Grant for life to Queen Philippa of all the houses of Jean d’Aire in the town of Calais, with all the houses, cottages and all void places . . . on condition that . . . she find certain men for the defence of the town, as the king and council have ordained . . .
Calendar of Patent Rolls, August 1347
Loveday saw Millstone and Thorp on to their ship at Calais harbour the next morning. Another ship called Saintmarie, although not the same one that had brought them almost a year earlier. The Dogs now carried packs heavy with silver coin. They had been paid eight and a half forties a man. More money than any of them had ever seen.
At the office of the treasurer, Thorp had argued for Tebbe’s pay, to take home to his family. The head of the office, Wetwang, a humourless man, flatly refused.
Instead, the Dogs pooled their pay and made out a quarter-share of the total. Thorp carried it. He promised to deliver it as the first thing he did when they got back, after the good day’s drink they would have to celebrate their safe return to whichever port the Saintmarie made dock in.
‘You’re sure you won’t come with us?’ Thorp asked, as they stood by the gangplank.
Loveday shook his head. ‘Not just yet.’
‘Christ, Loveday, you saw him. You won’t—’
‘I’m not looking for him any more.’
‘What then?’ Thorp spat in the sea. ‘They’re not paying us to stay now.’
‘I don’t . . . ’ Loveday felt suddenly like he was on the ladder again. Paralysed. Caught between climbing up and going down. ‘I won’t be long behind you. I feel like there’s something I need to see.’
‘What?’
‘I don’t know. I’ll only know when I see it.’
The three men embraced awkwardly. Feeling the smallness of their group. Thorp spat into the sea again and kept clearing his throat. He seemed unable to talk.
Millstone finally managed to get a few words out. ‘Until Southwark, then. Next spring?’ Loveday had never seen Millstone cry. But now the big stonemason would not meet his eye.
A sailor called down to them to hurry up. The Saintmarie was ready.
‘Aye. The spring.’
None of them quite believed it.
Once they were gone, Loveday walked alone in Calais’ warren of streets. He dodged royal servants carting piles of rubbish and bones away to the great fires being lit in Villeneuve, where the siege camp was being torn down. He saw piles of possessions – furniture and kitchen utensils and blankets and curtains – being dragged out of abandoned properties and stacked up for inventory by the city’s new governors. He saw the last few pinch-faced citizens stumbling away, empty-handed, from homes that were no longer their own.
He saw the death of a city. And he saw the city coming back to life: shuttered windows being opened and locked doors unbarred. Many shops and business premises seemed already to be open for business, as though there had never been a siege at all, nor any want or dearth or hunger. Stacked outside those that were back in business were piles of crates marked with some symbol Loveday did not recognise. A cross, its arms extended with tails.
Everywhere, the takeover was happening. Loveday overheard negotiations as English owners bartered with royal agents for possession of properties in the streets away from the main squares. The king was already in the castle. Outside it all the best places had been hung with the queen’s livery. The next best were being taken over by the merchants Loveday had seen around the dais. But there was plenty more to be claimed, and no shortage of claimants.
For a moment, he stood outside a modest little shack, its roof in need of new thatch and door sagging on its hinges, and wondered if the coin in his pack was enough for him to claim it as a place for himself. Then he shook his head at the absurdity of the thought and moved on.
He did not look for the Captain.
And he did not see him either.
He spent the night in a tavern under the sign of the Beehive.
He drank himself to sleep at a table on his own, and woke up there as dawn was breaking and a girl with her hair shorn was sweeping up shards of broken mugs and the night’s filthy straw from around his feet.
A throbbing head, fat tongue, churning stomach and painful bladder told him he was at best very hungover. Probably still drunk.
He staggered to his feet, knocking his stool over. He cursed, stumbled again, apologised to the girl and thanked her.
She didn’t understand, and seemed frightened of him. He grabbed a half-drunk jug of wine from a table, left her a handful of coins scattered in its place and let himself out of the bolted door.
