If Sterz had acquired pretensions to self-worth since taking command of the Great Company, everyone knew him to be the son of a charcoal burner. This, being the lowest of low occupations, occasioned many a joke at his expense, though never within the range of his hearing. He had a fierce temper that acted as a red mist and could kill before the realisation dawned on him it was not necessary. If he had risen by soldiering, his background made him touchy regarding his dignity and the way he lived reflected that.
His accommodation was no mere tent, more a spacious pavilion which was always set down with what wind blew and to where in mind, so that the odours of two thousand men, of horses, livestock on the hoof and that which was cooking did not intrude on his luxury. The contents of several carts were always on display at each tented encampment, likewise laid out when the company assaulted and took a monastery or citadel and rested under a proper roof.
His other habit, playing the great magnate, was to invite his captains to dine with him and his German secretary, the Benedictine friar Cunradus. This would be served at a great board, minions toiling hard to ensure it groaned under the weight of the food he provided. The serving dishes and goblets were of either silver or gold, the decorated knives made from the finest steel Milan could produce. Few alluded to the fact that it was paid for by all; it was shared property, not personal plunder from their joint exploits.
The profits of the host were pooled and distributed according to rank and ability, with Sterz holding such valuables as a common coffer in case times became hard. Hawkwood’s English longbowmen and experienced spearmen were highly regarded and thus well rewarded in comparison to others he now commanded. Foot soldiers tended to be no more than armed peasants and so were the lowest paid, just ahead of the untrained youths who had joined their travelling band to escape rural tedium.
There were, of necessity, those who ranked above them all, such as the mailed and armoured knights. Also paid and fed were the scribes, usually but not exclusively monks, others of that ilk acting as mendicants. There were smiths, farriers, sutlers and armourers as well as camp wives and their urchins. All lived off what the company could garner in booty and provisions from those who lay in their predatory path. If they did not plunder they did not eat and the direction in which they went next was of paramount importance; where could they sack, burn or extort to the greatest level of profit?
If the German used his dinners to play the great man, they were also used to lay out plans for future operations and in this he required to know what forces might be ranged against them. Powerful local magnates or large towns who might raise a substantial body of men were left untroubled, the blows falling on those less able to defend themselves: minor nobility, rich urban-based traders as long as their domicile lacked stout walls, farmers of broad hectares and deep coffers, though the poor were not left untouched either.
Wherever a freebooting company went they left behind them a trail of destruction: ruined buildings, scorched fields, cut-down vines, dead men or those maimed by torture into revealing hidden wealth. Women suffered for their gender and the lust of men who were not inclined to bypass vats of wine or the pleasures of free flesh.
The French crown had tried many times to interdict the Great Company, known to be the largest, in the year since Brétigny but the Paris-based princes had never fielded enough men to put a stop to Sterz leading his host to wherever he sought to go. That accepted, contact was avoided: it was no part of their task to engage in fixed battle with a proper army, in which men might expire or pick up a wound without return, so any hint of a substantial opponent close by had an effect.
Flush from ravishing the Beauce, the general intention was to continue south into country that had never seen or been troubled by any of the free companies. Rich pickings were to be expected in places that were blessed by the sun and had seen no turmoil in decades.
Throughout the eating and boasting Hawkwood ate well but drank sparingly, leaving the pavilion early to do the rounds of his own area and ensure his men were content; such diligence was much appreciated for it was not common amongst captains. This occasioned several stops at campfires to exchange words, jests and memories with people he had fought alongside, Hawkwood never having lost sight of the fact that he had once been an ordinary archer.
He was about to get into his sleeping cot – he kept a fairly humble tent on the grounds that display caused unnecessary envy – when the summons came to return immediately to the pavilion. A call of that kind might presage danger and he thought to order a stand-to, with mounts saddled, only to put it aside; Sterz would have called for that already if danger threatened. Yet he did take his own sword and the boy page Christopher, whom he could send back to undertake that task if there was any danger.
Hawkwood was not the last to enter the pavilion and those who did follow him showed evidence of having overindulged in their leader’s hospitality, having probably stayed behind when the less gluttonous had departed. Sterz himself, clad in a fine silk gown that had once graced a senior French bishop and shimmered in the mass of candlelight, said nothing. But seeing in Hawkwood’s eye the obvious question, as well as his weapon to hand, he responded with an imperceptible shake of the head. There was a stranger present, a fellow whose clothing was covered in the dust of travel which implied he had ridden to this place and was newly arrived, which in turn suggested he had brought intelligence, something the company paid well to receive as a guarantor of both security and opportunity. Was it a chance for booty or news of a hostile force close by? The next act engendered even deeper curiosity and hinted at something very unusual. Sterz ordered his servants, quick to fill and serve goblets of wine, to their beds – all except the monk, Cunradus.
