The castle was a secure, comfortable group of buildings huddled inside the walls. True, it had been designed some decades before, in the happy days when it was common for men to bed down with their lords in the same building. Nowadays, with guards loyal only for as long as they were paid, it was more normal to keep the guards separate from the lord and his family. Too often had mercenary guards turned traitor, despoiling and murdering their own lords, Berenger knew. But for all that, it was warm and cosy, and Berenger could see why Jean de Vervins was so fond of the place.

Sir John had ordered that the men should be sent out in regular two-vintaine patrols to spy out the land, both to find out when the French army was approaching and to seek out good places for ambushes or attacks.

Leaving Marguerite and her son at the castle for their safety, Berenger had taken his vintaine to the north, in a sweep roughly a league away, when news came to them of Gauvain’s death.

They had been riding gently that morning in deference to Berenger’s fragile mood. He had a splitting headache, a queasy stomach, and a trembling sensation in his hands and legs. In short, he was badly hungover. As the two vintaines rode past deserted farmsteads, his mood was not improved by the sight of the columns of smoke rising on all sides.

He had known that the vintaines which had come this way yesterday had returned laden with plunder, but to see the results of their efforts was shocking even to him. Berenger had seen many examples of rape and slaughter in his time. The roads to Crécy were filled with the wounded and the dead after the army had passed by. Yet to see this carnage on a smaller scale was somehow more distressing.

‘Pointless waste,’ he muttered.

Jack was riding nearby, his eyes on the hedgerows and any other places that could possibly conceal an ambush. ‘Why does he do it?’

‘Jean de Vervins has no brain, but seeks to profit from the distress of others. He thinks King Edward will come here to rescue him. The fool is turning every peasant against him.’

It was unnecessary. There was no need to bring war to these peaceful, flat fields. Sir John and Grandarse had no desire to draw an army towards them any sooner than must inevitably happen, but this kind of wanton destruction was bound to lead to exactly that: a retaliatory raid by all the forces available to the local men.

‘Stupid, stupid, stupid,’ he grunted as another spasm made his stomach send acid into his throat. He grimaced at the taste and bitter sting, and took a sip of water from his leather flask. It didn’t help, just as his chewing a hunk of dry bread had not helped earlier. It just made his belly rumble and complain still more. He thrust the cork back into the neck with excessive force and almost broke it.

‘Rider, Frip!’

He looked up in time to see a man cantering towards them. He wore a russet tunic and his green cloak snapped and jerked in his wake. Berenger said, ‘Archers, keep your eyes open!’

The fellow was only young, but was plainly no fool. At the sight of the archers, he slowed and came closer at a trot: brisk enough, but wary.

‘Sir, are you English?’

Berenger grinned sardonically. The fact of their bows should have been confirmation enough. ‘Yes. And you too, from your voice.’

‘I am. I’m looking for the castle of Bosmont and Jean de Vervins or Sir John de Sully.’

‘You’re three leagues from it. If you want, we can take you there.’

‘Good. I’ve been riding for the last day without pause. I’ll be glad to reach the place at last.’

‘You have urgent messages?’

‘That useless prickle, the Count of Flanders, has escaped – and some think he could be heading this way.’

‘But he was to marry the King’s daughter,’ Berenger said.

‘Aye, he was. He’s kept the King and all his entourage dangling in Flanders these past weeks with the constant promise of compliance, but now he’s flown the coop and all we can do is curse him! Unless, of course, he rides straight into some of our own men.’

Berenger scowled. This was terrible news. He had thought that the Flemings were all on the side of the English, and if their leader had left, what would happen to the rest of the country?

‘Does that mean the people will side with their Count?’ he asked.

‘Hah! After he fled, his brother tried to raise an army.’ The messenger fell into step with the vintaine as they began to make their way back to the castle. ‘The people heard of his plans, caught him and executed him. The Flemings want their freedom and they can see themselves getting it from King Edward.’

Berenger nodded, and questioned the messenger about all the activities in Flanders and at Calais.

‘There is little enough to tell about the siege,’ the man said when he had told of the fighting to the north. ‘The French are desperate to have supplies arrive, but we have tightened our fist about the place. They won’t be getting any more food in there, or I’m a Saracen. The last attempt left them with three of their ships destroyed; after that the rest turned tail and fled.’

‘That is all to the good,’ Berenger said. ‘So long as the siege lasts long enough for us to join in again. Otherwise my men will string me up for allowing Sir John to bring us all down here. The rewards will be much better in Calais!’

