Kemp: The Road to Poitiers: An edge-of-your-seat medieval adventure packed with battle and action

By Jonathan Lunn

Two kingdoms clash in one of the greatest battles of the Hundred Years War.

September 1356. Martin Kemp and his troop of archers ride with the Black Prince’s army as it burns and plunders its way across France. When they find all the bridges across the Loire are destroyed, however, their hopes of uniting with the Duke of Lancaster’s army are dashed, and a hasty retreat is the order of the day.

But a French army is closing in fast and Kemp’s old foe, Sir Geoffroi de Chargny, rides with it, now honoured with the duty of bearing the Oriflamme: the sacred war banner of France.

Cut off, outnumbered and running out of supplies, the weary English realise their only hope is to risk everything on a pitched battle, and hope the tricks they used ten years earlier at Crécy will pay off a second time, in a field just a few miles outside of Poitiers…

A climactic moment in history expertly told by a master of the genre, perfect for fans of Christian Cameron and David Gilman.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Canelo Adventure
• Release date: Mar 7, 2024
• ISBN: 9781804366981

Jonathan Lunn

Born in London a very long time ago, Jonathan Lunn claims to have literary antecedents, being descended from the man who introduced Sir Arthur Conan Doyle to the Reichenbach Falls. To relax he goes for long strolls in the British countryside, an activity which over the years has resulted in him getting lost (multiple times), breaking a rib, failing to overcome his fear of heights atop dizzying precipices, fleeing herds of stampeding cattle, providing a feast for blood-sucking parasites, being shot at by hooligans with air-rifles, and finding himself trapped by rising floodwaters. He lives in Bristol where he writes full time.

Book preview

For Walter

Martin Kemp and the Poitiers Campaign, Autumn 1356

One

The men-at-arms pursuing Sir Denys de Morbecque were less than a furlong behind him, the hoofs of their steeds kicking up clods from the earthy furrows of the field of stubble. Off to his left, a second troop raced along the top of the dyke, trying to head him off. He urged his horse on, raking its sweat-lathered flanks with his rowel spurs until the blood ran. He hated to be so cruel, but he knew his mount was dying anyway. With the shaft of a crossbow bolt jutting from its ribs, he was amazed it could still gallop. Sooner or later it must keel over. If it did so out here in the open, he was a dead man.

Beyond the dyke, trees clustered thickly, maples and hornbeams offering splashes of yellow amongst the still-verdant oaks. If Morbecque could not outrun his pursuers, perhaps he could go to ground in the undergrowth in the woods.

A tug on the reins veered the horse to the left and it cantered up the side of the dyke. The men-at-arms galloping along the road were close enough for the knight to make out the yellow fleurs-de-lys patterning their faded blue surcoats: the arms of the King of France. Morbecque urged his horse down through the ferns beneath the boughs of the trees. Between their trunks, he glimpsed the waters of the Loire, well over a bowshot across, lapping at the riverbank.

The horse stumbled on the steep slope, throwing the knight from his saddle. The world spun around him, the ground thumping him roughly, making him grateful he wore a padded gambeson beneath his armour. He glimpsed ferns, river, boughs, his horse’s hoofs flailing in the air.

He pitched up against the trunk of an oak with a jarring thud. Nearby, the horse thrashed about on its back, its movements growing feeble, an eye turned towards Morbecque wide and staring and full of reproach. Morbecque glanced down the slope to the riverbank. One of the boatmen who had ferried him upstream from Angers had explained that usually the river was broad yet shallow, its course frequently broken into smaller channels by wide sandbanks, with half a dozen places between Tours and Chouzé where a horseman might ford it with ease. But now the river was in spate, swollen by autumn rains. The turbid water lapped over the tussocks of sedge grass growing on the bank, and had it not been for the dyke, no doubt the fields to the south might have been flooded.

Morbecque heard the clop of hoofs on the stony road and looked up through the trees to see the men-at-arms rein in on the dyke. They began to pick their way gingerly down the slope. He was up and running before it occurred to him to check for broken limbs, weaving between the trees as he traversed the slope between road and river. There was a path here, or perhaps an animal trail. Steel plate rattled against chain mail with every step, though the neatly articulated poleyns he wore over his knees did not impede his movements as much as might have been supposed by those who had never worn armour tailor-made to spread the weight evenly about their frames. Though past the first flush of youth, Morbecque had all the vigour of a man who lived an active life.