Sure they were gone, he spoke, and for once it was with deliberate softness, half-turning to introduce the stranger. ‘This is Antonio di Valona.’
‘What does an Italian want here?’ called one of the assembly, with a distinct slur.
Sterz favoured the speaker with a withering look. ‘He comes to us with information of the greatest import. He will speak, we will listen.’
A gesture brought di Valona forward. In the increased candlelight Hawkwood noted he had lank and shiny black hair as well as smooth olive skin that had a softness to it. His eyes were dark brown, while the features gave him few years and a comely, near-feminine countenance.
‘My Lords—’
‘Not many of that rank here, fellow.’
The interruption brought forth guffaws and really annoyed Sterz, obvious by the glare and the hand chop demanding silence. A mumbled apology followed from the transgressors.
‘I have come from Avignon.’
‘The whore of France!’
‘Be silent all of you. Let the man speak.’
‘You will know that the Pope has been active in raising the gold to ransom the King of France. Three million livres.’
That got a general murmur as minds settled on the sum. If Hawkwood had been thrown the first time he had heard of a million, he was not in ignorance now; it was a fortune in specie the like of which no man from king to commoner had ever seen, a sum so vast it went beyond imagination.
‘Innocent sent cardinals to the Florentine and Milanese bankers with requests for loans on behalf of Paris, pledges provided.’
‘Even pledging the whole city and the River Seine with it would not cover such a sum.’
‘The task was to raise one-third of the monies and in that they have been successful. The charge now is to get it to where it will, once added to that raised by the French crown, achieve its purpose.’
‘They should leave the coward where he is,’ called John Thornbury. ‘France deserves a better king than Jean le so-called Bon.’
‘The route,’ Sterz added, in an impatient whisper, ‘is one on which we can meet them and relieve them of what they carry.’
The muttering that set up – every one of the dozen men present arrived at a simultaneous conclusion – precluded any further discussion. Sterz waited until it subsided before signalling that di Valona should continue.
‘The cardinals and their escorts are making for Pont-Saint-Esprit in the Comtat Venaissin, their intention to cross the Rhone by the Roman Bridge.’
‘There are,’ Sterz injected, ‘few places to cross the river north of Avignon.’
‘When?’ asked Hawkwood, which had the virtue of being an important question.
The face spun to respond, the candles showing his eyes had within them the light of intelligence. ‘Seven days from now.’
‘And before that?’
‘Each stop has been pre-planned. They intend to stay one night in Pont-Saint-Esprit before proceeding on, the object being to meet with the princes and the remainder of the ransom money in Orleans.’
‘Then should we not get there and bag the lot?’ suggested a captain called Francis the Belge, who led a body of Hainault spearmen.
‘It’s too far off, and besides, we would face an army. From my maps I see us as being three days’ forced march from the Rhone.’
Several seconds of silence followed those words from the German, no doubt with many present seeking to divide a million into what would be their own share and having trouble with the calculation. There were men in this pavilion, good fighters but finger counters, who struggled to get beyond the number ten without a monk to aid them.
‘Why come to us, fellow? Why not recruit a band to steal it yourself?’
The questioning voice had the languid tones of Aquitaine, so Hawkwood knew without looking it was Roland de Jonzac speaking. A doughty, fully mailed knight, he had fought alongside Hawkwood at Poitiers under Edward of Woodstock.
‘The escort numbers two hundred men, papal-funded levies from the Swiss Confederation, and they are sturdy fighters. It will take a strong body of men to subdue them, a force I cannot muster. I lack the means to pay and even if I had the money, would I not risk getting my throat cut once I set out the purpose?’
‘You do not fear that to happen here?’ asked Thornbury.
‘He has my bounden word it will not,’ Sterz insisted.
‘Better,’ Valona added, with the first hint of a kind of suppressed passion, ‘to have part of a loaf as against not even a crumb.’
A mass of detail followed; it seemed this young man had left no stone unturned in his calculations. He pushed for the cardinals to be interdicted at Pont-Saint-Esprit for the very good reason that if they were required to get to where they needed to be, a point to the north where they would be met by a very strong force of French chivalry, the crossing of the Rhone was the one part of their journey they could not alter. Also he was unsure of their route once the river had been crossed and thought it unwise to go beyond the crossing into the heavily populated and fertile papal possessions of the Comtat Venaissin, where news of their presence, of a routier band, would quickly spread.
It was telling that the initial scepticism had subsided, yet Hawkwood wondered at Sterz. He too must have been disbelieving of such a tale at first. What had this young man said to so convince him that he now had utter faith in di Valona’s explanation? Did he have other sources of information? If he had, he was not saying and nor would he if asked.