But he didn’t relish the thought. He had not forgotten his feelings at the sight of the dead after the battle outside Durham. The young Frenchman who had been poleaxed in front of him still returned to him in his dreams. It was part of the reason for his drinking: not only to help him alleviate the pain of his wound, but also to help him forget that young face.

Perhaps he had seen enough of war, he thought.

Archibald was scurrying around the muzzle of his great gonne like some sort of demented ant, Béatrice thought as he darted hither and thither, swabbing, drying, filling it with powder, tamping it down, rolling a ball of stone into it, ramming it home, and then clambering up the slope to the vent.

She was watching from the west of the town. There was a stand of trees and bushes here that had so far miraculously survived the depredations of soldiers desperate for firewood. It was here, so Archibald had said, that the man kept appearing, watching over the town and Archibald’s gonnes. She was to see if she could work out who he was, and bring news to Archibald without running any silly risks. But so far there was no sign of him. She could see much of the shoreline from here, and the first of the moats and walls encircling the town, but the only fellows hereabouts were soldiers and tradesmen plying their wares.

Up at the gonne’s little fortress she saw a sudden jet of smoke rise vertically. There was a blast of flames from the muzzle, and the thick column of smoke belched forth, dissipating as it reached halfway across the moat, the thick roiling blackness looking like smoke from the Devil’s own furnaces. From this distance she could understand why men looked upon Archibald’s devices as hideous machines of Satan.

A loud crack, and the rock flung from the gonne struck a wall and shattered into a thousand shards. The wall, however, showed little damage, and she bit her lip worriedly. Archibald was so convinced that his great tubes would devastate buildings and walls, and yet his greatest gonne had achieved little more than to pepper the town walls with dusty marks where his stones had smashed themselves to smithereens.

And that was when she saw him.

The priest stood a few yards from her, staring over at Archibald’s fortress with a look of quizzical disgust as he chewed at a honeyed lark. Then he turned away and began to walk back towards Villeneuve-la-Hardie. Béatrice waited a moment before setting off in pursuit.

‘Good!’ Grandarse roared as he saw Berenger and the others pass under the gatehouse of Bosmont Castle. ‘Thank God’s mercy that you got back in time. They’ll be here in another hour of the day.’

‘What? Who will?’ Berenger asked.

‘The poxed French, Frip, you lummox! Pay attention, man! We’ve been expecting them at any time, haven’t we? The manky gits who live in the area seem to have got it into their lice-ridden heads that we’re unwelcome here. The Bailiff of Vermandois, the Count of Roucy and all the people from Laon and hereabouts are on their horses and riding straight for us, if the scouts can be believed.’

‘Shite!’

‘Ach, don’t be such an old woman. This castle is strong enough. Look at the size of it. We can stick twenty men on each wall and still have a vintaine free to boil oil and bring it to the walls. Right.’ He pointed to another vintener. ‘Lance, you keep your men down here in the court. I want you to boil the oil, so get the fire started. You’ll have to bring the oil to the gatehouse and anywhere else the enemy choose to attack. Fripper, take your men to the wall over there.’ He indicated with a jerk of his thumb the wall to the west, nearest to the stables.

Berenger lifted an eyebrow. ‘You’ve changed your tune. At Laon you were all for riding away without hesitation.’

‘Aye, well, that was a city with enough men inside who hated our guts. Here, we can fight without having to watch our backs every moment of the day.’

While Grandarse continued bellowing orders, Berenger took his vintaine to the wall.

‘How long do we have?’ the Pardoner asked, gazing anxiously at the flat countryside.

‘Long enough,’ Berenger said soothingly, with a confidence he didn’t feel.

If he was right, and there had been a traitor who had sold them to the French, he swore he would find the man. Not that it should prove hard. He was convinced that Sir Peter was responsible for their precarious situation here. He had tried to have Berenger killed, and then had his own clerk set an ambush for Clip. Jack was right, that Clip was there to forage or thieve what he could, but surely the clerk had laid a trap for him? Although why anyone would want to catch Clip was beyond Berenger’s comprehension!

He glanced down at the river flowing sluggishly past below them, and was struck with the uncomfortable conviction that the people of this land would never allow them to stay. If the castle had walls ten times the height of these, the citizens of Laon and elsewhere would want to attack it, even if they had to use their bare fingers to pull it down. The English had, as he had reflected only a few hours before, brought unity to everyone here by the scale of their murderous depredations.

Now they would likely reap their just rewards.