'I think that's what the beast is called, my lord,' Thomas said, pretending ignorance.

'Not the badge of anyone I know,' the Earl said, then tried to flex the bow and raised his eyebrows in surprise at its strength. He gave the black shaft back to Thomas then dismissed him. 'I wish you G.o.dspeed in the morning, Thomas of Hookton.'

'My lord,' Thomas said, and bowed.

'I'll go with him, with your permission,' Skeat said, and the Earl nodded, then watched the two men leave. 'If we do get inside,' he told his remaining captains, 'then for G.o.d's sake don't let your men cry havoc. Hold their leashes tight. I intend to keep this town and I don't want the townsfolk hating us. Kill when you must, but I don't want an orgy of blood.' He looked at their sceptical faces. 'I'll be putting one of you in charge of the garrison here, so make it easy for yourselves. Hold them tight.'

The captains grunted, knowing how hard it would be to keep their men from a full sack of the town, but before any of them could respond to the Earl's hopeful wishes, Sir Simon stood.

'My lord? A request?'

The Earl shrugged. 'Try me.'

'Would you let me and my men lead the ladder party?'

The Earl seemed surprised at the request. 'You think Skeat cannot manage on his own?'

'I am sure he can, my lord,' Sir Simon said humbly, 'but I still beg the honour.'

Better Sir Simon Jekyll dead than Will Skeat, the Earl thought. He nodded. 'Of course, of course.'

The captains said nothing. What honour was there in being first onto a wall that another man had captured? No, the b.a.s.t.a.r.d did not want honour, he wanted to be well placed to find the richest plunder in town, but none of them voiced his thought. They were captains, but Sir Simon was a knight, even if a penniless one.

The Earl's army threatened an attack for the rest of that short winter's day, but it never came and the citizens of La Roche-Derrien dared to hope that the worst of their ordeal was over, but made preparations in case the English did try again the next day. They counted their crossbow bolts, stacked more boulders on the ramparts and fed the fires which boiled the pots of water that were poured onto the English. Heat the wretches up, the town's priests had said, and the townsfolk liked that jest. They were winning, they knew, and they reckoned their ordeal must finish soon, for the English would surely be running out of food. All La Roche-Derrien had to do was endure and then receive the praise and thanks of Duke Charles.

The small rain stopped at nightfall. The townsfolk went to their beds, but kept their weapons ready. The sentries lit watch fires behind the walls and gazed into the dark.

It was night, it was winter, it was cold and the besiegers had one last chance.

The Blackbird had been christened Jeanette Marie Halevy, and when she was fifteen her parents had taken her to Guingamp for the annual tournament of the apples. Her father was not an aristocrat so the family could not sit in the enclosure beneath St Laurent's tower, but they found a place nearby, and Louis Halevy made certain his daughter was visible by placing their chairs on the farm wagon which had carried them from La Roche-Derrien. Jeanette's father was a prosperous shipmaster and wine merchant, though his fortune in business had not been mirrored in life. One son had died when a cut finger turned septic and his second son had drowned on a voyage to Corunna. Jeanette was now his only child.

There was calculation in the visit to Guingamp. The n.o.bility of Brittany, at least those who favoured an alliance with France, a.s.sembled at the tournament where, for four days, in front of a crowd that came as much for the fair as for the fighting, they displayed their talents with sword and lance. Jeanette found much of it tedious, for the preambles to each fight were long and often out of earshot. Knights paraded endlessly, their extravagant plumes nodding, but after a while there would be a brief thunder of hoofs, a clash of metal, a cheer, and one knight would be tumbled in the gra.s.s. It was customary for every victorious knight to p.r.i.c.k an apple with his lance and present it to whichever woman in the crowd attracted him, and that was why her father had taken the farm wagon to Guingamp. After four days Jeanette had eighteen apples and the enmity of a score of better-born girls.