Hoofs pounded the ground behind him. Glancing over his shoulder, he saw one man-at-arms had pulled ahead of his companions to charge after him, lance couched, its tip aimed at the knight’s back.

Redoubling his efforts, Morbecque waited until the man-at-arms had almost skewered him before he dodged amongst the ferns by the side of the trail. The man-at-arms cantered past, then reined in and wheeled his horse. He tried to swing his lance around, but it struck the bole of a tree by the side of the trail. He raised the tip, trying to swing the lance around that way, but now it bumped against a bough overhead. With a grunt of frustration, he threw it away and drew his sword from its scabbard.

Morbecque had already unsheathed his own blade. The man-at-arms rode his horse at the knight and swung his blade at the polished bascinet he wore on his head. Morbecque parried, not so much blocking the blow as forcing it aside, slashing the tip of his own blade across the horse’s flank as the beast thundered past. It reared, throwing the man-at-arms from the saddle. The horse limped on, whinnying piteously, and the dazed man-at-arms crawled through the ferns on his hands and knees, scrabbling for his dropped sword.

Morbecque got there first, kicking the man in the head with one of the articulated sabatons he wore on his feet. Dazed, the man sprawled on his back. Morbecque aimed a second kick at his head, his foot connecting with the pointed visor on his bascinet to reveal his opponent’s face, red and sweating, framed by the coif of his chain-mail habergeon. Morbecque drove the tip of his sword down through one of the eyes of the man-at-arms. It was scarcely a chivalrous blow but, pitted against twenty foes, he could not afford to fight chivalrously.

Another man-at-arms couched his lance and charged through the trees. Morbecque tried to bring his sword up, but the tip had become wedged in his first victim’s eye socket. He braced a sabaton against the dead man’s chest so he could jerk the sword free but, before he could turn to face his next attacker, something slammed into his shoulder and he staggered off the trail. The man-at-arms had ridden too slow for the tip of his lance to pierce the steel plates beneath the studded leather covering of the brigandine Morbecque wore over his habergeon, but the sheer force of the impact felt as though it had dislocated his shoulder. Spinning, he stumbled and sprawled amongst the ferns.

The man-at-arms reined in, tossing aside his lance and dismounting. He looped his horse’s halter about a sapling, then drew his sword and strode through the bracken to where the knight lay. The other men-at-arms were closing in now. Morbecque looked about for his sword, but it had vanished amongst the ferns. Drawing a dagger from the sheath on his belt, he tried to rise, but he still felt sick and dizzy from the blow and his legs would not obey him. He dropped onto his buttocks and squirmed back until he felt a tree trunk hard against his spine.

‘Allez, fils de putain!’ Morbecque spat at the man-at-arms advancing towards him on foot. ‘Finissons-en!’

The man-at-arms raised his sword, the blade pointed down at the knight. Something whipped through the trees and a feathered shaft punched through the man’s brigandine, making him stagger. The sword fell from his lifeless fingers, its blade burying several inches of steel in the ground between Morbecque’s splayed legs, only a few inches from his groin. The man-at-arms took two tottering steps backwards and tumbled into the ferns on the opposite side of the trail.

The others turned the pointed visors of their bascinets this way and that as they looked to see where the arrow had come from. ‘Goddams!’ one exclaimed fearfully.

Frustrated by the narrow field of vision through their eye slits, some raised their visors. It was a mistake that cost a couple of them their lives, for at once more arrows whipped through the air. A few glanced off steel helmets or buried themselves harmlessly in tree trunks; more pierced brigandines and habergeons. Several men-at-arms tumbled out of their saddles with two or three feathered shafts jutting from their bodies. Others tried to wheel their mounts, some escaping a few dozen yards before arrows thudded into their backs, the rest blundering into their comrades as their horses reared and whinnied, their panic matching that of their riders. One man rode towards a gap between two trees, only for a burly figure to step out from behind one of the trunks, almost in his path. Gripping the helve of a maul two-handed, the stranger swung the pointed end of the head against the brigandine of the man-at-arms, the force of the blow jerking him out of the saddle as his mount cantered on. The man-at-arms rolled in the grass. The stranger swung the maul again, this time piercing the man’s bascinet.