There was not a single captain who exited the pavilion, well after the hourglass had taken them past the midnight hour, without thirsting to go after this fabulous prize and who was sure it was close to being in their grasp. To relieve the cardinals of their coffers would far outstrip anything the company had been able to gain hitherto by a huge margin. Even for a common soldier or archer the monies appropriated would be substantial, perhaps enough to put aside a life of constant movement and fighting along with the risk of dying in some foreign field.
Not immune to such imaginings himself and finding sleep impossible, Hawkwood shunned his cot to pace back and forth outside his tent, sending young Gold back to his slumbers. He had spent hours waiting outside the pavilion already and the lad’s duties did not extend to watching his master think. To ensure he got peace Hawkwood set off to stroll through the camp.
It was silent now, the only fires still fully lit those of the sentinels on the periphery. The rest were mere embers kept going with the addition of the odd log so they would be quick to revive in the morning. A piquet was necessary but not to protect against a sudden assault, which was unlikely given they generally knew if there was an enemy in the offing.
Besides, night attacks were notoriously difficult to mount without the noise of a large body of moving men alerting the quarry, especially with a sliver of moon and strong starlight. On an open, sloping field there was little chance of an unseen approach: these men were set to ensure that no locals came crawling in to pilfer from the sleepers, a constant concern.
His walk took him through the endless horse lines, the equines either munching at hay or sleeping, heads dropped but upright. He found and murmured words to his own courser, the favoured horse for fast riding which could still be relied upon in battle. The herd included rouncies to act as packhorses as well as the odd knightly destriers, heavy tilting mounts descended from the stallions of Byzantium able to carry a man in full armour.
If it was a task to feed and care for the needs of over two thousand men and the detritus that followed them then that of these animals was just as important, which meant good pasture, hay and a supply of oats. Without fit horses the company would be unable to operate and if there was the odd callous fellow who treated his mount badly, there were many more who held them in higher regard than their human companions.
Head on chest and deep in thought, Hawkwood came eventually to the riverbank, where the gurgling waters of the stream formed a pleasant background sound. Not yet high summer the watercourse was in good flow, reflecting the overhead light, and for a moment he was back in his Essex homeland, a flat landscape crossed by many a watercourse in which he had, as a youngster, fished and swam. It was beside such as this and after a naked dip that he and Antiocha’s mother had first lain together and probably conceived her.
As always when such thoughts occurred he went through the various moods, the ups and downs that had brought him to where he was now. Rarely a man to lie to himself, John Hawkwood was aware that in the life he had lived he had been far from perfect even when very young. It had never occurred to him he had a position to maintain to protect the reputation of his family and nor had he paid any attention to that outside his immediate gaze or given any thought to the worries of his father.
In a country riven with several years of famine, Hawkwood senior had held station enough in life to ensure his own wife and children did not suffer as did the peasantry. The youngest in his brood, he had been much cossetted by his mother, who saw him as a late blessing and treated him with a less strict hand than his older siblings. In his mind’s eye he could conjure up his home county easily. The seemingly endless Essex landscape, the searing wind blowing too often over the few hills from the sea to the east, the trips with his eldest brother to Hedingham Castle where he had been steward to the de Vere’s and where the little brother had seen at first hand the tempting luxury of aristocratic life.
As a boy he had hankered after such as he played within the motte-and-bailey part of the castle, imagining himself as a Norman warrior defending the high square tower and its valuable possessions against hordes of … whom? He had forgotten who those boyhood troublemakers were. Not Saxons, for they in folk memory were held in high regard. Danes and Vikings more like, even if it was hundreds of years since their incursions.
There was his daughter, named after a famous crusader victory outside the walls of Antioch, last seen suckling and wrapped in swaddling clothes, a small pinkish face much wrinkled by concentration until he was shooed away by the wet nurse. There was no image of what she would look like now, well past being a young lady; only that of the funeral he had been obliged to watch from a distance as her mother was interred in a de Vere family vault.
John Hawkwood was over forty summers old now and it was hard to count what he had and how he had come to this place as an unmitigated achievement. There existed a desire to return home to the family manor house in Sible Hedingham, not as the prodigal needing forgiveness but flushed with success. This would be measured in money and he desired it should be of a quantity that would see him ride into the village on a fine palfrey carrying saddlebags full of coin, which would enable him to flaunt his status as a dubbed knight.
Perhaps that could be brought to pass with John le Bon’s ransom and he now was prey to such visualisations. But it would not happen without guile and application, so he made a conscious effort to put his mind to what he had heard in the pavilion and how what was required could be achieved.