The sun was rising over quiet streets as Loveday weaved his way drunkenly back in what he thought was the direction of the harbour. His legs were wobbly, but the cool air cleared his head a little. He sipped from the jug, pissed in an alley and went out to stare at the sea.
He had no idea what he was looking for. He was just delaying going back to so little.
‘You old fool,’ he said out loud. ‘Go home.’
Against the long pier, a great cog had come in overnight and docked, though it was so early that the deck was silent, the gangplank drawn, and no one was yet waiting to board. He guessed it would be some hours before it went. So he walked on, along the seafront, seeing up close the city walls he had stared at for so long that spring from the Risbank.
Nothing now seemed special about them. The stone knew nothing. Or told nothing.
Which amounts to the same thing.
He kept going.
Where the buildings of the harbour stopped, the stone front gave way to a small beach. He clambered down on to it. At the other end of it, he saw something strange.
He squinted in the low morning light. Something grey was hunched on the shingle.
It looked like an animal. Bigger than a dog, but thinner. Perhaps it was a dog, he thought. Some poor cur, which had somehow survived in the city without being eaten.
He started walking towards it. When he was halfway along the beach, the animal sensed him coming. It looked up.
A wolf?
Loveday laughed. He really was drunk. It couldn’t be. Wolves didn’t live on beaches. Or in cities. And yet, there it was.
He stood still, trying not to make a move that would frighten the wolf, or make it attack him. After a while, very slowly, the wolf got up and moved off down the beach.
Although it was still some way away, the hairs on the back of Loveday’s neck stood up as he watched it move. He felt somehow as if he knew the wolf. As though they had seen each other in another place. Another life. Somewhere very long ago.
Loveday was about to turn back for the harbour when he realised the wolf had left something at the far end of the beach.
He went towards it.
At first, he thought it was a fisherman’s abandoned net, or a tangle of rags, wrapped around something grey-blue.
Then he thought it might be the remains of a large fish the wolf had been eating. Some rare morsel washed up as a gift of the sea.
But when he got close to it, he saw the bundle was a person. A lad, curled up tight around a heavy pack. He was wet through and unmoving. He was covered in long grey hairs. As though the wolf had been sheltering him.
Loveday crouched down and put his hand on the shoulder closest to him.
The shoulder felt very cold. But the faintest lift and fall of the small body told him the young man was still alive.
A surge of blood ran through Loveday’s body. He realised he had to get him warm. He dropped to the sand and hauled him up to sitting and wrapped both his arms tightly around his thin wet shoulders and pressed his whole body to him, his chest against the young man’s back.
The young man was limp and weak. He sagged in Loveday’s arms like a child’s doll. His head lolled. His arms flopped.
Loveday gripped him tighter still, and tried to press even harder against him. As he did, he smelled the stale booze on his own breath and the salt in the young man’s matted hair. He was soaking now, too, grit and sand and water all over him.
He didn’t care.
Loveday pressed himself close to the boy and tried to give him all the warmth from his own body. He felt as though his whole life depended on saving this one.
‘Hey,’ he said as he held him. ‘Hey, mate. I’ve got you. Come on. Try and wake up.’
The young man stirred faintly. He coughed. Water drooled from his mouth.
‘Mate,’ said Loveday again. ‘Try and wake up. You’ll be alright.’
With some effort, the young man raised his chin from his chest. He opened an eye and out of the corner of it tried to see Loveday.
‘There you go,’ said Loveday gripping him even tighter. ‘There you go, mate. I’ve got you. You’re safe now. Let’s get you home.’
Then the young man half turned, and Loveday’s own body went cold.
A pale-blue eye. A light beard now. His cheek a torn mess, where something or someone had sliced through it.
But a face Loveday would have known anywhere. He wrenched the young man around in his arms and cradled him like he was a baby.
‘Christ,’ said Loveday. ‘Christ, boy, what the devil are you doing here?’
‘Father?’ said Romford.