The English camp was furnished with sufficient provision of meat, drink, apparel, munition, and all other things necessary . . .
Chronicle of Raphael Holinshed
In the Wolvenhuis, Loveday stretched in his chair and enjoyed the appetising aroma of goose fat sizzling in the oven at the back of the room. Hastings had brought the geese around earlier that day when he came to collect his third-part of the brothel’s profits. They were two big birds, not yet plump with winter’s fat, but strong and meaty all the same, their throats slashed and breasts plucked to reveal the creamy yellow skin, naked and puckered and dimpled.
‘For later,’ Hastings had smirked. ‘I hear there’s a big night planned.’
Scotsman gutted the geese and readied them to bake in the oven, rather than turning them on the spit over the fire. The big man was the Dogs’ best cook, and after weeks of preparing nothing but salt pork and beans he now delighted in having good food at his fingertips. He put the goose hearts, necks and gizzards in a pot with water, leeks and a handful of wild herbs to make broth for a sauce. He set their kidneys and livers aside to braise and spread on bread. Then he left Loveday instructions for minding them and went back to bed in the loft, where he and Millstone were sleeping the afternoon away, having shared the last night’s watch.
With the two men slumbering, it was quiet in the brothel. Tebbe, Thorp and Romford were still out on duty with the prince’s archers, and would not return before the nones bells marked the mid-afternoon. Hircent was out too. Loveday guessed she had gone to fetch the ale and wine for which she charged a penny a cup. Only two of the five Flemish girls she had summoned from Ghent were at work; the others would return when dusk approached. But no men had passed through since they had opened their doors at midday. So the girls loitered, bored, in one of the curtained cells that branched off from the main room where Loveday sat. They spoke softly and occasionally to one another in Flemish. Loveday had no idea what they were saying and could not see them, but he could tell their conversation was stilted, coming in starts, as though they did not know each other well.
As he sat and listened, Loveday’s mind wandered. He pictured the girls behind the curtain, and tried to remember their names. There was the younger one with the shy smile, whom Tebbe liked: pretty but for a lazy eye, she wore her light brown hair uncovered and in a thick braid, which she rolled and pinned at the back of her head. She called herself Margie – though the fact that she could hardly pronounce the name suggested to Loveday that it was not her own. She was probably little older than twenty summers. The girl with her now was half as old again. Taller and bony-limbed, she kept her hairline plucked high and severe, and covered the scarred skin on her cheeks with pale brown paste. Though older, she seemed less certain of herself and deferred to Margie. He could not remember her name. Something with an A. Aggie, perhaps? Or Annie?
The names brought to his mind his wife. Alys. He tried to think of her as little as possible. But she still surprised him from time to time. And now, warm and comfortable, Loveday closed his eyes and found Alys’s face dancing across his vision. He remembered her looking around as he opened the door to their tiny house, wiping flour from her face with the back of her hand. Happy to see him. Careful not to ask what he had done to earn the handfuls of coin he tossed into her skirts when they sat together by the fire. He traced every tiny detail of her smile. Felt the softness of her skin, her hair, as it yielded to his hard, cracked hands.
A draught blew through the room. And he no longer saw Alys dancing before him, awaiting his return from another adventure, but rather as she was. Dead beneath the wet earth, where he had buried her all those years ago. Her bones flensed by worms. Her blind skull yawning in a sickly grin. Dead, like Pismire. Dead, like Father. Dead, like all the rest of them. Her soul dragged around by demons in Purgatory, kept there another day longer every time he forgot his prayers.
Loveday sat up and shivered violently, all his ease gone. The draught was coming from the brothel’s open door, beyond which a pair of well-dressed men stood peering in. Loveday wondered why they had not crossed the threshold. Then he saw the room had grown gloomy around him, lit only by a single lantern and the oven’s fire, which flickered and occasionally flared as a bubble of goose fat burst. He called to the men to enter. Then he hauled himself out of his chair, knees and hips clicking, and hurried around lighting the rest of the candles and lanterns.
By the brighter light, he knew one of the men: Sir Thomas Holand, a handsome, broad-shouldered knight who wore a leather patch over a blind eye. Loveday had fought alongside Holand at Caen, where the knight had taken valuable prisoners and – so it was said – been magnificently rewarded by the king. The other man was darker, plainly but expensively dressed, with a gold chain around his neck.
