'I was in a black rage that they should try to murder one of my men. I would do it again.'

'You would be a poor leader of men, were you not to take their health and well-being in hand. And avenge them in death.'

'I do my best for them,' Berenger said.

Sir John nodded. 'It is no more than I would expect.' His eyes suddenly widened. 'What is that?'

Ahead, and a little to the north, was another thick column of smoke. The wind caught at it and tugged it this way and that, but the pall was so thick and oily that it still remained hanging over the whole area.

Sir John studied it for some while, and then he beckoned his esquire. 'Richard, go and ask the Prince if we may ride to investigate that. It is far from our line of march. None of our men should be there. Suggest that we and two vintaines should go and reconnoitre.'

'Sir.'

The esquire wheeled his horse and cantered back to where Edward of Woodstock rode with the Earl of Warwick. Soon he was back.

'Sir John, the Prince thanks you for your observation. He says he would be grateful if we could go and investigate.'

'Good! Berenger, you come with me, and bring your men. We'll take Roger and his vintaine too,' Sir John said. He glanced at his esquire. 'We can ride and investigate, and if there is nothing, at least we shall have escaped this d.a.m.ned dust for a while,' he added.

They took their horses across the path of a swearing, furious wagon-master, and thence up a gentle rise to the top of a broad hillock. In the distance they could plainly see a series of large buildings enclosed by low walls.

'It's a monastery,' Richard said. 'If those are our men, they will pay a heavy price for this. The King wants no insults to G.o.d this late in the campaign.'

'G.o.d?' Sir John snorted. 'More to the point, the King wants as few English archers wasted in individual mercenary engagements as possible. He needs every single man. And he does not wish to be held up here, with the French breathing down our necks. If those are Englishmen, they will live to regret their actions for the rest of their lives. Although that may not prove to be a very long time.'

Later, sitting muzzily in the dark with a goblet of wine, Berenger would remember every moment of that afternoon.

Even as he cantered under the monastery's gatehouse, Berenger had a premonition of disaster. Just inside, three bodies were sprawled in the dirt. Avoiding them, the vintaine rode in past the outbuildings and towards the main convent.

All about the gra.s.s, they saw, were more bodies lay-brothers who had tried to defend their church and cloister, but had failed. Some had been pierced by arrows, while others had been beaten to death or stabbed. Fighting and killing those who were all but incapable of defending themselves was the action of outlaws, Berenger thought in disgust, not a disciplined army.

At a doorway, a porter lay draped over the steps. Berenger dismounted, and with Sir John and Geoff, he marched inside.

From the abbot's chamber upstairs there came the sound of ribald celebration. Sir John drew his sword and, with a quick look at the men behind him, took the stairs in a rush.

At the top there was an already open door, and inside they found a party of thirty men.

All were drunk. A pair were dancing on the abbot's table; beneath it lay the body of a man. A piper played a tune, beating time with his tambour, while others capered and sang, all brandishing goblets and cups which they refilled from the cask set on the sideboard. The cushions and hallings that had been hanging on the walls to keep the room warm, were thrown to the floor, and a man was p.i.s.sing on them as Sir John entered. He turned, mouth agape, at the intrusion, but before he could make a comment, Sir John's gauntleted fist smashed his lips against his teeth, and he crashed into the cupboard. Pewter and plate rattled and fell to the ground in a discordant cacophony, as though a box of hand-bells had been thrown on to a granite slab.

The piping, drumming and singing tapered off, and all the men in the room turned to stare at Sir John. He lifted his sword and pointed it at the men on the table. 'Get down!'

'What's this? Come to get your own share, my Lord Knight?' a sarcastic voice called. It was Tyler.

'All in this room are guilty of looting and disobeying the King's command,' Sir John announced. 'You will leave this chamber at once.'

'This is our victory, Sir Knight,' Tyler said in his sneering tone. 'You want us out, you'll have to pay us to go!'

There were some muttered a.s.sents to this, and heads were set nodding.

Sir John called to Berenger's men, and Jack and Geoff entered. Without needing to ask, they grabbed the nearest man and flung him bodily down the staircase. After that example, the men ignored Tyler's exhortations and followed down the stairs themselves. None was in a fit state to argue their cause.

