Blood on the Sand (18 page)

Andrew Retford lay panting in the long grass. He had been dragged from his horse early on, and stood up to draw his sword only to feel someone punch him in the back. When he
turned, he found his legs were weak, and now he lay with a sense of faint puzzlement at the constriction in his chest. He could hear water from a small stream gurgling and chuckling merrily nearby,
and his chest was making similar noises. There were loud cries and bellows from his friends. They would come to him soon, he was sure, but just now he was mostly aware of how his lungs seemed to
fill with water. He felt as though he was drowning.

The grasses here were very long. As he coughed he could see them over him, their seed heads pale amber-coloured against the grey of the sky. Somewhere overhead he could hear a bird singing from
a tree, and there, far off in the sky, was a buzzard, soaring easily. He could almost sense the wind under its wings, the feeling of joy in its heart. He remembered sitting under a tree back at the
manor, looking up through the branches and seeing a hawk in the sky high overhead. It looked so free, so careless, that even as a youngster he had felt a pang of jealousy . . .

There was a quick pain in his chest, and Andrew Retford was free to fly at last.

Clip saw a body on the ground. It was an outlaw, and he thrust twice to make sure of the man before looking for others. The vintaine were all standing and panting, the sudden
explosion of excitement and terror giving way to the lassitude that always assailed new recruits after their first battle. Clip himself could still feel the thrill coursing through his veins. There
was something magnificent about surviving. Every time, life felt sweeter. The fact of living when others were dead made existing more precious.

He dropped and felt over the man’s body. His purse held some coins, but not many. Still, better a few than none at all, he reflected. The man had a knife, too, stuck in a sheath about his
neck. Clip pulled the thong from over the corpse’s head and slipped it over his own, along with the little stone to whet it.

A snap of a twig, and Clip started up. Ahead, creeping around a bush, a man was staring at him. The face was familiar, with deep-set eyes in a curious, triangular-shaped face, but Clip
couldn’t tell where he might have seen him. Perhaps he had noticed the outlaw during the battle. In any case, the man was thirty paces away, and Clip had neither a bow and arrow to kill him,
nor the inclination to run after him.

‘Oh, just fuck off,’ he shouted, waving an arm. The man gave him a thankful look, ducked, and bolted away like a startled rabbit.

‘Wanker,’ Clip muttered, and went on to the next body.

‘Frip?’ Jack said. ‘You’re not going to like this.’

‘What?’ Berenger made his way through the long grasses until he was at Jack’s side, but then he stopped and stared at the body at their feet. ‘Oh, shit.’

Clip was with them a moment later, whistling tunelessly through his teeth. The whistling ceased. ‘Fuck! How did he die?’

There was no wound on his breast. ‘Help me roll him over, Jack,’ Berenger said. Then, ‘That’s how.’

‘A stab wound in his back. That’s not good,’ Clip said. ‘Ach, the poor bugger caught it when he was trying to run away.’

‘He didn’t get very far,’ Jack mused.

‘What was he doing over here anyway?’ Berenger wondered. ‘I didn’t see. I was too busy with the fight.’

‘I saw him being pulled from his horse, and then others crowded round to get at him,’ Jack said. ‘After that, I had to look to myself. Those bastards seemed to spring from
nowhere.’

‘They managed to kill the one man we were commanded to protect,’ Berenger noted.

While the three were studying the body, John of Essex appeared. ‘What’s this? Oh, he’s dead is, he? Should never have been sent. He couldn’t handle a knife or sword to
save his life.’

He stopped when he noticed all the others staring at him. ‘What? It’s the truth, isn’t it?’

Berenger turned back to the corpse at their feet.

John of Essex peered down. ‘What killed him?’

‘He has a stab wound here,’ Jack said.

They studied it, John of Essex craning his neck to view it from above. ‘That looks like a dagger,’ he said.

‘Thank you, John, I think we realised that,’ Berenger said with heavy irony.

‘It’s got the diamond shape.’

‘Yes,’ Jack said.