Her parents took her back to La Roche-Derrien and waited. They had displayed their wares and now the buyers could find their way to the lavish house beside the River Jaudy. From the front the house seemed small, but go through the archway and a visitor found himself in a wide courtyard reaching down to a stone quay where Monsieur Halevy's smaller boats could be moored at the top of the tide. The courtyard shared a wall with the church of St Renan and, because Monsieur Halevy had donated the tower to the church, he had been permitted to drive an archway through the wall so that his family did not need to step into the street when they went to Ma.s.s. The house told any suitor that this was a wealthy family, and the presence of the parish priest at the supper table told him it was a devout family. Jeanette was to be no aristocrat's plaything, she was to be a wife.

A dozen men condescended to visit the Halevy house, but it was Henri Chenier, Comte d'Armorique, who won the apple. He was a prime catch, for he was nephew to Charles of Blois, who was himself a nephew to King Philip of France, and it was Charles whom the French recognized as Duke and ruler of Brittany. The Duke allowed Henri Chenier to present his fiancee, but afterwards advised his nephew to discard her. The girl was a merchant's daughter, scarce more than a peasant, though even the Duke admitted she was a beauty. Her hair was shining black, her face was unflawed by the pox and she had all her teeth. She was graceful, so that a Dominican friar in the Duke's court clasped his hands and exclaimed that Jeanette was the living image of the Madonna. The Duke agreed she was beautiful, but so what? Many women were beautiful. Any tavern in Guingamp, he said, could throw up a two-livre wh.o.r.e who could make most wives look like hogs. It was not the job of a wife to be beautiful, but to be rich. 'Make the girl your mistress,' he advised his nephew, and virtually ordered Henri to marry an heiress from Picardy, but the heiress was a pox-faced slattern and the Count of Armorica was besotted by Jeanette's beauty and so he defied his uncle.

He married the merchant's daughter in the chapel of his castle at Plabennec, which lay in Finisterre, the world's end. The Duke reckoned his nephew had listened to too many troubadours, but the Count and his new wife were happy and a year after their wedding, when Jeanette was sixteen, their son was born. They named him Charles, after the Duke, but if the Duke was complimented, he said nothing. He refused to receive Jeanette again and treated his nephew coldly.

Later that same year the English came in force to support Jean de Montfort, whom they recognized as the Duke of Brittany, and the King of France sent reinforcements to his nephew Charles, whom he recognized as the real Duke, and so the civil war began in earnest. The Count of Armorica insisted that his wife and baby son went back to her father's house in La Roche-Derrien because the castle at Plabennec was small, in ill repair and too close to the invader's forces.

That summer the castle fell to the English just as Jeanette's husband had feared, and the following year the King of England spent the campaigning season in Brittany, and his army pushed back the forces of Charles, Duke of Brittany. There was no one great battle, but a series of b.l.o.o.d.y skirmishes, and in one of them, a ragged affair fought between the hedgerows of a steep valley, Jeanette's husband was wounded. He had lifted the face-piece of his helmet to shout encouragement to his men and an arrow had gone clean through his mouth. His servants brought the Count to the house beside the River Jaudy where he took five days to die; five days of constant pain during which he was unable to eat and scarce able to breathe as the wound festered and the blood congealed in his gullet. He was twenty-eight years old, a champion of tournaments, and he wept like a child at the end. He choked to death and Jeanette screamed in frustrated anger and grief.

Then began Jeanette's time of sorrow. She was a widow, la veuve Chenier, la veuve Chenier, and not six months after her husband's death she became an orphan when both her parents died of the b.l.o.o.d.y flux. She was just eighteen and her son, the Count of Armorica, was two, but Jeanette had inherited her father's wealth and she determined to use it to strike back at the hated English who had killed, her husband, and so she began outfitting two ships that could prey on English shipping. and not six months after her husband's death she became an orphan when both her parents died of the b.l.o.o.d.y flux. She was just eighteen and her son, the Count of Armorica, was two, but Jeanette had inherited her father's wealth and she determined to use it to strike back at the hated English who had killed, her husband, and so she began outfitting two ships that could prey on English shipping.

