blue wreath on which fleur-de-lis had been painted.
‘Who are you, father?’ the horseman demanded.
Thomas opened his mouth to answer, but no words came. He gaped up at the horseman, who had a reddish moustache and oddly yellow eyes. A hard-looking bastard, Thomas thought, and he raised a hand to touch St Guinefort’s paw. Perhaps the saint inspired him, for he was suddenly possessed of devilment and began to enjoy playing a priest’s role. ‘I am merely one of God’s humbler children, my son,’ he answered unctuously.
‘Are you English?’ the man-at-arms demanded suspiciously. Thomas’s French was near perfect, but it was the French spoken by England’s rulers rather than the language of France itself.
Thomas again felt panic fluttering in his breast, but he bought time by making the sign of the cross, and as his hand moved so inspiration came to him. ‘I am a Scotsman, my son,’ he said, and that allayed the yellow-eyed man’s suspicions; the Scots had ever been France’s ally. Thomas knew nothing of Scotland, but doubted many Frenchmen or Bretons did either, for it was far away and, by all accounts, a most uninviting place. Skeat always said it was a country of bog, rock and heathen bastards who were twice as difficult to kill as any Frenchman. ‘I am a Scotsman,’ Thomas repeated, ‘who brings a kinswoman of the Duke out of the hands of the English.’
The man-at-arms glanced at the wagon. ‘A kinswoman of Duke Charles?’
‘Is there another duke?’ Thomas asked innocently. ‘She is the Countess of Armorica,’ he went on, ‘and her son, who is with her, is the Duke’s grandnephew and a count in his own right. The English have held them prisoner these six months, but by God’s good grace they have relented and set her free. The Duke, I know, will want to welcome her.’
Thomas laid on Jeanette’s rank and relationship to the Duke as thick as newly skimmed cream and the enemy swallowed it whole. They allowed the wagon to continue, and Thomas watched as Hugh Boltby led his men away at a swift trot, eager to put as much distance as possible between themselves and the crossbowmen. The leader of the enemy’s men-at-arms talked with Jeanette and seemed impressed by her hauteur. He would, he said, be honoured to escort the Countess to Guingamp, though he warned her that the Duke was not there, but was still returning from Paris. He was said to be at Rennes now, a city that lay a good day’s journey to the east.
‘You will take me as far as Rennes?’ Jeanette asked Thomas.
‘You want me to, my lady?’
‘A young man is useful,’ she said. ‘Pierre is old,’ she gestured at the servant, ‘and has lost his strength. Besides, if you’re going to Flanders then you will need to cross the river at Rennes.’
So Thomas kept her company for the three days that it took the painfully slow wagon to make the journey. They needed no escort beyond Guingamp for there was small danger of any English raiders this far east in Brittany and the road was well patrolled by the Duke’s forces. The countryside looked strange to Thomas, for he had become accustomed to rank fields, untended orchards and deserted villages, but here the farms were busy and prosperous. The churches were bigger and had stained glass, and fewer and fewer folk spoke Breton. This was still Brittany, but the language was French.
They stayed in country taverns that had fleas in the straw. Jeanette and her son were given what passed for the best room while Thomas shared the stables with the two servants. They met two priests on the road, but neither suspected that Thomas was an imposter. He greeted them in Latin, which he spoke better than they did, and both men wished him a good day and a fervent Godspeed. Thomas could almost feel their relief when he did not engage them in further conversation. The Dominicans were not popular with parish priests. The friars were priests themselves, but were charged with the suppression of heresy so a visitation by the Dominicans suggested that a parish priest has not been doing his duty and even a rough, wild and young friar like Thomas was unwelcome.
They reached Rennes in the afternoon. There were dark clouds in the east against which the city loomed larger than any place Thomas had ever seen. The walls were twice as high as those at Lannion or La Roche-Derrien, and had towers with pointed roofs every few yards to serve as buttresses from which crossbowmen could pour bolts on any attacking force. Above the walls, higher even than the turrets, the church towers or the cathedral, was the citadel, a stronghold of pale stone hung with banners. The smell of the city wafted westwards on a chill wind, a stink of sewage, tanneries and smoke.
The guards at the western gate became excited when they discovered the arrows in the wagon, but Jeanette persuaded them that they were trophies she was taking to the Duke. Then they wanted to levy a custom’s duty on the fine armour and Jeanette harangued them again, using her title and the Duke’s name liberally. The soldiers eventually gave in and allowed the wagon into the narrow streets where shopwares protruded onto the roadway. Beggars ran beside the wagon and soldiers jostled Thomas, who was leading the horse. The city was crammed with soldiers. Most of the men-at-arms were wearing the wreathed white ermine badge, but many had the green grail of Genoa on their tunics, and the presence of so many troops confirmed that the Duke was indeed in the city and readying himself for the campaign that would eject the English from Brittany.
They found a tavern beneath the cathedral’s looming twin towers. Jeanette wanted to ready herself for her audience with the Duke and demanded a private room, though all she got for her cash was a spider-haunted space beneath the tavern’s eaves. The innkeeper, a sallow fellow with a twitch, suggested Thomas would be happier in the Dominican friary that lay by the church of St Germain, north of the cathedral, but Thomas declared his mission was to be among sinners, not saints, and so the innkeeper grudgingly said he could sleep in Jeanette’s wagon that was parked in the inn yard.
‘But no preaching, father,’ the man added, ‘no preaching. There’s enough of that in the city without spoiling the Three Keys.’
Jeanette’s maid brushed her mistress’s hair, then coiled and pinned the black tresses into ram’s horns that covered her ears. Jeanette put on a red velvet dress that had escaped the sack of her house and which had a skirt that fell from just beneath her breasts to the floor, while the bodice, intricately embroidered with cornflowers and daisies, hooked tight up to her neck. Its sleeves were full, trimmed with fox fur, and dropped to her red shoes, which had horn buckles. Her hat matched the dress and was trimmed with the same fur and a blue-black veil of lace. She spat on her son’s face and rubbed off the dirt, then led him down to the tavern yard.
‘Do you think the veil is right?’ she asked Thomas anxiously.
Thomas shrugged. ‘It looks right to me.’
‘No, the colour! Is it right with the red?’
He nodded, hiding his astonishment. He had never seen her dressed so fashionably. She looked like a countess now, while her son was in a clean smock and had his hair wetted and smoothed.
‘You’re to meet your great-uncle!’ Jeanette told Charles, licking a finger and rubbing at some more dirt on his cheek. ‘And he’s nephew to the King of France. Which means you’re related to the King! Yes, you are! Aren’t you a lucky boy?’
Charles recoiled from his mother’s fussing, but she did not notice for she was busy instructing Pierre, her manservant, to stow the armour and sword in a great sack. She wanted the duke to see the armour. ‘I want him to know,’ she told Thomas, ‘that when my son comes of age he will fight for him.’
Pierre, who claimed to be seventy years old, lifted the sack and almost fell over with the weight. Thomas offered to carry it to the citadel instead, but Jeanette would not hear of it.
‘You
