Thomas unlooped the string from his bow and placed it under his helmet. 'I told you how to get in,' he told Skeat, 'told you at dawn.'

Skeat looked at Thomas for a long time. 'We tried it, lad.'

'I got to the stakes, Will. I promise I did. I got through them.'

'So tell me again,' Skeat said, and Thomas did. He crouched in the ditch under the jeers of La Roche-Derrien's defenders and he told Will Skeat how to unlock the town, and Skeat listened because the Yorkshireman had learned to trust Thomas of Hookton.

Thomas had been in Brittany for three years now, and though Brittany was not France its usurping Duke brought a constant succession of Frenchman to be killed and Thomas had discovered he had a skill for killing. It was not just that he was a good archer - the army was full of men who were as good as he and there was a handful who were better - but he had discovered he could sense what the enemy was doing. He would watch them, watch their eyes, see where they were looking, and as often as not he antic.i.p.ated an enemy move and was ready to greet it with an arrow. It was like a game, but one where he knew the rules and they did not.

It helped that William Skeat trusted him. Skeat had been unwilling to recruit Thomas when they first met by the gaol in Dorchester where Skeat was testing a score of thieves and murderers to see how well they could shoot a bow. He needed recruits and the King needed archers, so men who would otherwise have faced the gallows were being pardoned if they would serve abroad, and fully half of Skeat's men were such felons. Thomas, Skeat had reckoned, would never fit in with such rogues. He had taken Thomas's right hand, seen the callouses on the two bow fingers which said he was an archer, but then had tapped the boy's soft palm.

'What have you been doing?' Skeat had asked.

'My father wanted me to be a priest.'

'A priest, eh?' Skeat had been scornful. 'Well, you can pray for us, I suppose.'

'I can kill for you too.'

Skeat had eventually let Thomas join the band, not least because the boy brought his own horse. At first Skeat thought Thomas of Hookton was little more than another wild fool looking for adventure - a clever fool, to be sure - but Thomas had taken to the life of an archer in Brittany with alacrity. The real business of the civil war was plunder and, day after day, Skeat's men rode into land that gave fealty to the supporters of Duke Charles and they burned the farms, stole the harvest and took the livestock. A lord whose peasants cannot pay rent is a lord who cannot afford to hire soldiers, so Skeat's men-at-arms and mounted archers were loosed on the enemy's land like a plague, and Thomas loved the life. He was young and his task was not just to fight the enemy, but to ruin him. He burned farms, poisoned wells, stole seed-grain, broke ploughs, fired the mills, ring-barked the orchards and lived off his plunder. Skeat's men were the lords of Brittany, a scourge from h.e.l.l, and the French-speaking villagers in the east of the Duchy called them the h.e.l.lequin, h.e.l.lequin, which meant the devil's hors.e.m.e.n. Once in a while an enemy war band would seek to trap them and Thomas had learned that the English archer, with his great long war bow, was the king of those skirmishes. The enemy hated the archers. If they captured an English bowman they killed him. A man-at-arms might be imprisoned, a lord would be ransomed, but an archer was always murdered. Tortured first, then murdered. which meant the devil's hors.e.m.e.n. Once in a while an enemy war band would seek to trap them and Thomas had learned that the English archer, with his great long war bow, was the king of those skirmishes. The enemy hated the archers. If they captured an English bowman they killed him. A man-at-arms might be imprisoned, a lord would be ransomed, but an archer was always murdered. Tortured first, then murdered.

Thomas thrived on the life, and Skeat had learned the lad was clever, certainly clever enough to know better than to fall asleep one night when he should have been standing guard and, for that offence Skeat had thumped the daylights out of him. 'You were G.o.dd.a.m.n drunk!' he had accused Thomas, then beat him thoroughly, using his fists like blacksmith's hammers. He had broken Thomas's nose, cracked a rib and called him a stinking piece of Satan's s.h.i.t, but at the end of it Will Skeat saw that the boy was still grinning, and six months later he made Thomas into a vintenar, which meant he was in charge of twenty other archers.

