in any of them.
With a great stamping of feet the column surged out onto the remaining
length of the wooden bridge, those in the lead hefting big wicker screens
before them, the rest bearing overhead the crudely constructed platforms
they would use to try and span the gap. Adam saw FitzJohn near the front,
urging them on. Part of him willed the man to fall, shot down by a chance
arrow. But a greater part of him knew that unless the crossing was taken, de
Montfort’s campaign would falter and die right here on the riverbank.
As soon as the advancing column approached the broken end of the
bridge, the bowmen and slingers on the far side released their first sleeting
volley. Impossible to miss such a target; at once the wicker screens and the
raised shields of the leading men were battered by arrows, quarrels and
stones, and the advance stalled abruptly. Adam saw men drop, either
wounded or dead, to be carried back by their comrades. One or two tumbled
from the bridge and plummeted into the muddy waters below. But still the
fraying mass of troops pushed forward, until they reached the brink of the
broken section.
Breath held tight, Adam watched as the gang of men at the front of the
column stumbled and swayed, manhandling the heavy timbers forward and
edging them out over the gulf as the arrows spat down.
‘There he is, look,’ Hugh said, nodding to his right, and Adam tore his
gaze from the distant turmoil on the bridge. Following the herald’s gesture,
he caught the blaze of blood-red banners through the damp morning drizzle.
Simon de Montfort was riding along the riverbank, accompanied by his
household knights. At the bridgehead Lord Simon reined in his horse and
stood up tall in the stirrups, watching the struggles of the men at the brink
of the broken section as they tried to wrestle the timbers into place.
‘They say,’ said Hugh in an undertone, ‘that he’s developing a cunning
stratagem for taking the bridge, if this assault should fail. Supposedly he
has a secret weapon.’
Adam raised an eyebrow, dubious. But Hugh pursed his lips, and did not
seem inclined to say more. A flash of light came from across the Medway,
and Adam turned to see the sun gleaming through a gap in the clouds,
lighting the tall castle keep and the banners that flew from its towers.
Squinting, he picked out the red and gold of the king, the blue of Roger de
Leyburne, the blue and yellow chequers of John de Warenne. Then the
clouds rolled onward, light flashed on the estuary waters, and the next
moment the group on the nearer bank was illuminated in a burst of sun.
Armour glittered, and the colours of the riders’ surcoats and the horse
caparisons glowed. Lord Simon raised his hand, and the men assembled
along the bank cheered and cried out his name. Even at such a moment,
Adam realised, he could still inspire adulation.
 Abruptly the clouds closed once more, and the brightness was gone. A
cry of dismay came from the bridge, a creak and crash of falling wood, and
the crude platform of planks and beams toppled and slid into the river
below. A few moments more, and the band of men on the bridge had begun
their retreat, carrying their wounded with them. Cheers and yells of
defiance came from the fortification on the far side, and a last few arrows
came lofting over the gap.
*
‘Hugh of Oystermouth claims that Lord Simon has a secret weapon,’
Adam said. He and Robert de Dunstanville were sitting outside their tent,
armour and equipment spread around them on the patchy grass. The days of
rain and drizzle had covered the metal with a thin freckling of rust. Seated
on a folding stool, a helmet propped on his knee, Adam was scrubbing at
the iron with a coarse rag coated in ashes from the fire.
‘He has,’ Robert replied, eating raisins from a cupped palm. ‘He’s
making Greek Fire.’
‘He’s . . . what?’
Robert continued chewing stolidly. ‘Don’t ask me how, or for what
purpose. But he has found an artificer who claims to be able to produce the
stuff. He’s not Jewish either, before you ask.’
Adam suppressed a shudder. The thought of devilish artificial fire
sounded somehow unclean. Surely no Christian would use such a weapon,
and on Good Friday too? They needed some way of capturing the bridge,
but how fire might assist them in doing that Adam could not imagine.
All around them, the encampment of de Montfort’s army spread in a
mass of damp canvas and smoking fires, almost engulfing the little riverside
settlement of Strood. It resembled the tournament camps that Adam knew
so well from the continent, on a far larger scale. But with thousands of
London militiamen present as well, it had more the feel of a village fair than
a chivalric gathering. Here and there the banners of the knightly retinues
rose like islands of gaudy colour in the sodden murk.
The church bells were silent for Good Friday, and without the familiar
ringing from near and far to mark the hours, the day felt strangely timeless.
But otherwise all thought of religion seemed to have been suspended in the
midst of war. In two days it would be Easter, the holiest day of the Christian
year – what, Adam wondered, would happen then? Normally it would be a
time for confessing misdeeds and being granted absolution; he had last
confessed at Cologne, a full year ago, and he felt the black weight of twelve
months of sin pressing heavily on his soul. He could not bear to
contemplate what Robert must be feeling, with his terrible oath of mortal
jeopardy hanging over him.
‘Sir Humphrey was asking about you,’ de Dunstanville said, finishing
the last of his raisins and dusting his palms.
Adam said nothing and continued cleaning the armour. There was a
rumour, so Wilecok had reported, that during the riots Robert de
Dunstanville and Humphrey de Bohun had seized the treasure of one of the
richest Jewish moneylenders in London, and held onto it for themselves.
Perhaps, he thought, it was safer for men to believe such things. He had
been all too aware, as he rode beside the infantry column on their two-day
march from London, that many of the men alongside him must have been
among those who launched the attack on the Jews. But none had spoken of
it, and since leaving the city all had cloaked themselves in unity and
comradeship.
‘I don’t doubt that if you should ever earn your spurs,’ Robert went on,
narrowing his eyes in the slanting sunlight, ‘de Bohun would be happy to
give you a place in his retinue, as a household knight. Not a bad position to
take. He could certainly offer you more than I ever could.’
‘If such a day ever came,’ Adam said, ‘then I would not be the
household knight of Humphrey de Bohun, or of anyone else. I would be my
own man, and seek my own lands and my own fortune.’
‘Quite so,’ Robert said quietly, inclining his head. He appeared, Adam
noticed, impressed and a little relieved. He was conscious that the balance
between them had shifted subtly since their angry words on the afternoon of
Palm Sunday.
‘Has there been any word of what Lord Simon will do now?’ Adam
asked, eager to change the subject.
Robert nodded briskly. ‘He intends to make a crossing of the river
tonight, under cover of darkness. All day he’s been gathering boats from far
upstream. Gilbert de Clare’s sent a party of men across from the Rochester
side as well, to guide the assaulting force.’
‘You’re intending to join them?’ Adam asked. Robert had taken no part
in the attacks on the bridge over the last two days. Apparently he felt there
was no glory to be gained in such a thing.
 ‘Not I,’ Robert said with a dry laugh. ‘I do not float so well, you know.
De Montfort already has four young knights who’ve volunteered to lead the
attack. But he wants other men, squires and serjeants of proven valour and
skill at arms, to support them.’
Adam stopped scrubbing the armour and raised his eyes. Robert was
peering back at him with a speculative half-smile. The memory of that
morning’s assault loomed in his mind, and he tried to hide his look of
misgiving. To stand and passively watch such a thing was horrendous, but
to be in the midst of it, struggling on the narrow bridge while the arrows
rained down, would be worse. Any alternative had to be preferable. And if
this was the part he had to play, Adam thought – the test that fate had
decreed for him, perhaps – then he could not refuse.
‘Humphrey de Bohun recommended me?’ he asked, a shadow crossing
his mind.
‘Oh no, there was no need for that,’ Robert said. ‘But as I told Sir
Humphrey, if my squire wishes to volunteer for such a foolhardy thing, it is
his own decision. I cannot command him.’
*
Simon de Montfort’s secret weapon was drawn up on the mudflats
beside the river, lodged beneath a rough shelter of thatch and sticks. The
bridge was a mile downstream, and the position was hidden from the
watchers in the castle towers by a bend in the river and a stand of trees; the
shelter was more to protect the contraption from the rain than to conceal it
from the eyes of the enemy. It was a fishing boat, wide-hulled and flat-
bottomed. A mast was set near the bows, with a big sail of heavy canvas
lowered on the yard. Covering the hull from end to end was a construction
of sticks and straw, arched over like a vaulted roof. Adam was reminded of
a carved model of Noah’s Ark he had seen in a church in Germany. But
even from ten paces away, he could pick out its particularly repulsive smell,
despite the sour whiff of the estuary mud.
‘I make no great claims for it, masters,’ the artificer said. He was a
disappointingly ordinary man, short and jowly, with none of the sinister
aspect many had been expecting. ‘It is what it is. But it will do what’s
needed, that I guarantee.’
‘What’s it made from?’ one of the onlookers asked.
The artificer gave a modest shrug. ‘There’s no real secret to it – merely
charcoal and dry tinder stacked inside, pitch and pine resin, several bags of
sulphur. And the special ingredient . . .’
‘Magic?’ one of the younger squires asked, round-eyed with wonder.
‘No,’ the artificer replied. ‘Lard. Slabs of it, laid on thick. Burns lovely,
you know, and hard to quench, once the sulphur sets it going.’
That explained the smell, Adam realised. Sure enough, now the man had
identified it the stink of rancid pork fat was unmistakeable.
‘Pah, this is not the true Greek Fire,’ said John D’Abernon, one of de
Montfort’s household knights. He tugged at his blonde moustache as he
turned away. ‘I had expected some wonder out of the east, the dragon’s
breath itself! This is a mere blaze in a hogman’s yard . . .’
The others were beginning to drift away as well, repelled rather than
fascinated now the mysteries of the device had been revealed. Nearby, a
dozen more boats were drawn up on the muddy bank of the Medway, ready
to carry them across the river that night. The tide was low, and wide grey-
black mudflats stretched from the hummock grass and reeds of the
riverbank to the water’s edge, where wading birds stepped and pecked in
the shallows. Insects flickered over the sheen of mud in the late-afternoon
sun.
Adam lingered, caught by an unpleasant premonition. In his mind he
saw burned corpses rolling in a dark torrent. With a shudder, he banished
the images. But again he found himself wondering whether Humphrey de
Bohun had somehow put him forward for this task on purpose, maybe
trying to rid himself of a rival for Joane’s affections. No, Adam told
himself, Humphrey de Bohun had no need of such desperate expedients; he
was a great nobleman, with titles and lands, a retinue of followers; the heir
to one of the most powerful earldoms in the kingdom. He had the prospect
of marriage to a beautiful heiress ahead of him. Adam, by contrast, had
nothing but his courage and a strong sword arm – he was expendable, and
that was the reason that he had been so quickly accepted for the night’s
expedition.
