Son of the Morning (46 page)

Orsino declined. He was busy fetching and carrying for Sariel and warding off the unwanted advances of the Flemish traders. Dow declined too. The idea of lying with a woman who disliked the act so much she would need to be paid to perform it was distasteful to him. Lucifer was a joyous presence and his followers believed in spreading joy. There was nothing joyful in the couplings he saw in the camp.

Sariel came and sat beside him, gazing into the firelight. She had covered her hair on the pardoner’s advice, to attract less attention from men. Any woman showing her hair in a military camp – and many other places, for that matter – would be assumed to be a prostitute. Orsino sat next to her, alert, eyes on her like a dog by a table, waiting for a morsel to fall. Dow could see he found the woman a mystery. She hardly spoke and when she did, made little sense. Dow found her presence difficult too. He wanted to question her about so many things but he would not. She was a fallen angel, he was convinced, and it was for her to decide when she would talk to him. ‘They don’t think like us,’ Abbadon had told him, when reciting the names of the fallen. Watchers, he’d called them – as they watched for the return of the Son of the Morning. Only Osbert the pardoner seemed to be able to get through to her. Away to his right, the pardoner was regaling some English bowmen with tales of the whores of London, raucous laughter drifting over. He at least was joyful.

‘The thought of happiness disturbs you.’ Her voice was as he remembered it, soft but strong. It conjured strange feelings in him – a sadness, a longing for home. He remembered that night on the moor, his head on his nan’s lap, the kestrel holding the world on its wing. He tried to speak but his voice was choked, his throat tight. His ympe stirred in his tunic.

Orsino leaned closer to listen to her.

‘All your days in resentment. Lucifer is the child of joy.’

Orsino crossed himself.

‘You can tell my thoughts?’ replied Dow.

‘No. But I watch you. It is easy to see what you think.’

‘You rescued me.’

‘I found myself there. That thing would have killed me.’

‘
This
called you.’ He moved his shirt to expose his wound.

She caught a laugh in her hand as the little ympe poked out its head.

‘Lady of Light,’ said the little creature.

‘Soul who would be free,’ she said.

She looked at the scar on Dow’s chest. ‘You are marked for great things,’ she said. ‘I saw the light that shone from you.’

‘How does this call you?’

‘It’s a tear,’ she said, ‘a rip, and sometimes it lets out the light of which you are made. They hurt you didn’t they, God’s men?’

‘Yes.’ He felt his eyes filling up.

‘Who is it that you think of? Not of downthrown angels.’

‘Of my nan.’ Dow rubbed at his eyes, willing his tears back in. ‘The fire is smoky,’ he said. The ympe fluttered from his shirt to settle on her hands.

‘If someone sees that we’ll all be hanged,’ said Orsino.

Sariel cupped the little demon in her hands and it gazed up at her.

She continued talking to Dow. ‘Your nan would have wanted to see you so sad?’

‘No.’

‘Then be joyful. Smile in the morning light, it is the best prayer Lucifer knows.’

‘I want to see them all downthrown.’

‘You are young and strong and able. Take joy in that, then. Take joy in the power you have to shape your destiny and share your joy with the Lord of Light accordingly.’

He thought of his nan. She had told him he would be a great man. But he didn’t feel like a great man, he felt like a miserable boy. He couldn’t pray for himself – he had been taught never to do that. ‘Take joy –’ Abbadon had said to Dow, ‘– try to remember all those who would change position with you in an instant.’ He was fed, he was warm, he had a purpose granted him. He wasn’t a beggar or a cripple or a twisted priest. So he prayed to see that, to understand that, though he was hard done by, at least means of redress had been put in his hands – the sword, his education, the ympe that gazed up in wonder at Sariel.

‘Pray with me,’ she said.

A prayer to Lucifer, though, was not like a prayer to the God of the priests; Dow did not ask him to grant things or for blessings.

‘Lucifer. I declare to you that from this day forth I shall keep my anger like an arrow in a quiver, untouched until required. I shall see the world as you made it, bright and lovely. I shall be joyful. I make this bond with you in friendship and brotherhood. Call me to account if I fail to honour it.’ She spoke the words slowly and he said them after.