Another stranger appeared, clad in a quilted green aketon that reached down past his knees. He tried to vault up behind one of the few men-at-arms who was still in the saddle, presumably to stab him with his blade, a weapon too small to call a sword, too large to pass for a dagger. But he misjudged his leap, slipping back off the horse’s rump and narrowly avoiding a kick from a hoof as he crashed into the bracken.

Before the man-at-arms could escape, however, a tall, broad-shouldered figure stepped into his path, armed with an English war bow. His flint-blue eyes implacable beneath the steel brim of his kettle helmet, the archer took an arrow from the sheaf under his belt and nocked it to the string of his bow. He drew and loosed, all in one smooth, well-practised movement. The string thrummed against the leather bracer on his left wrist, and the arrow whipped through the air to slam against the breast of the man-at-arms, effortlessly puncturing his armour at such close range.

Two more archers appeared over on the knight’s right, blocking the escape of another man-at-arms. Undaunted, the man couched his lance and rode straight at them. The archer standing in his path tried to draw his bow, but the string snapped, leaving him defenceless. He threw his bow down and reached for the maul tucked under his belt. His companion – a chubby youth scarcely old enough to shave, with a mop of curly brown hair – already had an arrow nocked, but he just stood there, ashen-faced and gaping.

‘Shoot!’ roared the flint-eyed archer, fumbling to draw a second arrow from the sheath under his belt. ‘Shoot, Hankin! Shoot!’

The chubby archer did not seem to hear the instruction, for he just stood rooted to the spot, gawping wide-eyed as the man-at-arms skewered his companion with his lance. By then, the flint-eyed archer had nocked his second arrow and let fly. The arrow hit home, the man-at-arms reeling in the saddle. Another man-at-arms spurred his mount up the side of the dyke. The flint-eyed archer reached for a third arrow, but by the time he had it nocked, the man-at-arms had crested the top of the dyke and disappeared.

‘Tom!’ shouted the flint-eyed archer.

Standing nearer the top of the dyke, a burly man with a snub nose and a pox-pitted face turned.

The flint-eyed man gestured after the man-at-arms who had crested the dyke. ‘Stop him!’

Tom nodded and ran to the top of the dyke, disappearing.

Morbecque rolled one shoulder, satisfying himself it was not dislocated, as he had feared. He looked around to see if any of the other men-at-arms still presented a threat. The corpses strewn beneath the trees changed an idyllic pastoral scene into a bloody shambles.

The flint-eyed archer strode to where the man wearing the green aketon now sprawled in the bracken, clasping his hand and hauling him to his feet. ‘Did no one ever tell you you’re getting too old to leap up behind the cantle of a foe’s saddle, Ieuan?’

‘Sorry, Martin.’ The man in the aketon spoke with a Welsh accent. Past forty, Ieuan was a short, stocky fellow wearing a Monmouth cap over his hair. He grinned ruefully beneath his bushy, drooping moustache. ‘I’m not as spry as I once was.’

‘Leave the leaps and tumbles to those that can still manage them.’

Not yet ready to unstring his bow and return the stave to the woollen bow bag tucked under his belt – perhaps fearing there might be more French men-at-arms nearby – Martin looped it across his back by its string and gazed down to where one of his men sat on the trail, the lance skewering his torso holding him upright in a sitting position, blood dribbling from his lips. Martin crouched beside him, a hand under the dead man’s jaw to tilt his head back so he could look into his eyes. Seeing no sign of life, he let the head loll again. Rising to his feet, he braced the sole of one boot against the dead man’s shoulder to draw out the bloody lance, tossing it away and letting the dead man flop back onto the trail. Setting his jaw and clenching his fists, Martin strode across to where Hankin stood. The chubby youth looked as though he hoped that, if he stood still enough, no one would notice him.

