"Since you have not taken her," Berenger called to Erbin, "you won"t mind us staying for some drink and food, as comrades who share at ease."
"Nay," Erbin said, looking at Berenger coolly. "You accused us, and that was an insult. On second thoughts, I think you should go now before I call the guards to report you. Go on f.u.c.k off. The wench is probably back there already, wondering where you have got to.
Berenger glanced at Geoff. "What do you think?"
"I think he"s talking ballocks, Frip."
Berenger had risked his life many times for money and the chance of winning a b.u.t.t of wine. If he were to attack Erbin, he felt sure there was a good chance he would die, but what of that? To die trying to save the girl who had herself saved their Donkey was a good trade. He saw Geoff give a wolfish grin, and felt his own face crack into a smile. He was just about to shout and launch himself at Erbin when Granda.r.s.e put his hand to his breast.
"No, lads. If you do that, we"ll all hang. Leave these Welsh fellows alone."
"Why?" Berenger said. He was ready for action.
"Fripper, you had Sir John save you once before when you killed one of these pieces of s.h.i.t. Don"t expect him to do so again."
"I don"t know," Berenger had his eyes fixed on Erbin. That was the man, if it came to blows, whom he would kill first. There was something cold and feline in Erbin"s eyes. Something unnatural.
"What now?" Geoff murmured from the side of his mouth.
"Ballocksed if I know," Berenger said with a shamefaced chuckle. There was nothing they could do but retreat. It was one thing if these Welshmen leaped upon them and brought matters to a head, but if they did nothing and stood back while the Englishmen remained here, it was a stalemate. No one would support them if they caused an affray in the middle of the Welsh camp.
All because of that woman, too. All this trouble over a French tart who wasn"t even a "wife" to any of them.
Geoff said, "If she was here, we"d have heard her by now, Berenger."
"He"s got a point, Fripper. If they"ve killed her, it"s too late to do anything about it now," Granda.r.s.e added.
"All right, I know," Berenger said. But he was reluctant to leave, and possibly abandon her to her fate. She had saved Ed, he told himself.
There came to his ears a noise, a pop and hiss like a loud hiccup. All heard it. Erbin"s eyes slid away towards a door set in the wall on their right, and a sudden, shrill scream came from within.
Berenger stepped forward, slammed the cross of his sword into Erbin"s face hard enough to feel the nose break, and then span to his side. His sword was at the throat of the nearer Welshman, and the second was stepping away from Geoff"s point, arms held up defensively.
"Wait here, Granda.r.s.e," Berenger snapped, and was about to make his way to the chamber, but there was no need.
She appeared in the doorway, her face blank. Her mouth was moving, as though she was whispering something, but Berenger could hear not a single word.
The Welsh drew away from her, averting their faces, one covering his eyes as she came out and walked forward, her feet scarcely rustling the gra.s.ses, until she drew level with Berenger. She looked like a woman who had peered into h.e.l.l itself, and who had lost her mind. She then continued on her way, pa.s.sing behind Granda.r.s.e and Geoff, leaving the clearing and continuing on towards the vintaine"s camp beyond the copse.
Berenger felt a shiver run down his spine. There was the distinct odour of brimstone about her. The men in the camp huddled anxiously near the fire as if men afrighted by a ghost or a vampire, casting agitated glances all about them. And all the while, shrieks of agony came from the little room.
Berenger, still clutching his sword, saw a man stumble from the room, his hands to his face.
"I"m blind! The b.i.t.c.h blinded me!" he cried.
Ed was sitting back, feeling sick to his core, while Archibald ministered to him, when she returned.
"Beatrice? Are you all right?" Archibald asked. Each syllable threatened to shatter his own bruised skull.
She said nothing, merely squatted on her haunches at the fireside, staring at the flames. Then she pulled out the flask and placed it on the ground near Archibald, away from the fire.
"They took me into their room and left me tied up. They said I was to satisfy all of them. But my hands were in front of me. I poured powder into a drinking horn, and put stones and sand on top. I wanted to kill them. When the vintener came, a man was sent to hold me still and quiet. I sat down and shivered, and asked him to stir the flames and make the fire warmer. When he did, I threw the horn into the fire. It exploded, right beneath his face."
"You did well, maid," Archibald said, but he thought something had broken. Something deep inside her that had been fine and strong was rent apart and would never be mended.
He stood, fetched a thick blanket and, barely touching the woman, draped it over her shoulders. He poured water into a pot and set it on the fire to boil. Tipping some strong wine into a large cup, he topped it up with the steaming water, stirred in a dollop of honey and pa.s.sed it to her. She took it without looking up, but at least she sipped it.
Something about its warmth or taste communicated with her. She looked about her as if startled, wondering where she was, but then stared at the ground, and Archibald was saddened to see her misery. It made his own eyes well up.
"Maid, you"re safe now," he said gruffly.
"No. I will never be safe," she said, and began to weep.
