Vagabond (Extract)
Bernard de Taillebourg, Frenchman, Dominican friar and Inquisitor, spent the autumn night in a pig pen and, when dawn came thick and white with fog, he went to his knees and thanked God for the privilege of sleeping in fouled straw. Then, mindful of his high task, he said a prayer to Saint Dominic, begging the saint to intercede with God to make this day’s work good. “As the flame in thy mouth lights us to truth,” he spoke aloud, “so let it light our path to success.” He rocked forward in the intensity of his emotion and his head struck against a rough stone pillar that supported one corner of the pen. Pain jabbed through his skull and he invited more by forcing his forehead back against the stone, grinding the skin until he felt the blood trickle down to his nose. “Blessed Dominic,” he cried, “blessed Dominic! God be thanked for thy glory! Light our way! Light our path!” The blood was on his lips now and he licked it and reflected on all the pain that the saints and martyrs had endured for the church. His hands were clasped and there was a smile on his haggard face.
Soldiers who the night before had burned much of the village to ash and raped the women who failed to escape and killed the men who tried to protect the women, now watched the priest drive his head repeatedly against the blood-spattered stone. “Dominic,” Bernard de Taillebourg gasped, “oh, Dominic!” Some of the soldiers made the sign of the cross for they recognised a holy man when they saw one. One or two even knelt, though it was awkward in their mail coats, but most warily watched the priest or else watched his servant who, sitting outside the sty, returned their gaze.
The servant, like Bernard de Taillebourg, was a Frenchman, but something in the younger man’s appearance suggested a more exotic birth. His skin was sallow, almost as dark as a Moor’s, and his long hair was sleekly black which, with his narrow face, gave him a feral look. He wore mail and a sword and, though he was nothing but a priest’s servant, he carried himself with confidence and dignity. His dress was elegant, something strange in this ragged army. No one knew his name. No one even wanted to ask, just as no one wanted to ask why he never ate or chatted with the other servants, but kept himself fastidiously apart. Now the mysterious servant watched the soldiers and in his left hand he held a knife with a very long and thin blade, and once he knew enough men were watching him, he balanced the knife on an outstretched finger. The knife was poised on its sharp tip that was prevented from piercing the servant’s skin by the cut-off finger of a mail glove that he wore like a sheath. Then he jerked the finger and the knife span in the air, blade glittering, to come down, tip first, to balance on his finger again. The servant had not looked at the knife once, but kept his dark-eyed gaze fixed on the soldiers. The priest, oblivious to the display, was howling prayers, his thin cheeks laced with blood. “Dominic! Dominic! Light our path! Light our way!” The knife span again, its wicked blade catching the foggy morning’s small light. “Dominic! Guide us! Guide us!”
“On your horses! Mount up! Move yourselves!” A grey haired man, a big shield slung from his left shoulder, pushed through the onlookers. “We’ve not got all day! What in the name of the devil are you all gawking at? Jesus Christ on His God damn cross, what is this, Eskdale bloody fair? For Christ’s sake, move! Move!” The big shield on his shoulder was blazoned with the badge of a red heart, but the paint was so faded and the shield’s leather cover so scarred that the badge was hard to distinguish. “Oh suffering Christ!” The man had spotted the Dominican and his servant. “Father! We’re going now. Right now! And I don’t wait for prayers.” He turned back to his men. “Mount up! Move your bones! There’s devil’s work to be done!”
“Douglas!” The Dominican snapped.
The grey-haired man turned fast back. “My name, priest, is Sir William, and you’ll do well to remember it.”
The priest blinked. He seemed to be suffering a momentary confusion, still caught up in the ecstasy of his pain-driven prayer, then he gave a perfunctory bow as if acknowledging his fault in using Sir William’s surname. “I was talking to the blessed Dominic,” he explained.
“Aye, well I hope you asked him to shift this damn fog?’
“And he will lead us today! He will guide us!”
“Then he’d best get his damn boots on,” Sir William Douglas, Knight of Liddesdale, growled at the priest, “for we’re leaving whether your saint is ready or not.” Sir William’s chain mail was battle-torn and patched with newer rings. Rust showed at the hem and at the elbows. His faded shield, like his weather-beaten face, was scarred. He was forty six now and he reckoned he had a sword, arrow or spear scar for each of those years that had turned his hair and short beard white. Now he pulled open the sty’s heavy gate. “On your trotters, father. I’ve a horse for you.”
“I shall walk,” Bernard de Taillebourg said, picking up a stout staff with a leather thong threaded through its tip, “as our Lord walked.”
“Then you’ll not get wet crossing the streams, eh, is that it?” Sir William chuckled, “you’ll walk on water will you, father? You and your servant?” Alone among his men he did not seem impressed by the French priest or wary of the priest’s well-armed servant, but Sir William Douglas was famously unafraid of any man. He was a border chieftain who employed murder, fire, sword and lance to protect his land and some fierce priest from Paris was hardly likely to impress him. Sir William, indeed, was not overfond of priests, but his King had ordered him to take Bernard de Taillebourg on this morning’s raid and Sir William had grudgingly consented.
All around him soldiers pulled themselves into their saddles. They were lightly armed for they expected to meet no enemies. A few, like Sir William, carried shields, but most were content with just a sword. Bernard de Taillebourg, his friar’s robes mud-spattered and damp, hurried alongside Sir William. “Will you go into the city?”