Orsino sat by the fire so uncomfortable he looked as if he was being roasted alive. He bowed his head himself and prayed loudly. ‘Lord, master of this earth, do not judge these your servants in their sin. Come to them, forgive them, set them on a path to obedience and righteousness, Father. Spare their souls.’

Dow felt his anger rise. So much for leaving it untouched. ‘Who is it that sets himself so high he can damn and forgive? What manner of thing demands worship and obeisance?’

‘Silence your blasphemy or get us killed!’ said Orsino.

Sariel smiled at him. ‘It doesn’t matter what Orsino thinks or says,’ she said, ‘it is what you believe. Be strong in yourself, unthreatened and open. Wait for the dawn. You could learn from him.’ She nodded towards the pardoner.

‘How?’

‘See how he smiles despite what life throws at him. See how men warm to him. See how cleverly he makes them believe in him. He has a role to play in your struggle, I’m sure.’

‘Can you see the future?’

‘No, not at all. Who can see that? I have a sense of people, that is all. He feels … underused. He is capable of more than he allows himself to do. He could help you.’

‘Will you not help me?’

‘I am looking for the light,’ she said, ‘to take it and shape it and bring it flesh.’

‘Why?’

‘To let it know suffering. Angels do not know suffering. So they cannot feel the suffering of the world. They know only beauty, see only beauty and so worship God. This is why they will lay waste an army for a king who builds them a fine chapel. They do not understand the pain they cause, only that in glass, gold and paintings they have made the world more lovely.’

She patted him on the leg and said. ‘My head is clearer when I talk to you. You are a healer, I think.’

‘Do you need healing?’

‘I was deceived,’ she said, ‘but in you I take joy.’

She let the ympe go and it flew up into the night and was gone, chasing the moon through a tangle of trees.

Dow felt very sleepy. He put his head into her lap. She smelled of peat and of rain on the moors. She sang to him.

This is what she sang:

‘Heather is your bed,

The stars are your candles,

And your blanket is my caress.’

She stroked his hair and he fell asleep in her lap. The last thing he recalled was Orsino standing and stomping away from the fire.

7

The church had been razed, which pleased Montagu. The French were firing the suburbs to deny the English shelter – from the weather or attack. If they were burning their own churches then God would love them a lot less. Marquette was a collection of about twenty houses to the direct north of Lille – most of them burned to nothing. There was a long strip of woods to the east masking anything that went on behind it. He didn’t like that. Nor did he like it that the village was right on the river and that – not two hundred yards away – the water had been diverted around the town to form a large moat. He was in the crook of an elbow of water.

He rode around the village, his horse skittish because of the fire. No one there. Bardi’s man would have to come and find him if he could. Montagu was already beginning to think he had been foolish. Why come here? Too long counting wool and worrying about angels, too itchy for a fight.

‘You want a closer look at the walls?’ said Suffolk. ‘It’ll do ’em good to think we’re recce-ing a siege.’

‘Why not? Though let’s be quick. I don’t want them having the chance to get a run on …’ The words died in his mouth. There was movement in the line of trees and a flash of bright blue. That could only be a knight’s surcoat.

‘We should get back to the ford,’ said Montagu.

‘Trouble?’

‘I should say so.’

Too late. From the trees, a column of mounted men began to file across the country, a line of crossbowmen and men-at-arms on foot in front of them. Sixty horsemen, one hundred and forty crossbowmen, one hundred foot soldiers, at a guess. Montagu had only a breath to decide. Could they charge down the crossbows and punch a hole through the enemy? They’d need to connect before the footmen put up a schilliton of spears in front of the crossbows, before the crossbows could load and fire. Not possible. Too far. At one hundred yards he’d have had a chance. This was more like two hundred and fifty.

‘Will George see them?’ Suffolk was calm, a soldier practised at keeping his inner feelings to himself.

‘Well, let’s hope,’ said Montagu. ‘Although there’s a good hill between us and them.’

‘Run east?’

‘Seems fair. If that fails, back here. There’s enough cover that we can make them come and fight us in the houses, which takes the crossbows out of it and means they can’t charge. One hundred and sixty of them – those crossbowmen won’t want to fight up close. Twenty-five of us. What do you think?’