Most of the other men gathered along the riverbank were around his
own age. Adam recognised a few of the squires from the tournaments in
France, or the more recent expedition to St Albans. The four knights leading
the assault parties were young men too, aged between twenty and thirty. In
their company, Adam felt more secure – like them, he had been chosen for
his abilities, that was all. But then he noticed that one of the knights was
Richard de Malmaines, and his mood soured. He hoped fervently that he
would not find himself in a boat with the man that night, out on the dark
waters. His palms itched, like a presentiment of violence.
‘Preudhommes,’ a gravelly voice declared. ‘Preudhommes, gather to
me, if you would. All must know how this thing is to be done.’
John Spadeberd was a squat, square-faced serjeant, and Simon de
Montfort had placed him in charge of leading the night’s attack on the
bridge. He stood on a grassy hummock, legs planted and fists on his hips,
and waited for the two-score knights and squires and younger men to
assemble around him. It was unusual for a mere serjeant to be set above his
social superiors, but the forthcoming expedition would be far from usual.
Besides, Spadeberd was a veteran of the fighting in Wales, skilled in
leadership and all forms of combat; when he spoke, his voice carried an
effortless note of authority.
‘We take to the water an hour before midnight,’ he announced, turning
from the waist to address the assembly, ‘when the tide is full. Six boats,
towing the fireship between them. Oars to be muffled, and none are to
speak or make a sound. When we are in midstream we let the current and
the turn of the tide carry us down towards the bridge. At my signal, the
devils aboard the fireship will set flame to their cargo.’
He paused for a moment, waiting for any questions. There were plenty,
Adam knew: how were they to capture the bridge by burning it? And how
would they avoid the flaming fireship from burning them? But none said a
word, unwilling to seem fearful or irresolute.
‘Then,’ the serjeant went on, ‘with luck and prayers – and with the holy
blessing – the burning ship will drift downstream and lodge directly beneath
the fortification on the broken bridge, and as the tide falls the keel will
ground beneath it and the enemy will be unable to float it clear. While their
minds are filled with panic and their eyes with the flames, we will land on
the riverbank behind them and seize the town gate, overcoming in a rush
any who oppose us. We hold it until the London militiamen cross the river
in the second flotilla and help to secure it. And this is what Lord Simon has
decreed.’
Silence for a few heartbeats after he had spoken. Adam sensed everyone
around him drawing a long breath.
‘The moon’s only a sliver past full,’ somebody said, gazing upwards.
‘How are we to conceal ourselves from its light?’
 ‘There’ll be plenty of cloud come nightfall,’ Spadeberd said. ‘And our
friends on this side of the river will light fires and make commotion to
suggest they plan another attack. So, cover your steel, and keep silence.
With the blessing, our enemies will be looking elsewhere.’
‘And may the Good Lord sow confusion among them!’ another voice
said, and all turned as Simon de Montfort strode down the riverbank to join
their assembly. His horses and attendants waited at the edge of the copse of
trees. Immediately Adam noticed the assembled men standing more upright,
raising their heads and throwing back their hoods and cloaks. As one they
turned to face the Earl of Leicester.
‘Friends,’ he declared. ‘All of you have volunteered for this task, and I
thank you for it from my heart.’ He pressed his palm to his breast, and his
level gaze seemed to touch every one of them. ‘On you, our success or
failure depends. On your courage, preudhommes. Your fortitude and
valour.’
Fine words, Adam thought. He had heard them so often before. But at
least Simon de Montfort could not be accused of having nothing in the
balance. And they were spoken with such force that they sounded sincere.
Now de Montfort went to John Spadeberd and to each of the four knights in
turn and embraced them – Adam averted his eyes as the earl greeted
Richard de Malmaines. He spoke to each one, giving more of his words,
more of his assurance and encouragement. Then, as he stared out over the
waters of the river, he paused and pressed his fingers to his brow.
Without a word he sank to his knees. There was no bell, no call or
sound, but the knowledge passed between the men around him and as one
they knelt too. It was nones, the third hour of the afternoon, the hour of
Christ’s death. And all of them were silent. Out on the river, oblivious to the
solemnity, a flight of geese flew southward, their wingtips seeming to skim
the water.
After a few moments of prayer they rose to their feet once more.
‘Now,’ Simon de Montfort said, turning to address them all. ‘Make
ready as best you can, and wait for nightfall. If God grants us his favour, we
will gather on Easter morning in the cathedral of Rochester, and by then the
fortress will be ours!’

OceanofPDF.com
 Chapter 20
Two hours after nightfall, and clouds covered the moon. Adam
stumbled forward, feeling his feet sinking into thick river ooze as the black
water swilled around his ankles, then his knees. The tide was high in the
estuary, covering the mudflats, and the boats had been pulled up close to the
bank between the stands of reeds and the long sedge grasses. Encumbered
by a full mail hauberk, the coif laced over his head beneath a wide-brimmed
iron helmet, a shield slung on his back and a dark woollen cape shrouding
his body, Adam waded forward into the gloom with arms outstretched until
he could grab the side of the boat and haul himself aboard.
‘Careful there! Careful!’ the boatmen hissed, standing waist-deep in the
water holding the craft steady while the soldiers clambered forward over the
thwarts. Wet boots thudded and scuffed on the timbers, weapons clattered
and mail clinked, and all of it sounded far too loud in the darkness. The
smell of the river mud was thick in the night air.
Once six or seven men had clambered aboard and scrambled up to perch
on the benches between the oarsmen, the men in the water shoved the laden
boat away from the bank and out into the river’s current. Adam felt the
glide of water along the hull, the chill of it in the air, the smell of it rising
from his soaked clothes and the muddy puddles filling the bilges. He tugged
the dark cape closer around his shoulders, hunching as the breeze whispered
across the river’s blackness. Oars rattled out, the blades splashing as they
met the water, and the rowlocks creaked as the oarsmen bent to their work.
When Adam turned his head, he saw the riverbank receding into darkness.
Sounds carried strangely, out on the open water. A light rain was falling,
misting the river’s surface, and as his eyes adjusted, Adam picked out the
shapes of the other five boats gliding out into the stream. The much larger
shape of the fireship rose beyond them, a humped darkness on the water, its
mast raised and its heavy sail beginning to belly to the estuary breeze. Even
from here he could make out the foul trace it left in the air.
Adam became aware of the heavy pulsing of his blood. His palms were
sweating so much he feared he would not be able to grip his sword. For the
first time he was about to go into battle with edged steel. Only a few hours
before he had watched as the armourer sharpened his blade on the grinding
wheel, then honed it with the whetstone. Somewhere out there in the night’s
darkness, he knew, were men that he did not know and with whom he had
no grudge, but who he would have to try and kill. The thought of it pressed
on him with a terrible sobering weight. But what he feared was not the
fighting, not even the killing. Instead he was convinced that he would
stumble and trip while getting out of the boat, fall into the black water with
a shout that would betray their silent landing to the enemy. He was
convinced that in battle he would fumble and drop his weapon, or become
confused in the darkness. He feared failure, and disgrace.
The boat was moving steadily downriver now, carried by the current in
mid-stream, the oarsmen only making occasional pulls to keep the course
true. On the bench beside Adam sat a man in a thick linen gambeson, a
crossbow laid across his knees. The man was praying fervently, barely
above a breath, and repeatedly kissing a holy medal. Adam set his teeth and
tried to still his mind.
‘Have no fears, sirs!’ a low voice said in the darkness. The serjeant on
the bench in front turned and grinned over his shoulder. Adam could smell
his rank breath as he whispered. ‘Have no fears, for I have a holy string of
St Thomas tied about me, and it’ll protect us all!’
‘A holy string . . .?’ Adam said, frowning.
‘Yes! Measured it myself, I did, on the saint’s tomb in Canterbury. I’ve
worn it ever since, tied tight just here.’ He patted his midriff, below his
chest, and grinned again. Even in the dark Adam could make out his ruined
teeth. ‘Protects against all perils, it does, sirs!’ he said, to Adam and the
quaking crossbowman. ‘Proof against fire and water, and steel too!’
The man twisted on the bench, leaning closer to Adam. ‘They call me
Le Brock, sir,’ he said. ‘Due to this.’ Pulling back his coif he exposed the
stripe of vivid white in his lank black hair. ‘I’m serjeant to Lord Gilbert.’
‘Christ’s love will you keep quiet!’ one of the other squires hissed from
near the stern. Adam could make out the tremble in his voice. ‘They must
be able to hear you in London!’
‘Remember,’ the man named Le Brock whispered, and gave a leering
wink as he patted his torso again. ‘Keep close to me, sir, and the holy string
will see you good!’
The helmsman, standing at the stern with his steering oar, made a sharp
sound between his teeth and gestured into the darkness. The clouds shifted,
and Adam saw the walls of the castle standing above them on the riverbank,
with the pale turreted block of the keep rising high above them against the
shredded moon. Over the bows of the boat he could make out the broken
bridge, skeletal above the moon’s gleam on the water, and ahead of it was
the black shape of the fireship with its big sail still driving it on
downstream.
‘They should have lit it!’ somebody whispered harshly. ‘Why haven’t
they lit it? Is it too wet? – oh merciful Christ!’
A chorus of angry hisses silenced him, and all peered into the night and
the river’s reach. Silent and tense on the benches, the oarsmen steadily
backed water in long sweeps to hold them in position against the current as
the other boats came up around them.
‘There!’ somebody gasped, and all drew breath as they saw the spark of
flame deep inside the black cavern of the fireship. For a few slow heartbeats
the flame wavered, appearing no larger than a candle, then blossomed
upwards to light the curve of sticks and straw above it. Adam made out the
shapes of figures moving in the depths – devils, John Spadeberd had called
them. Once the fire was ignited they would tie the tiller of the boat and then
slip overboard to swim to safety, trusting the big wetted sail to keep the
burning vessel moving unstoppably down towards the bridge.