The hope was in vain. ‘Wat would still be alive, had you not hesitated.’ Martin kept his voice low, but there was a tightly controlled fury in it. ‘Why?’

Hankin blanched but said nothing. Grabbing him by both arms, Martin shook him violently. ‘Why did you not shoot when you had the chance? The Jehan who slew him was but a few yards from where you stood; even a boss-eyed fool such as you could not have gleft his shot. Why did you hesitate?’

‘I know not.’ Hankin hung his head. ‘I was affrighted.’

‘Affrighted, eh?’ Martin turned him towards the corpse. ‘Take a good look, boy! That’s Wat Ousthorpe lying there. Dead, because you lacked the stomach to kill. You’re here to slay the foe. If you cannot do that, you’re no use to me; no use to anyone. You want to get yourself slain, that’s your business. But get any more of my men slain, and I’ll kill you myself.’ He clipped Hankin roughly across the back of the head. ‘Understand?’

‘Aye, Cap’n.’

Tom came back down through the trees. ‘Sorry, Martin. That man-at-arms got away.’

‘We’d best not tarry here, then. Fetch our horses. Rob, Will, David and Edwin, bear him a hand.’

As four other archers hurried after Tom, Martin grabbed hold of Hankin again and indicated Ousthorpe’s corpse. ‘Put him on his horse. Tie him on well, so he does not slide off the saddle. Then make a leading rein to tie his bridle to your saddle. When we get back to our camp, you’ll dig a grave so we can give him a decent burial.’

The youth nodded wretchedly.

Morbecque was wondering if this would be a good moment to introduce himself – he suspected not – when a stalk of bracken snapped nearby, and he turned to see another archer standing over him with an arrow nocked to his bow, ready to let fly at him in an instant if he did anything rash. Like his companions, he was broad-shouldered and barrel-chested, his thews no doubt strengthened by a lifetime of drawing his powerful yew bow. The French called such men ‘les Goddams’ because blasphemy was never far from their lips.

‘Martin!’ he called, and when the captain glanced at him, he jerked his head at Morbecque. ‘Shall I slay this one?’

‘Let’s learn who he is first, and why these others pursued him.’ Martin doffed his kettle helmet and pulled back the coif of his habergeon and the quilted hood of his gambeson to run his fingers over close-cropped blond hair. He was not a day over thirty winters, much younger than the knight would have credited from his commanding self-assurance. Morbecque had spent enough time riding with the Duke of Lancaster’s host to know the English organised their archers in twenties, like common labourers, with each ‘twenty’ commanded by a twentyman. A young man of thirty winters might well have commanded a twenty, but the others called him ‘captain’, which suggested he commanded a company, probably several twenties strong. Even though many of the archers were evidently some years older than him, they nonetheless hastened to obey his orders.

Martin stood over Morbecque with his thumbs hooked behind his belt, one hand resting inches from the hilt of the broadsword scabbarded at his hip. ‘Well? Parlez en français, si vous ne connaissez pas l’anglais,’ he said in tolerably passable French. ‘Je parle assez bien la langue d’oïl.’

‘I speak English,’ said Morbecque. ‘You are Prince Edward of Woodstock’s men?’

‘What boots it to you if we are?’

‘I have a message for your prince, from the Duke of Lancaster.’

Martin held out a hand as if he expected the knight to put a scroll of parchment in it.

Morbecque tapped his forehead with an index finger. ‘In here.’

The captain pointed at the knight’s head. ‘Then perhaps I should lop that off and give that to my prince.’

‘The duke did not write the message down lest I be captured by my countrymen. Instead he made me memorise it. His caution proved justified.’

‘You are French.’

‘I am a knight of Artois. But I have sworn homage to your King Edward. The duke thought that, speaking French as a Frenchman, I should have a better chance of reaching your prince than any other man in his host.’

Martin pursed his lips, weighing the knight’s words carefully. ‘What is your name?’

‘I am Sir Denys de Morbecque.’

The name clearly meant nothing to the captain, but then Morbecque had not expected it would. ‘Tell me your message,’ said Martin. ‘I’ll pass it on.’

Smiling, the knight shook his head. ‘The duke told me I should confide his message to none but the prince himself.’

