The King of England swore that he would not leave [France] until he had taken the town of Calais. He called the place where he and his host had set up their defences ‘Villeneuve la Hardie’ [The Bold New Town] . . .
Les Grandes Chroniques de France
Loveday and Scotsman picked a path among the thousands of tents in the English siege camp that had sprung up on the marshland stretching inland from the walls of Calais. They were heading for the centre of the camp, where the king’s and lords’ dwellings lay. It was slow, wet going. The soft ground, watered by tiny streams that criss-crossed the boggy fields, oozed under their feet. In places, the mire was knee-deep. The site was quiet – most of the men were taking cover from the drizzle or just sleeping under their timber-and-skin shelters. The stale odour of rotting rubbish and human waste already hung in the air.
‘Mary Magdalene feeding the fucking donkey, this place stinks,’ muttered the Scot. ‘Hold on, Loveday.’ The big man stopped, put his hands on his knees and breathed slowly, trying to calm his churning stomach. As usual, he was hungover. Loveday patted him gently on the back, as sympathetically as he could. The previous night, Jakke, Nicclaes and Heyman had announced that they were leaving and going home to Flanders. King Edward had issued an edict ordering Flemish troops to quit the English army, for the good of general order. There had been one too many brawls of the sort Scotsman had fought with Hircent in Wissant harbour. The lords wished for peace to be restored.
So the Dogs had seen the Flemish men off, sitting up with them by the campfire, sharing ale and a couple of wineskins. Scotsman and Hircent had been the last to sleep by many hours. Loveday had heard them chuntering away even as dawn was breaking. Hircent was not leaving. She seemed to regard the king’s edict as a challenge, not a command.
‘He wants me out, he can come and move me himself,’ she said, fondling Heartbreaker.
Loveday, Millstone and the archers felt uneasy about her continued presence. But the Scot seemed to admire her defiance. The two of them carried on as usual by night, when the ale flowed. Drinking toasts as they told each other stories of old bar brawls they had known. Planning drinking sessions in other realms in the future. Rehearsing conversations they had already had half a dozen times before.
Having swallowed down the bile in his belly, Scotsman straightened up.
‘Sorry, mate,’ he said to Loveday. ‘We can carry on now.’
Loveday patted him on the back again. ‘Maybe go a little easier this week,’ he said, as gently as he could. ‘We could be fighting again any day.’
The Scot blinked blearily around the campsite, which stretched for miles, as far as the forests to the south. ‘Fuck that,’ he said. ‘It looks like we could be settling in for a long fucking wait. Anyway, if there’s trouble, we can just leg it, eh?’
He dug Loveday in the ribs. But the joke stung. Loveday reddened, and started to protest. ‘I wasn’t running away. I’m telling you, I saw him—’
‘I know, I know.’ The Scot backed down, too hungover to argue. ‘I was only pissing around.’ He changed the subject. ‘Are you sure you know where we’re heading?’
‘Humph,’ said Loveday, still needled. He pointed in the direction of Calais itself, the rectangular, high-walled, deep-moated city beyond the northern end of the campsite. ‘Hastings said to meet him where the engineers are building the market hall, and he would make us an offer. Listen—’
He paused and the two men cocked their ears. From somewhere closer to Calais’ towering walls came the sound of hammering and sawing. ‘All we have to do is follow that.’
The Scot grunted agreement. But after a minute he started up again. ‘You’re sure this is worth it? This Hastings cunt strikes me as slippery,’ said Scotsman. ‘And as for that silly fucking rug he wears on his head . . . ’
Loveday sighed. ‘God knows I hear you. But do you know anyone else who’s buying prisoners? Millstone and I have had no luck trying to sell him to anyone else. Northampton won’t see me, because one of those wretched squires told him Sir Denis followed us into the woods, which got him killed . . . who knows when he’ll ever pay us – if he even does. And you’re running low on rings.’
The Scot looked at his fingers, where his collection was dwindling. Every few days he traded one of the rings he had plundered from Crécy’s dead for another skin of wine or barrel of ale. He now had just eight left. ‘I suppose you’re right. How much do you think we’ll get for him? I’ve never heard of this Artle . . . Arble . . . ’
‘Arnoul,’ said Loveday patiently. ‘Sir Arnoul d’Audrehem. I haven’t either. Then again, how many knights are there? You’d need to be a herald to keep track of them all. Or to know one, anywise. In any case, we’ve got him and we need to sell him. Fast. We can’t even afford to keep him fed.’
The Scot said nothing. They both knew there was nothing to say. Once he and Millstone had taken Sir Arnoul prisoner in the woods outside Thérouanne, they had brought him to the Earl of Warwick’s doctors, who had managed to remove the crossbow bolts from his leg and hand. Then, having no place of their own to imprison him, they had lodged him with Warwick’s guards, in the pool of other prisoners taken after the battle outside the city.
