smiled, then stepped forward and plucked the cloak from Jeanette’s shoulders. ‘When I first saw you, my lady,’ he said, ‘I confess I thought of marriage. But you have been perverse, so I have changed my mind.’ He put his hands at her bodice’s neckline and ripped it apart, tearing the laces from their embroidered holes. Jeanette screamed as she tried to cover herself and Jake again held Thomas’s arm down.
‘Wait till he gets the armour off,’ Jake whispered. They knew the bolts could pierce mail, but none of the three knew how strong the plate armour would prove.
Sir Simon slapped Jeanette’s hands away. ‘There, madame,’ he said, gazing at her breasts, ‘now we can have discourse.’
Sir Simon stepped back and began to strip himself of the armour. He pulled off the plated gauntlets first, unbuckled the sword belt, then lifted the shoulder pieces on their leather harness over his head. He fumbled with the side buckles of the breast and back plates that were attached to a leather coat that also supported the rerebraces and vambraces that protected his arms. The coat had a chain skirt, which, because of the weight of the plate and ring mail, made it a struggle for Sir Simon to drag over his head. He staggered as he pulled at the heavy armour and Thomas again raised the crossbow, but Sir Simon was stepping back and forward as he tried to steady himself and Thomas could not be sure of his aim and so kept his finger off the trigger.
The armour-laden coat thumped onto the ground, leaving Sir Simon tousle-haired and bare-chested, and Thomas again put the crossbow stock into his shoulder, but now Sir Simon sat down to strip off the cuisses, greaves, poleyns and boots, and he sat in such a way that his armoured legs were towards the ambush and kept getting in the way of Thomas’s aim. Jeanette was struggling with the knife, scared out of her wits that Thomas had not stayed close, but tug as she might the dagger would not move.
Sir Simon pulled off the sollerets that covered his feet, then wriggled out of the leather breeches to which the leg plates were attached. ‘Now, madame,’ he said, standing whitely naked, ‘we can talk properly.’
Jeanette heaved a last time at the dagger, hoping to plunge it into Sir Simon’s pale belly, and just then Thomas pulled his trigger.
The bolt scraped across Sir Simon’s chest. Thomas had aimed at the knight’s groin, hoping to send the short arrow deep into his belly, but the bolt had grazed one of the whiplike alder boughs and been deflected. Blood streaked on Sir Simon’s skin and he dropped to the ground so fast that Jake’s bolt whipped over his head. Sir Simon scrambled away, going first to his discarded armour. Then he realized he had no time to save the plate and so he ran for his horse, and it was then that Sam’s bolt caught him in the flesh of his right thigh so that he yelped, half fell and decided there was no time to rescue his horse either and just limped naked and bleeding into the woods. Thomas loosed a second bolt that rattled past Sir Simon to whack into a tree, and then the naked man vanished. Thomas swore. He had meant to kill, but Sir Simon was all too alive.
‘I thought you weren’t here!’ Jeanette said as Thomas appeared. She was clutching her torn clothing to her breasts.
‘We missed the bastard,’ Thomas said angrily. He heaved the dagger free of her skirts while Jake and Sam thrust the armour into two sacks. Thomas threw down the crossbow and took his own black bow from his shoulder. What he should do now, he thought, was track Sir Simon through the trees and kill the bastard. He could pull out the white-feathered arrow and put a crossbow bolt into the wound so that whoever found him would believe that bandits or the enemy had killed the knight.
‘Search the bastard’s saddle pouches,’ he told Jake and Sam. Jeanette had tied the cloak round her neck and her eyes widened as she saw the gold pour from the pouches. ‘You’re going to stay here with Jake and Sam,’ Thomas told her.
‘Where are you going?’ she asked.
‘To finish the job,’ Thomas said grimly. He loosed the laces of his arrow bag and dropped one crossbow bolt in among the longer arrows. ‘Wait here,’ he told Jake and Sam.
‘I’ll help you,’ Sam said.
‘No,’ Thomas insisted, ‘wait here and look after the Countess.’ He was angry with himself. He should have used his own bow from the start and simply removed the telltale arrow and shot a bolt into Sir Simon’s corpse, but he had fumbled the ambush. But at least Sir Simon had fled westwards, away from his two men-at-arms, and he was naked, bleeding and unarmed. Easy prey, Thomas told himself as he followed the blood drops among the trees. The trail went west and then, as the blood thinned, southwards. Sir Simon was obviously working his way back towards his companions and Thomas abandoned caution and just ran, hoping to cut the fugitive off. Then, bursting through some hazels, he saw Sir Simon, limping and bent. Thomas pulled the bow back, and just then Colley and the squire came into view, both with swords drawn and both spurring their horses at Thomas. He switched his aim to the nearest and loosed without thinking. He loosed as a good archer should, and the arrow went true and fast, smack into the mailed chest of the squire, who was thrown back in his saddle. His sword dropped to the ground as his horse swerved hard to its left, going in front of Sir Simon.
Colley wrenched his reins and reached for Sir Simon, who clutched at his outstretched hand and then half ran and was half carried away into the trees. Thomas had dragged a second arrow from the bag, but by the time he loosed it the two men were half hidden by trees and the arrow glanced off a branch and was lost among the leaves.
Thomas swore. Colley had stared straight at Thomas for an instant. Sir Simon had also seen him and Thomas, a third arrow on his string, just stared at the trees as he understood that everything had just fallen apart. In one instant. Everything.
He ran back to the clearing by the stream. ‘You’re to take the Countess to the town,’ he told Jake and Sam, ‘but for Christ’s sake go carefully. They’ll be searching for us soon. You’ll have to sneak back.’
They stared at him, not understanding, and Thomas told them what had happened. How he had killed Sir Simon’s squire, and how that made him both a murderer and a fugitive. He had been seen by Sir Simon and by the yellow-haired Colley, and they would both be witnesses at his trial and celebrants at his execution.
He told Jeanette the same in French. ‘You can trust Jake and Sam,’ he told her, ‘but you mustn’t be caught going home. You have to go carefully!’
Jake and Sam argued, but Thomas knew well enough what the consequences of the killing arrow were. ‘Tell Will what happened,’ he told them. ‘Blame it all on me and say I’ll wait for him at Quatre Vents.’ That was a village the hellequin had laid waste south of La Roche-Derrien. ‘Tell him I’d like his advice.’
Jeanette tried to persuade him that his panic was unnecessary. ‘Perhaps they did not recognize you?’ she suggested.
‘They recognized me, my lady,’ Thomas said grimly. He smiled ruefully. ‘I am sorry, but at least you have your armour and sword. Hide them well.’ He pulled himself into Sir Simon’s saddle. ‘Quatre Vents,’ he told Jake and Sam, then spurred southwards through the trees.
He was a murderer, a wanted man and a fugitive, and that meant he was any man’s prey, alone in the wilderness made by the hellequin. He had no idea what he should do or where he could go, only that if he was to survive then he must ride like the devil’s horseman that he was.
So he did.
Quatre Vents had been a small village, scarce larger than Hookton, with a gaunt barn-like church, a cluster of cottages where cows and people had shared the same thatched roofs, a water mill, and some outlying farms crouched in sheltered valleys. Only the stone walls of the