But the fire was very small, making more smoke than flame. Now the
clouds had thinned, the moonlight appeared very bright, striping the river
and the walls of the castle. The men in the boats could see other fires
burning on the far riverbank, where Montfort’s army had assembled to
cause a distraction. But already they could hear the shouts of alarm from the
watchers on the castle battlements.
Smoke rolled from the burning boat, billowing upwards against the sail
and then spilling away over the river’s surface. The flames lit it with a
sunset glow, and as it thinned across the water and caught the moonlight it
turned to a pale roiling fog. Adam realised that he was holding his breath,
and forced himself to exhale. The oarsmen were still backing water, but the
little flotilla of boats was being carried steadily downstream towards the
bridge. At any moment, the men on the castle walls would see them, picked
out by the sickly radiance of the burning vessel.
Then came a dull whoosh of air, and flame burst upwards from the hull
of the ship and curled around the roof of dry tinder, scattering sparks
against the sail. Bursts of bright fire came from deep inside – the sulphur
catching light, Adam guessed – and then the flames were racing, seething
upwards against the damp sailcloth and spilling away into the night. A wave
of scorching heat rolled back across the water, and the men in the boats
shielded their faces from it.
‘Holy Mary protect us,’ the crossbowman beside Adam chanted, ‘Christ
and all His saints protect us!’
‘Archers!’ another voice cried, startlingly loud. A scream of pain came
from one of the other boats. ‘Pull for the riverbank!’
An arrow struck the hull of the boat. Another whipped just overhead.
Adam struggled to drag the shield from off his back and hold it above him;
others did the same, although it was hard to tell the direction from which
the arrows flew.
Ahead of them the fireship was blazing, filling the expanse of the river
with its flame. Adam saw the great sail ignite and disintegrate into flying
fiery shreds, but the vessel was still moving. Sparks of burning chaff blew
from it, hissing and steaming as they dropped into the water, and he could
hear the men on the bridge fortification screaming in panic as the hellish
vessel bore down upon them. But the boats were moving fast now, sharp
prows cutting through the water as the oarsmen heaved, the armed men
crowded aboard each one with shields raised, weapons readied.
A roar came from along the river; Adam saw that the burning fireship
had lodged itself between two of the stone bridge piers, directly below the
timbers of the fortification. Already men were running back towards the
riverbank to summon help, while others struggled to draw up buckets of
water to quench the flames, or use long poles to shove the blazing craft
away.
‘Steady!’ a voice said from the stern. ‘Brace yourselves!’
A rush of water and a grate of mud, and the boat ground to a halt on the
riverbank. At once the men in the bows leaped down into the shallows, the
others clambering forward over the benches hefting arrow-studded shields
and naked weapons. Almost without thinking, Adam found himself in the
bow; he jumped, and splashed down into muddy water. Three sloshing
strides and he was climbing the bank, forging through long grass with his
shield raised in front of him and his sword gripped tight in his fist.
The bank was steep here, and his shadow threw the ground ahead into
total blackness. As he scrambled upwards Adam could see the end of the
bridge, the town wall and gate, illuminated by the flames of the burning
fireship. And now he could see the cleverness of the stratagem: men were
running out through the town gates to aid those on the bridge in fighting the
fires. If Adam and the others landing from the boats could scale the
riverbank quickly enough in the darkness, they stood a chance of seizing the
gates before the defenders could close them once more.
But already the sentries on the walls were raising the alarm. Ahead of
Adam a man in a gambeson stumbled on the rutted bank as a crossbow bolt
pinned him through the neck. He fell, and Adam leaped over him. Another
bolt struck his shield, the iron head punching through the boards just above
Adam’s forearm. Then a figure reared up ahead of him, wreathed in smoke
and whirling sparks. An axe slammed against Adam’s shield and he
deflected the blow, then swung a low cut beneath the rim. He felt the blade
bite, and heard the roar of pain, but already he was shoving his shield
forward against his attacker’s body. The man toppled, and Adam stabbed
down once into the dark and then ran onward. There were others around
him, men from the boats yelling as they reached the level ground at the top
of the riverbank. I have killed a man; the thought pulsed in Adam’s mind,
then it was gone.
Only ten running strides to the gate. Figures staggered through the
smoke, shadows wheeling, and Adam could not distinguish friend from foe.
He paused to pull the crossbow bolt from his shield and then he advanced,
sword raised, sensing the others that flanked him. The blazing bridge was
behind them now, silhouetting them, and to the defenders around the gates
they were screaming wraiths of darkness as the billowing sparks arced
above them.
The men confronting them now had no experience of war. They were
barely fighters at all, just militia trying to defend their town and their
bridge. Adam saw them quailing before the onslaught, and his face
tightened into a fierce grin. Already he was halfway to the gate, men to
either side of him, and their enemy were on the verge of breaking. A spear
jabbed at his face and he blocked it, rolling the point and shaft aside.
Another spear, clashing against his sword as he parried – he slid the blade
down the spear shaft, slicing off fingers. Howls from the dark; he smelled
the blood he could not see. A huge figure ahead of him now, a giant in a
pale gambeson. Adam caught the blow of a mace on his shield, the impact
bursting pain into his left shoulder, then pivoted from the waist as he drove
the leading edge of the shield forward, striking the giant in the chest and
knocking him back. The following blow flowed smoothly, his blade
slashing down across the man’s shoulder. Adam felt the blade cut deep,
splitting bone and flesh, then the man was down. Hot wetness up his arm as
he wrenched his blade free.
It was just like in the buhort, when he knew his enemies were routed but
still there was a chance they could rally and turn at bay. Adam heard the
yelps and snarls of the men around him, like hunting dogs, like beasts.
Snatching a glance behind him, he felt the searing heat on his face. A
glimpse of billowing fire, the shapes of men throwing themselves from the
bridge into the river. The fireship was still burning, great sheets of flame
curling up from it and rolling down to the water, fiery flags in the
blackness. The air was filled with dancing sparks and swirling smoke.
‘With me! With me!’ Adam shouted, feeling the rasp of the words in his
scorched throat. The man called Le Brock was beside him now, hefting an
axe with both hands. Together they raced the last distance to the gate. Adam
rammed aside the fleeing shape of a man with his shield, stumbled, ran
onward. Only moments had passed since they left the boats. Heartbeats,
spilled out in bloodshed.
Now they were beneath the gate arch, into the churn of bodies. The
gates were heavy oak, banded and studded with iron, with barely the space
remaining for a man to pass between them. A mob pressed at either side,
every man roaring, shields rammed tight as they shoved. One side was
trying to force the gates open, the other to seal them closed. Spears flicked
and stabbed in the gap between them, grating against stone, against mail. A
man beside Adam screamed as a spearhead darted from the press and ripped
open his face. He slumped back, but his body remained upright, caught in
the crush.
De Malmaines appeared beside Adam, his face flecked dark red, lit by
the fiery glare behind them. ‘You?’ he said to Adam, and laughed out loud.
Together they threw themselves forward, shoulders to the hollow of their
shields, trying to burst the knot of men between the gates by brute force.
Adam saw iron-studded oak in front of him and threw himself against it.
Old hinges wailed; on the far side of the gap the defenders had the big
timber locking bar and were shoving it against the gates, trying to force
them closed against the press of bodies filling the threshold. Adam felt
something strike his ankle. A man beside him screamed and leaped back.
He stamped his foot, and his boot came down on the shaft of a spear and
shattered it.
 ‘Bastards!’ Le Brock was screaming into the mob of men packing the
threshold, spittle flecking his jaws. ‘Sons of dogs! The devil take you all!’
He was hewing with his axe, driving great cleaving blows into the gap
between the gates. His blade banged off a shield, then rang off a helmet,
then chopped flesh.
By ones and twos the men on the far side of the gate were falling back.
Then a rush, the attackers surged, and abruptly the pressure was gone.
Timbers shrieked as the gates were flung back against the stone arch and
the seething mass of men outside surged across the threshold.
Adam stumbled forward, tripping over a sprawling body, and fell to his
knees on the greasy cobbles. When he raised his head he saw in the
wheeling firelight two men in identical gambesons wrestling on the ground,
one of them grimly driving a pointed dagger into the throat of the other.
Fear raced through him, the energy of the fight dispelled and cold horror
rising in its place. Just for a moment Adam could not move, his limbs weak
and his blood still. Then he heard the roar of voices, the triumphant yells,
and once again the song of battle was loud inside him. His body was
flowing with sweat as he scrambled back to his feet, and his throat felt
scorched. Smoke rolled through the arch from the burning bridge.
‘Hold back!’ an iron voice yelled. ‘Hold back – keep to the gateway!’
Sir John D’Abernon had pushed through the mob of soldiers and was taking
charge now, forming the men into two lines beneath the archway. Already
the defenders in the darkened street beyond the gate were rallying, noticing
for the first time the small number of their attackers. Barely thirty men had
come up from the boats; two had fallen in the attack, but many more were
wounded. With the defenders from the bridge fortification gathering in the
smoke-filled darkness outside the walls and the town militia massing on the
inside, they would be swept away unless they were reinforced.
‘The signal,’ D’Abernon cried, ‘shoot now!’ But the sky was full of fire
and whirling sparks, and the flaming arrow that one of his men shot
upwards was lost to sight almost instantly. From the far riverbank, it would
have been invisible amid the larger conflagration. Grimly the little band
beneath the gate arch tightened their lines, raising shields edge to edge.
Some were already busy trying to heave the big gates off their hinges.
Arrows and crossbow bolts smacked into shield boards, clashed against the
stone archway; here and there they found a mark in human flesh.
 Adam stood hunched behind his shield. Le Brock was at his left
shoulder, and John Spadeberd to his right. From somewhere along the line
he could hear Richard de Malmaines spitting curses into the darkness,
goading their enemies to attack. A flung spear arced overhead, and he heard
a shout of pain from behind him. Another arrow struck his shield, and he
felt the impact through the bone of his forearm. He willed himself to stay
strong, to fight down the fear, but now the momentum of the attack had
stalled he felt the cold tendrils crawling in his blood, twining through his
limbs.
Shouts from behind him, and fresh sweat broke on his brow and coursed
from beneath the rim of his mail coif. Adam blinked, trying to shake the
stinging drops from his eyes, his face, but he felt half blind. The voices
behind him grew clearer: ‘A Montfort! A Montfort!’