"You know what she is?" Erbin said. He stood at Berenger"s shoulder now. "She has already killed one of mine, at Caen, when she called you to aid your bratchet. Now she has blinded another of my men. She will bring bad luck to us all. You understand me? She is evil, man. A witch. You saw her cursing us. We have to destroy her."
The man in the room was being tended to at the fire. His face was a ma.s.s of blood where the flesh had been burned, and his eyes were mere b.l.o.o.d.y caverns. He sobbed and moaned as the men tried to comfort him.
"She had something, and it exploded in my face! It all blew up! I can"t see anything!"
Erbin spat. "Someone shut him up."
"This is your fault. You took her," Berenger said, although he felt his flesh creep at the inhuman sounds coming from her victim. "Leave her alone. If you do anything more, if you look at her, let alone touch her, I will command her to curse you with all the fervour at her command."
"It is not just us," Erbin called as Berenger rejoined Granda.r.s.e and Geoff and set off for their camp. "It"s the whole army. You think a b.i.t.c.h like her will comfort you in your beds? While you"re swyving her, you"ll be seeing to the end of all of us! We"ll all die here!"
Berenger continued on his way as the Welshman shouted after them, his words growing more overwrought as the English left the Welsh camp behind.
"You hear me? You will see to the ruin of the whole army if you keep her! She"s evil! She"s a witch!"
Granda.r.s.e stopped and looked back at Erbin through the trees. "You hear that? Daft b.u.g.g.e.r has had his pate beaten once too often, hasn"t he? He"s brain-dead. Witch, my a.r.s.e! What, does he think a witch would come here just to annoy him?" His tone was light, but there was a frown on his face. His superst.i.tious soul rebelled at the thought of harbouring a witch. "Eh? Berenger?"
"Yeah, what do you think, Frip?" Geoff asked.
Berenger looked at them both. "She feared rightly that she was to be raped, by the whole lot of them, so she defended herself as best she might. That"s all. They captured her and imprisoned her in that little chamber. We all heard her being taken."
"Aye, but if she is a witch . . ." Granda.r.s.e growled.
"If she is, she"ll likely strengthen us. We haven"t done anything but try to help her, so the wench would have no cause to want to harm us," Berenger said with finality.
They entered the edge of their camp and Granda.r.s.e and Geoff strode to the fire, squatting near the heat.
Berenger found his own attention moving to Archibald and the wagon. There was a small fire, and Berenger could see Ed sitting there beside Beatrice. The sight of her reminded him of Erbin"s hissed words: "She is evil, man. A witch."
"Ballocks to the lot of it," he sighed tiredly, and stepped around the men in the camp, over to his own belongings, and there he lay down.
At a sudden snapping of twigs, he looked up again and felt a shiver of unease when he saw that Beatrice was staring straight at him, as though she could read his every thought.
8 August Berenger slept uneasily that night. When the vintaine was called to stand-to the next morning, he could not help but look to where he had last seen Beatrice and the Donkey, but they were not there. Of course they weren"t. They had their own duties to attend to. Archibald, however, was there and he waved amiably.
As Granda.r.s.e wandered up and down the line counting the men, Berenger saw a movement over his shoulder. It was the Donkey, with Beatrice. She moved so elegantly, it was like watching a woman skating on a frozen lake, but he felt a flicker of alarm at the sight of her. He could see again the face of Erbin, flames lighting his features with an unwholesome orange glow as he made his stark accusation: "She is evil, man: a witch."
There was something unsettling about her; something otherworldly, he thought. But it was time to put such ideas away and concentrate on the job in hand.
Overnight, fires had raged through many farmsteads, almost up to the walls of Rouen itself. The land was scorched. Only the skeletons of trees stood in copses and woods, stark and bare, all the undergrowth gone. Such wanton damage must be evil in the eyes of G.o.d, but to Berenger it was the way of war, and he could no more change how warriors fought than turn back the tide.
Sir John called him to join a scouting party. The bridge at Rouen, they found, was completely demolished. At the farther side of the river a group of men stood guard, and the French herald trotted to the riverbank, from where he could shout across to them to convey his King"s message.
"This is a pretty nonsense," Sir John muttered.
"Sir?" Berenger said.
"The King asks if the French will join in battle, but look about you: is there any point? The French have surrendered the western bank of the Seine, and now wait over there to contest any attempt to cross."
"Are you sure?" Berenger said doubtfully, thinking of the army King Philippe had at his disposal.
"He wants to ensure that we are utterly crushed when he fights us," Sir John said. "He will wait until he has all his might here, and he can close his fist around all of us."
"Then what can we do?"
"Torment him to the extent that he finally agrees to fight us here, or find another bridge before he has his camp struck. We could make our way to the next bridge and take it, then cross the river and find a suitable field to fight him."
"And if we don"t?"
Sir John looked at him. "Pray that we do," he said curtly.
"When we were here before . . ." Berenger began.
"Eh?"
Berenger looked at the knight. Sir John was shrewd, and his memory was undimmed. "Sir, when we were here with William of Wales sixteen years ago or more, we saw many lands over here."