Those twenty were nearly all older than Thomas, but none seemed to mind his promotion for they reckoned he was different. Most archers wore their hair cropped short, but Thomas's hair was flamboyantly long and wrapped with bowcords so it fell in a long black plait to his waist. He was clean-shaven and dressed only in black. Such affectations could have made him unpopular, but he worked hard, had a quick wit and was generous. He was still odd, though. All archers wore talismans, maybe a cheap metal pendant showing a saint, or a dried hare's foot, but Thomas had a desiccated dog's paw hanging round his neck which he claimed was the hand of St Guinefort, and no one dared dispute him because he was the most learned man in Skeat's band. He spoke French like a n.o.bleman and Latin like a priest, and Skeat's archers were perversely proud of him because of those accomplishments. Now, three years after joining Will Skeat's band, Thomas was one of his chief archers. Skeat even asked his advice sometimes; he rarely took it, but he asked, and Thomas still had the dog's paw, a crooked nose and an impudent grin.

And now he had an idea how to get into La Roche-Derrien.

That afternoon, when the dead man-at-arms with the split skull was still tangled in the abandoned ladder, Sir Simon Jekyll rode towards the town and there trotted his horse back and forth beside the small, dark-feathered crossbow bolts that marked the furthest range of the defenders' weapons. His squire, a daft boy with a slack jaw and puzzled eyes, watched from a distance. The squire held Sir Simon's lance, and should any warrior in the town accept the implicit challenge of Sir Simon's mocking presence, the squire would give his master the lance and the two hors.e.m.e.n would fight on the pasture until one or the other yielded. And it would not be Sir Simon for he was as skilled a knight as any in the Earl of Northampton's army.

And the poorest.

His destrier was ten years old, hard-mouthed and sway-backed. His saddle, which was high in pommel and cantle so that it held him firm in its grip, had belonged to his father, while his hauberk, a tunic of mail that covered him from neck to knees, had belonged to his grandfather. His sword was over a hundred years old, heavy, and would not keep its edge. His lance had warped in the wet winter weather, while his helmet, which hung from his pommel, was an old steel pot with a worn leather lining. His shield, with its escutcheon of a mailed fist clutching a war-hammer, was battered and faded. His mail gauntlets, like the rest of his armour, were rusting, which was why his squire had a thick, reddened ear and a frightened face, though the real reason for the rust was not that the squire did not try to clean the mail, but that Sir Simon could not afford the vinegar and fine sand that was used to scour the steel. He was poor.

Poor and bitter and ambitious.

And good.

No one denied he was good. He had won the tournament at Tewkesbury and received a purse of forty pounds. At Gloucester his victory had been rewarded by a fine suit of armour. At Chelmsford it had been fifteen pounds and a fine saddle, and at Canterbury he had half hacked a Frenchman to death before being given a gilded cup filled with coins, and where were all those trophies now? In the hands of the bankers and lawyers and merchants who had a lien on the Berkshire estate that Sir Simon had inherited two years before, though in truth his inheritance had been nothing but debt, and the moment his father was buried the moneylenders had closed on Sir Simon like hounds on a wounded deer.

'Marry an heiress,' his mother had advised, and she had paraded a dozen women for her son's inspection, but Sir Simon was determined his wife should be as beautiful as he was handsome. And he was handsome. He knew that. He would stare into his mother's mirror and admire his reflection. He had thick fair hair, a broad face and a short beard. At Chester, where he had unhorsed three knights inside four minutes, men had mistaken him for the King, who was reputed to fight anonymously in tournaments, and Sir Simon was not going to throw away his good royal looks on some wrinkled hag just because she had money. He would marry a woman worthy of himself, but that ambition would not pay the estate's debts and so Sir Simon, to defend himself against his creditors, had sought a letter of protection from King Edward III. That letter shielded Sir Simon from all legal proceedings so long as he served the King in a foreign war, and when Sir Simon had crossed the Channel, taking six men-at-arms, a dozen archers and a slack-jawed squire from his enc.u.mbered estate, he had left his creditors helpless in England. Sir Simon had also brought with him a certainty that he would soon capture some French or Breton n.o.bleman whose ransom would be sufficient to pay all he owed, but so far the winter campaign had not yielded a single prisoner of rank and so little plunder that the army was now on half rations. And how many well-born prisoners could he expect to take in a miserable town like La Roche-Derrien? It was a s.h.i.t hole.