Monsieur Belas, who had been her father's lawyer, advised against spending money on the ships. Jeanette's fortune would not last for ever, the lawyer said, and nothing soaked up cash like outfitting warships that rarely made money, unless by luck. Better, he said, to use the ships for trade. 'The merchants in Lannion are making a fine profit on Spanish wine,' he suggested. He had a cold, for it was winter, and he sneezed. 'A very fine profit,' he said wistfully. He spoke in Breton, though both he and Jeanette could, if needs be, speak French.

'I do not want Spanish wine,' Jeanette said coldly, 'but English souls.'

'No profit in those, my lady,' Belas said. He found it strange to call Jeanette 'my lady'. He had known her since she was a child, and she had always been little Jeanette to him, but she had married and become an aristocratic widow, and a widow, moreover, with a temper. 'You cannot sell English souls,' Belas pointed out mildly.

'Except to the devil,' Jeanette said, crossing herself. 'But I don't need Spanish wine, Belas. We have the rents.'

'The rents!' Belas said mockingly. He was tall, thin, scanty-haired and clever. He had served Jeanette's father well and long, and was resentful that the merchant had left him nothing in his will. Everything had gone to Jeanette except for a small bequest to the monks at Pontrieux so they would say Ma.s.ses for the dead man's soul. Belas hid his resentment. 'Nothing comes from Plabennec,' he told Jeanette. 'The English are there, and how long do you think the rents will come from your father's farms? The English will take them soon.' An English army had occupied unwalled Treguier, which was only an hour's walk northwards, and they had pulled down the cathedral tower there because some crossbowmen had shot at them from its summit. Belas hoped the English would retreat soon, for it was deep in the winter and their supplies must be running low, but he feared they might ravage the countryside about La Roche-Derrien before they left. And if they did, Jeanette's farms would be left worthless. 'How much rent can you get from a burned farm?' he asked her.

'I don't care!' she snapped. 'I shall sell everything if I have to, everything!' Except for her husband's armour and weapons. They were precious and would go to her son one day.

Belas sighed for her foolishness, then huddled in his black cloak and leaned close to the small fire which spat in the hearth. A cold wind came from the nearby sea, making the chimney smoke. 'You will permit me, madame, to offer you advice? First, the business.' Belas paused to wipe his nose on his long black sleeve. 'It ails, but I can find you a good man to run it as your father did, and I would draw up a contract which would ensure the man would pay you well from the profits. Second, madame, you should think of marriage.' He paused, half expecting a protest, but Jeanette said nothing. Belas sighed. She was so lovely! There were a dozen men in town who would marry her, but marriage to an aristocrat had turned her head and she would settle for nothing less than another t.i.tled man. 'You are, madame,' the lawyer continued carefully, 'a widow who possesses, at the moment, a considerable fortune, but I have seen such fortunes drain away like snow in April. Find a man who can look after you, your possessions and your son.'

Jeanette turned and stared at him. 'I married the finest man in Christendom,' she said, 'and where do you think I will find another like him?'

Men like the Count of Armorica, the lawyer thought, were found everywhere, more was the pity, for what were they but brute fools in armour who believed war was a sport? Jeanette, he thought, should marry a prudent merchant, perhaps a widower who had a fortune, but he suspected such advice would be wasted. 'Remember the old saying, my lady,' he said slyly. 'Put a cat to watch a flock and the wolves eat well.'

Jeanette shuddered with anger at the words. 'You go beyond yourself, Monsieur Belas.' She spoke icily, then dismissed him, and the next day the English came to La Roche-Derrien and Jeanette took her dead husband's crossbow from the place where she hid her wealth and she joined the defenders on the walls. d.a.m.n Belas's advice! She would fight like a man and Duke Charles, who despised her, would learn to admire her, to support her and restore her dead husband's estates to her son. So Jeanette had become the Blackbird and the English had died in front of her walls and Belas's advice was forgotten, and now, Jeanette reckoned, the town's defenders had so rattled the English that the siege would surely be lifted. All would be well, in which belief, for the first time in a week, the Blackbird slept well.

