same time defend himself from the oncoming lance. The skill of that was to deflect the thrust which, having the weight of a horse behind it, could break a man’s back by throwing him against the high cantle. The shock of two heavy horsemen meeting, and with all their weight concentrated into lance points, was like being hit by a cannon’s stone.
Sir Simon was not thinking about any of this. He was watching the oncoming lance, glancing at the white cross on the shield where his own lance was aimed, and guiding his horse with pressure from his knees. He had trained to this from the time he could first sit on a pony. He had spent hours tilting at a quintain in his father’s yard, and more hours schooling stallions to endure the noise and chaos of battle. He moved his horse slightly to the left like a man wanting to widen the angle at which the lances would strike and so deflect some of their force, and he noted that the stranger did not follow the move to straighten the line, but seemed happy to accept the lesser risk. Then both men rowelled back their spurs and the destriers went into the gallop. Sir Simon touched the horse’s right side and straightened the line himself, driving hard at the stranger now, and leaning slightly forward to ready himself for the blow. His opponent was trying to swing towards him, but it was too late. Sir Simon’s lance cracked against the black and white shield with a thump that hurled Sir Simon back, but the stranger’s lance was not centred and banged against Sir Simon’s plain shield and glanced off.
Sir Simon’s lance broke into three pieces and he let it fall as he pressed his knee to turn the horse. His opponent’s lance was across his body now and was encumbering the black-armoured knight. Sir Simon drew his sword and, while the other man was still trying to rid himself of the lance, gave a backswing that struck his opponent like a hammer blow.
The field was still. Henry Colley held out a hand for his winnings. The man pretended not to understand his crude French, but he understood the knife that the yellow-eyed Englishman suddenly produced and the coins, just as suddenly, appeared.
The knight in the black armour did not continue the fight, but instead curbed his horse and pushed up his visor. ‘Who are you?’
‘My name is Sir Simon Jekyll.’
‘English?’
‘I was.’
The two horses stood beside each other. The stranger threw down his lance and hung the shield from his pommel. He had a sallow face with a thin black moustache, clever eyes and a broken nose. He was a young man, not a boy, but a year or two older than Sir Simon.
‘What do you want?’ he asked Sir Simon.
‘A chance to kill the Prince of Wales.’
The man smiled. ‘Is that all?’
‘Money, food, land, women,’ Sir Simon said.
The man gestured to the side of the pasture. ‘There are great lords here, Sir Simon, who will offer you pay, food and girls. I can pay you too, but not so well; I can feed you, though it will be common stuff; and the girls you must find for yourself. What I will promise you is that I shall equip you with a better horse, armour and weapons. I lead the best knights in this army and we are sworn to take captives who will make us rich. And none, I think, so rich as the King of England and his whelp. Not kill, mark you, but capture.’
Sir Simon shrugged. ‘I’ll settle for capturing the bastard,’ he said.
‘And his father,’ the man said, ‘I want his father too.’
There was something vengeful in the man’s voice that intrigued Sir Simon. ‘Why?’ he asked.
‘My family lived in England,’ the man said, ‘but when this king took power we supported his mother.’
‘So you lost your land?’ Sir Simon asked. He was too young to remember the turmoil of those times – when the King’s mother had tried to keep power for herself and for her lover and the young Edward had struggled to break free. Young Edward had won and some of his old enemies had not forgotten.
‘We lost everything,’ the man said, ‘but we shall get it back. Will you help?’
Sir Simon hesitated, wondering whether he would not do better with a wealthier lord, but he was intrigued by the man’s calmness and by his determination to tear the heart out of England. ‘Who are you?’ he asked.
‘I am sometimes called the Harlequin,’ the man said.
The name meant nothing to Sir Simon. ‘And you employ only the best?’ he asked.
‘I told you so.’
‘Then you had best employ me,’ Sir Simon said, ‘with my man.’ He nodded towards Henry Colley.
‘Good,’ the Harlequin said.
So Sir Simon had a new master and the King of France had gathered an army. The great lords: Alençon, John of Hainault, Aumale, the Count of Blois, who was brother to the aspiring Duke of Brittany, the Duke of Lorraine, the Count of Sancerre – all were in Rouen with their vast retinues of heavily armoured men. The army’s numbers became so large that men could not count the ranks, but clerks reckoned there were at least eight thousand men-at-arms and five thousand crossbowmen in Rouen, and that meant that Philip of Valois’s army already outnumbered Edward of England’s forces, and still more men were coming. John, Count of Luxembourg and King of Bohemia, a friend of Philip of France, was bringing his formidable knights. The King of Majorca came with his famed lances, and the Duke of Normandy was ordered to abandon the siege of an English fortress in the south and bring his army north. The priests blessed the soldiers and promised them that God would recognize the virtue of France’s cause and crush the English mercilessly.
The army could not be fed in Rouen, so at last it crossed the bridge to the north bank of the Seine, leaving a formidable garrison behind to guard the river crossing. Once out of the city and on the long roads stretching through the newly harvested fields, men could dimly comprehend just how vast their army was. It stretched for miles in long columns of armed men, troops of horsemen, battalions of crossbowmen and, trailing behind, the innumerable host of infantry armed with axes, billhooks and spears. This was the might of France, and France’s friends had rallied to the cause. There was a troop of knights from Scotland – big, savage-looking men who nourished a rare hatred of the English. There were mercenaries from Germany and Italy, and there were knights whose names had become famous in Christendom’s tournaments, the elegant killers who had become rich in the sport of war. The French knights spoke not just of defeating Edward of England, but of carrying the war to his kingdom, foreseeing earldoms in Essex and dukedoms in Devonshire. The Bishop of Meaux encouraged his cook to think of a recipe for archers’ fingers, a daube perhaps, seasoned with thyme? He would, the bishop insisted, force the dish down Edward of England’s throat.
Sir Simon rode a seven-year-old destrier now, a fine grey that must have cost the Harlequin close to a hundred pounds. He wore a hauberk of close-ringed mail covered with a surcoat that bore the white cross. His horse had a chanfron of boiled leather and a black trapper, while at Sir Simon’s waist hung a sword made in Poitiers. Henry Colley was almost as well equipped, though in place of a sword he carried a four-foot-long shaft of oak topped with a spiked metal ball.
‘They’re a solemn bunch,’ he complained to Sir Simon about the other men who followed the Harlequin. ‘Like bloody monks.’
‘They can fight,’ Sir Simon said, though he himself was also daunted by the grim dedication of the Harlequin’s men.
The
