as they waited in a swathe of bluebells at the wood’s margin from where they could see La Roche-Derrien’s western gate. Thomas had only brought a dozen bolts, short and stub-feathered, so each of them shot just two times. Will Skeat had been right: the weapons did kick up as the archers loosed so that their first bolts went high on the trunk that was their target. Thomas’s second shot was more accurate, but nothing like as true as an arrow shot from a proper bow. The near miss made him apprehensive of the morning’s risks, but Jake and Sam were both cheerful at the prospect of larceny and murder.
‘Can’t really miss,’ Sam said after his second shot had also gone high. ‘Might not catch the bastard in the belly, but we’ll hit him somewhere.’ He levered the cord back, grunting with the effort. No man alive could haul a crossbow’s string by arm-power alone and so a mechanism had to be employed. The most expensive crossbows, those with the longest range, used a jackscrew. The archer would place a cranked handle on the screw’s end and wind the cord back, inch by creaking inch, until the pawl above the trigger engaged the string. Some crossbowmen used their bodies as a lever. They wore thick leather belts to which a hook was attached and by bending down, attaching the hook to the cord and then straightening, they could pull the twisted strings back, but the crossbows Thomas had brought from Lannion used a lever, shaped like a goat’s hind leg, that forced the cord and bent the short bow shaft, which was a layered thing of horn, wood and glue. The lever was probably the fastest way of cocking the weapon, though it did not offer the power of a screw-cocked bow and was still slow compared to a yew shaft. In truth there was nothing to compare with the English bow and Skeat’s men debated endlessly why the enemy did not adopt the weapon. ‘Because they’re daft,’ was Sam’s curt judgement, though the truth, Thomas knew, was that other nations simply did not start their sons early enough. To be an archer meant starting as a boy, then practising and practising until the chest was broad, the arm muscles huge and the arrow seemed to fly without the archer giving its aim any thought.
Jake shot his second bolt into the oak and swore horribly when it missed the mark. He looked at the bow. ‘Piece of shit,’ he said. ‘How close are we going to be?’
‘Close as we can get,’ Thomas said.
Jake sniffed. ‘If I can poke the bloody bow into the bastard’s belly I might not miss.’
‘Thirty, forty feet should be all right,’ Sam reckoned.
‘Aim at his crotch,’ Thomas encouraged them, ‘and we should gut him.’
‘It’ll be all right,’ Jake said, ‘three of us? One of us has got to skewer the bastard.’
‘In the shadows, lads,’ Thomas said, gesturing them deeper into the trees. He had seen Jeanette coming from the gate where the guards had inspected her pass then waved her on. She sat sideways on a small horse that Will Skeat had lent her and was accompanied by two grey-haired servants, a man and a woman, both of whom had grown old in her father’s service and now walked beside their mistress’s horse. If Jeanette had truly planned to ride to Louannec then such a feeble and aged escort would have been an invitation for trouble, but trouble, of course, was what she intended, and no sooner had she reached the trees than the trouble appeared as Sir Simon Jekyll emerged from the archway’s shadow, riding with two other men.
‘What if those two bastards stay close to him?’ Sam asked.
‘They won’t,’ Thomas said. He was certain of that, just as he and Jeanette had been certain that Sir Simon would follow her and that he would wear the expensive suit of plate he had stolen from her.
‘She’s a brave lass,’ Jake grunted.
‘She’s got spirit,’ Thomas said, ‘knows how to hate someone.’
Jake tested the point of a quarrel. ‘You and her?’ he asked Thomas. ‘Doing it, are you?’
‘No.’
‘But you’d like to. I would.’
‘I don’t know,’ Thomas said. He thought Jeanette beautiful, but Skeat was right, there was a hardness in her that repelled him. ‘I suppose so,’ he admitted.
‘Of course you would,’ Jake said, ‘be daft not to.’
Once Jeanette was among the trees Thomas and his companions trailed her, staying hidden and always conscious that Sir Simon and his two henchmen were closing quickly. Those three horsemen trotted once they reached the wood and succeeded in catching up with Jeanette in a place that was almost perfect for Thomas’s ambush. The road ran within yards of a clearing where a meandering stream had undercut the roots of a willow. The fallen trunk was rotted and thick with disc-like fungi. Jeanette, pretending to make way for the three armoured horsemen, turned into the clearing and waited beside the dead tree. Best of all there was a stand of young alders close to the willow’s trunk that offered cover to Thomas.
Sir Simon turned off the road, ducked under the branches and curbed his horse close to Jeanette. One of his companions was Henry Colley, the brutal yellow-haired man who had hurt Thomas so badly, while the other was Sir Simon’s slack-jawed squire, who grinned in expectation of the coming entertainment. Sir Simon pulled off the snouted helmet and hung it on his saddle’s pommel, then smiled triumphantly.
‘It is not safe, madame,’ he said, ‘to travel without an armed escort.’
‘I am perfectly safe,’ Jeanette declared. Her two servants cowered beside her horse as Colley and the squire hemmed Jeanette in place with their horses.
Sir Simon dismounted with a clank of armour. ‘I had hoped, dear lady,’ he said, approaching her, ‘that we could talk on our way to Louannec.’
‘You wish to pray to the holy Yves?’ Jeanette asked. ‘What will you beg of him? That he grants you courtesy?’
‘I would just talk with you, madame,’ Sir Simon said.
‘Talk of what?’
‘Of the complaint you made to the Earl of Northampton. You fouled my honour, lady.’
‘Your honour?’ Jeanette laughed. ‘What honour do you have that could be fouled? Do you even know the meaning of the word?’
Thomas, hidden behind the straggle of alders, was whispering a translation to Jake and Sam. All three crossbows were cocked and had their wicked little bolts lying in the troughs.
‘If you will not talk to me on the road, madame, then we must have our conversation here,’ Sir Simon declared.
‘I have nothing to say to you.’
‘Then you will find it easy enough to listen,’ he said, and reached up to haul her out of the saddle. She beat at his armoured gauntlets, but no resistance of hers could prevent him from dragging her to the ground. The two servants shrieked protests, but Colley and the squire silenced them by grabbing their hair, then pulling them out of the clearing to leave Jeanette and Sir Simon alone.
Jeanette had scrabbled backwards and was now standing beside the fallen tree. Thomas had raised his crossbow, but Jake pushed it down, for Sir Simon’s escort was still too near.
Sir Simon pushed Jeanette hard so that she sat down on the rotting trunk, then he took a long dagger from his sword belt and drove its narrow blade hard through Jeanette’s skirts so that she was pinned to the fallen willow. He hammered the knife hilt with his steel-shod foot to make sure it was deep in the trunk. Colley and the