Yet he rode up and down beneath its walls, hoping some knight would take the challenge and ride from the town's southern gate that had so far resisted six English a.s.saults, but instead the defenders jeered him and called him a coward for staying out of their crossbows' range and the insults piqued Sir Simon's pride so that he rode closer to the walls, his horse's hoofs sometimes clattering on one of the fallen quarrels. Men shot at him, but the bolts fell well short and it was Sir Simon's turn to jeer.

'He's just a b.l.o.o.d.y fool,' Jake said, watching from the English camp. Jake was one of William Skeat's felons, a murderer who had been saved from the gallows at Exeter. He was cross-eyed, yet still managed to shoot straighter than most men. 'Now what's he doing?'

Sir Simon had stopped his horse and was facing the gate so that the men who watched thought that perhaps a Frenchman was coming to challenge the English knight who taunted them. Instead they saw that a lone crossbowman was standing on the gate turret and beckoning Sir Simon forward, daring him to come within range.

Only a fool would respond to such a dare, and Sir Simon dutifully responded. He was twenty-five years old, bitter and brave, and he reckoned a display of careless arrogance would dishearten the besieged garrison and encourage the dispirited English and so he spurred the destrier deep into the killing ground where the French bolts had torn the heart out of the English attacks. No crossbowman fired now; there was just the lone figure standing on the gate tower, and Sir Simon, riding to within a hundred yards, saw it was the Blackbird.

This was the first time Sir Simon had seen the woman every archer called the Blackbird and he was close enough to perceive that she was indeed a beauty. She stood straight, slender and tall, cloaked against the winter wind, but with her long black hair loose like a young girl's. She offered him a mocking bow and Sir Simon responded, bending awkwardly in the tight saddle, then he watched as she picked up her crossbow and put it to her shoulder.

And when we're inside the town, Sir Simon thought, I'll make you pay for this. You'll be flat on your a.r.s.e, Blackbird, and I'll be on top. He stood his horse quite still, a lone horseman in the French slaughter ground, daring her to aim straight and knowing she would not. And when she missed he would give her a mocking salute and the French would take it as a bad omen.

But what if she did aim straight?

Sir Simon was tempted to lift the awkward helmet from his saddle's pommel, but resisted the impulse. He had dared the Blackbird to do her worst and he could show no nerves in front of a woman and so he waited as she levelled the bow. The town's defenders were watching her and doubtless praying. Or perhaps making wagers.

Come on, you b.i.t.c.h, he said under his breath. It was cold, but there was sweat on his forehead.

She paused, pushed the black hair from her face, then rested the bow on a crenellation and aimed again. Sir Simon kept his head up and his gaze straight. Just a woman, he told himself. Probably could not hit a wagon at five paces. His horse shivered and he reached out to pat its neck. 'Be going soon, boy,' he told it.

The Blackbird, watched by a score of defenders, closed her eyes and shot.

Sir Simon saw the quarrel as a small black blur against the grey sky and the grey stones of the church towers showing above La Roche-Derrien's walls.

He knew the quarrel would go wide. Knew it with an absolute certainty. She was a woman, for G.o.d's sake! And that was why he did not move as he saw the blur coming straight for him. He could not believe it. He was waiting for the quarrel to slide to left or right, or to plough into the frost-hardened ground, but instead it was coming unerringly towards his breast and, at the very last instant, he jerked up the heavy shield and ducked his head and felt a huge thump on his left arm as the bolt slammed home to throw him hard against the saddle's cantle. The bolt hit the shield so hard that it split through the willow boards and its point gouged a deep cut through the mail sleeve and into his forearm. The French were cheering and Sir Simon, knowing that other crossbowmen might now try to finish what the Blackbird had begun, pressed his knee into his destrier's flank and the beast obediently turned and then responded to the spurs.

'I'm alive,' he said aloud, as if that would silence the French jubilation. G.o.dd.a.m.n b.i.t.c.h, he thought. He would pay her right enough, pay her till she squealed, and he curbed his horse, not wanting to look as though he fled.