Sudden relief, a great gasp and cry of salvation. Then the
reinforcements were thronging among them, surging up the riverbank from
the second wave of boats and packing the arch of the gateway. They were
Londoners, men of the militia armed with spears and axes, their rough
voices echoing beneath the gate arch as they swelled the fighting line
behind the wall of shields.
‘Now – onward! Go!’ cried John D’Abernon, and with a roar the line
surged forward, a wave of shields and armoured bodies, bristling with
blades. The enemy turned and fled before them. Adam was running, the
breath burning in his throat, feeling once more the wild madness of combat
powering him. His boots slipped and skidded on the worn and grimy
cobbles but he stayed upright. He lashed out at somebody ahead of him, but
they were gone before his blow could connect.
More figures, a line of shields in the murk of the street. To the right was
the broad grassy moat of the castle, with the castle wall rising on the far
side vague in the gloom. Somewhere ahead the wooden bridge and the
towers of the barbican. The charge slowed, men closing into a fighting line
once more behind their shields. Adam peered into the darkness, his eyes
streaming from the smoke and sweat. Yellow shields, marked with
something in red.
‘A Hastings! A Hastings!’ a man cried from the opposing lines. Adam
heard a cheer from behind him, the answering cry of ‘A Montfort!’ and the
two lines surged together. Henry de Hastings’s retainers had closed up from
the south, chasing on the heels of the last defenders as they retreated across
the wooden bridge over the moat to the castle beyond.
*
It was past midnight by the time they set fire to the barbican. The breeze
had shifted, and sparks and flying smuts were scattering across the town as
the troops gathered for the attack. Adam felt the smuts on his face and
squinted. Somewhere in the night men were ransacking the priory and
plundering the cathedral buildings. From the surrounding streets rose
screams, pleas for mercy, wild laughter. The luckier citizens had already
fled or taken shelter in the castle.
Through a glaze of fatigue, Adam heard men shouting that the gates
were down, the charred timbers burst through with a ram and the portcullis
sealing the gate passage beyond levered open. Once again he felt the fierce
energy of battle pulsing in his blood. Then he was running, thundering
across the bridge towards the smoke-wreathed castle barbican with a squad
of Henry de Hastings’s serjeants, hardly aware of what was happening or
who was leading the attack. Through the funnel of the gate passage Adam
charged, scrambling to keep up with the rush. Arrows flickered around him,
glancing off the walls, then he was out into the open space of the castle
bailey as the cloud shifted and flooded the scene with bright moonlight.
Adam would remember only fragments of the hours that followed. In
the dancing shadows, the bursts of firelight and the whirling smoke he saw
lines of men clash in combat, fall back and then clash again. He was
fighting himself, warding off blows with his shield, his senses drowned
with the grate and whine of steel, the copperish stink of blood, the yells of
fear and fury and the screams of the injured. His shoulders and back ached
from the weight of his mail, his knuckles were grazed and his arms bruised.
At some point he found himself snatching a waterskin to wash the reek of
smoke and ashes from his throat; the skin contained wine, not water, and he
choked and spat, then drank again and swallowed it down.
He remembered slipping on the churned turf, and finding that the
blackness beneath him was a lake of spilled blood. A little later – a few
moments, a few hours – he seized a half-loaf from a basket and started to
eat, only to notice the blood of other men still covering his hands.
Then, later still, Adam heard the clanging of a handbell, and when he
raised his eyes from the rutted earth he saw the grey daylight appearing
blearily through the grim clouds of smoke. It was the morning of Holy
Saturday. A file of men walked slowly across the ravaged expanse of the
bailey, priests carrying the holy vessels, with a man with a crucifix going
before them. As they passed through the milling throng of fighting men, the
wounded and the captured and those still preparing for another attack, all
fell still and silent. As one, men knelt and bowed their heads, and the file of
priests crossed to the little chapel near the wall of the bailey to conduct the
service of morning mass.
When Adam raised his head, everything before him seemed to be part of
a dream. Suddenly he felt too weary to get to his feet again. He was
scrubbing the black smirch from his face with blood-smeared hands as Le
Brock appeared before him.
‘See, young sir?’ the man said, patting his midriff. ‘Didn’t it keep you
safe, eh? You were right to stay close to me. Kept you safe all through the
darkness, it did, just like I said – the string of St Thomas!’

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 Chapter 21
The morning of Easter Sunday was a holy truce, and all the bells in
Rochester were ringing. In the great cavern of the cathedral the nave and
aisles blazed with candles, and on the high altar the crucifix stood proudly,
raised from its sepulchre as the choir sang Christus Resurgens, on this day
of the resurrection. The congregation had been gathering since first light,
since matins, thronging the main doors and shuffling in lines, barefoot on
the worn paving stones, towards the north transept to make confession, then
kneeling in rows before the chancel screen to hear mass and receive holy
communion. More like cattle than true penitents, Adam thought as he
looked at them. But he was no better.
No, he thought, they were not arrayed in the robes of God. Nor were
they clothed in love and charity. These were warriors, the same men that
had stormed the gates and the castle barbican, and slain the townsfolk and
the king’s serjeants in the bailey. The same that had plundered the town and
the cathedral close, and stabled their horses in the cloisters of the priory.
They were unshaven and mostly unwashed, and they belched and laughed
and scratched at themselves as they waited to confess and be shriven.
Stinking of smoke and sweat and dried gore, they knelt on the cold stone
with bare feet and bare shins, and they showed no shame, no remorse at all.
Adam reached the head of the confessional queue and stepped forward
quickly. The confessor was one of several, working in tandem, so great was
the number of men waiting to be absolved.
‘Benedicite pater,’ Adam mumbled quickly, dropping to kneel before
the seated priest. They were running through the ceremony quickly; already
he had seen and overheard a score or more confessions.
‘Dominus exaudiat nos,’ the priest muttered from under his hood, in a
flat monotone. Lord hear us. But how could he, Adam thought, when so
many were speaking at once?
‘Confiteor deo omnipotenti . . .’ He clasped his hands and leaned into
the priest’s lap, not even glancing up at that tired grey face in the hood’s
shadow, those hanging jowls. He recited his Creed in a rapid whisper, while
the priest nodded and fanned the air above him. Behind him Adam could
hear the others in the queue shuffling closer, urging him to hurry up with his
sins.
 ‘I acknowledge to God and to all the holy company of heaven that I am
a sinner,’ Adam mumbled quickly, switching to French. ‘I have sinned in
thought, word and deed . . . I have not loved God above all things. I have
not dreaded him nor worshipped him . . .’
For days he had been thinking over what he would say, how he would
phrase his confession. Now it came to the moment, he knew that he should
not have been so concerned. The priest was barely listening. He appeared
barely awake.
‘I have violated the commandments and neglected the holy days,’ Adam
went on. ‘I have sinned with women, and failed to perform the seven works
of mercy . . . I have bent my knees more gladly in fornication than in
prayer, and hungered more for the acclaim of others than for the blessings
and peace of Almighty God . . .’
He was trying to mean what he said, and to feel the contrition in his
heart. But these were formulas, not true confessions. He paused, took a
breath, and whispered. ‘I have killed a man in battle – more than one,
perhaps . . .’ Better to be sure, he had decided. He had searched among the
bodies of the slain the day before, thinking he might recognise those he had
cut down, but all had looked equally unfamiliar in death.
The priest had barely moved. Surely, Adam thought, he must have heard
such things countless times already that day. He realised that he could
confess anything he liked, the most enormous sins, the most heinous
crimes, and still the priest would grant him the same absolution he had
granted all the rest. Why should he not? He hated them all alike, and
doubtless wished them all in hell by the swiftest road.
‘I have lusted after a woman who is not my wife . . .’ The image of
Joane de Quincy appeared to him, and fervently he blinked it away. More
troublingly, the image of Belia rose in its place. His voice caught; he could
confess no more. ‘I beseech my Lord Jesus Christ of his mercy,’ Adam went
on in a leaden voice, looking up at the priest for the first time, ‘and pray for
penance for my misdeeds and absolution for the sake of my soul.’
The priest seemed to awaken from a mild trance of discomfort. He
raised his fingers and sketched the sign of the cross. ‘Make pilgrimage to
the shrine of St Thomas, prior to Whitsun, and make offerings worth at least
ten shillings,’ he said in a croak. ‘Ego te absolvo.’
Already as Adam scrambled to his feet the queue was shunting and the
next penitent was creeping forward. He did not feel lightened of sin. Rather,
he felt that something heavy had been draped around him, some new burden
he would have to carry from this day forward. Instinctively, as he waited to
hear mass he scanned the rows of kneeling people, searching for Robert de
Dunstanville. Then he remembered the oath the man had taken, and with a
pang of remorse he lowered his gaze to the flagstone floor.
*
Later that day the feasting began. With the restrictions of the Lenten fast
lifted, every kitchen and campfire in Rochester smoked and spat, and the air
was filled with the smell of roasting flesh. Simon de Montfort had laid his
Easter banquet in the open air, in a garden adjoining the best house in town.
The sky was clear and the sun bright, although a chilly breeze whipped at
the smoke from the fires and tugged at the white table linen, and now and
again the servants had to sprint off in pursuit of errant baskets and trays.
Most of the men seated at the long tables were barons and magnates,
leaders of great retinues. Robert de Dunstanville was lucky to have been
invited at all, even seated at the very far end of the lowest table. Adam was
standing behind him, assuaging his hunger with boiled eggs and crusts of
bread. The scents of the roast lamb made his stomach sigh, but as usual he
would have to wait for his master to dine first. At least now that he had
confessed and been absolved, had taken holy communion and heard the
High Mass, he felt lighter in his soul.
Opposite, on a wooden dais, Simon de Montfort sat at the high table
with his son Henry and his great friend the Bishop of Worcester. Flanking
them were Gilbert de Clare and Humphrey de Bohun. The apple trees
surrounding the garden had already been hacked down for timber to use in
the siege works, and there was a clear view of the castle walls and the
towering keep. De Montfort and his chief followers could view their enemy
as they feasted and drank, and their enemy could view them.