Yet to keep a prisoner was expensive, and Loveday was beginning to realise why the Dogs had never involved themselves in that sort of work before. ‘If we strike a deal with Hastings today, we don’t have to worry about him. We’ll see what he can give us. You never know, it might cover everything we were supposed to have had by now.’
The Scot just shrugged. And the two men squelched on through the marsh together, dodging tent ropes and wooden stakes, and trying to close their noses to the smell of countless thousands of men, all too long in the field, inured to living among piss and shit and vegetable skins and the bones of the animals they devoured. All caught between their hope of an end and acceptance of their fate, which was simply to wait and try not to die until the ships came to take them home.
They walked until eventually the tents came to an end. And they found themselves in a new place: a vast building site, where a whole town of wood and thatch was being erected, faster and on a grander scale than Loveday had ever seen.
‘This is it,’ Loveday said, gazing around in admiration at what seemed to be an entire city under construction on the marsh outside Calais.
‘And that’s him,’ muttered the Scot, pointing to where a restless-looking Hugh Hastings stood before the swarm of builders, engineers and labourers, occasionally spitting on the ground and fiddling with his ginger wig, awaiting the Dogs’ arrival.
Hastings was alone, and spoke without courtly polish. He recognised Loveday straight away.
‘Took your time, by God,’ he said. ‘Any later and you’d have found me gone.’
Loveday gave an awkward bow in apology. ‘It took us some time to cross the camp on the marshes, sir.’
Hastings waved an irritable hand, batting Loveday’s apology away. ‘Well, you’re here now.’ He breathed hard through his misshapen nose. Behind him, an engineer working on the market hall dropped a hammer and cursed. Hastings put his hands on his hips. ‘So. Shall we make a deal?’
Loveday opened his mouth to speak, but before he could, Hastings cut him off. ‘Here’s the thing. You’ve got a decent prisoner. How you pair laid hands on him, I don’t know.’
‘As it happens, sir, it was me and another of our men—’
Hastings looked incredulous at Loveday’s interruption. Then he seemed to recognise Scotsman from the cathedral in Thérouanne. ‘You,’ he said. ‘Now I remember. Spreading muck and filth all over the Lord’s house is more your style, isn’t it?’
‘Hey,’ began Scotsman, his red face flushing even brighter than usual. But Hastings cut him off. ‘Shut up and listen. I’m busy.’
‘As I said, you have a good prisoner. But your timing is terrible. For one thing, you’re late. Two weeks ago, the market was buzzing. The king’s men were buying anyone you brought them. You could have stuck a coat of arms on a scarecrow and they’d have paid you a hundred pounds for it. The Flemish were paying. The London syndicates were over here paying, shipping them back to the Tower like cattle.’
He paused. ‘But that was two weeks ago. And now the word is that the Tower is heaving. They’re sticking prisoners in every castle in southern England. They’ve got them in Newgate, with the debtors and the perverts. And guess what?’
Loveday and Scotsman shook their heads.
‘No,’ said Hastings, ‘I didn’t think you were on top of this game. I’ll tell you. None of them are making their money back. If I buy Sir Pierre Pintletugger from you, I’m doing it so that I can sell him back to Lady Pintletugger and her five little baby Pintletuggers for twice what I paid you, plus the expenses I’ve incurred keeping Sir Pierre alive.
‘The trouble is, we’ve done too well. Not only have we captured Sir Pierre, but we’ve got half of his cousins and brothers too. Meanwhile, the other half had their faces hacked off at Crécy, and all their heirs are taking each other to court to scrap over their estates. Which means . . . ?’
He looked expectantly from Loveday to Scotsman, then sighed.
‘It means they’re all broke. They can’t afford to ransom Sir Pierre back. So the hundred pounds I paid for him is now merely an investment in Sir Pierre’s favourite activity. By the time he gets out of jail and goes home, he’ll be nothing but a skeleton with an extremely thin and shiny pintle, and I’ll be in a cell next to him in Newgate doing time for the debts I’ve run up looking after him.’
Not for the first time, Loveday felt a little overwhelmed. ‘Will the king—’ he began. Sir Hugh snorted. ‘No, “the king” will not. That’s the other half of the problem. Look around you. What do you see?’
‘A building site,’ growled Scotsman. ‘A big one.’
‘Aye,’ said Sir Hugh. ‘Maybe you Scotch savages aren’t as stupid as you are ugly. A very, very big building site.’ He gestured around him so vigorously that his wig slipped off his head. He caught it and jammed it back in place. ‘Opinions vary on what in Christ’s name we’re doing outside this wretched city, best known for harbouring pirates beyond the reach of any God-given law or authority. Be that as it may. We’re here for a while.’
Loveday looked around him and once more took in the scale of the works that were underway. Beside the market hall there was what appeared to be a parade of shops, the first storeys of spacious lords’ houses and municipal buildings. A street plan had been marked out with ropes strung between wooden stakes hammered into the soft marshland.
