‘You’re a damned scoundrel, Hawkwood, regardless of how high you think to stand in the eyes of our prince. And a satyr to boot. Don’t think I’ve forgotten how you debauched a great-niece of mine. I should have flogged you for that instead of taking you into my service. You may thank God that your skill with a longbow saved your back.’
No acknowledgement of his Christian name from this noble bastard, or of his being daubed knight by Edward of Woodstock. Worse still, silence on the years of service rendered since the day King Edward landed his army at St Vaast in pursuit of the French crown. The temptation to remind him was there, the desire to argue even stronger, to suggest that when it came to debauching it took more than one to make merry. Yet it would be impolitic to say to the Earl of Oxford that his young and comely relative had been a very willing victim in their couplings; all he could do was cross himself and murmur an incantation for a paramour long departed this life, taken in childbirth.
‘May God rest her sweet soul and bless Antiocha, the child of our innocent misdemeanour.’
One of the falcons perched in the tent furiously flapped its wings, as if to question the veracity of that statement and it produced for Hawkwood another glare from his liege lord. Was John de Vere being crusty merely for effect? He had barely said two words to the relative in question and Hawkwood knew him to be far from sentimental as regards the loss of even family members or a close friend. As to the child, she was being raised by the earl’s Essex cousins.
Right now the enquiry he had posited was more important than pointing up blue-blooded hypocrisy; he needed to stay on the right side of the earl in the hope that he and his company of archers could remain as paid retainers and perhaps even fighting men. Weeks of talking were coming to a head and it was rumoured the two sovereigns of France and England were close to agreeing the terms of a lasting peace, one brokered by a representative of the papacy.
No one doubted the necessity: Edward’s army was exhausted by years of campaigning added to the failure to take Paris. They had been obliged to withdraw from a siege they were too few in number to properly impose. Calais apart, all the most important successes in the English campaign had come in the open field on a well-chosen site that suited a numerically inferior force.
Taking fortresses was hard toil: Calais had held out for just shy of a whole year, while the walls of Paris had proved too lengthy to fully invest, which left starvation as the only possible avenue to success without a high quantity of siege equipment and that, as well as the men with the skills to build such things, was lacking. As short of food as the city inhabitants and with morale plummeting, the time had come for Edward Plantagenet to withdraw to the safer territory of Normandy.
Not that they got there unscathed: as if by divine judgement a great tempest, biblical in its intensity, hit the retreating column, with hail the size of rocks and bolts of lightning falling with an intensity akin to the arrow swarms of Crécy and Poitiers. Many a knight perished as well as a number of soldiers clad in chain mail, lightning literally frying the former in their plate armour and striking down the latter either by the attraction of their metal cowls or the tips of the spears they carried. Such chain mail hoods had been the price of vanity; how was it necessary to still be so garbed with no fighting in prospect?
‘Transgressions aside, you have grown to be a good captain,’ de Vere growled, bringing his visitor back from unpleasant recollection. ‘So know this. You have the right to continue in my service, perhaps as a steward like your older brother, though not, God forbid, anywhere near Castle Hedingham, given your previous offence.’
If it was an offer with some attraction – de Vere owned land all over the southern counties of England – but it was one he could not accept.
‘You will recall I was asking not just for myself but also for my company?’ Seeing the hackles rise – a belted earl was not accustomed to being questioned by a man-at-arms, even a captain of archers – Hawkwood added quickly, ‘I mean should there be an accord that brings an end to the war.’
‘What use does King Edward have of an army if there is concord? What use do I have for a hundred longbowmen, men I’ll have to sustain from my own purse?’ The shaking of the head was violent enough to move the long greying locks. ‘No, if a treaty is agreed they must fend for themselves, as will many.’
‘On short commons’ was the thought that engendered as well as the memory of what he had faced himself after the Crécy campaign. Success in battle had granted Hawkwood and many others much in the way of booty, enough to contemplate a return to England with the hope of a decent life immediately after the capture of Calais.