‘Can any in the prince’s host vouch for you?’

‘Sir Eustace d’Auberchicourt.’

Evidently that was a name Martin knew. ‘Very well. We’ll take you to where our host is camped.’ He turned to one of his companions. ‘Bind his hands.’

Morbecque winced. ‘Is that necessary?’

‘We’ll loose them when Sir Eustace vouches for you,’ said Martin. ‘If he vouches for you.’

‘Is it far?’

A hint of amusement twitched up the corners of the captain’s mouth. ‘I wondered how long it would be before you asked where our host is camped.’

‘You think I am a spy for the Crowned One?’

‘The thought crossed my mind.’

It was widely understood – by those with wit to perceive such things – that King Edward’s claim to the French throne was merely a negotiating position, which he would happily abandon in return for the lands his ancestors had once ruled in France – not just Gascony but also Ponthieu and Touraine, as well as more recently acquired territories such as Calais and Guînes – and all those without the necessity of doing homage to King Jehan. Until the French king was willing to grant these concessions, however, King Edward and his supporters refused to acknowledge the validity of his claim to the French throne, referring to him by the circumlocution of ‘the Crowned One’ in preference to calling him ‘king’.

‘Do you think the Constable of Chinon had twenty of his men pursue me in the hope they would all be killed by a troop of English archers to convince them of my good faith?’ Chuckling, Morbecque shook his head. ‘You are a fool.’

‘Perhaps,’ Martin allowed coolly. ‘But if I am, I’m a wary one. I don’t doubt the constable thinks you a foe, but perhaps you can win your way back into his good graces by telling him what you learn from us.’ He nodded towards the river. ‘Are there any fords nearby?’

‘Across the Loire?’ Morbecque shook his head. ‘It is flooded. All the fords are impassable.’

‘You found a way across. If you speak the truth about coming from the duke’s host.’

‘Some boatmen rowed me up the Loire from Angers. They put me ashore at the confluence with the Vienne. But it was not long after that I was arrested by the constable’s men. I tried to spin him a yarn, but one of his men recognised me as an outlaw.’

‘Is the Duke of Lancaster at Angers?’

‘You’d have me trust you, but you will not trust me in return.’

Martin indicated the corpses strewn amongst the bracken. ‘We’ve already proven our good faith.’

‘Yes, the duke is at Angers.’

‘How far downstream is that?’

‘About fourteen leagues.’

‘And there are no fords or bridges betwixt here and there?’

‘None. The fords are all flooded and those bridges not destroyed by the floods have been broken by the Crowned One’s men.’

The archers who had gone to fetch the horses returned, leading their mounts along the road on the dyke, two-and-twenty stocky rouncies. Tom helped Hankin lift the dead archer across the saddle of one, strapping him there securely. Most of the horses of the men-at-arms had fled, but the archers had managed to capture one.

‘You’re in charge of Sir Denys,’ Martin told one of his men, and indicated the horse. ‘Tie his leading rein to the cantle of your saddle.’

‘Aye, Cap’n.’

‘The rest of you be sure you have all your gear. Let’s be on our way in less time than it takes to recite a miserere.’

‘Which way?’ asked Tom.

‘Back towards our camp.’

‘God be praised!’ Another archer crossed himself piously, and the furrowed brows of several of the other men were smoothed.

Once Morbecque was mounted, the archers swung themselves into their saddles, and they set out along the road, following the riverbank upstream. ‘A little harsh on Hankin, weren’t you?’ Morbecque overheard Ieuan murmur to Martin.

‘You saw what befell. Wat’s dead because of him. He left a wife and two bairns back in Portsmouth.’

‘Wat’s wife was a whore and he had no more intention of going back to her than I have of flapping my arms and flying to the moon.’

‘Even so. That might as easily be my corpse draped over yon saddle; aye, or yours!’

‘Hankin’s new to this business. What boots it, if he was affrighted? It’s a good horse that never stumbles. I seem to recall there was a time when someone not a hundred miles from here was a snot-nosed youth who knew not chalk from cheese. You learned. So will he, if you’ll but give him a chance.’