‘Earl Simon invited their leaders to join him, you know,’ one of the
knights at the tables said, raising his chin towards the castle. ‘De Warenne
and de Leyburne, I mean. Invited them to join him at table, for the holy
truce! They’ve refused, it seems.’
‘A telling sign,’ Robert de Dunstanville replied.
‘How so?’ the knight asked, frowning. He was a heavily built man in
middle age named Ralph de Heringaud, Lord of Eynsford in Kent. His
fifteen-year-old son William stood behind him, acting as his squire.
 ‘They fear the king’s wrath,’ Robert said, raising his eyebrows. ‘Either
they expect Henry to relieve them soon, or they are considering that they
may have to surrender. If they intended to hold out for a lengthy siege – if
they had sufficient supplies, sufficient men and courage to do so – then they
would have no qualms about feasting with their enemy. But they fear that
any congenial acts now may appear treacherous soon enough.’
Ralph de Heringaud pondered this for a moment, still frowning, then
gave a loud harrumph. ‘Maybe so!’ he announced. ‘Maybe so indeed. But
we shall have a hard fight nevertheless I think, for the king is far away, and
they surely won’t yield at once.’
‘I doubt you will be doing very much hard fighting either way, Sir
Ralph,’ Robert said in a sly tone. Some of the others around the table
smirked and laughed. The overweight knight could make no reply; all knew
that only the younger men, with the serjeants and the infantry, would be
required to assault the breaches once the war engines had done their work.
To his left, over the stumps of the trees, Adam could see the high lever
arms of three newly constructed trebuchet catapults. Two more were under
construction on either side of the cathedral grounds, and three more on a
hill to the south of the castle. The engines had arrived the day before by
barge, brought from the Tower of London down the Thames and up the
Medway, together with skilled artillerists to construct and use them. Now
that de Montfort’s labourers and engineers had cleared the charred
wreckage of the bridge fortification and laid a temporary timber roadway
across the old stone piers, the rest of his army had moved across the river
and into the town. Rochester thronged with fighting men, horses, war
engines and wagons of military supplies and munitions.
‘Sit,’ Robert said to Adam, shifting along the bench to make room. ‘Join
us.’ Enough time had passed, it seemed, that social niceties need not be
observed. Adam gladly seated himself, and took a helping of roast lamb
from the communal dish. The rich meat, suffused with the flavours of
ginger and thyme, was like the manna of heaven. Juices ran down his
fingers as he chewed.
‘Was it not King John who took Rochester after a siege, back in our
grandfathers’ day?’ asked John D’Abernon, sitting further along the table.
‘He did!’ Ralph de Heringaud replied. ‘After tunnelling beneath the
south tower and bringing down half the keep. I doubt Earl Simon will
require such tactics. Although King John took nearly two months to subdue
the castle.’
‘And we must do it in only two weeks,’ Robert said.
Again everyone at the table stared at him, nonplussed. ‘How do you
calculate that?’ D’Abernon asked.
‘The king is keeping his Easter court at Nottingham, as we believe,
yes?’ Robert said. ‘But he will surely hear that we’re assaulting his castle
soon enough, and will march south to break the siege. Two weeks from
now, at the latest, he will have brought his army here. If the castle has not
fallen by then—’
‘He’ll be able to cut us off from London, and even surround us,’ Adam
said. ‘A siege within a siege.’
Ralph de Heringaud shot him an irritated glance. Clearly he did not
expect squires to speak at the dining table. ‘So we turn and bring him to
battle!’ he declared.
‘Oh no,’ Robert said, shaking his head. ‘Not if it can be helped. Battles
are very dangerous, Sir Ralph. It is quite possible to lose. And in such cases,
it is quite possible to die.’
‘I fear Sir Ralph has not read his Vegetius,’ John D’Abernon said with a
grin. ‘On the battlefield, luck plays a greater part than valour . . .’
‘A coward’s maxim,’ de Heringaud said, flustered. ‘And not at all the
way of a chivalrous man!’
Adam kept his head down, concentrating on his meal. When he glanced
up again, he saw the men seated at the middle table. The bullish Henry de
Hastings was there – Adam could hear his booming voice as he made some
joke or boast – with John de Burgh and Nicholas de Segrave. And beside
them, John FitzJohn. From the corner of his eye Adam watched the young
nobleman, remembering the bloody scenes in the London Jewry less than
two weeks before. Had nobody else here witnessed FitzJohn’s savagery?
Surely all had heard of it; the young man had made no secret of what he had
done. Did nobody else here condemn it, then?
FitzJohn was stuffing his mouth with meat, his jaws shiny with grease
as he laughed along with de Hastings’s jokes. He took a draught of wine
from his silver-rimmed cup to wash the meat down, choked slightly and
spat, then ate again. A band of musicians had struck up, drowning the noise
of the voices and laughter with a skirl of pipes and rattle of tabor.
Meanwhile, most of the squires and many of the serjeants and heralds and
others had come to join their masters at the tables, crowding along the
benches and adding to the revelry. Ralph de Heringaud’s son William slid
down onto the bench beside Adam and seized a cup, filling it brimful of
wine from the jug and drinking it back.
A hand tapped Adam’s shoulder and he tensed, reaching instinctively for
his eating knife as he turned. The figure behind him was standing against
the light, but stepped back at once and raised his hands. One of the young
pages from the high table, Adam noticed as he blinked and squinted.
‘The Lord Simon invites you to speak with him,’ the page said in a
squawk, still unnerved by Adam’s reaction as he gestured towards the high
table. Adam nodded, getting to his feet, aware that the other men on the
benches were regarding him with great interest.
‘Be careful what you say,’ Robert told him in a hushed voice, turning
and taking his arm. ‘Remember—’
‘I know,’ Adam replied with a dismissive shrug, then followed the page
over the grass to the dais where the high table stood.
As he approached, he was struck once more by the way everyone
present seemed to attend upon de Montfort. The Earl of Leicester sat at the
centre of the table, but those to either side of him and all those standing
around and seated at the adjoining tables appeared to be directing their
attention towards him, listening avidly to every quiet word he said, noticing
his every gesture. Adam remembered the gathering in the cellar room
before the tournament at Senlis, nearly two years before, when de Montfort
had first spoken to him. Lord Simon still projected that effortless and rather
uncanny allure, a force that drew all towards him. If anything, it seemed
even stronger now.
Adam rubbed at his chin, wishing that he had shaved more dutifully that
morning. But most of the men around him still appeared rough and battle-
worn, for all their fine clothes and festive air. Humphrey de Bohun was
seated at the nearest end of the table, dressed in a tunic and surcoat of bright
blue covered with embroidered golden lions. He smiled broadly as Adam
stepped up to the dais, standing and clapping him on the shoulder, then
passing him a fresh cup of wine. Again, Adam was baffled by the man’s
warmth. Did he now regard him as an old friend? He was more surprised
when Simon de Montfort too got to his feet, gesturing lightly for Adam to
follow him as he moved away from the table.
 Holding his cup, Adam walked a few paces beside de Montfort. The earl
appeared grave suddenly, and slightly distracted. ‘My serjeant, John
Spadeberd,’ he said, ‘tells me that you acted with great courage during the
attack on the bridge and gate,’ he said. ‘I’ve been meaning to commend you
in person.’
‘Thank you, my lord,’ Adam said, trying to hide his confusion. He had
been one among many that night.
De Montfort paused, folding his arms across his chest, and gazed up at
the castle keep. ‘So,’ he said. ‘What do you think? Can it be taken?’
‘I believe any castle can be taken, my lord,’ Adam said. ‘Or so I’ve
heard.’
The older man glanced at him quickly, a smile tightening his face.
‘That’s what you’ve learned from Robert de Dunstanville, I suppose?’ he
said. ‘Well, he’s a good instructor, and he’s not wrong. Anything can be
accomplished, with sufficient courage and strength. And if God wills it, of
course.’
‘You intend to storm the walls, my lord, once the engines have opened a
breach?’ Adam asked. It seemed an obvious question, but he felt the need to
say something. More than that – he felt the need to impress this man in
some way. A vain desire, perhaps, maybe even a childish one, but it burned
strongly in him.
‘I do, as soon as this holy truce is over,’ Simon replied, jutting his jaw.
‘And hopefully that will carry it, and we will not have to resort to
burrowing beneath the walls, as King John did . . . How I wish this struggle
had come decades ago!’ he went on, balling his fist. ‘Were I even twenty
years younger I would be leading the assault myself.’
Adam looked at de Montfort, surprised by his candour. At close hand
and in daylight, the marks of age were clear to see. He must be nearing his
mid-fifties, Adam realised; his broad rawboned face was lined and pouched,
his eyes webbed with wrinkles and his iron-grey hair shot through with
paler strands at the temples. But still Simon de Montfort seemed to exude
the strength and vigour of a much younger man.
Abruptly he turned to look at Adam, his deep-set eyes sharpening as he
took him by the shoulder. ‘Understand,’ he said intently, ‘that it’s not for
myself that I fight this war. Not for those of my generation – the magnates
and barons who follow my banners or the king’s. It’s for you younger men
that I fight. For the bachelors of England – you, and my sons, and all the
others of your age. You are the men who will inherit this new realm we are
building.’
The word inherit seemed to hang in the air. Adam felt de Montfort’s
hand tighten on his shoulder, as if to stress it.
‘You understand that, yes?’
‘I do,’ Adam replied. ‘And I would be honoured to fight beside you for
that cause.’ He realised as he spoke that he was no longer merely trying to
impress; he meant what he said.
‘Good,’ de Montfort replied, his hand dropping as he turned once more
to stare at the castle. For a few moments he said nothing, and Adam
wondered if he should take his leave. Then the earl spoke again. ‘Remind
me,’ he said, raising a finger. ‘Your family come from near Waverley, is that
right? Blakemore or Woolmer area?’
‘Yes, lord. My father’s lands were just west of there.’ My inheritance, he
thought.
‘Then you must know that country well, I suppose?’ de Montfort went
on, as if he was pondering something. ‘I may need to call on your services,
one of these days,’ he said. ‘But I shall ask leave of Robert de Dunstanville
first, of course.’
Adam bowed, then turned to go. ‘May God protect you tomorrow,
Adam de Norton,’ de Montfort said.