Contrary winds had destroyed that prospect, blowing the Earl of Oxford’s ship off its course for the shores of southern England, driving them far to the west and the coast of Ireland. There they were stripped of all they possessed by the bare-arsed locals, left with only the clothes on their back and a long trek to find a boat to take them home on a pledge of payment from the earl, which counted as money owed.
True, de Vere had lost more than the men he led, but he came back to England and the landed possessions as well as income he held as a potent magnate. In addition to his rents he still had a claim on unpaid ransoms, and they were substantial, from the French noblemen taken prisoner at Crécy.
When the next call to arms was promulgated, for an assault on Aquitaine under the King’s son and heir Edward of Woodstock, a strapped Hawkwood, living from hand to mouth on nefarious schemes and with a writ as a common malefactor hanging over his person, had been left with little choice but to volunteer for a second campaign.
At least that had provided good returns. Called the Festival of Pillage, the young prince and his army had devastated the rich lands of the Languedoc, their endeavours ending in the even greater victory over the French at Poitiers. The English nobility had proceeded to ransom half the captured chivalry of France and pocketed fortunes. This would pale into insignificance against the money that would be needed to get the King of France released, also taken prisoner in the battle.
The evidence of success for John de Vere lay all around this beautiful silken tent, once the property of the French Constable: fine furniture, gold plate off which to eat, ornaments and illuminated manuscripts of great value to fill empty hours, while the lordly stables were packed with the finest mounts, saddlery and gilded accoutrements France could produce. And that was before every man he led offered up one-third of his own gains to his liege lord, de Vere in turn passing a third of the whole to King Edward through his son.
If the men had done well from plunder and sack on the march, stripping the dead of their weapons and possessions as well as purloining the property of a slain French knight, the coin gained had been expended to maintain their needs in wine and pleasure in the failed attempt to invest Paris. Non-noble fighters were not the kind to accumulate: they were a tribe who regularly faced death and not only in battle. Prey to disease as well as misfortune, they lived for the moment and not the rainy day.
Going home to England, which was being touted as their future, would scarce be attractive to the men Hawkwood led. Nor was it to him personally, even with de Vere’s offer. Quite apart from the risk to his person, to accept would be a betrayal of those who trusted him to look to their well-being. They were likely to land on their home soil with little left to sustain them and no occupation of worth to look forward to. Skilful archery would not provide a living; the Welsh and Scottish borders, where many had previously plied their trade, were known to be peaceful.
‘I would wish to appeal against this, Your Grace.’
‘Then I suggest you do so to Prince Edward, who still believes he owes you his life.’
There was mockery in that; many believed the claim that John Hawkwood had come upon Edward of Woodstock just in time to stop him from being skewered by an enemy lance to be nonsense. In addition the prince, having laid his sword upon Hawkwood’s shoulders to dub him with the honour of knighthood, had passed by him several times since without so much as a nod of recognition, which marked the elevation for what it truly was: a piece of flummery from a leader in the first flush of glory, designed to add lustre to his name and no other.
‘His Grace has his own companies to maintain. I cannot believe he will seek to add to them.’
‘You have my offer, Hawkwood, say aye to it or decline.’
‘War does not train a man for collecting rents, Your Grace.’
‘You were not born a soldier, Hawkwood, you were sired by a tenant farmer.’
‘Nor was I born a villein, though happen I saw service under one.’
Accompanied by a glare, it hit home as it was supposed to. The term for an indentured man tied to his strip of land, when spoken, was close to that of a thief. Hawkwood wanted to make it plain that in denying those who had swollen the de Vere coffers any hope of comfort was something akin to robbery. Judging by the flushed cheeks and furious glare he had struck home.
‘I bid Your Grace good day.’
The call that followed, not a shout but just as meaningful, told the Captain of Archers in the Earl of Oxford’s division there was no going back.
‘While I, Hawkwood, bid you a full if not a fond farewell. Oblige me in this, do not call upon my person again unless you learn humility.’