An hour later, after his squire had put a bandage over the slashed forearm, Sir Simon had convinced himself that he had scored a victory. He had dared, he had survived. It had been a demonstration of courage, and he lived, and for that he reckoned he was a hero and he expected a hero's welcome as he walked toward the tent that housed the army's commander, the Earl of Northampton. The tent was made from two sails, their linen yellow and patched and threadbare after years of service at sea. They made a shabby shelter, but that was typical of William Bohun, Earl of Northampton who, though cousin to the King and as rich a man as any in England, despised gaudiness.

The Earl, indeed, looked as patched and threadbare as the sails that made his tent. He was a short and squat man with a face, men said, like the backside of a bull, but the face mirrored the Earl's soul, which was blunt, brave and straightforward. The army liked William Bohun, Earl of Northampton, because he was as tough as they were themselves. Now, as Sir Simon ducked into the tent, the Earl's curly brown hair was half covered with a bandage where the boulder thrown from La Roche-Derrien's wall had split his helmet and driven a ragged edge of steel into his scalp. He greeted Sir Simon sourly. 'Tired of life?'

'The silly b.i.t.c.h shut her eyes when she pulled the trigger!' Sir Simon said, oblivious to the Earl's tone.

'She still aimed well,' the Earl said angrily, 'and that will put heart into the b.a.s.t.a.r.ds. G.o.d knows, they need no encouragement.'

'I'm alive, my lord,' Sir Simon said cheerfully. 'She wanted to kill me. She failed. The bear lives and the dogs go hungry.' He waited for the Earl's companions to congratulate him, but they avoided his eyes and he interpreted their sullen silence as jealousy.

Sir Simon was a b.l.o.o.d.y fool, the Earl thought, and shivered. He might not have minded the cold so much had the army been enjoying success, but for two months the English and their Breton allies had stumbled from failure to farce, and the six a.s.saults on La Roche-Derrien had plumbed the depths of misery. So now the Earl had called a council of war to suggest one final a.s.sault, this one to be made that same evening. Every other attack had been in the forenoon, but perhaps a surprise escalade in the dying winter light would take the defenders by surprise. Only what small advantages that surprise might bring had been spoiled because Sir Simon's foolhardiness must have given the townsfolk a new confidence and there was little confidence among the Earl's war captains who had gathered under the yellow sailcloth.

Four of those captains were knights who, like Sir Simon, led their own men to war, but the others were mercenary soldiers who had contracted their men to the Earl's service. Three were Bretons who wore the white ermine badge of the Duke of Brittany and led men loyal to the de Montfort Duke, while the others were English captains, all of them commoners who had grown hard in war. William Skeat was there, and next to him was Richard Totesham, who had begun his service as a man-at-arms and now led a hundred and forty knights and ninety archers in the Earl's service. Neither man had ever fought in a tournament, nor would they ever be invited, yet both were wealthier than Sir Simon, and that rankled. My hounds of war, the Earl of Northampton called the independent captains, and the Earl liked them, but then the Earl had a curious taste for vulgar company. He might be cousin to England's King, but William Bohun happily drank with men like Skeat and Totesham, ate with them, spoke English with them, hunted with them and trusted them, and Sir Simon felt excluded from that friendship. If any man in this army should have been an intimate of the Earl it was Sir Simon, a noted champion of tournaments, but Northampton would rather roll in the gutter with men like Skeat.

'How's the rain?' the Earl asked.

'Starting again,' Sir Simon answered, jerking his head at the tent's roof, against which the rain pattered fitfully.

'It'll clear,' Skeat said dourly. He rarely called the Earl 'my lord', addressing him instead as an equal which, to Sir Simon's amazement, the Earl seemed to like.

'And it's only spitting,' the Earl said, peering out from the tent and letting in a swirl of damp, cold air. 'Bowstrings will pluck in this.'

'So will crossbow cords,' Richard Totesham interjected. b.a.s.t.a.r.ds,' he added. What made the English failure so galling was that La Roche-Derrien's defenders were not soldiers but townsfolk: fishermen and boatbuilders, carpenters and masons, and even the Blackbird, a woman! 'And the rain might stop,' Totesham went on, 'but the ground will be slick. It'll be bad footing under the walls.'

'Don't go tonight,' Will Skeat advised. 'Let my boys go in by the river tomorrow morning.'