‘One strike only,’ Berenger said. ‘And it looks like it was a downward blow. You can see where the blade moved here. The killer must have hit the shoulder-bone or a rib, and
that sent the blade sideways.’

‘He wouldn’t have known much about it, anyway,’ Jack said with rough kindness. ‘It must have punctured his heart or lungs. That’s what comes from running
away.’

Berenger nodded. But in his mind’s eye, he remembered Clip and Jack’s bickering from the other day, when Retford alone of all the new recruits in the vintaine had stood his ground
and not retreated nervously. The idea that he would turn and run was not credible.

Of course, someone in the outlaw gang could have slipped behind him and stabbed him – but the vintener could not help but wonder if Sir Peter was right.

Was it someone from the vintaine who had killed him?

‘That was a nasty little skirmish,’ the Pardoner said, and shivered.

John of Essex grunted. ‘You think so? Nah, I’ve seen worse brawls after a good market-day football match where I come from.’

Berenger didn’t look at him. They had brought the three bodies to lie in a row at the roadside: Horn, Wren and Retford, all with the same sad emptiness. Alive, the men had possessed
vitality, and their spirits had given them strength and poise. Without the guiding soul within them, they were mere bags of bone and meat. Wren still wore a look of surprise, which could almost
have been amusing, but for the eruption of blood that had smothered his breast and hosen. Horn looked dreadful. A war hammer had ended his life, the spike punching a hole deep into his skull and
killing him instantly. Retford, by contrast, looked almost peaceful.

‘We’ll take them with us,’ Berenger decided. ‘It isn’t far to York.’

John of Essex looked around at the empty countryside. ‘Is there any point? We may as well . . .’

‘They will receive a proper burial,’ Berenger said firmly. As he spoke, Jack Fletcher stepped near to him. Jack had received a nasty cut to his brow that had left him with a bloody
face, smeared where he had tried to wipe it away. It lent him a demonic appearance as he gave John a warning look. John glanced at him and submitted.

The ponies had scattered. Although they could not find one of them, the rest were discovered huddled anxiously in a little copse where a stream passed, and they were soon gathered together
again. Wren’s, when they threw his body over her back, became skittish, rolling her eyes and jerking her head at the stench of blood. Eventually Berenger snapped at the men to move the body
to a different mount and put a live rider on her, and at last, shivering fearfully, she allowed Jack to soothe her. Berenger’s own horse had to be slaughtered. The cut to her shoulder had
gone too deep, and they had no time to try to let the wound heal. Already the flies were feasting when Jack took a poleaxe to her.

At last Berenger and the remains of his depleted command mounted their beasts and set off.

‘Frip?’ Jack said after a little.

‘Yes?’ Berenger didn’t turn his head. His eyes were flitting from bush to bush, hedge to hedge, tree to tree as he sought any sign of a new ambush.

‘Retford. Are you content about his death?’

‘Content? No! I wanted to bring him safe to the Archbishop. Of course I am not pleased that I have failed in this, no.’

‘I meant, his death.’

‘What?’ Berenger turned to him irritably. ‘What is that supposed to mean?’

‘I was talking to Aletaster, and he said that he saw the Saint and Retford run together. Yet the Saint now denies it.’

Berenger shrugged. ‘Perhaps Aletaster was mistaken, or Saint and Retford only appeared to be together. You know as well as I do how a man will see one thing under pressure, when something
else entirely happened. I’ve known it myself.’

‘He was convincing.’

‘So?’

‘I just think we should keep an eye on the Saint. Perhaps the rumours of a spy were not so wide of the bull’s eye, after all.’

Berenger turned his attention back to his study of the scenery. ‘Keep your eyes on the Saint then, but watch all the other newcomers too. I don’t know that I trust any of them yet.
And I certainly don’t care for Tyler. He’s a more likely candidate than the others.’

That was a thought: he had made the comment from a simple dislike of Tyler, whom he had mistrusted ever since the long march from the coast to Crécy. Tyler had, so he suspected, tried to
cause friction between Berenger’s men and others in the King’s army.