Making his way back to the lower table, Adam turned over de
Montfort’s words in his mind. He still did not understand why the earl had
singled him out for praise, or what the meaning of his closing comments
might be. But the brief conversation had kindled a warm sense of pride in
him nonetheless. Foolish, he knew, to be so taken in by the words of the
powerful. But he felt himself almost taller and broader as he returned to his
place at the bench. And that, he supposed, was how men like Simon de
Montfort won others to their cause.
His stream of thought ended as he neared the table and caught the sound
of raised voices. Returning swiftly to awareness, he saw the men standing
around the table, the others who had risen from the benches, the tensed
postures and the angry gestures. With a jolt of alarm he saw that Robert de
Dunstanville was at the heart of the confrontation. Robert was still seated
on the bench, apparently calm, his hands on the table before him, but Adam
could read the man well and recognised that he was both extremely angry
and primed for violent movement.
 It was John FitzJohn who confronted him. The younger man had
crossed from the middle table to stand before him, one hand clasping his
belt and the other resting lightly on the hilt of his scabbarded knife. Other
men formed a ring around them, like spectators at a wrestling bout.
‘We know well the company you keep, de Dunstanville,’ FitzJohn was
saying, his face bunched into a sneer. ‘We know all about your Jewish
friends, and where you choose to lay your head . . . You call me Jew killer,
is that right? Well, I call you Jew lover, and consider it a more shameful
name by far!’
‘Why should I care about your dirty thoughts, FitzJohn?’ Robert said,
turning his palm casually. He was not looking directly at the man, but Adam
knew he was tracking his every move. ‘Why should I care anything for
some young pup who only won his spurs, what . . . yesterday, was it?’
‘I’ve done more to earn them than you!’ FitzJohn snarled. ‘I don’t think
anyone here has seen you on the field of battle lately. You deserted us on the
road to Northampton. You fought against us in London, while we were
regaining what was rightfully ours . . .’
‘When you were murdering and plundering defenceless people, you
mean?’ Robert said lightly, with a shrug. ‘Molesting women and killing
children?’
‘Oh, spare us your homilies!’ FitzJohn declared, stabbing his finger at
Robert. ‘There are few here who haven’t been squeezed by the Jews. Few
here who haven’t lost their patrimonies in loan repayments – speak to Ralph
de Heringaud there, he knows! How much blood have they sucked from
you, Ralph?’
De Heringaud raised his palms in entreaty, mumbling something.
‘Or,’ FitzJohn went on, with an air of satisfaction, ‘speak to Earl Simon
de Montfort. Ask him if he opposed my actions. Ask him if he thinks ill of
what I did, for the liberation of us all. Those who hate God and the Church
and despise the sacraments will always be my enemy!’
Growls of agreement came from the men at his back – Henry de
Hastings was one of them, with several other knights. Richard de
Malmaines was among them too, Adam noticed. But a rival band was
gathering to back Robert now, smaller but no less determined to stand their
ground. Adam moved forward to join them, pushing between them until he
stood at Robert’s shoulder.
 ‘And I have confessed all my sins, on this holy day!’ FitzJohn declared,
spreading his hands and grinning. ‘Confessed and been absolved. Although
I do not know that anybody saw you confessing, de Dunstanville. Did you
hear mass? Did you enter the church? Are you still a Christian at all, or does
your true allegiance lie elsewhere now? . . .’
Robert stood up suddenly, the bench shunting from beneath him, and
FitzJohn took a step backwards. Few of those present had swords, but their
scabbarded weapons lay beside them, and every man had his knife. Adam
glanced down, checking where his own sword lay.
‘Enough!’ a voice cried. ‘Friends, enough!’ Humphrey de Bohun came
striding through the crowd, spreading his arms to separate the rivals. Adam
saw Henry de Montfort, the earl’s son, following him, and the bishop too.
‘Step back from these accusations, I command you!’ de Bohun yelled.
‘My allegiance is plain for any man to see,’ Robert said, still speaking
quietly. ‘And you yourself shall see it tomorrow, FitzJohn, when we storm
the first breach. Side by side, eh?’
‘I shall consider that a challenge,’ John FitzJohn said, his face still
reddened. ‘First man over the wall. First onto the enemy rampart. Let all
here witness us. But if you fail us, de Dunstanville, if you shirk, or show
your heels . . .’
‘Likewise,’ Robert said. He leaned across the table and stuck out his
palm. FitzJohn seized it, and they glared at each other as they shook hands.
Adam’s heart was still beating fast, his reactions sharpened. He began to
ease out a breath, and then caught it again as Robert glanced over his
shoulder. De Dunstanville’s expression was hard and flinty, but there was a
look of intense satisfaction in his eyes. As if, Adam thought, he had
provoked the confrontation with FitzJohn. As if he had desired that
attention, that notoriety. As if he was making a point, somehow. Could it be,
Adam wondered, that Robert had envied his own audience with Simon de
Montfort? Could he even have resented it?
Then a ghastly retching sound came from along the table, and everyone
turned to see young William de Heringaud collapse from the bench,
spewing up the wine and rich meats he had consumed so avidly.

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 Chapter 22
‘Baby on the way!’ the man in the leather apron yelled, then hauled on
the rope. A grate of iron, a click and a jolt. Timbers wailed as the great
counterweight began to fall, and the lever arm of the trebuchet, the length of
a ship’s mast, sprang upwards. A stone the size of a man’s torso lay in the
leather sling; as the lever arm swung, the stone was jerked suddenly into
motion. A smooth rising curve, the arm creaking and the sling whipping up
and over, then the counterweight crashed to a halt and the sling released.
The stone flew clear across the outer bailey wall, a tumbling speck against
the bright sky. From the far side came the distant crunch of impact.
Adam had been watching the war engines all morning, amazed and
frankly terrified by their power and precision. Every time one was released
he hunched, chest tight, expecting the lever arm to crack, the sling to hurl
its massive projectile backwards or sideways into the ranks of the
surrounding men, or the whole ungainly timber construction to shudder and
explode into fragments. But all morning the crews had hauled down the
lever arms, loaded their machines and loosed them. All morning the
massive stones had arced over the rampart of the outer bailey to batter the
keep and the inner wall still held by the enemy.
Between shots the crews oiled the ammunition channels with liquid
grease from the kitchens, tensed and slackened bolts and knots, and
watched for the signals from the watchers on the outer wall, who alone
could judge where the stones were falling and the damage they were doing.
In the moments between the heaving swings and crashes of the big
trebuchets outside the walls came the sharper and more frequent cracks of
the lighter man-hauled perrier machines mounted inside the bailey, flinging
stones at closer range. The keep and the walls of the inner ward were being
battered incessantly from all sides.
‘Won’t be long now,’ Robert said. He was chewing his cheek, a tense
agitation animating his whole body.
‘You think they’ll surrender?’ a knight beside him asked.
Robert looked at him, witheringly, and shook his head. ‘They’ll make a
breach, I mean, in the wall of the inner ward. A breach wide enough to
storm.’
 ‘Move up! Move up!’ a serjeant was shouting, and the band of archers
and foot soldiers waiting by the bridge jolted into motion. Adam joined
Robert and the group of knights that accompanied him, and together they
jogged across the battered bridge and in through the blackened arches of the
gatehouse. The noise of clashing weapons and stamping boots, the heavy
clink of mail and the gruff words of command, echoed in the soot-covered
stone tunnel between the gates.
Adam had not ventured within the circuit of the castle walls since the
night they captured the town gates and stormed the bailey. That bloody and
confused combat in the darkness remained fresh in his memory. But the
scene before him now appeared totally transformed. Except for the chapel,
the buildings of the outer bailey had all been burned and reduced to
blackened shells. The open space within the circuit of walls was crossed by
lines of wooden mantlets and wicker hurdles, providing shelter for the
attacking archers from the arrows, crossbow quarrels and slingshot of the
defenders. Shelter too for the three perrier catapults, and for the troops
gathering for the assault on the inner defences.
The wall that crossed the bailey and enclosed the inner ward was neither
as high nor as strong as the outer ramparts, but with its gatehouse and
battlements it had presented a formidable obstacle on the night that Adam
and the other attackers had first tried to storm the castle. Now the wall too
looked very different: the battlements were in ruins, merlons demolished
and crenels knocked together by the impact of shot from the perrier
catapults. The wall itself was pitted and cratered, and in places the outer
stone facing had broken away to reveal the crumbling rubble core. As Adam
watched, another big projectile came arcing over from the trebuchets
beyond the gatehouse, to smash directly into the most damaged section of
the wall. Almost simultaneously another stone came whirling in from the
catapults over near the cathedral, striking the wall at the same point on the
far side. A cheer went up from the foot soldiers sheltering behind the
mantlets as the wall visibly quaked under the double impact. The defenders
were still up on the rampart walks, preparing to reinforce any breaches, but
the siege engines were working with devastating effect. Another missile
fell, crashing against the wall exactly on target, and the stones shuddered as
a mist of pulverised masonry rose from them.
Adam could taste the dust. His throat was dry, and when one of the
serjeants passed a waterskin he seized it gladly, swilling his mouth. His
body felt oiled with sweat beneath the weight of his hauberk, aketon and
helmet. Most of the fighting men around him were dressed in the same way.
They were not wearing leg armour, no mail chausses or greaves which
would make it harder to run and to clamber across broken walls and up
scaling ladders. Few wore helmets either, just iron skullcaps beneath their
tight-fitting mail coifs, ventails hanging loose from their faces so they could
breathe more easily. Adam noticed John FitzJohn and his serjeants,
distinctive in quartered yellow and red surcoats. Robert and FitzJohn had
exchanged glances as they entered the enclosure of the bailey, but there was
no time now for exhibitions of rivalry. Tension rippled through them all,
every man squinting as he gazed at the rampart, waiting for the wall to
crumble.
A yelp of pain came from close by, and everyone hunched instinctively.
Arrows were dropping from the dusty air; Adam had not realised they were
in range of the archers on the inner rampart. One of the serjeants lay
writhing in the dirt, his face corded with pain as he clutched his leg and
stared at the arrow pinning his thigh.
‘Heads down, shields up!’ John FitzJohn cried. His voice sounded thin,
youthful compared to the gruff shouts of the veteran serjeants around him.
Adam recalled that the man was only a few years older than he was.