Sir John said nothing, but looked about him carefully. "You should forget William le Walleys," he said quietly.
They both knew why. Their charge, "William", was in fact the man they had sworn to serve all his life: King Edward II. But he had been declared dead in Berkeley Castle, and his son had taken the throne thinking, in his grief, that he was come into his inheritance. No King would wish to be reminded that he took his crown while his father was yet breathing. That was an offence against G.o.d.
"I know, Sir John," Berenger said. "But I recall good flat plains and fields to the north, when we crossed the water to come here."
Sir John nodded. "I too recall those plains. There were some that would serve us well today, but," he sighed, "they are all too far away. We need a good field here to bring the French to battle. We have to force them to fight."
They stood with the herald waiting for the answer until the sun was grinding its way to its meridian. When it came, Sir John gritted his teeth.
"So, it is as I thought. He waits for the rest of his men. Only when he outnumbers us by tens of thousands will he risk trial by battle. We shall be hard-pressed when he finally agrees to wage war against us."
Berenger returned to the camp that night to find the men in a wary mood, on the alert for any new threat from the Welsh.
For her part, Beatrice worked on, fetching fodder and drink for the horse, helping Archibald move his gear and make some supper. Keeping busy was key, she thought.
"Careful with that," Archibald said at one point.
She looked down. A man had given them a pair of coneys, and she had skinned them with a knife Archibald had lent her. Now she saw that she had been about to set the blade to rest on top of a barrel. Archibald nodded as she took the knife and set it aside.
"Don"t want to risk any sparks with that barrel," he said. "You know better than that."
She nodded, and shortly afterwards, he lumbered off.
It was a little later that Berenger appeared. He stood anxiously for a few moments, and then cleared his throat. "Maid?"
Her thoughts had been far away. Now she looked up with the alarm of a hart hearing a hunter. "Yes?"
"I have not spoken to you since . . ." he wanted to say, "since we came to the Welsh camp", but couldn"t. He felt the need to prove that Geoff was entirely wrong about her, but looking down into her anxious eyes, he found himself wondering how anyone could think evil of her. She looked so innocent.
"You need fear nothing from me," he said.
"I know. You came to save me."
"Ed cried out and alerted us. I was worried about you. Did they say why they had taken you?"
"At first I thought it was because they wanted to offend you. But then I heard the man they called Erbin tell another to "find the boy and kill him", but they could not find him as I had hidden him under Archibald"s cart, so they took me instead."
Berenger considered that. The Donkey had been struck down. "If the Welsh had wanted to kill him, he was easy prey. Who knocked him down?"
She looked at him very straight. "I did. I knew they would kill him." There was a fresh tear glistening in the corner of her eye.
"You knocked him down to protect him. That was kind of you," Berenger said more gently, but he was still unsure whether he could trust her. Her coolness, her distance, all spoke of her strangeness. He wasn"t used to women like this.
He jerked his head in the direction of the Welsh. "Did you hear what Erbin said to me? He said you were a witch."
"What of you, vintener? What do you think?" she said, her voice lowered.
She looked so young, but so full of knowledge and despair, that any idea of her being a witch was simply preposterous. Yet if she were a witch, surely she would be able to appear in any guise she wished including that of a young woman. Every year Berenger watched the Pa.s.sion plays, and he knew that some witches had the skill of dissimulation. Perhaps that was her magic: an ability to change her appearance at will, to confuse and frustrate men?
"I don"t know what to think," he said truthfully. "But I do know you"d be safer away from us. If Erbin and his men want you, they will know where to find you if you stay with us."
"You are telling me to leave the army?" she asked, and for the first time he saw a hint of vulnerability. There was a tiny flaring of her nostrils, a tremor at her eyelid, that betrayed her inner fears.
"No. But we must see if there"s a place in the army where you"ll be safer," he said.
"I feel safe here," she said.
"With the Serpentine?" Berenger said, glancing down at Archibald who was snoring, his back against a cart"s wheel. "Sweet Jesus, even Erbin would be safer than him!"
9 August The English struck camp in the pre-dawn light of the Wednesday, and Berenger and his men were told to scout the lands to south and east.
There was a sense of urgency in the camp as he took up his bow and set off. Men were scurrying about, gathering their belongings and packing. Berenger saw Erbin at the copse as he threw his pack into the back of the cart. Beatrice was there already, stroking the long nose of their old nag and murmuring softly, so that the brute nuzzled at her throat. She met Berenger"s gaze with a calm nod, but when she saw Erbin, her eyes hardened.
They were off before full dawn. The land about the Seine was dark and misty, but as they started their journey, the sun broke through and filled all the river"s plain with a pale golden glow, as if the ground itself was lighted by an inner fire.
Berenger and the men made good progress. They hurried forward, for once without complaints. Granda.r.s.e had made it plain that the first man to grumble aloud would be flogged, and there was something in his manner that convinced the men to pay heed.