Martin shook his head. ‘All I’ve ever wanted was to lead the best damned company of archers in the king’s service. I’ve worked too hard for too long to get where I am today; I don’t intend to let a damned young fool like Hankin Foster ruin it all for me.’

‘Every cock is proud on his own dungheap,’ sneered Morbecque.

Riding alongside him, Martin raised a hand as if to give the knight a back-handed slap. ‘Just because you were born with a silver spoon up your arse-thirle, do not reckon I’ll hold back from striking you. I’ve pissed on the Chamberlain of France. Imagine what I’ll do to you, if you provoke me.’

Morbecque only smirked. ‘You pissed on Sir Geoffroi de Chargny?’ he sneered sceptically.

‘To be fair, he was not the Chamberlain of France at the time,’ said Ieuan.

‘Who do you think you are?’ Morbecque asked the captain scornfully. ‘Martin Kemp?’

Martin and Ieuan exchanged grins. ‘Will you tell him, or shall I?’ asked the Welshman.

Morbecque’s eyes grew wide. ‘You are Kemp?’ he asked incredulously.

‘The freebooter, not the minstrel.’ Urging his skewbald rouncy to quicken the pace, Kemp signalled the rest of his men to keep up.

---

The archers and their prisoner rode along the riverbank at a Canterbury trot. Urgent though Morbecque’s message might be, they had eight leagues to cover back to the prince’s camp, and there was no sense in exhausting their steeds before they had covered half the distance.

Weariness weighed Kemp down like a prisoner’s irons. In the five weeks since the prince’s host had left Gascony, they had marched over a hundred leagues. Kemp and his men had seen little fighting; the only engagement the host had fought so far had been the brief siege of the castle at Romorantin, but other men had worked the siege engines, or loosed flights of arrows at the figures on the battlements in exchange for crossbow bolts. Rumours constantly reached them of a great host King Jehan was assembling at Chartres to repel the English, Gascon and Welsh invaders, but so far Kemp had seen no evidence of it.

That did not mean he and his men had been idle, however. Ever since they had crossed the Dordogne at Bergerac, the Earl of Warwick had kept them busy scouting ahead, foraging for victuals, plundering villages and taking their turn on picquet duty. Like many in the prince’s host, Kemp and his men were freebooters, hired by the prince for sixpence a day plus a share of the booty. They were known as the Company of the Dragon, from their banner of a red dragon on a black background. Some said Kemp was too young to be captain of such a company, though none dared say it to his face; and, young though he was, none could deny he had more experience of fighting than many twice his age. For as long as he could remember, he had yearned for the honour of leading his own company and, now that he had it, he wondered if perhaps those who criticised him behind his back were not in the right of it.

He gave Morbecque a sidelong glance. A brawny man with a scarred face and a broken nose, the French knight rode with the padded hood of his gambeson pulled back to reveal light brown hair matted with sweat. It was true the Duke of Lancaster was campaigning somewhere north of the Loire with a host of his own; the reason the prince had sent Kemp to find a ford was to allow one of their hosts to cross the flooded river and join forces with the other.

But just because Morbecque knew of the Duke of Lancaster’s host, and knew also that Auberchicourt rode with the prince’s host, that did not prove he had sworn homage to King Edward. Still, Auberchicourt could establish his bona fides – or not – when they returned to camp. Kemp pushed such worries from his mind and instead thought back to that night at Calais, when Sir Geoffroi de Chargny had tried to recapture the town by bribing the governor, and Kemp had defeated him in single combat – admittedly more by luck than skill – and pissed on him as he lay dazed, to show his contempt. I should ha’ slain him when I had the chance, he thought.

The battlements of Château d’Ussé rose over the treetops, a mile away across the fields to their right. Ieuan ap Morgan urged his horse forward until he rode alongside Kemp at the head of the column. An old friend of Kemp’s, the Welshman served as vice-captain of the Company of the Dragon. ‘You know they’ll never accept you as one of their own, don’t you?’

‘Who won’t?’ Kemp pretended not to understand the question.

‘You know who. I know you’re a better man than our so-called superiors, and so do they.’ Ieuan jerked his head at the archers riding behind them. ‘And you know it, too. Don’t you?’