The perrier catapults swung and loosed, swung and loosed, faster now
that a breach appeared imminent. Crouching in the shade of his raised
shield, Adam watched them as they worked. Each of the engines had a crew
of eight men hauling on the ropes, dragging the lever beam up and over to
sling the stone projectile towards the wall. The crews shouted in unison as
they heaved, and the engines cracked and jumped as they discharged their
shot.
‘Looking nervous, squire,’ a voice said. ‘You’ve never stormed a breach
before?’
Adam turned to see Richard de Malmaines running a whetstone along
the edge of his blade. ‘No, I have not,’ he said.
‘Me neither, to be fair,’ de Malmaines said, and let out a cracked laugh.
‘But I’m sure it’s not as terrifying as men say!’
Then a roar came from the men around them. Adam peered from
beneath his shield, narrowing his eyes into the glare. A plume of dust was
rolling upwards from the inner wall, about fifty paces to the left of the
gatehouse. As it cleared, all could see the section of masonry leaning
outwards, stones and rubble jammed together with great fissures running
through it. It looked like it would collapse at any moment.
A breathless hush, a double thud from the trebuchets outside the bailey,
and everyone craned upwards as two more projectiles sailed across the sky.
One overshot, vanishing behind the wall somewhere. The second struck the
ground just at the lip of the ditch before the wall, raising a shower of dirt as
it bounced upwards to crash directly against the base of the sagging
rampart. For a few heartbeats nothing happened. Then the wall section
cracked and began to slide, stones grinding as a chunk of masonry ten paces
wide toppled forward and crashed down into the ditch in front of the wall.
The breach was open, and as the dust cleared the attackers let out a savage
roar.
‘Forward!’ John FitzJohn yelled, raising his sword. ‘Everyone forward!’
But Robert de Dunstanville was already running, Adam close behind
him, John Chyld and half a dozen other serjeants at their heels. Forward
into the rolling dust cloud they ran, armour heavy, breath already rasping as
they swerved between the mantlets and hurdles and the knots of archers still
lofting shafts against the broken ramparts. The perriers were still cracking
away too, whirling stones into the breach to drive back anyone attempting
to seal it.
John FitzJohn and his men were on the right of the charge, Robert and
Adam on the left. But between and ahead of them were the knights and
squires of Simon de Montfort’s household, leading the vanguard. Their red
shields bore the rampant white lion blazon, and several of them carried long
scaling ladders between them.
An arrow banged into Adam’s shield as he ran, then a second. A man
ahead of him stumbled and fell as he was hit by an arcing shaft. The
charging men did not slacken their pace. Suddenly Adam saw the ditch
opening before him and staggered down the near side of it, kicking up dust.
Rubble grated underfoot, and he quickly realised that he had come down
too far to the left of the breach. A stone dropped from the wall above
clipped the rim of his helmet, and he felt the kick of it ringing in his skull.
The mound of rubble formed by the collapsed wall was a lot steeper
than it had appeared, but already men were scrambling up the tumbled stone
and shattered masonry. Arrows and crossbow quarrels spat down at them
from the edges of the ramparts to either side. Holding his shield above his
head, Adam began to clamber up the rubble slope. Robert was climbing
ahead of him; he could hear his labouring breath. The dust in the air formed
a choking yellow-grey fog.
‘Christ’s bones, I’m too old for this!’ John Chyld cried. Adam turned to
see him clambering up behind them.
‘A Montfort! A Montfort!’ The household knights were gasping out their
battle-cry as they reached the top of the rubble slope. In the breach, a wall
of jostling shields and a thicket of spears. The defenders were screaming
defiance, shoving at the men climbing up towards them. One of de
Montfort’s squires was speared in the face and tumbled backwards, bringing
down two of the men behind him as he fell. When Adam glanced upwards
he saw Richard de Malmaines clambering into the gap, sword raised. From
somewhere to his right he could hear the hoarse cries, ‘A FitzJohn! A
FitzJohn!’
Ahead of him Adam saw the body of a man who had been struck
directly by a catapult stone. The man’s upper chest and head had been
obliterated, turned into a smear of mashed flesh and blood spattered across
the rubble, but the arms still stuck out grotesquely to either side, hooked
fingers grasping air. Choking back nausea, Adam scrambled on upwards.
Then he was into the breach, grazing his shins on broken masonry.
Staring from beneath his helmet rim he saw the chaotic mass of struggling
bodies filling the gap, blades battering shields, maces and axes swinging, no
formation or order remaining beyond wild desperate combat. To his right,
Robert hooked his axe around a man’s ankle and wrenched him off his feet,
pausing only to deal a hacking blow at the fallen body before piling forward
into the melee.
‘Guard yourself!’ a voice cried in his ear, and Adam swung his shield
just in time as a man in a green gambeson hurled an axe at his head. The
spinning weapon struck his shield, the blow almost knocking him off his
feet, and already his attacker was on him. The man in green reached down
to his belt and drew a long-bladed knife, but Adam shoved forward with his
shield and slammed against his chest and right shoulder, pinning his arm
across his body. He drew back his fist, levelled his sword and stabbed
across the upper rim of his shield, punching the blade in beneath the man’s
coif and through his throat. The man gaped at him, blood spilling from the
wound, but as his legs went from beneath him he seized the rim of Adam’s
shield and dragged it down with him. Horrified, Adam tried to haul back on
the shield straps, but the man’s full weight was pulling at him and his sword
was still stuck in his throat. Why would he not die?
Adam twisted his right hand, sawing the blade in the wound, seeing
only the dying man’s eyes glaring back at him with a look of utter
contempt. The man choked, lips tightening, then blood burst from his
mouth. Abruptly the grip on Adam’s shield slackened as the man dropped
back onto the broken stones.
Staggering upright, the red stink washing over him, Adam drew a
gasping breath and pushed himself forward once more, over the wall to
cascade down the far slope of rubble. The fight had spilled back from the
breach now and across the inner ward towards the base of the great keep.
Adam risked a glance upwards; from here the structure appeared enormous,
impregnable, a sheer cliff of smooth stone, pierced with arrow slits all the
way up to the bristling ramparts and fighting platforms.
Someone barged against him and Adam staggered to one side. The other
man glanced at him with a twisted grin on his face – he was one of de
Montfort’s serjeants, wearing a red gambeson and coif – then a plunging
stone dropped from high overhead and burst his head apart. Adam let out a
cry as he stumbled backwards, feeling hot blood and bone fragments spatter
his face and chest.
Robert seized him by the arm, dragging him aside. ‘You’re hurt?’ he
demanded. Mastering himself, fighting down the sudden wave of sickening
terror and disgust, Adam shook his head.
‘There,’ Robert cried, pointing. ‘It’s de Leyburne!’
Adam stared through the milling bodies, and saw that a party of
defenders had sallied from the buildings of the inner ward to drive back the
assault. Leading them was a knight in full armour, his blue surcoat and
shield decorated with white lions. His face was obscured by his great helm,
but Adam recognised the man he had seen at Lagny years before, in Lord
Edward’s company. At his back was a tight wedge of armoured serjeants,
and already they had carved a path into the attacking horde.
They met FitzJohn’s retinue first, driving them back across the inner
ward towards the rubble-strewn breach. Adam saw John FitzJohn himself
limping heavily as two of his squires escorted him clear of the melee. Then
Robert charged into the fray, yelling for Adam to follow him.
But John Chyld was quicker. As the remnant of FitzJohn’s retinue fell
back, the grizzled serjeant dodged towards de Leyburne, swinging a
falchion. The knight reacted with practised speed, catching the blow on his
shield and turning it, then sliced off John Chyld’s hand with a single cut.
The serjeant buckled in pain, and de Leyburne wheeled his blade and
brought it hacking down through his shoulder to cleave his chest.
Robert halted with a cry of dismay as John Chyld fell. Adam was
already darting forward, grabbing the serjeant’s bloodied body by the sleeve
of his gambeson and dragging it clear of the hacking blades. He tried not to
look at the grisly wound. No man could have survived that. Invulnerable in
his full armour, Roger de Leyburne strode forward once more, leaving the
crippled and the dying sprawled in his wake.
A shout from the breach, and Adam glanced back to see the second
wave of attackers swarming in across the rubble, Sir Humphrey de Bohun
leading them. De Leyburne saw them too, and just for a moment his steady
murderous advance was checked. The men behind him were closing up,
raising shields against this new threat. Robert de Dunstanville saw his
chance, and struck.
Hooking his axe over the top of the other knight’s shield he dragged it
aside, then raised his own shield and punched the leading edge of it into the
gap below de Leyburne’s helmet rim. The knight staggered back, and
already Robert’s axe was wheeling to chop down on him. De Leyburne got
his shield up in time, and lifted his sword to strike. Robert pulled his blow
at the last moment, letting the axe skate off de Leyburne’s shield and then
cut diagonally at the knight’s wrist. De Leyburne bellowed as the axe grated
along his mail sleeve and his sword fell from his gauntleted grip. It was still
hanging by the leather wrist strap, but the knight was reeling now,
disorientated, and Robert dealt another hacking blow to his shoulderblade
with the axe.
De Leyburne dropped heavily to his knees, his shield slipping from his
arm. Robert had time to slam his axe against the side of the man’s helmet,
denting the iron, before the enemy serjeants closed around their master.
Two of them grabbed de Leyburne beneath the arms and began dragging
him back towards the keep, while the rest formed a wall of shields and
levelled spears.
‘Mine! He’s mine!’ Robert bellowed after them, madness in his voice,
but the serjeants had closed up as they retreated, fending off the furious
blows of his axe with their shields. Humphrey de Bohun’s men came
storming into the fight, spilling away to either side to try and outflank their
retreating foes and cut them off from the steps to the keep. Two of them
seized John Chyld’s mauled body and lugged it between them, carrying it
back towards the breach in the wall as Robert protected them, swinging his
axe at any attacker that approached. Adam could hear the grief in the
knight’s defiant yells. He felt it himself, a sense of disbelief that clouded his
senses, even as the fight grew hotter around him.