Chapter 2.

Thomas crouched beside the river. He had broken through a stand of alders to reach the bank where he now pulled off his boots and hose. Best to go barelegged, he reckoned, so the boots did not get stuck in the river mud. It was going to be cold, freezing cold, but he could not remember a time when he had been happier. He liked this life, and his memories of Hookton, Oxford and his father had almost faded.

'Take your boots off,' he told the twenty archers who would accompany him, 'and hang your arrow bags round your necks.'

'Why?' someone challenged him from the dark.

'So it b.l.o.o.d.y throttles you,' Thomas growled.

'So your arrows don't get wet,' another man explained helpfully.

Thomas tied his own bag round his neck. Archers did not carry the quivers that hunters used, for quivers were open at the top and their arrows could fall out when a man ran or stumbled or clambered through a hedge. Arrows in quivers got wet when it rained, and wet feathers made arrows fly crooked, so real archers used linen bags that were water-proofed with wax and sealed by laces. The bags were bolstered by withy frames that spread the linen so the feathers were not crushed.

Will Skeat edged down the bank where a dozen men were stacking the hurdles. He shivered in the cold wind that came from the water. The sky to the east was still dark, but some light came from the watch fires that burned within La Roche-Derrien.

'They're nice and quiet in there,' Skeat said, nodding towards the town.

'Pray they're sleeping,' Thomas said.

'In beds too. I've forgotten what a bed's like,' Skeat said, then edged aside to let another man through to the riverbank. Thomas was surprised to see it was Sir Simon Jekyll, who had been so scornful of him in the Earl's tent. 'Sir Simon,' Will Skeat said, barely bothering to disguise his own scorn, 'wants a word with thee.'

Sir Simon wrinkled his nose at the stench of the river mud. Much of it, he supposed, was the town's sewage and he was glad he was not wading barelegged through the muck.

'You are confident of pa.s.sing the stakes?' he asked Thomas.

'I wouldn't be going otherwise,' Thomas said, not bothering to sound respectful.

Thomas's tone made Sir Simon bridle, but he controlled his temper. 'The Earl,' he said distantly, 'has given me the honour of leading the attack on the walls.' He stopped abruptly and Thomas waited, expecting more, but Sir Simon merely looked at him with an irritated face.

'So Thomas takes the walls,' Skeat finally spoke, 'to make it safe for your ladders?'

'What I do not want,' Sir Simon ignored Skeat and spoke to Thomas, 'is for you to take your men ahead of mine into the town itself. We see armed men, we're likely to kill them, you understand?'

Thomas almost spat in derision. His men would be armed with bows and no enemy carried a long-stave bow like the English so there was hardly any chance of being mistaken for the town's defenders, but he held his tongue. He just nodded.

'You and your archers can join our attack,' Sir Simon went on, 'but you will be under my command.'

Thomas nodded again and Sir Simon, irritated by the implied insolence, turned on his heel and walked away.

'G.o.dd.a.m.n b.a.s.t.a.r.d,' Thomas said.

'He just wants to get his nose into the trough ahead of the rest of us,' Skeat said.

'You're letting the b.a.s.t.a.r.d use our ladders?' Thomas asked.

'If he wants to be first up, let him. Ladders are green wood, Tom, and if they break I'd rather it was him tumbling than me. Besides, I reckon we'll be better off following you through the river, but I ain't telling Sir Simon that.' Skeat grinned, then swore as a crash sounded from the darkness south of the river. 'Those b.l.o.o.d.y white rats,' Skeat said, and vanished into the shadows.