‘I’ll do that,’ Jack said. ‘You still don’t trust him, then.’

‘Would you?’

As they rode away, the man with the triangular face wiped the dirt from his brow and gave a sigh of relief.

That had been close. When the scrawny one had seen hm after the fight it had felt like his heart was going to stop. The little prick could have easily killed him, or at the least summoned his
comrades.

It was fortunate that Clip had not recognised him. He had feared that Clip might while the two of them stared at each other over the greensward. Clip had followed him that day back at
Villeneuve-la-Hardie. It was his mentioning Clip to the heavy-set Carlisle man that had led to Clip’s unpleasant immersion in the latrines. But perhaps that soaking had led him to forget the
man he had followed. The vision of a great brute from Carlisle had entirely overridden his memory.

It was late the next afternoon that the vintaine reached the walls of York.

The city lay in the countryside like a great cancer, under a black fog of smoke from all the fires. Grey moorstone walls, lightened with occasional splashes of ochre or raw, red stains in the
stone, encircled it. From their approach, Berenger could see the towers of the great church and spires of lesser churches, while outside the walls, suburbs of wattle and daub buildings had been
hastily thrown up, some straggling as though for comfort up against the walls themselves.

He led his group along the road to the gates, and in beneath the vast gatehouse, and up along the street behind. It was narrow for the main street in such a large city: barely wide enough for
two carts to pass, and Berenger and the men were forced to sit and wait impatiently when two sumptermen fell to arguing in the middle of the street. Overhead, the buildings jettied out, leaving
only a narrow sliver of sky, and that, Berenger could see, was as grey as a slab of stone. Bad weather was on the way or he was a Gascon.

‘Move yourself!’ he called at last, irritated by the delay. At once he became aware of the attention of several people. Two were the sumptermen, one of whom cursed Berenger before
realising that he had a vintaine behind him and swiftly buttoned his lips. But another group took notice, a half-dozen men with polearms and the tatty remnants of uniforms.

One, clearly their captain, eyed Berenger and the others with scowling interest before wandering over. He had a crop of black stubble sprouting on his jaw, a broken nose, and an overall
appearance of competence with the weapons in his hand and at his belt. ‘What are you doing here?’ he asked.

Jack turned his mount and stared at the man, waiting for Berenger to comment.

Clip snorted, hawked and spat. ‘Aye, we’ve ridden all the way up here to save the prickle, and now he wants to arrest us for it?’

‘Silence, Clip,’ Berenger said.

‘We’ll all get killed by our own, is all I’m saying,’ Clip said, unruffled.

‘Master, we are here to see the Archbishop with an urgent message from the King.’ Berenger held up the message purse he had rescued from Retford’s body.

‘What’s that?’ the watchman demanded, pointing at Retford’s body slumped over a pony.

‘We have been attacked by felons. They killed three of our men. We need them buried.’

‘The Archbishop doesn’t demean his office by things like that.’

‘Did you not hear me? I have messages from your King. Lead us to the Archbishop immediately.’

After a certain amount of reluctant arguing, the man finally agreed and took the vintaine towards the great cathedral church, but on the way Berenger saw a rough board hanging over a doorway,
with a picture of a ferocious-looking wild boar painted on it. ‘Jack, take the men in there and wait for me. I’ll be back as soon as I’ve passed on the message. Hopefully then we
can escape back south to sanity.’

Jack nodded, and after Berenger had paid one urchin to take the reins of two of the ponies with their cargoes of Wren and Horn, he followed after the watchman with the reins of the pony carrying
the body of Retford loose in his hand.

He left the bodies on the ponies as he entered the cathedral’s close, and soon he was at the Archbishop’s hall.

‘You have a message for me, I think?’ the Archbishop said.

William de la Zouche was no doddering fool. He was the latest in a line of intelligent, strong men from his family, and political manoeuvring was in his blood. He waited while Berenger kissed
his ring, and then nodded. ‘You are from the King?’