‘Take it in,’ said Hastings. ‘And try to imagine what it’s costing. His Grace King Edward has been calling it Villeneuve-la-Hardie – which means Bold New Town. A better name might be “Bankrupt-the-Country New Town”. We’ve not yet paid for the campaign you lot have been on. I’ve been handing out royal money like there’s no tomorrow to our Flemish friends. As I’m sure you saw, we just lost a whole supply convoy to the Italians, ably abetted by every pirate crew along the coast. All of which means our Lord by the grace of the Almighty King Edward does not want to underwrite the ransoms of any more Sir Pierres.
‘Or to put it another way, you boys are extremely lucky to have found me. Because I am going to buy Sir Pierre from you. Or as he likes to be known, Sir Arnoul d’Audrehem. And since I’m a generous man, I’m going to give you fifty pounds for him.’
Loveday’s heart leapt. This was more money by far than the Dogs had been promised for their whole campaign. ‘Sir, that’s a very generous offer. My men will be—’
But Scotsman interrupted him. ‘Fuck that.’
Hastings glared. ‘Fuck what?’
‘Fuck fifty,’ said the Scot. ‘We want five hundred. I’ve heard about lords being sold for ten thousand and more. You said it yourself, this is a top man. Give us five hundred.’
Hastings burst out laughing, then stopped as abruptly as he began. ‘Have you seen the rocks above Calais harbour?’
Scotsman jutted his rank-bearded chin forward. ‘No.’
‘Well, go take a look at them, and once you’re there, take a long high leap into the sea. I said fifty, by Christ, for all the very good reasons I’ve been at pains to describe to you.’
Scotsman’s eyes flashed in a way Loveday knew all too well.
‘Sir Hugh, we’d be glad to accept,’ Loveday said.
‘No we fucking wouldn’t,’ said the Scot.
Hastings rolled his eyes. ‘Which of you two is in charge?’ he asked.
‘I am, sir,’ said Loveday.
‘And which of you two did I see abetting a grotesquely fat woman relieving her bowels on the altar of a consecrated cathedral?’
Scotsman fumed.
‘Right,’ said Hastings. ‘Fifty it is. You can go and let Sir Arnoul Pintletugger know he’s under my command, and tell the king’s men at the guardhouse to send the bill for all his expenses to me. Or rather, to my lady.’
‘Your lady?’ Loveday asked, confused.
‘My lady Queen Philippa of England,’ said Hastings. ‘Of whose household I was lord steward until duty diverted me. She’ll be here soon enough. You’ll like her a lot.’ He drummed his fingers impatiently on the backs of his arms. ‘Do we have a deal?’
‘We do,’ said Loveday, and this time the Scot said nothing.
‘Thank Christ and all the saints,’ said Hastings.
Then a thought crossed his face.
‘Until then, since you’ve proven such accommodating business partners, I’m going to put one more condition on my offer. How do you fancy moving into one of these places next week?’ He gestured at a row of half-built shop-front buildings on one side of the market hall. ‘It’ll beat catching foot-rot and roasting rats in a tent two miles yonder across the bog.’
Loveday and Scotsman glanced at each other. ‘That sounds most agreeable, sir,’ said Loveday. ‘But what’s the—’
‘The snag? The thing you’re going to mope about? The snag, by God, is that this row of buildings is marked out as a special, very necessary area of the camp. In it, you and your men will be overseeing one of the least reputable establishments that will do business here in Villeneuve, which will be owned in part by me.
‘You’ll get to meet some interesting people and some pretty girls. But the work may be rough, and you in particular—’ – he jabbed Loveday in the chest – ‘—seem likely to endure a measure of misplaced heartache at the plight of the employees.
‘Are you catching my meaning?’
Loveday had not the first clue what Hastings meant. Yet a beam was spreading across the Scot’s face. For the first time since Loveday had shaken his huge friend awake that morning, he seemed genuinely happy.
‘Unless I’ve got something arse about neb, Sir Hugh here is asking us to help him run a fucking brothel,’ said the Scot, still grinning.
‘Bravo,’ exclaimed Hastings, clapping his hands together.
‘Scotsman, no,’ said Loveday.
‘We fucking accept,’ said Scotsman.
Hastings grabbed his wig with both hands and rotated it a full turn on his head. ‘One victory apiece!’ he said. ‘I call that a successful morning.’
He clapped his hands again. ‘We’ll meet again very soon. Don’t forget to pass on the good news to Sir Arnoul. Feel free to knock a tooth or two loose if he objects to the mention of my name. It won’t affect his value too much.
‘Now, if you’ll excuse me, His Grace the Prince of Wales has requested my presence at Mass.’
Hastings nodded brusquely at the two Dogs. Then he strode off towards the campsite, where the grandest tents of vermillion and blue and green and white and gold cloth stood on the driest part of the marsh, and the arms of the English king, Edward, third of his name, were billowing in the salt breeze.