Amongst the men Sir John saw three he recognised, and he glanced at Berenger, whose face was filled with misery. Shaking his head, the vintener walked outside, waiting until Gil appeared.

'What were you doing here, Gil?'

Gil's faded blue eyes were almost grey, and although he was sober, he looked washed-out and anxious. 'We helped them, just as you said.'

'You knew your orders, didn't you? You knew no one was to attack a town or manor, but to keep moving, to prevent the French from catching up with us. What did you think would happen?'

The men were marched from the abbey's grounds. Geoff and Jack were despatched by Berenger to see if anyone had survived the a.s.sault, but even Geoff looked shocked at the sights in the cloister.

'Two men in there, they'd been tied to a wall and crucified. They were tortured first. Frip,' he said in a quiet voice. 'I've never seen things like that before. They didn't even choose the sort of men who would know where any treasure would be stored, but just grabbed anyone: servants or lay-brothers, from the look of them.'

Berenger had the captives herded back towards the army. When they arrived, the marching troops were commanded to halt, and a pa.s.sageway was opened for the renegades. Riding slowly down it, Berenger saw the Prince approaching beside his father from the far end of the corridor. The King, a tall, handsome man in his middle years, was known for a sense of humour. But today there was no smile on his face. Today, he was bitterly angry.

He held up his hand to halt his escort.

'Is it true, what my son has told me?'

Sir John allowed his rounsey to side-step to expose the men with Tyler behind him. Berenger watched as the King allowed his gaze to fall upon each of the bound men in turn. 'Where were they?'

Sir John took a breath and cleared his throat reluctantly. 'At the monastery over there, Your Magesty. All inside were slain. Some tried to defend their convent, but they were cut down. I think no monks or lay-brothers survived.'

'And for what?' the King demanded in a low, furious voice.

'We sought to wage war with fear, just as you told us,' Tyler said boldly. 'You brought us all here to fight a war of dampnum. You told us to attack towns and cities, farms and villages. We continued what you told us to do.'

'I gave orders that the whole army was to ignore tempting targets today, and should ride with determination to the Somme. That was the sole purpose of our day, to make it to the river before the French get there. It will be our purpose tomorrow too. We must prevent ourselves from being trapped here. But you decided to slow us, to entertain your own base greed for profit. By your treachery, you may have cost us more than treasure!'

'Sire, we did what you wanted us to do all the way here! How were we to know that this one day you would choose to alter your plans?'

'Silence! I will not debate with you about this act of callous treachery! You have betrayed my trust: Sir John, have them form a line.'

Sir John nodded and motioned to his esquire. 'Do as your King bids.'

The men were forced from their horses, and pushed and shoved into a line. Men armed with bills kept them in their places.

King Edward motioned, and the men at his side rode forward a few paces. On the King's left was the Earl of Warwick, and he now pointed with his baton to more foot-soldiers. They marched up, bills at the ready.

'These men have broken my command,' the King declared, his voice singing out in the silence. 'They knowingly rode out on adventure for their own benefit. Their greed has endangered our army, for their arrogance caused us delay, and our enemy is hard on our heels. For this there has to be a punishment that fits the severity of their offences. The first man will step to the left, the second to the right, the third to the left, and so on through the men in the line. Those on the right shall be reduced to the rank of the foot-archers and their money shall be stopped at that level. They will have to prove their loyalty afresh.'

He paused while the men were prodded and beaten into their new lines, and then the foot-soldiers marched down between the two lines and separated them.

The King stared at the second line.

'These other men shall be executed now.'

Ed listened to the King's words with breathless disbelief.

When the men had all been marched back to the army, he had thought that there would be a court, an opportunity to explain and yet here he was, with the sentence of death on him!

He looked about him frantically as he realised the full awfulness of his situation. When they were forced into a line, he had shuffled between Gil and Walt. There, with their two solid forms before and behind, he had felt safe. It was like standing between the walls of an fortress. He was out of sight and that meant he was out of mind.

And then he heard the King's judgement, and suddenly his confidence was stripped away as he realised his danger. Men came marching down the line, pulling a man to the left, then to the right, and as they came closer and closer, Ed saw that Gil, in front of him, and Walt behind, would both be pulled out to one side, leaving him on the other.

