1356

‘He can be on no other, sire.’

‘Then why …’ the king began the question and decided it was better not answered. Smoke was thickening on the right-hand side of the tower now, which shuddered as a second springald bolt crashed home. A man-at-arms limped away from the levers with a bolt through his thigh as squires ran with armfuls of rope, but it was too late.

Fire suddenly showed in the centre floor. For a moment there was just a great billow of smoke, then flames shot through the grey. The planks on the right side were alight and there was not enough water to douse the blaze. ‘God can be very fickle,’ the king said bitterly, and turned away. A man was waving a flag to and fro on the ramparts, revelling in the French defeat. The drums and the trumpets fell silent. Men were screaming in the tower; others were jumping to escape the inferno.

Roland was unaware of the fire until the smoke began churning up through the ladder’s hole. ‘Down!’ he shouted. ‘Down!’ The first men scrambled down the ladder, but one of their scabbards became entangled in the rungs, and then flame burst through the hole as the trapped man screamed. He was being roasted in his mail. Another man jumped past him and broke a leg when he fell. The burning man was sobbing now, and Roland ran to help him, beating out the flames with his bare hands. Robbie did nothing. He was cursed, he thought. Whatever he touched turned to ash. He had failed Thomas once, he failed his uncle now, he had married, but his wife had died in her first childbirth, and the child with her. Cursed, Robbie thought, and he still did not move as the smoke thickened and the flames licked at the platform beneath him, and then the whole tower lurched as a third springald bolt crashed home. There were three men left on the top platform with him and they urged him to try to escape, but he could not move. Roland was carrying a wounded man down the ladders, and God must have loved the virgin knight because a fierce swirl of wind blew the flames and smoke away from him as he descended the rungs. ‘Go!’ a man shouted at Robbie, but he was too dispirited to move.

‘You go,’ he told the men with him, ‘just go.’ He drew his sword, thinking at least he could die with a blade in his hand, and he watched as the three men tried to climb down the scaffold of timbers at the tower’s open back, but all were scorched by the fierceness of the flames and they jumped to save their lives. One was unharmed, his fall cushioned by men beneath, but the other two broke bones. One of the four flags topping the tower was burning now, the fleurs-de-lys turning into glowing cinders, and the whole tower collapsed. It fell slowly at first, creaking, throwing sparks, then the fall became faster as the great contraption keeled over like a proud ship foundering. Men scattered from its base, and still Robbie did not move. Roland had reached the ground, and Robbie was now alone and rode the burning tower down, clinging to the great stanchion, and the tower fell with a thump and an explosion of sparks and Robbie was thrown clear, rolling amidst small flames and thick smoke, and two Frenchmen saw him and ran into the smoke to pull him out. He had been knocked unconscious by the impact, but when men splashed his face with water and pulled off his mail coat they found him miraculously uninjured.

‘God saved you,’ one of the men said. The Navarrese on Breteuil’s wall were jeering. A crossbow bolt slapped into a timber of the fallen tower, which was now an inferno of blazing wood. ‘We must get away from here,’ Robbie’s rescuer said.

The second man brought Robbie his sword while the first helped him to his feet and guided him towards the French tents. ‘Roland,’ Robbie asked, ‘where’s Roland?’ A last crossbow quarrel pursued him, skidding uselessly in the mud. Robbie clutched his sword. He was alive, but why? He wanted to weep, but dared not because he was a soldier, but a soldier for whom? He was a Scot, but if he could not fight against the English then what use was he?

‘God saved you, my friend.’ Roland de Verrec, quite unharmed by the tower’s destruction, spoke to Robbie. The Frenchman held out his hand to help steady Robbie. ‘You have a holy destiny,’ he said.

‘Tournament!’ a second voice snarled.

Robbie, still dazed, saw his uncle, the Lord of Douglas, standing in the smoke of the burning tower. ‘Tournament?’ Robbie asked.

‘The king is going back to Paris and he wants a tournament! A tournament! The English are pissing all over his land and he wants to play games!’

‘I don’t understand,’ Robbie muttered.

‘Wasn’t there someone who played the lute while his city burned?’

‘Nero,’ Robbie said, ‘I think.’

‘We’re to play at tournaments while the English piss all over France. No, not piss, while they drop great stinking turds all over King Jean’s precious land, and does he give a rat’s fart for that? He wants a tournament! So get your horse, pack up, be ready to leave. Tournament! I should have stayed in Scotland!’

Robbie looked around for Roland. He was not sure why, except that he admired the young Frenchman and if anyone could explain God’s reason for inflicting this defeat then surely it was Roland, but Roland was deep in conversation with a man who wore a livery unfamiliar to Robbie. The man’s jupon displayed a rearing green horse on a white field, and Robbie had seen no other men in King Jean’s army wearing that badge. The man spoke softly and earnestly to Roland, who appeared to ask a few questions before shaking the stranger’s hand, and when Roland turned towards Robbie his face was suffused with happiness. The rest of the king’s army might be dejected because the hopes of France were now a burning mass of timber in a wet field, but Roland de Verrec fairly glowed with joy. ‘I have been given a quest,’ he told Robbie, ‘a quest!’

‘There’s going to be a tournament in Paris,’ Robbie said, ‘I’m sure you’ll be needed there.’

‘No,’ Roland said. ‘A maiden is in trouble! She has been snatched from her lawful husband, carried off by a villain, and I am charged with her rescue.’

Robbie just gaped at the virgin knight. Roland had said those words with utmost seriousness, as if he believed he truly was a knight in one of the romances that the troubadours sang.

‘You will be paid generously, sire,’ the knight in the green and white jupon said.

‘The honour of the quest is payment enough,’ Roland de Verrec said, but added hastily, ‘though if your master the count should offer some small token of thanks then I will, of course, be grateful.’ He bowed to Robbie. ‘We shall meet again,’ he said, ‘and do not forget what I said. You have been saved for a great purpose. You are blessed. And so am I! A quest!’

The Lord of Douglas watched Roland de Verrec walk away. ‘Is he really a virgin?’ he asked in disbelief.

‘He swears so,’ Robbie said.

‘No wonder his right arm is so bloody strong,’ the Lord of Douglas said, ‘but he must be mad as a sack of bloody stoats.’ He spat.

Roland de Verrec had a quest, and Robbie was jealous.

PART TWO

Montpellier

Four

‘Forgive me,’ Thomas said. He had not meant to speak aloud. He spoke to the crucifix above the main altar in the little church of Saint Sardos that stood beneath Castillon d’Arbizon’s castle. Thomas was kneeling. He had lit six candles, which burned on the side altar of Saint Agnes where a young, pale-faced priest counted bright new genoins.

‘Forgive you for what, Thomas?’ the priest asked.

‘He knows.’

‘And you don’t?’

‘Just say the masses for me, father,’ Thomas said.

‘For you? Or for the men you killed?’

‘For the men I killed,’ Thomas said. ‘I gave you enough money?’

‘You gave me enough to build another church,’ the priest said. ‘Remorse is an expensive thing, Thomas.’

Thomas half smiled. ‘They were soldiers, father,’ he said, ‘and they died in obedience to their lord. I owe them peace in their afterlife, don’t I?’