Holand nodded a greeting to Loveday. He looked around the brothel, taking its measure. Then he seemed to realise who Loveday was.
‘FitzTalbot? By God, I’d heard you were in the ransom trade. Don’t tell me you’re a pimp now? Where’s the madam of the house?’
Hircent was still nowhere to be seen. ‘The madam is on her way, gentlemen,’ said Loveday. ‘She’s . . . ’
‘ . . . run away, too, has she?’ Holand winked with his one good eye and laughed as Loveday’s face crimsoned. ‘I’m jesting, FitzTalbot. Are there at least some girls here? Or will we have to make do with you?’
Holand nudged his companion, who did not seem to find the joke as funny as he did.
‘Forgive me,’ Holand continued. ‘Loveday FitzTalbot, this is Toussaint.’ He raised both his eyebrows.
Toussaint frowned, impatient to find he was not known by reputation. Holand shrugged. ‘I see my friend FitzTalbot here is not a follower of tournaments.’ A nasty smile flitted briefly across Holand’s face. ‘But no matter. FitzTalbot, we have heard good things about the women here. Are they clean? Pretty? Do they have at least a head of hair and some of their own teeth?’
Loveday squirmed. ‘Aye, sir. But perhaps if you can wait until the, ah, until . . . I’m here to ensure there’s no trouble, you see. Not to transact the business.’
Holand put his hands on Loveday’s shoulders and braced him affectionately. ‘We’ll be no trouble at all,’ he said. ‘Toussaint here has had a hard day shouting at diggers in the ditch. He just wants his weary muscles rubbed. And I said I would join him. Of course, if anything else should be rubbed, that is in God’s hands.’ He laughed. ‘Or perhaps not God’s! Now, how many girls do you have, and where shall we find them?’
From behind Loveday, a voice interrupted. Scotsman was standing at the foot of the ladder from the loft, rubbing sleep from his eyes. ‘Rooms on your left,’ he yawned. ‘There’s two in at the moment. Margie and Annett. Take your pick.’ The Scot whistled and the two girls appeared, faking coy blushes and fluttering their eyelashes. Scotsman turned back to the two knights. ‘I know I don’t have to tell you lads,’ he said. ‘But treat them like fucking ladies.’
He looked at Holand. ‘You don’t want another eye missing. And you—’ He just nodded at Toussaint, sizing him up. ‘—well, I don’t want to end up digging your fucking ditch.’
The two knights bowed courteously, and went off with the girls. ‘Loveday will see that you pay before you leave,’ the Scot shouted after them. There was no reply. Soon Loveday heard the girls feigning giggles, and the sounds of heavy leather clothes being shed.
The Scot peered in the oven and called to the crackling birds, ‘How are my wee goosies doing?’ He took a deep breath in through his nose and savoured the sweet scent of roasting flesh. ‘Praise be to St fucking Michael,’ he said. ‘Cunt’s looked after us this year.’
He stood up and stretched. ‘I’ll put the kidneys in a bit later. Watch those smooth bastards, Loveday. Any problems you shout for me. I’m going back to bed.’
Through living and working in the Wolvenhuis, Loveday picked up plenty of information about the state of the English and French armies and the course the siege was likely to take. That afternoon proved no different. The brothel’s location at the heart of Villeneuve, along with the fact that Hastings was known to be its patron, meant there was a steady flow of customers from almost all ranks of the army below the greatest lords. Typically, these men liked to talk. Some talked to the girls, some to the Dogs, and some to each other. Almost all of them seemed to regard the Wolvenhuis as a place where things could be spoken in confidence. They let their tongues wag.
Naturally, not everything said in the brothel was true or trustworthy. Much of the talk was boastful, garbled nonsense, or the baseless chatter of bored soldiers imagining events unfolding in the way that best suited their own hopes. But enough was credible and true, and by keeping his ears open, Loveday had begun to piece together a reasonably accurate picture of the way things stood. Above all, he had concluded that as they camped in their new town outside Calais, the army occupied a peculiar and delicate position.
After the English triumph at Crécy – now many weeks ago – King Philippe of France had disbanded almost his entire army, believing that the English would bolt for home to celebrate their victory. Almost immediately, however, he had changed his mind, and a new French army had been summoned to drive the English away from Calais – though hardly anyone believed it could be raised before Christmas at the earliest.
