fed, my son,’ Thomas said, and squatted near their fire.
‘Are you a priest or a vagabond?’ the man asked. He had an axe and he drew it towards him protectively, for Thomas’s tangled hair was wildly long and his face as dark as any outlaw’s.
‘I am both,’ Thomas said with a smile. ‘I have walked from Avignon,’ he explained, ‘to do penance at the shrine of St Guinefort.’
None of the refugees had ever heard of the Blessed Guinefort, but Thomas’s words convinced them, for the idea of pilgrimage explained his woebegone condition while their own sad condition, they made clear, was caused by war. They had come from the coast of Normandy, only a day’s journey away, and in the morning they must be up early and travelling again to escape the enemy.
Thomas made the sign of the cross. ‘What enemy?’ he asked, expecting to hear that two Norman lords had fallen out and were ravaging each other’s estates.
But the ponderous wheel of fortune had turned unexpectedly. King Edward III of England had crossed the Channel. Such an expedition had long been expected, but the King had not gone to his lands in Gascony, as many had thought he would, nor to Flanders where other Englishmen fought, but had come to Normandy. His army was just a day away and, at the news, Thomas’s mouth dropped open.
‘You should flee them, father,’ one of the women advised Thomas. ‘They know no pity, not even for friars.’
Thomas assured them he would, thanked them for their news, then walked back up the hill to where Jeanette waited. All had changed.
His king had come to Normandy.
They argued that night. Jeanette was suddenly convinced they should turn back to Brittany and Thomas could only stare at her in astonishment.
‘Brittany?’ he asked faintly.
She would not meet his eyes, but stubbornly stared at the campfires that burned all along the road, while further north, on the night’s horizon, great red glows showed where larger fires burned, and Thomas knew that English soldiers must have been ravaging the fields of Normandy just as the hellequin had harrowed Brittany. ‘I can be near Charles if I’m in Brittany,’ Jeanette said.
Thomas shook his head. He was dimly aware that the sight of the army’s destruction had forced them both into a reality from which they had been escaping in these last weeks of freedom, but he could not connect that with her sudden wish to head back to Brittany.
‘You can be near Charles,’ he said carefully, ‘but can you see him? Will the Duke let you near him?’
‘Maybe he will change his mind,’ Jeanette said without much conviction.
‘And maybe he’ll rape you again,’ Thomas said brutally.
‘And if I don’t go,’ she said vehemently, ‘maybe I will never see Charles again. Never!’
‘Then why come this far?’
‘I don’t know, I don’t know.’ She was angry as she used to be when Thomas first met her in La Roche-Derrien. ‘Because I was mad,’ she said sullenly.
‘You say you want to appeal to the King,’ Thomas said, ‘and he’s here!’ He flung a hand towards the livid glow of the fires. ‘So appeal to him here.’
‘Maybe he won’t believe me,’ Jeanette said stubbornly.
‘And what will we do in Brittany?’ Thomas asked, but Jeanette would not answer. She looked sulky and still avoided his gaze. ‘You can marry one of the Duke’s men-at-arms,’ Thomas went on, ‘that’s what he wanted, isn’t it? A pliant wife of a pliant follower so that when he feels like taking his pleasure, he can.’
‘Isn’t that what you do?’ she challenged him, looking him in the face at last.
‘I love you,’ Thomas said.
Jeanette said nothing.
‘I do love you,’ Thomas said, and felt foolish for she had never said the same to him.
Jeanette looked at the glowing horizon that was tangled by the leaves of the forest. ‘Will your king believe me?’ she asked him.
‘How can he not?’
‘Do I look like a countess?’
She looked ragged, poor and beautiful. ‘You speak like a countess,’ Thomas said, ‘and the King’s clerks will make enquiries of the Earl of Northampton.’ He did not know if that was true, but he wanted to encourage her.
Jeanette sat with her head bowed. ‘Do you know what the Duke told me? That my mother was a Jewess!’ She looked up at him, expecting him to share her indignation.
Thomas frowned. ‘I’ve never met a Jew,’ he said.
Jeanette almost exploded. ‘You think I have? You need to meet the devil to know he is bad? A pig to discover he stinks?’ She began to weep. ‘I don’t know what to do.’
‘We shall go to the King,’ Thomas said, and next morning he walked north and, after a few heartbeats, Jeanette followed him. She had tried to clean her dress, though it was so filthy that all she could manage was to brush the twigs and leaf mould from the velvet. She coiled her hair and pinned it with slivers of wood.
‘What kind of man is the King?’ she asked Thomas.
‘They say he’s a good man.’
‘Who says?’
‘Everyone. He’s straightforward.’
‘He’s still English,’ Jeanette said softly, and Thomas pretended not to hear. ‘Is he kind?’ she asked him.
‘No one says he’s cruel,’ Thomas said, then held up a hand to silence Jeanette.
He had seen horsemen in mail.
Thomas had often found it strange that when the monks and scriveners made their books they painted warfare as gaudy. Their squirrel-hair brushes showed men in brightly coloured surcoats or jupons, and their horses in brilliantly patterned trappers. Yet for most of the time war was grey until the arrows bit, when it became shot through with red. Grey was the colour of a mail coat, and Thomas was seeing grey among the green leaves. He did not know if they were Frenchmen or Englishmen, but he feared both. The French were his enemy, but so were the English until they were convinced that he was English too, and convinced, moreover, that he was not a deserter from their army.
More horsemen came from the distant trees and these men were carrying bows, so they had to be English. Still Thomas hesitated, reluctant to face the problems of persuading his own side that he was not a deserter. Beyond the horsemen, hidden by the trees, a building must have been set on fire for smoke began to thicken above the summer leaves. The horsemen were looking towards Thomas and Jeanette, but the pair were hidden by a bank of gorse and after a while, satisfied that no enemy threatened, the troops turned and rode eastwards.
Thomas waited till they were out of sight, then led Jeanette across the open land, into the trees and out to where a farm burned. The flames were pale in the bright sun. No one was in sight. There was just a farm blazing