The Earl rubbed the wound on his scalp. For a week now he had a.s.saulted La Roche-Derrien's southern wall and he still believed his men could take those ramparts, yet he also sensed the pessimism among his hounds of war. One more repulse with another twenty or thirty dead would leave his army dispirited and with the prospect of trailing back to Finisterre with nothing accomplished. 'Tell me again,' he said.

Skeat wiped his nose on his leather sleeve. 'At low tide,' he said, 'there's a way round the north wall. One of my lads was down there last night.'

'We tried it three days ago,' one of the knights objected.

'You tried the down-river side,' Skeat said. 'I want to go up-river.'

'That side has stakes just like the other,' the Earl said.

'Loose,' Skeat responded. One of the Breton captains translated the exchange for his companions. 'My boy pulled a stake clean out,' Skeat went on, 'and he reckons half a dozen others will lift or break. They're old oak trunks, he says, instead of elm, and they're rotted through.'

'How deep is the mud?' the Earl asked.

'Up to his knees.'

La Roche-Derrien's wall encompa.s.sed the west, south and east of the town, while the northern side was defended by the River Jaudy, and where the semicircular wall met the river the townsfolk had planted huge stakes in the mud to block access at low tide. Skeat was now suggesting there was a way through those rotted stakes, but when the Earl's men had tried to do the same thing at the eastern side of the town the attackers had got bogged down in the mud and the townsfolk had picked them off with bolts. It had been a worse slaughter than the repulses in front of the southern gate.

'But there's still a wall on the riverbank,' the Earl pointed out.

'Aye,' Skeat allowed, 'but the silly b.a.s.t.a.r.ds have broken it down in places. They've built quays there, and there's one right close to the loose stakes.'

'So your men will have to remove the stakes and climb the quays, all under the gaze of men on the wall?' the Earl asked sceptically.

'They can do it,' Skeat said firmly.

The Earl still reckoned his best chance of success was to close his archers on the south gate and pray that their arrows would keep the defenders cowering while his men-at-arms a.s.saulted the breach, yet that, he conceded, was the plan that had failed earlier in the day and on the day before that. And he had, he knew, only a day or two left. He possessed fewer than three thousand men, and a third of those were sick, and if he could not find them shelter he would have to march back west with his tail between his legs. He needed a town, any town, even La Roche-Derrien.

Will Skeat saw the worries on the Earl's broad face. 'My lad was within fifteen paces of the quay last night,' he a.s.serted. 'He could have been inside the town and opened the gate.'

'So why didn't he?' Sir Simon could not resist asking. 'Christ's bones!' he went on. 'But I'd have been inside!'

'You're not an archer,' Skeat said sourly, then made the sign of the cross. At Guingamp one of Skeat's archers had been captured by the defenders, who had stripped the hated bowman naked then cut him to pieces on the rampart where the besiegers could see his long death. His two bow fingers had been severed first, then his manhood, and the man had screamed like a pig being gelded as he bled to death on the battlements.

The Earl gestured for a servant to replenish the cups of mulled wine. 'Would you lead this attack, Will?' he asked.

'Not me,' Skeat said. 'I'm too old to wade through boggy mud. I'll let the lad who went past the stakes last night lead them in. He's a good boy, so he is. He's a clever b.a.s.t.a.r.d, but an odd one. He was going to be a priest, he was, only he met me and came to his senses.'

The Earl was plainly tempted by the idea. He toyed with the hilt of his sword, then nodded. 'I think we should meet your clever b.a.s.t.a.r.d. Is he near?'

'Left him outside,' Skeat said, then twisted on his stool. 'Tom, you savage! Come in here!'

Thomas stooped into the Earl's tent, where the gathered captains saw a tall, long-legged young man dressed entirely in black, all but for his mail coat and the red cross sewn onto his tunic. All the English troops wore that cross of St George so that in a melee they would know who was a friend and who an enemy. The young man bowed to the Earl, who realized he had noticed this archer before, which was hardly surprising for Thomas was a striking-looking man. He wore his black hair in a pigtail, tied with bowcord, he had a long bony nose that was crooked, a clean-shaven chin and watchful, clever eyes, though perhaps the most noticeable thing about him was that he was clean. That and, on his shoulder, the great bow that was one of the longest the Earl had seen, and not only long, but painted black, while mounted on the outer belly of the bow was a curious silver plate which seemed to have a coat of arms engraved on it. There was vanity here, the Earl thought, vanity and pride, and he approved of both things.