The white rats were the Bretons loyal to Duke John, men who wore his badge of a white ermine, and some sixty Breton crossbowmen had been attached to Skeat's soldiers, their job to rattle the walls with their bolts as the ladders were placed against the ramparts. It was those men who had startled the night with their noise and now the noise grew even louder. Some fool had tripped in the dark and thumped a crossbowman with a pavise, the huge shield behind which the crossbows were laboriously reloaded, and the crossbowman struck back, and suddenly the white rats were having a brawl in the dark. The defenders, naturally, heard them and started to hurl burning bales of straw over the ramparts and then a church bell began to toll, then another, and all this long before Thomas had even started across the mud.

Sir Simon Jekyll, alarmed by the bells and the burning straw, shouted that the attack must go in now. 'Carry the ladders forward!' he bellowed. Defenders were running onto La Roche-Derrien's walls and the first crossbow bolts were spitting off the ramparts that were lit bright by the burning bales.

'Hold those G.o.dd.a.m.n ladders!' Will Skeat snarled at his men, then looked at Thomas. 'What do you reckon?'

'I think the b.a.s.t.a.r.ds are distracted,' Thomas said.

'So you'll go?'

'Got nothing better to do, Will.'

'b.l.o.o.d.y white rats!'

Thomas led his men onto the mud. The hurdles were some help, but not as much as he had hoped, so that they still slipped and struggled their way towards the great stakes and Thomas reckoned the noise they made was enough to wake King Arthur and his knights. But the defenders were making even more noise. Every church bell was clanging, a trumpet was screaming, men were shouting, dogs barking, c.o.c.kerels were crowing, and the crossbows were creaking and banging as their cords were inched back and released.

The walls loomed to Thomas's right. He wondered if the Blackbird was up there. He had seen her twice now and been captivated by the fierceness of her face and her wild black hair. A score of other archers had seen her too, and all of them men who could thread an arrow through a bracelet at a hundred paces, yet the woman still lived. Amazing, Thomas thought, what a pretty face could do.

He threw down the last hurdle and so reached the wooden stakes, each one a whole tree trunk sunk into the mud. His men joined him and they heaved against the timber until the rotted wood split like straw. The stakes made a terrible noise as they fell, but it was drowned by the uproar in the town. Jake, the cross-eyed murderer from Exeter gaol, pulled himself alongside Thomas. To their right now was a wooden quay with a rough ladder at one end. Dawn was coming and a feeble, thin, grey light was seeping from the east to outline the bridge across the Jaudy. It was a handsome stone bridge with a barbican at its further end, and Thomas feared the garrison of that tower might see them, but no one called an alarm and no crossbow bolts thumped across the river.

Thomas and Jake were first up the quay ladder, then came Sam, the youngest of Skeat's archers. The wooden landing stage served a timberyard and a dog began barking frantically among the stacked trunks, but Sam slipped into the blackness with his knife and the barking suddenly stopped. 'Good doggy,' Sam said as he came back.

'String your bows,' Thomas said. He had looped the hemp cord onto his own black weapon and now untied the laces of his arrow bag.

'I hate b.l.o.o.d.y dogs,' Sam said. 'One bit my mother when she was pregnant with me.'

'That's why you're daft,' Jake said.

'Shut your G.o.dd.a.m.n faces,' Thomas ordered. More archers were climbing the quay, which was swaying alarmingly, but he could see that the walls he was supposed to capture were thick with defenders now. English arrows, their white goose feathers bright in the flamelight of the defenders' fires, flickered over the wall and thumped into the town's thatched roofs. 'Maybe we should open the south gate,' Thomas suggested.

'Go through the town?' Jake asked in alarm.

'It's a small town,' Thomas said.

'You're mad,' Jake said, but he was grinning and he meant the words as a compliment.

'I'm going anyway,' Thomas said. It would be dark in the streets and their long bows would be hidden. He reckoned it would be safe enough.