‘I’m not surrendering – they’ll hang me,’ said D’Aubrequin.

‘Perceval, we are the English army,’ said Montagu, ‘there’s no question of surrender to a Frenchman. My God, the very idea. Insupportable. Come on, lads, stick your spurs into your horses and we’ll try to ride around the back of those woods behind them.’

He kicked his destrier forward and they thundered across the fields towards the woods. Montagu heard the Genoese captain give the order to fire. A rain of crossbow bolts struck the land, thirty yards to his right. The idiot didn’t know his range, either that or had been commanded to fire by a Frenchman who thought he knew better than the master of crossbows about crossbows. The bright colours of the horsemen, so vibrant under the steel blue sky, wheeled and charged to cut them off, thumping out a long diagonal towards the bottom of the woods, others going around the top. Montagu realised he wasn’t going to make it. He put his horn to his lips and turned his horse around.

His riders followed him and charged again, the one hundred yards back to the town.

‘Archers! Archers!’ shouted Montagu.

The bowmen dismounted behind a row of smouldering stumps that had once been houses and D’Aubrequin marshalled three men to grab their horses and tie them in as much cover as could be obtained from the broken down buildings. They needed to keep the animals if they were to have a chance of breaking and running.

The bowmen were not the raw levies of Ypres but professional soldiers, not gentlemen – no one could call them that – but tremendously well drilled.

In an instant they had formed their longbows into a platoon and the first dark flight of arrows sang towards the onrushing French. Too long! The second flight, though, was not, ten shafts landing and then another ten as the men-at-arms came forward. Two dead. Then three. The arrows disordered and maddened the advancing troops who broke line and sprinted towards the houses.

‘My God, who’s commanding this lot, a child?’ thought Montagu.

Twelve men still mounted, a vast body of footmen rushing towards them in a chaotic mass. No English knight needed telling what to do. Montagu urged his destrier forward while screaming at the French. The bowmen could not shoot now, nor crossbowmen, for fear of hitting their own troops but twelve horses ate the ground towards the onrushing hoard, lances levelled, in as close a formation as they could muster, a charge of no more than forty yards.

Montagu lost his lance through a spearman as soon as he struck, but his warhorse cut a swathe like a ship through a lake among the men-at-arms as it smashed into the enemy’s lines. He felt the impact of the collision through the body of the horse. Around him the French panicked, shouted and died as the turf flew under the pulverising hooves of the warhorses. Montagu’s sword was free and he shouted the name of his protectors, ‘St Anne! St George!’

To his right, Suffolk’s horse sent men flying as it turned and kicked. D’Aubrequin had kept his lance and managed to ride straight through the whole enemy line. He turned and charged again.

A circle of the enemy was all around him as Montagu’s horse spun and wheeled, kicking at the footmen, sending them stumbling backward. The animal had cost him half an estate in Norfolk. He’d got it cheap – it was like riding a dragon. He kept the horse moving, to stand still was to be swamped. The braver footmen came rushing in on him but those closer didn’t fancy the scrap so much and backed away. Men tripped over men. One spearman dropped his weapon and ran, another – a boy no more than fifteen – just sank to his knees crossing himself. He was a weak point in the line. Montagu rode him down, hacking and slashing with his great sword, two spears bouncing off his horse’s thick caparison, one of the spearmen losing half his head to Montagu for his presumption. Young Charles De Beaumont was dragged off his horse and went down fighting, flaying at his attackers with his sword. Roger Mandeville’s horse died underneath him, collapsing onto the man who had killed it. No time to help them. Montagu remembered his father teaching him. ‘Head up. In battle, a leader gets his head up!’ He flicked up the visor on his basinet and looked around him. Two hundred yards away the French horses were wheeling, forming up. The idiots couldn’t charge their own men? They could! A group of ten French knights broke away from the main group.

‘The village! The village!’ shouted Montagu.

The English knights broke – ten of the twelve who had charged returning. The French footmen took a heartbeat to realise what was happening, but the horses had put distance between the groups and a black swarm of English arrows came hissing down on them from the village.

It broke Montagu’s heart to do so but he had to abandon his horse. He tied it as best he could but he knew that it would very likely be stolen in hand to hand fighting.