“Of course I’ll not go into the bloody city. There’s a truce, remember?”
“But if there’s a truce . . .”
“If there’s a bloody truce then we leave them be.”
The French priest’s English was good, but it took him a few moments to work out what Sir William’s last three words had meant. “There’ll be no fighting?”
“Not between us and the city, no. And there’s no God damned English army within a hundred miles so there’ll be no fighting. All we’re doing is looking for food and forage, father, food and forage. Feed your men and feed your animals and that’s the way to win your wars.” Sir William, as he spoke, climbed onto his horse that was held by a squire. He pushed his boots into the stirrups, plucked the skirts of his mail coat from under his thighs and gathered the reins. “I’ll get you close to the city, Father, but after that you’ll have to shift for yourself.”
“Shift?” Bernard de Taillebourg asked, but Sir William had already turned away and spurred his horse down a muddy lane that ran between low stone walls. Two hundred mounted men at arms, grim and grey on this foggy morning, streamed after him and the priest, buffeted by their big dirty horses, struggled to keep up. The servant followed with apparent unconcern. He was evidently accustomed to being among soldiers and showed no apprehension, indeed his demeanour suggested he might be better with his weapons than most of the men who rode behind Sir William.
The Dominican and his servant had travelled to Scotland with a dozen other messengers sent to King David II by Philip of Valois, King of France. The embassy had been a cry for help. The English had burned their way across Normandy and Picardy, they had slaughtered the French King’s army near a village called Crécy and their archers now held a dozen fastnesses in Brittany while their savage horsemen rode from Edward of England’s ancestral possessions in Gascony. All that was bad, but even worse, and as if to show all Europe that France could be dismembered with impunity, the English King was now laying siege to the great fortress harbour of Calais. Philip of Valois was doing his best to raise the siege, but winter was coming, his nobles grumbled that their king was no warrior, and so he had appealed for aid to Scotland’s King David, son of Robert the Bruce. Invade England, the French king had pleaded, and thus force Edward to abandon the siege of Calais to protect his homeland. The Scots had pondered the invitation, then were persuaded by the French king’s embassy that England lay defenceless. How could it be otherwise? Edward of England’s army was all at Calais or else in Brittany or in Gascony, and there was no one left to defend England, and that meant the old enemy was helpless, it was asking to be raped and all the riches of England were just waiting for Scottish hands.
And so the Scots had come south.
It was the largest army that Scotland had ever sent across the border. The great lords were all there, the sons and grandsons of the warriors who had humbled England in the bloody slaughter about the Bannockburn, and those lords had brought their men at arms who had grown hard with incessant frontier battles, but this time, smelling plunder, they were accompanied by the clan chiefs from the mountains and islands; chiefs who led their wild tribesmen who spoke a language of their own and fought like devils unleashed. They had come in their thousands to make themselves rich and the French messengers, their duty done, had sailed home to tell Philip of Valois that Edward of England would surely raise his siege of Calais when he learned that the Scots were ravaging his northern lands.
The French embassy had sailed for home, but Bernard de Taillebourg had stayed. He had business in northern England, but in the first days of the invasion he had experienced nothing but frustration. The Scottish army was twelve thousand strong, larger than the army with which Edward of England had defeated the French at Crécy, yet once across the frontier the great army had stopped to besiege a lonely fortress garrisoned by a mere thirty eight men, and though the thirty eight had all died, it had wasted four days. More time was spent negotiating with the citizens of Carlisle who had paid gold to have their city spared, and then the young Scottish King frittered away three more days pillaging the great priory of the Black Canons at Hexham. Now, ten days after they had crossed the frontier, and after wandering across the northern English moors, the Scottish army had at last reached Durham. The city had offered a thousand golden pounds if they could be spared and King David had given them two days to raise the money. Which meant that Bernard de Taillebourg had two days to find a way to enter the city, to which end, slipping in the mud and half blinded by the fog, he followed Sir William Douglas into a valley, across a stream and up a steep hill. “Which way is the city?” he demanded of Sir William.
“When the fog lifts, father, I’ll tell you.”
“They’ll respect the truce?”
“They’re holy men in Durham, father,” Sir William answered wryly, “but better still, they’re frightened men.” It had been the monks of the city who had negotiated the ransom and Sir William had advised against acceptance. If monks offered a thousand pounds, he reckoned, then it would have been better to have killed the monks and taken two thousand, but King David had overruled him. David the Bruce had spent much of his youth in France and so considered himself cultured, but Sir William was not thus hampered by scruples. “You’ll be safe if you can talk your way into the city,” Sir William reassured the priest. The horsemen had reached the hilltop and Sir William turned south along the ridge, still following a track that was edged with stone walls and which led, after a mile or so, to a deserted hamlet where four cottages, so low that their shaggy thatched roofs seemed to swell out of the straggling turf, clustered by a crossroads. In the centre of the crossroads, where the muddy ruts surrounded a patch of nettles and grass, a stone cross leaned southwards. Sir William curbed his horse beside the monument and stared at the carved dragon encircling the shaft. The cross was missing one arm. A dozen of his men dismounted and ducked into the low cottages, but they found no one and nothing, though in one cottage the embers of a fire still glowed and so they used the smouldering wood to fire the four thatched roofs. The thatch was reluctant to catch the fire for it was so damp that mushrooms grew on the mossy straw.