Now that the melee had tightened, he could see what lay ahead. At the
nearer corner of the keep the stone steps turned at an angle, passing through
a projecting turret closed by a single door of heavy studded oak. Above the
turret, the stairway ascended once more, up the left-hand face of the keep
towards a larger gatehouse. Before this second gate was a ten-foot gap,
crossed only by a narrow plank-bridge. Peering upwards, Adam felt his
heart seize in his chest. The steps were a death trap for anyone trying to
storm them. Truly, the keep was impregnable.
Already, as de Leyburne’s men carried their master up the first flight of
steps and through the turret gate, the mass of attackers were surging after
them. But there were men with crossbows on the turret cap and the
gatehouse roof, and at every slit and embrasure above the steps. Stones
were showering down from the high battlements too; everyone who could
pick up a rock and hurl it was concentrated in the corner above the steps,
raining death on the men below.
Adam crouched beneath his shield, feeling the concussion as stones and
crossbow bolts struck it. Two bolts had already punched through the
shield’s leather and wood, their iron heads projecting from the back. Knees
bent, he scuttled to the base of the keep and pressed himself against the
wall, desperately trying to keep clear of the hail of missiles. Something dark
fell from above, and the contents of a chamberpot spattered the ground.
A roar, then a battering noise. De Leyburne’s men had managed to
retreat through the turret door and force it closed behind them; now de
Montfort’s men were hacking at the oak with axes and hammers. But Adam
could see that the effort would be useless; only a ram could break through
that door, and with the angle of the steps immediately below it there was no
room to manoeuvre one up there or to swing it effectively.
Other men were sheltering at the base of the keep with Adam, a crush of
bodies pressed against the stones, men in gambesons and mail, several
wounded and groaning, others craning outwards to try and see what was
happening above them. A strange hissing sound came from high overhead,
then a wave of dry heat that seemed to roll downwards from the steps.
Sudden motion, shrieks of terror, men scrambling away to either side, some
leaping out into the open to brave the arrows. Uncomprehending, Adam
followed the rush around the corner of the keep. When he glanced back he
saw bodies tumbling from the steps amid a strange whirling brown mist.
Sand, he realised – the defenders had tipped red-hot sand down onto the
men outside the turret door. He felt it on his face as the breeze carried it,
little freckles of fire, and turned away quickly. But the men who had been
struck directly had no escape. The burning-hot sand was trapped in the links
of their mail and beneath the padding of their gambesons, filtering quickly
downwards until it met flesh. Those who had thrown themselves from the
steps were rolling in agony, screaming like souls in hell as they tried to rip
off their armour and clothing to escape the searing particles. Some cried for
water, but there was none. Arrows and bolts spat down from above, ending
their suffering quickly enough.
The remaining attackers had fallen back from the steps, most of them
fleeing across the bailey while others leaped down to join Adam and the
others sheltering at the base of the wall. Crouched beneath the steps, they
were sheltered from the missiles from overhead. But if they stepped out into
the open, Adam realised, every crossbow on the ramparts and the gatehouse
roof would be aimed at them at once.
‘I believe we’ve done enough to satisfy the demands of honour, don’t
you?’ the knight beside Adam said. He turned, and saw it was Richard de
Malmaines. The other man seemed just as surprised to see him there. His
bulging eyes and the smear of blood across his face gave him a particularly
deranged look.
‘We’re not going to break into the keep from here, certainly,’ Adam
said, with a wary glance upwards. They could hear the defenders yelling at
them, goading them to show themselves, taunting them with the defeat of
their assault. Adam felt the angry frustration boiling inside him. To have got
this far and then to have failed – it was maddening.
‘We could take one of those ladders and set it against the wall here,’ he
said, glancing at the discarded equipment littering the base of the steps.
‘Climb up to the inner gateway and try to break it down.’
‘Excellent idea,’ de Malmaines said in a wry tone. ‘You go first, and I’ll
follow right behind.’
 Adam turned to him, frowning, and de Malmaines laughed coldly.
‘Remember,’ he said. ‘I’m still pledged to kill you.’
On the far side of the inner ward, another group of men were sheltering
in the ruins of buildings along the back of the rampart wall. Robert de
Dunstanville was among them, carrying de Leyburne’s discarded shield as a
trophy; he saw Adam and gestured towards the breach in the wall. Adam
saw that the men who had been thrown back from the keep had regrouped
there, joined by others from the outer bailey carrying wooden mantlets and
wicker screens. But open ground separated Adam and the others with him
from that sanctuary. Twenty long strides, Adam estimated, through a storm
of arrows, bolts, slingshot and stones from the ramparts of the keep and gate
tower.
Another group of men edged around the corner of the keep to join those
sheltering with Adam. Humphrey de Bohun was leading them; he had three
crossbow bolts jutting from his shield and he clasped the hilt of a broken
sword. Adam had seen him earlier, with the party that tried to storm the
steps and attack the turret door. Sir Humphrey’s face was marked with red
blisters from the heated sand.
‘Does anyone have water?’ he asked, his voice parched. None did. Lips
drawn back from his teeth, he tipped his head back and gazed up at the dark
cliff of masonry above them. ‘We can avail nothing here,’ he said.
‘We must get back to the breach, lord,’ one of the serjeants said,
confirming what all of them knew. ‘Lead, and we’ll follow . . .’
More yells of derision from above them, then came the sound of iron
hinges and the bang of the wooden plank-bridge falling into place. The men
along the base of the wall leaped up instantly, hefting shields and weapons.
Boots crashed on the plank-bridge, then on the stone steps as the castle
defenders sallied forth once more to cut them off from their line of retreat.
‘Now!’ Humphrey de Bohun yelled. ‘Back to the breach – with me!’
Shoving themselves away from the wall, the little group of men broke
into a sprint across the open ground. Instantly the air seethed with arrows
and bolts. Adam saw a man to his right pinned through the foot by a
quarrel; two others seized him by the elbows and dragged him after them as
he howled in pain. A stone dropped immediately ahead of him, raising dust,
and he leaped over it and kept running. He was almost there now,
clambering up onto the lower slope of rubble that climbed to the breach.
Then he heard a shout, and glanced behind him.
 Humphrey de Bohun was sprawled face down in the arrow-studded dirt.
For one galloping heartbeat Adam thought he was dead, that de Bohun, the
man who would marry Joane de Quincy, had been slain.
Then de Bohun moved, reaching out with one hand and trying to raise
himself to crawl. Adam was poised at the base of the rubble slope. Other
men ran past him, scrambling into the safety of the breach and the line of
mantlets.
‘Leave him!’ de Malmaines cried. ‘He’s a dead man!’
But already Adam was moving, instinct propelling him. In his mind he
heard his own voice telling him he was a fool, that he would be better off by
far leaving Humphrey to die; that Joane would be better off too if de Bohun
was gone.
Too late. Already he was dropping to kneel beside the fallen man. He
had sheathed his sword, but still carried his shield strapped to his left arm.
He raised it over them both; at once he felt the impact of a crossbow bolt,
then a stone banging off the rim. De Bohun had been struck on the head, as
far as Adam could see. Blood was coursing down his face from beneath his
mail coif, but he appeared to be merely stunned. Adam hooked his right arm
beneath Sir Humphrey’s chest and heaved him up, straightening his legs
and keeping his shield raised over him. But de Bohun had always been a big
man, and in full mail he weighed a lot more than Adam.
Another bolt slammed into his shield. Adam could sense the men on the
ramparts and towers spanning their crossbows and whirling their slings as
fast as they could, all of them concentrating their shots at the two figures
pinned down in the open. Another rock fell, only a stride away from de
Bohun’s feet. Sir Humphrey grabbed hold of Adam’s surcoat and clung on,
breath rasping from his throat as he tried to blink the blood from his eyes.
Adam was dragging him, hunched over the heavy body as he felt the sweat
bursting on his forehead and coursing down his face.
‘Stand up!’ he hissed through his teeth. ‘On your feet, damn you!’
Then suddenly the weight eased as another man grabbed Sir
Humphrey’s right arm. Between them they lifted him, and Humphrey
groaned and kicked his legs, getting himself upright and beginning to
stagger.
‘By Christ’s wounds, I will not let you die!’ de Malmaines told Adam,
his eyes wide with demented rage. ‘Your life belongs to me – not to them!’
 Adam laughed suddenly, through the screaming pain in his muscles, the
sweat glazing his face, the death raining down all around them. He laughed,
his voice cracking, as together he and Richard de Malmaines dragged the
body of Humphrey de Bohun up the slope of rubble and over the breach in
the wall, where the mantlets were dragged aside and the arms of other men
seized them and guided them to safety at last.
*
That night Adam lay in his tent in the cathedral grounds. He could hear
drunken singing from the nearby watch-fires, but most of the men in de
Montfort’s army were too weary and demoralised even to drink. His body
ached, his muscles felt raw, and he was covered in grazes and cuts he had
not even noticed at the time. In the darkness of the tent Robert de
Dunstanville was snoring deeply. Though he had come through the fight
unscathed, the death of John Chyld had crushed any satisfaction he might
have felt about pressing his advance further than John FitzJohn, or bringing
down de Leyburne. Adam felt a similar anguish; he had known loss before,
but always at a remove. The serjeant had been part of his life for the last
two and a half years, and that sudden and senseless death in the battle had
stunned him.
But when he closed his eyes, Adam saw only the face of the man he had
killed. The first man he was sure that he had killed, at least. He saw again
the look of contempt in the man’s eyes as the life ebbed from him, as the
blood burst from his mouth. Adam did not regret what he had done. But it
was a grave thing, a sobering thing, to take a life. And he had been lucky
indeed not to have been killed himself. De Bohun had thanked him, and
Robert had appeared warily impressed. But perhaps, Adam thought, de
Malmaines had been right all along. He had been a fool to risk his own life
to save a man like Humphrey de Bohun.
There would be no swift conclusion to their siege of Rochester Castle.
Already men were down in the castle moat with picks and shovels and
baulks of wood to begin their mine beneath the castle walls. It would take at
least a week just to dig beneath the outer defences, and even with the king
and Lord Edward still somewhere far to the north, few believed they had
that long.
Lying on his bedroll in the stale gloom of the tent, Adam imagined the
labourers deep underground, hacking at the soil. As he slid into weary sleep,
he could almost believe that he heard them down there, the scrape of their
shovels and the muffled heave of their breath as they dug blindly onward
through the dark earth.