The French position was thus thought to be very weak. The English were dug in on the islands of the marsh, and once Northampton’s ditch was complete, it would be extremely hard to assault them from any direction. After the sack of Thérouanne, every walled city within two days’ ride of Calais had shut its gates and hastened to reinforce its garrison. But these were defensive measures, and the only danger they posed to the English was likely to be through raiding the wagon trains that were currently bringing food to Villeneuve from the king’s allies in the cities of Flanders.
The English, therefore, believed their position to be promising. Like Hircent’s followers, Jakke, Nicclaes and Heyman, almost all the Flemings had departed the army to go home ahead of the winter. But Flemish merchants were continuing to supply the English camp from the cities of the north, despite persistent reports of thieves and murderers targeting them on the roads into Villeneuve. Meanwhile, King Edward had sent orders for a huge surge of food, weapons and military reinforcements to be shipped over from England. When the first supply convoys had been destroyed by French-allied Genoese gallies and broken up by pirates, morale had briefly sunk very low. But it was now widely said that the Genoese had fallen out with the French king over unpaid contracts, had taken their galleys home and were not certain to return, even in the spring. The English could therefore expect to be fed and provisioned until the siege reached a conclusion.
The biggest debate Loveday heard among the clients of the brothel was what that conclusion would be. And now, as he sat and listened to Sir Thomas Holand and Toussaint gossip while Margie and Annett rubbed oil into their backs and thighs, he heard the subject discussed again. It arose as Sir Thomas Holand was complaining to Toussaint about a legal difficulty he was having, proving the validity of his marriage to a young cousin of the prince, whom he called Joanie.
Loveday settled back into his chair and tried to follow their conversation.
‘They call her the fair maid of Kent for a reason, but I swear to Christ, the woman is going to bankrupt me before I have the chance to get inside her,’ Holand was saying. ‘Everyone knows I married her before that shit Montagu did. Why the king won’t just tell him to release her I don’t know. The amount she’s cost me in legal fees . . . if I see her at court at Christmas I ought to just bend her over and—’ He broke off and grunted as Margie’s fingers dug into some tender part of his flesh.
Toussaint snorted. ‘Christmas? Tommy, I wager you anything you care to stake that we’ll still be here for Christmas. And the only thing bending over will be the half of our army who are shitting bloody water from marsh fever and the flux. The only way you’re seeing your fair maid Joanie for Christmas is if you stow away on one of the supply ships and go and abduct her . . . and if you do that, you’ll have even bigger problems with the king’s law than you do already. By the way, have you heard what they’re doing to deserters?’
Holand sighed impatiently. ‘Of course I heard. I speak to the Earl of Warwick as often as you see Northampton.’ The one-eyed knight slipped into an uncanny impression of the booming-voiced marshal, Warwick. ‘Guard the ports and snatch them off the boats, by God’s nails! Flog the poor, fine the rich and put them all in the Tower of London until they’re begging to come back here and dig the ditch!’
Holand returned to his own voice. ‘But that’s no concern of mine, because I’m telling you, we’ll be home by Christmas. Isn’t that right, Margie?’
Margie, hearing her name but having no idea what was being said to her, just giggled.
Toussaint, meanwhile, would not let the subject go. His smooth, self-assured voice drifted in from Annett’s cell.
‘I’m telling you, Tommy,’ he said, ‘you’re wrong. This isn’t one of your frozen forest hunts for pagans in Prussia. In case you’re blind in both your eyes now, Calais has two moats fed by filthy seawater, and walls as big as Paris. And . . . ’
Holand finished Toussaint’s sentence for him, now mimicking the knight’s voice: ‘ . . . and you can’t put a siege tower on the marsh because it’ll sink, and you can’t dig tunnels because they’ll collapse and we won’t have enough ships to blockade Calais until the spring, and, and, and . . . ’
He sighed. ‘We all know what’s really going on. You hear it and I hear it every day. Warwick and your good lord Northampton want to put the siege towers up and attack. The king won’t commit. And every merchant in England is writing to His Grace daily to congratulate him on his caution. Why? Because the longer the siege, the more supplies we burn through. The more supplies we burn through, the more the king borrows from them. And the more he borrows, the more they bleed him for in repayments.