He wanted to ask to be allowed to stay with his friends, but the man tugged him away, and he found himself on one side of a polearm held across a guard's chest, while beyond he could see Gil and Walt. The polearm was one of many forming an impenetrable fence, and the look in the guard's face told Ed that any pleading would be useless.

And then he heard the King's p.r.o.nouncement.

Time slowed to a heartbeat's drum-pace. He found his gaze moving helplessly from side to side, trying to seek an escape, already knowing that there was none. A horn blast sounded clear on the air, and he knew that shortly he would be marched away.

A shiver convulsed his frame. Tears wanted to spring, but the full shock of his situation seemed to prevent them. He was soon to be executed, and he couldn't even plead his innocence. G.o.d stood by, waiting for his supplication, but he could not move his lips.

While they had been gathering the men from the abbey, the King had sent a team of engineers to construct a large gallows-tree.

Three tree-trunks had been cut and conveyed to the army's flank. Now they were embedded vertically in the French earth in a triangular formation. From the top of each trunk, a strong plank ran to the next one. Thus, by linking the three tree-trunks, a triangle of planks stood some fifteen feet from the ground. Now men threw coils of rope up and over the planks, seven to each plank, and a pair of hardy men looped and knotted these until each rope had a noose of sorts dangling.

No need for formality here. The King had issued his commands, and for men held under martial law, there was no higher authority. The first of the men in Ed's line was pulled forward. A thong was quickly lashed about his hands behind his back, a noose placed over his throat, and then to the command of a vintener, three men hauled hard on the other end of the rope, and the man was slowly lifted into the air, his face reddening, eyes bulging, legs kicking and thrashing in the manner so familiar to those who had witnessed men dancing the Tyburn Jig before.

Berenger watched the second man. He had already soiled himself, and when he was hoisted aloft, his kicking spread ordure over the observers. Some laughed to see their comrades bespattered, and there were ribald comments as the third went up. This one had managed to release his hands, and now he clung to the rope at his throat, desperately clawing at the cord. Berenger had seen men fight the rope before. Inevitably their attempts failed, but not before they had raked the flesh at the rope into a b.l.o.o.d.y mess where fingernails had sc.r.a.ped away the skin of their necks.

It was a foul way to die, he told himself. When he looked along the line and saw Ed, a sense of melancholy settled on his spirit. Gil was in the first line of men, standing and watching the frail little form of their Donkey as the King's men pushed and shoved Ed and the others towards the gallows.

Ed found himself pushed forwards to his doom. To his side, the guilty men from the abbey who had been spared were watching. Some looked away; one had his hands over his eyes but many just stared without compa.s.sion. Tyler himself was there, Ed saw, with a look of indifference on his face. There was no sympathy for the men who had followed him so willingly to the abbey and who now dangled, moving gently as the jerking of their legs lessened and gradually stilled.

Near him was Gil, who stared back at Ed despairingly.

Eleven were up now, and the twelfth was being hoisted up. The man in front of Ed would be next. All of a sudden, the man whirled around, punched the nearest guard and fled, weaving and ducking to evade his pursuers. His run was ended suddenly as a bill swung and caught his leg. With a shrill squeal, much like an injured rabbit's, the man was felled. He tried to rise, but he had broken a leg, and now his screams of agony rose over all the other sounds. The guards moved in to grab him . . .

. . . And Ed felt a hand at his shoulder.

'Boy! Donkey! Swyve your mother, boy! Move!'

He heard the urgently hissed command and allowed himself to be pulled back, and to his confusion, was tugged away from the line and concealed behind the guards, while Gil took his place in the line.

'But . . . what . . .?' he managed.

Gil gave him a twisted smile. 'You remember what I said to you, Donkey? You be a good soldier, if you make it that far. Don't do as the rest of us have. Understand?'

The limping man was pulled bodily up to the ropes, his left leg dragging in the dirt, his face full of terror, staring up at the ropes and hanging bodies. A noose was placed over his head, and soon his shrieking was cut off with a hideous gurgling as he tried to breathe. When his legs jerked, his shattered left leg moved irrationally, like a puppet's, bending forward and sideways as well as back.