A dozen men followed Thomas while the rest started plundering the nearer buildings. More and more men were coming through the broken stakes now as Will Skeat sent them down the riverbank rather than wait for the wall to be captured. The defenders had seen the men in the mud and were shooting down from the end of the town wall, but the first attackers were already loose in the streets.

Thomas blundered through the town. It was pitch-black in the alleys and hard to tell where he was going, though by climbing the hill on which the town was built he reckoned he must eventually go over the summit and so down to the southern gate. Men ran past him, but no one could see that he and his companions were English. The church bells were deafening. Children were crying, dogs howling, gulls screaming, and the noise was making Thomas terrified. This was a daft idea, he thought. Maybe Sir Simon had already climbed the walls? Maybe he was wasting his time? Yet white-feathered arrows still thumped into the town roofs, suggesting the walls were untaken, and so he forced himself to keep going. Twice he found himself in a blind alley and the second time, doubling back into a wider street, he almost ran into a priest who had come from his church to fix a flaming torch in a wall bracket.

'Go to the ramparts!' the priest said sternly, then saw the long bows in the men's hands and opened his mouth to shout the alarm.

He never had time to shout for Thomas's bow stave slammed point-first into his belly. He bent over, gasping, and Jake casually slit his throat. The priest gurgled as he sank to the cobbles and Jake frowned when the noise stopped.

'I'll go to h.e.l.l for that,' he said.

'You're going to h.e.l.l anyway,' Sam said, 'we all are.'

'We're all going to heaven,' Thomas said, 'but not if we dawdle.' He suddenly felt much less frightened, as though the priest's death had taken his fear. An arrow struck the church tower and dropped into the alley as Thomas led his men past the church and found himself on La Roche-Derrien's main street, which dropped down to where a watch fire burned by the southern gate. Thomas shrank back into the alley beside the church, for the street was thick with men, but they were all running to the threatened side of the town, and when Thomas next looked the hill was empty. He could only see two sentinels on the ramparts above the gate arch. He told his men about the two sentries.

'They're going to be scared as h.e.l.l,' he said. 'We kill the b.a.s.t.a.r.ds and open the gate.'

'There might be others,' Sam said. 'There'll be a guard house.'

'Then kill them too,' Thomas said. 'Now, come on!'

They stepped into the street, ran down a few yards and there drew their bows. The arrows flew and the two guards on the arch fell. A man stepped out of the guard house built into the gate turret and gawped at the archers, but before any could draw their bows he stepped back inside and barred the door.

'It's ours!' Thomas shouted, and led his men in a wild rush to the arch.

The guard house stayed locked so there was no one to stop the archers from lifting the bar and pushing open the two great gates. The Earl's men saw the gates open, saw the English archers outlined against the watch fire and gave a great roar from the darkness that told Thomas a torrent of vengeful troops was coming towards him.

Which meant La Roche-Derrien's time of weeping could begin. For the English had taken the town.

Jeanette woke to a church bell ringing as though it was the world's doom when the dead were rising from their graves and the gates of h.e.l.l were yawning wide for sinners. Her first instinct was to cross to her son's bed, but little Charles was safe. She could just see his eyes in the dark that was scarcely alleviated by the glowing embers of the fire.

'Mama?' he cried, reaching up to her.

'Quiet,' she hushed the boy, then ran to throw open the shutters. A faint grey light showed above the eastern roofs, then steps sounded in the street and she leaned from the window to see men running from their houses with swords, crossbows and spears. A trumpet was calling from the town centre, then more church bells began tolling the alarm into a dying night. The bell of the church of the Virgin was cracked and made a harsh, anvil-like noise that was all the more terrifying.

'Madame!' a servant cried as she ran into the room.

'The English must be attacking.' Jeanette forced herself to speak calmly. She was wearing nothing but a linen shift and was suddenly cold. She s.n.a.t.c.hed up a cloak, tied it about her neck, then took her son into her arms. 'You will be all right, Charles,' she tried to console him. 'The English are attacking again, that is all.'