Kemp said nothing.

‘So why do you care what the prince and the Earl of Warwick think?’ asked Ieuan.

The captain sighed. ‘The Lord of Uzerte will never let me marry Ysabeau if I cannot prove myself worthy of her,’ he murmured. Ysabeau’s father was a vassal of the Captal of Cazoulat, who had sworn fealty to King Edward. If Kemp proved himself worthy to the prince and the lords who rode with him, surely that would carry some weight with Uzerte?

‘Then just present him with a… what is it the Jehans call it? A fait accompli. Just take her.’ ‘Jehan’ – the way the French had of saying ‘John’ – was such a common name amongst them, Kemp and his comrades used it as a synonym for a Frenchman. ‘I’ve seen the two of you together,’ Ieuan continued. ‘She’s willing enough, with or without her father’s blessing.’

Kemp’s knuckles whitened where they gripped his reins. ‘I must prove myself.’

‘To whom? Them? Or yourself?’ Ieuan shook his head. ‘You’ve got nothing to prove to me, lad. Or them.’ Again he jerked his head at the men behind them. ‘Men like Uzerte think something in their blood makes them different from us, more deserving of the riches fate has bestowed upon them. But you and I both know their shit stinks just as foul as ours. As for Ysabeau… not even all the Crowned One’s men could keep the two of you apart. You know what they say: wedding is destiny…’

‘…And hanging likewise!’ Kemp completed the old homily. ‘I reckon a man makes his own luck in life.’

‘The wise man knows when to jump on the Wheel of Fortune so it will raise him up,’ agreed Ieuan. ‘And when to jump off again, before he is crushed beneath it. Just remember the story about the old man carrying a heavy bundle of sticks, who prayed to be relieved of his burden, and had his prayer answered by Death! Ofttimes God punishes men’s hubris by answering their prayers.’

Two

Odon de Xaintreuil opened his hand, letting the two dice tumble from his fingers to rattle across the top of the half-barrel the men playing hazard were using as a gaming table. These were the moments he lived for: when everything depended on which way up the dice would land. A hatchet-faced young squire, he could almost hear the axle squeal as Dame Fortune gave her wheel another spin. One of the dice bounced off the rim before coming to rest near its companion: a three and a four.

Xaintreuil had been sick with dysentery a couple of years ago and had once soiled himself with such violence it had left him drained of strength to the point where he nearly passed out. Staring at the seven pips that seemed to mock him, he felt the same way now: drained, shocked, humiliated and faint.

‘Crabs!’ called the merchant, who was acting as banker for the game. The fistful of coins Xaintreuil had staked disappeared from the barrelhead.

The banker’s yell was lost in the hubbub of the voices of the tavern’s other patrons as they gossiped over earthenware cups of wine and guffawed raucously at ribald jests. A trio of minstrels played a lively jig on gittern, shawm and tabor while a whore danced to the music with a drunk pilgrim. Autumn might have mellowed the sun’s glare, but the crowded tavern was hot and sweaty.

The friar on Xaintreuil’s left snatched up the dice, shaking them in a loosely clenched fist. ‘Six!’ he called, and tossed the dice across the barrelhead: two ones. ‘God damn it to hell!’

The play moved around the table, with coins wagered, won and lost passing back and forth across the barrelhead. At last it came back to Xaintreuil. He reached for his purse, as if he expected to find it had magically replenished itself since he had emptied his last few sous into his palm just before his previous throw.

When Xaintreuil hesitated, the friar impatiently reached across to help himself to the dice. Before his fat and greasy fingers could close over them, however, Xaintreuil caught him by the wrist, then wagged a chiding finger in his face. His grip was strong enough to persuade the friar to withdraw his hand as soon as his wrist was released. Motioning the merchant to be patient, Xaintreuil unbuckled his sword belt so he could slide his dagger off it. It was of a type known as a misericord, because it was supposedly used to put dying knights out of their misery. Every coat of mail had two weak points, one in each oxter, where seven rings joined, leaving a hole nearly an inch wide. Any good quality dagger slammed against it with sufficient force might split the ring and slide between the ribs below, but a misericord was designed with a long, thin blade