Harlequin. Bernard Cornwell
to lay waste. God’s teeth, you’ll soon be richer than me.’ He stood. ‘Sir Simon will guide you to your quarters.’
Sir Simon might have bridled at the curt order to be a mere guide, but surprisingly he obeyed without showing any resentment, perhaps because he wanted another chance to meet Jeanette. And so, at midday, he led Will Skeat and his men through the streets to the big house beside the river. Sir Simon had put on his new armour and wore it without any surcoat so that the polished plate and gold embossment shone bright in the feeble winter sun. He ducked his helmeted head under the yard’s archway and immediately Jeanette came running from the kitchen door, which lay just to the gate’s left.
‘Get out!’ she shouted in French, ‘get out!’
Thomas, riding close behind Sir Simon, stared at her. She was indeed the Blackbird and she was as beautiful at close range as she had been when he had glimpsed her on the walls.
‘Get out, all of you!’ She stood, hands on her hips, bareheaded, shouting.
Sir Simon pushed up the pig-snout visor of the helmet. ‘This house is commandeered, my lady,’ he said happily. ‘The Earl ordered it.’
‘The Earl promised I would be left alone!’ Jeanette protested hotly.
‘Then his lordship has changed his mind,’ Sir Simon said.
She spat at him. ‘You have already stolen everything else of mine, now you would take the house too?’
‘Yes, madame,’ Sir Simon said, and he spurred the horse forward so that it crowded her. ‘Yes, madame,’ he said again, then wrenched the reins so that the horse twisted and thumped into Jeanette, throwing her onto the ground. ‘I’ll take your house,’ Sir Simon said, ‘and anything else I want, madame.’ The watching archers cheered at the sight of Jeanette’s long bare legs. She snatched her skirts down and tried to stand, but Sir Simon edged his horse forward to force her into an undignified scramble across the yard.
‘Let the lass up!’ Will Skeat shouted angrily.
‘She and I are old friends, Master Skeat,’ Sir Simon answered, still threatening Jeanette with the horse’s heavy hoofs.
‘I said let her up and leave her be!’ Will snarled.
Sir Simon, offended at being ordered by a commoner and in front of archers, turned angrily, but there was a competence about Will Skeat that gave the knight pause. Skeat was twice Sir Simon’s age and all those years had been spent in fighting, and Sir Simon retained just enough sense not to make a confrontation. ‘The house is yours, Master Skeat,’ he said condescendingly, ‘but look after its mistress. I have plans for her.’ He backed the horse from Jeanette, who was in tears of shame, then spurred out of the yard.
Jeanette did not understand English, but she recognized that Will Skeat had intervened on her behalf and so she stood and appealed to him. ‘He has stolen everything from me!’ she said, pointing at the retreating horseman. ‘Everything!’
‘You know what the lass is saying, Tom?’ Skeat asked.
‘She doesn’t like Sir Simon,’ Thomas said laconically. He was leaning on his saddle pommel, watching Jeanette.
‘Calm the girl down, for Christ’s sake,’ Skeat pleaded, then turned in his saddle. ‘Jake? Make sure there’s water and hay for horses. Peter, kill two of them heifers so we can sup before the light goes. Rest of you? Stop gawping at the lass and get yourselves settled!’
‘Thief!’ Jeanette called after Sir Simon, then turned on Thomas. ‘Who are you?’
‘My name is Thomas, madame.’ He slid out of the saddle and threw his reins to Sam. ‘The Earl has ordered us to live here,’ Thomas went on, ‘and to protect you.’
‘Protect me!’ Jeanette blazed at him. ‘You are all thieves! How can you protect me? There is a place in hell for thieves like you and it is just like England. You are thieves, every one of you! Now, go! Go!’
‘We’re not going,’ Thomas said flatly.
‘How can you stay here?’ Jeanette demanded. ‘I am a widow! It is not proper to have you here.’
‘We’re here, madame,’ Thomas said, ‘and you and us will have to make the best of it. We’ll not encroach. Just show me where your private rooms are and I’ll make sure no man trespasses.’
‘You? Make sure? Ha!’ Jeanette turned away, then immediately turned back. ‘You want me to show you my rooms, yes? So you know where my valuable properties are? Is that it? You want me to show you where you can thieve from me? Why don’t I just give you everything?’
Thomas smiled. ‘I thought you said Sir Simon had already stolen everything?’
‘He has taken everything, everything! He is no gentleman. He is a pig. He is,’ Jeanette paused, wanting to contrive a crushing insult, ‘he is English!’ Jeanette spat at Thomas’s feet and pulled open the kitchen door. ‘You see this door, Englishman? Everything beyond this door is private. Everything!’ She went inside, slammed the door, then immediately opened it again. ‘And the Duke is coming. The proper Duke, not your snivelling puppet child, so you will all die. Good!’ The door slammed again.
Will Skeat chuckled. ‘She don’t like you either, Tom. What was the lass saying?’
‘That we’re all going to die.’
‘Aye, that’s true enough. But in our beds, by God’s grace.’
‘And she says we’re not to go past that door.’
‘Plenty of room out here,’ Skeat said placidly, watching as one of his men swung an axe to kill a heifer. The blood flowed over the yard, attracting a rush of dogs to lap at it while two archers began butchering the still twitching animal.
‘Listen!’ Skeat had climbed a mounting block beside the stables and now shouted at all his men. ‘The Earl has given orders that the lass who was spitting at Tom is not to be molested. You understand that, you whoresons? You keep your britches laced up when she’s around, and if you don’t, I’ll geld you! You treat her proper, and you don’t go through that door. You’ve had your frolic, so now you can knuckle down to a proper bit of soldiering.’
The Earl of Northampton left after a week, taking most of his army back to the fortresses in Finisterre, which was the heartland of Duke John’s supporters. He left Richard Totesham as commander of the new garrison, but he also left Sir Simon Jekyll as Totesham’s deputy.
‘The Earl doesn’t want the bastard,’ Will Skeat told Thomas, ‘so he’s foisted him on us.’
As Skeat and Totesham were both independent captains, there could have been jealousy between them, but the two men respected each other and, while Tote-sham and his men stayed in La Roche-Derrien and strengthened its defences, Skeat rode out into the country to punish the folk who paid their rents and owed their allegiance to Duke Charles. The hellequin were thus released to be a curse on northern Brittany.
It was a simple business to ruin a land. The houses and barns might be made of stone, but their roofs would burn. The livestock was captured and, if there were too many beasts to herd home, then the animals were slaughtered and their carcasses tipped down wells to poison the water. Skeat’s men burned what would burn, broke what would break and stole what could be sold. They killed, raped and plundered. Fear of them drove men away from their farms, leaving the land desolate. They were the devil’s horsemen, and they did King Edward’s will by harrowing his enemy’s land.
They wrecked village after village–Kervec and Lanvellec, St Laurent and Les Sept Saints, Tonquedec and Berhet, and a score of other places whose names they never learned. It was Christmas time, and back home the yule logs were being dragged across frost-hardened fields to high-beamed halls where troubadours sang of Arthur and his knights, of chivalrous warriors who allied pity to strength, but in Brittany the hellequin fought the real war. Soldiers were not paragons; they were scarred, vicious men who took delight in destruction.