‘Meanwhile, they stall his requests for ships until the spring, because they know that if we don’t get a proper fleet over here, we can’t blockade Calais and starve the fuckers out. You know who’s running the supplies into the city for the defenders?’
Holand broke off and let out a moan. Across Villeneuve, the afternoon bells had started ringing, announcing nones. In the cell, Margie giggled her fake giggle. Loveday guessed her hands were wandering away from Holand’s back towards his beltline. But then the knight stopped her. ‘Hold on . . . whatever your name is, let me tell him this.
‘You know who’s running it?’
Toussaint mumbled, now only half-interested. Annett was evidently following Margie’s lead. But Holand pushed on.
‘I’ll tell you who. Jean Marant, for the love of Barabbas up before Pilate. Throat-cutter Marant, by God. The guy who used to run the – Christ, girl . . . ’
With some effort, he finished his sentence. ‘ . . . used to run . . . the pirate gang on Guernsey. He helped take down our supply convoy. He’s working out of a tavern called the Tin Jar up on the bluff near Sangatte. And he’s got men inside Calais. Led by some cripple, if you can imagine that. Chucked off a bridge in Paris. Or something . . . ’
By now, Toussaint had stopped paying any attention whatever, and was breathing deep and fast as Annett worked her hands over him. But Loveday was listening as intently as he had to anything in his life. He sat upright in his chair.
Marant.
He remembered the pirate from before. They had crossed paths over the years. In Rye and London. Somewhere else he could not recall. He had a crew about twice the size of the Dogs’.
Toussaint and Holand were both groaning, like cows overdue their milking.
A cripple.
Loveday felt a prickling running up and down the back of his legs and his spine. He saw the Captain’s face, as clearly as he had at Thérouanne. He stood up and started towards the cells where the girls were relieving the two knights. He wanted to grab Holand by the throat. Shake out of him what he meant.
Loveday knew a madness was taking him over. He didn’t care.
But just as he reached the entrance to Margie’s cell, the front door of the brothel flew open and in burst Tebbe and Thorp, each with an arm around Romford. The boy had black grime all over his hands and face, and a dazed look in his eyes.
He smelled rank: of eggs and piss and burning bread. And his own dried sweat, which had stained brown circles all over his filthy green-and-white tunic.
For a moment Loveday stood still in shock, thinking the boy was burned. But then he saw his cheeks were flushed. His eyes sparkled, even as he gazed around in a half-daze.
He seemed speechless. But Tebbe and Thorp were speaking loudly, talking over the top of one another so enthusiastically that Loveday could not make out what either of them was saying. It had something to do with a noise, and the walls of Calais.
A shout came from one of the knights’ cells. ‘God’s tongue and tonsils! What’s this? You’ve put me off my—’ Holand burst into the room, shoving his shirt into his belt. He glared at the excited archers. Margie followed, looking apologetic and babbling Flemish.
She tried to pull Holand back into the cell. But he shoved her off roughly, threw a coin in her direction and stormed out of the brothel’s door. Toussaint sauntered out soon after, looking a good deal more relaxed. He grabbed one last handful of Annett’s arse before he paid her.
Loveday’s head was spinning as he turned to the archers. ‘Christ, boys, what are you doing? Do you know what those knights were just talking about?’
Thorp dismissed him with a wave. ‘Never mind fucking knights, Loveday. You won’t believe what we’ve been doing. By God, that goose smells good.’ He slapped Romford hard on the back. ‘Tell him, boy – about the guy’s face.’ He mimed a man holding his head in agony.
Romford looked at Tebbe and Thorp and opened his mouth to try and find the words to explain. Nothing came. He just stuttered, as though he had forgotten how to speak English.
Eventually, Tebbe and Thorp filled in the gaps for him. Each of them seemed to have enjoyed their day more than any other since they left England.
In the oven, the Michaelmas geese spat fat. Not long after, Margie was sitting on Tebbe’s lap, and Scotsman was cooking gizzards for gravy. Loveday wondered, just briefly, if everything they had suffered had been to earn them this moment of happiness.
It was not until late that night, when he lay half-drunk in his bed with his stomach full and said a prayer of thanks to St Michael, that he suddenly returned to thinking about what Sir Thomas Holand and Toussaint had said.
A pirate called Marant. A cripple in Calais. A war that was far from over.
The thoughts writhed inside his head like snakes. It took him a long time to fall asleep.