'For a man who was up to his knees in river mud last night,' the Earl said with a smile, 'you're remarkably clean.'

'I washed, my lord.'

'You'll catch cold!' the Earl warned him. 'What's your name?'

'Thomas of Hookton, my lord.'

'So tell me what you found last night, Thomas of Hookton.'

Thomas told the same tale as Will Skeat. How, after dark, and as the tide fell, he had waded out into the Jaudy's mud. He had found the fence of stakes ill-maintained, rotting and loose, and he had lifted one out of its socket, wriggled through the gap and gone a few paces towards the nearest quay. 'I was close enough, my lord, to hear a woman singing,' he said. The woman had been singing a song that his own mother had crooned to him when he was small and he had been struck by that oddity.

The Earl frowned when Thomas finished, not because he disapproved of anything the archer had said, but because the scalp wound that had left him unconscious for an hour was throbbing. 'What were you doing at the river last night?' he asked, mainly to give himself more time to think about the idea.

Thomas said nothing.

'Another man's woman,' Skeat eventually answered for Thomas, 'that's what he was doing, my lord, another man's woman.'

The a.s.sembled men laughed, all but Sir Simon Jekyll, who looked sourly at the blushing Thomas. The b.a.s.t.a.r.d was a mere archer yet he was wearing a better coat of mail than Sir Simon could afford! And he had a confidence that stank of impudence. Sir Simon shuddered. There was an unfairness to life which he did not understand. Archers from the shires were capturing horses and weapons and armour while he, a champion of tournaments, had not managed anything more valuable than a pair of G.o.dd.a.m.ned boots. He felt an irresistible urge to deflate this tall, composed archer.

'One alert sentinel, my lord,' Sir Simon spoke to the Earl in Norman French so that only the handful of wellborn men in the tent would understand him, 'and this boy will be dead and our attack will be floundering in river mud.'

Thomas gave Sir Simon a very level look, insolent in its lack of expression, then answered in fluent French. 'We should attack in the dark,' he said, then turned back to the Earl. 'The tide will be low just before dawn tomorrow, my lord.'

The Earl looked at him with surprise. 'How did you learn French?'

'From my father, my lord.'

'Do we know him?'

'I doubt it, my lord.'

The Earl did not pursue the subject. He bit his lip and rubbed the pommel of his sword, a habit when he was thinking.

'All well and good if you get inside,' Richard Totesham, seated on a milking stool next to Will Skeat, growled at Thomas. Totesham led the largest of the independent bands and had, on that account, a greater authority than the rest of the captains. 'But what do you do when you're inside?'

Thomas nodded, as though he had expected the question. 'I doubt we can reach a gate,' he said, 'but if I can put a score of archers onto the wall beside the river then they can protect it while ladders are placed.'

'And I've got two ladders,' Skeat added. 'They'll do.'

The Earl still rubbed the pommel of his sword. 'When we tried to attack by the river before,' he said, 'we got trapped in the mud. It'll be just as deep where you want to go.'

'Hurdles, my lord,' Thomas said. 'I found some in a farm.' Hurdles were fence sections made of woven willow that could make a quick pen for sheep or could be laid flat on mud to provide men with footing.

'I told you he was clever,' Will Skeat said proudly. 'Went to Oxford, didn't you, Tom?'

'When I was too young to know better,' Thomas said drily.

The Earl laughed. He liked this boy and he could see why Skeat had such faith in him. 'Tomorrow morning, Thomas?' he asked.

'Better than dusk tonight, my lord. They'll still be lively at dusk.' Thomas gave Sir Simon an expressionless glance, intimating that the knight's display of stupid bravery would have quickened the defenders' spirits.

'Then tomorrow morning it is,' the Earl said. He turned to Totesham. 'But keep your boys closed on the south gate today. I want them to think we're coming there again.' He looked back to Thomas. 'What's the badge on your bow, boy?'

'Just something I found, my lord,' Thomas lied, handing the bow to the Earl, who had held out his hand. In truth he had cut the silver badge out of the crushed chalice that he had found under his father's robes, then pinned the metal to the front of the bow where his left hand had worn the silver almost smooth.

The Earl peered at the device. 'A yale?'