Ed witnessed it all, and now, as he saw men take Gil's arms and pull him, unresisting, to the next noose he heard a burst of laughter. When he turned and stared, traumatised, he saw the King's household sitting mounted on their great beasts, drinking wine from richly chased mazers. Only the King himself appeared to be watching his soldiers as they hanged, his eyes dark and bleak below his thick brows.

When he turned his attention back to Gil, Ed saw that his companion was already in the air, his face growing purple as he span gently on the wind. When he revolved, his eyes sought out Ed's, communicating an especial urgency.

Ed went forward to him, and as the body turned, he jumped up and grabbed Gil's legs, using his own weight to try to snap his neck, or at least hasten his end. His eyes screwed tight shut, Ed clung there, as his tears fell.

It was the only means he had of repaying the debt.

18 August Ed slept fitfully and only woke fully when most of the camp had already risen. He had pa.s.sed the night beneath the wagon of the gynour, and felt worn out. His eyes were sore from weeping, and he had a feeling of guilt that would not pa.s.s. Every time he closed his eyes during the night, he saw Gil's body as it slowly revolved, dangling above him.

He sat up, rubbing his eyes. When he woke in the night, Beatrice had been beside him, but she was gone now. He rolled up the thick sheepskin that had softened the ground, and slid himself into the cold, dark, pre-dawn light.

'Oh, so you're awake then?' Archibald demanded. The gynour was sitting near a fire at a safe distance from the wagon, his eyes twinkling in the light. For an instant, when a flame rose, his eyes glowed red, and Ed felt a superst.i.tious dread at the sight. He almost recoiled.

'G.o.d's blood!' he gasped.

'Calm down, boy. I'm not the Devil! And you should not take the Lord's name in vain.'

'I don't think He's going to care what happens to me now', Ed said miserably. The memories of the previous day came flooding back. The destruction and killing and Gil dying to save Ed's life. 'He must hate me.'

'You think the Lord would desert you when you need His help most? He will care, if you behave. But, not if you behave as you did yesterday though.'

Ed scowled as the old man eyed him seriously. 'I wasn't there to loot and kill,' he explained. 'It was just difficult to get away when all those men started. I didn't want to be there.'

'That, boy, is the excuse of the felon through the years. "It wasn't me, I didn't want to do it, they made me." If that is the best you can say, perhaps you should keep your excuses to yourself.'

It was true and Ed was unpleasantly aware of his guilt. The double guilt of having joined in at the destruction of the abbey and then, having been convicted, allowing another man to take his place at the gallows.

Gil: why had he done that? Pulled Ed from the queue of death, and put himself forward instead? It made no sense. As far as Ed was aware, Gil had never shown him too much in the way of kindness. It was incomprehensible.

'What do we do today?' he asked, keen to change the subject.

'What do we do?' Archibald stared at him with a smile. 'Why, boy, we ride, or walk, to where the King tells us. Our life is very simple, after all. We march when we are told, and at some time in the near future, we shall stop. And then we shall fight.'

They were up and moving before the dawn, to Berenger's relief. The men of the vintaine were sullen, and he could sense a simmering resentment.

'What's the matter with the wh.o.r.esons today, Fripper?' Granda.r.s.e asked as he jogged along uncomfortably on his pony. 'From the expressions on their faces anyone would think they'd been told all the wine was drunk.'

'It's something to do with the death of Gil yesterday.'

'Tell them he was a fool and shouldn't have gone plundering on his own account, then,' Granda.r.s.e said unsympathetically and rode on.

But it wasn't only that, Berenger knew. As he rode, he caught little glances from the men, meaningful looks at the wagons behind them, and muttering.

Geoff and Jack were a short distance in front, and he saw them talking. However, the pair were very quiet in their speech, and when Geoff noticed Berenger watching them, he hissed something, and spurred his little beast away.

Berenger kicked his pony to a shambling trot, and soon caught up with Jack. 'Come on, tell me what's going on, he said.'

'It's nothing, Frip. Just talk.'

'Good. If it's nothing, you won't mind telling me.'

Jack had known Berenger for many years now, and was not afraid to say, 'You think I'm a child to be forced to speak?'

'I think you're man enough to understand that your vintener needs to know if there's something boiling in the minds of the men.'

Jack lifted an eyebrow at that. 'This isn't to do with you, Frip.'