In his rented lodgings in Bordeaux, Sir John de Sully issued his commands with a light heart.

He had been a fighter all his life, and had been luckier than most. Born in 1281, he was already seventy-five years old, but his enthusiasm and zest for life were undimmed. He had the conviction that God must soon want to take him, but if that were the case, he intended to make best use of the time he had left. There was no point being alive and spending all one’s time preparing for death: better to act as though each day was your last and behave gloriously, honourably and generously as a knight should.

‘It is confirmed?’ he said.

‘The Prince has ordered the muster, Sir John. He will leave today for La Réole. We are to join him as soon as we are ready.’

‘He has paid us?’ The Prince was a good lord who believed in rewarding his men, but even he could occasionally forget to reimburse his knights for their efforts.

‘Yes.’

‘Good!’ His broad smile was proof of Sir John’s relief. ‘Then buy what we are likely to need for the journey, and get a saddle-maker to look at my second-best. I think that the cantle may be damaged. Then we will need to let the men know.’

‘I already have. The centeners are outside.’

‘Good. Bring them in.’

Sir John sat on his chair and eyed the two as they entered. One, Grandarse, was a vast figure who seemed to fill the room on his own. While his esquire, Richard Bakere, beckoned the steward to fetch wine for them all, Grandarse walked to the fire in the middle of the floor and cast an appraising eye over the sideboard, the display of pewter and silver, and the tapestries hanging on the walls.

‘You can’t have them, Grandarse.’

The centener grinned broadly. ‘Aye, well, I’ll take them when you’ve no further use for them.’

‘Why? To sell so you can fill your belly? In God’s name, man, you’re already the weight of four soldiers! Your paunch is the size of a calf as it is!’

‘This body is honed and trained for your honour, Sir John. I only eat that I might give you better service, and increase your glory,’ Grandarse said seriously, patting his belly. His blue eyes twinkled.

Sir John shook his head, studying him reflectively. ‘You’re looking old, Grandarse. Are you sure this isn’t going to be too much for you?’

‘I’m twenty years younger than you, Sir John, so perhaps you’d like to go take a holiday from war yourself?’

‘Aye, go swyve a goat,’ the knight chuckled. ‘I have plenty of fights left in me if the Good Lord leaves me a little more time.’

‘Aye, and so have I,’ Grandarse said. He took the mazer proffered by the steward and peered into it suspiciously. Taking a long pull of wine, he smacked his lips appreciatively. ‘If you have a little more of this to bring to battle, I’ll be happy to be at your side.’

Sir John stood. The other centener, a serious, staid man called Henry, drank more sparingly. He had hooded eyes and a manner of leaning forward and staring without blinking that was unsettling, but for all that Sir John knew him to be loyal, shrewd, and a man whose archers would follow him to the Devil and back.

‘We will need to provision the men and stock up on all items for the campaign,’ Sir John said, and walked to the table near the door to his solar, where they discussed food, equipment and recruiting.

‘We have too few men just now,’ Sir John said after a while.

‘We’ll manage. With the Prince leading us,’ Grandarse said, ‘we can match any army the French can throw at us.’

‘That is all true. However, I want more men,’ Sir John said.

‘Aye,’ Grandarse sighed. More men would mean depleting his profits. He was paid to recruit men, and if he chose to collect a smaller force, he could slip the remainder of the money into his purse after paying them. ‘If you are sure, sir.’

‘I am. You have a few days. Soon we shall move to a forward encampment. We will be travelling to La Réole.’

The two centeners nodded. All levity was gone now.

‘The Prince has told me of the battle plan,’ Sir John said. ‘The Duke of Lancaster is to sail for Brittany in a few days. Our King had a powerful ally in Charles of Navarre, and the Duke sails to protect some of Charles’s territory, to take the pressure off his people. He has been imprisoned, because it is said he was plotting to have King John captured and assassinated.’

‘Was he plotting that?’ Grandarse asked.

‘It’s said he planned to act as regent controlling the King’s son, the Dauphin, as they call him. Whether it’s true or not,

I’ve no idea,’ the knight said. ‘All that matters is that, since the announcement of this scheming, all have turned against him. The Dauphin, who was his greatest friend and ally, now lays siege to Navarre’s men at Évreux. The Duke intends to raise that siege. He will attack in the north and sow distress. At the same time, we shall advance as soon as we are ready, and create a great confusion in the hearts of Frenchmen: should they attack us in the south, or should they concentrate their efforts on Lancaster’s men? And while they wonder, a third blow will be struck, for King Edward is determined to attack in Flanders. He intends to join with Lancaster and take command of a great army that will threaten Paris. All the while, we shall ride northwards sowing dissension and misery as we come, ready to fall on the rear of the French as they meet with King Edward and Lancaster!’

Grandarse gave a low growl. ‘That is news to my liking.’

‘We will also be in charge of some gonnes,’ Sir John added.

‘Shite,’ Grandarse muttered. Henry made no comment but the tightening of his lips indicated his displeasure.

‘I know. I don’t like it myself,’ Sir John said. He drained his cup and waved the steward over with the jug. ‘But the fact is, the King and his son like them. They scare me, but by God, they scare the enemy more. We are to bring Archibald Tanner with us once more. He will be responsible for the gonnes and powder.’

There were many more items to discuss: numbers of arrow sheaves, bow staves, strings, how many spares of each, how many wagons and carts would be needed to transport so much, and how many wagons and oxen devoted to carry the gonnes and powders.

‘We will not have a huge army this time, but there will soon be so many men hunting for oxen and packhorses that we’ll be fighting for fewer and fewer before we know it. You’ll need to get on with things. And find more men.’

‘How long do we have?’ Henry asked.

‘A matter of days. Perhaps a little more, but expect less rather than more.’

Grandarse hoicked his belt upwards as he considered this. ‘I have John of Essex, although now he prefers to be called John Hawkwood – I’ll be buggered if I’ll call him that. Still, he’s good at organising things generally. I’ll leave them to sort out the majority of the carts and wagons for my centaine. If there’s any spare, Henry, I’ll tell you. What else?’

‘We will need to have some wine and ale for the first weeks, until we get to forage for what we need.’

‘Aye.’

‘And men. You need more men, don’t forget.’

‘Aye.’

‘Why do you look so despondent now, Grandarse?’ Henry demanded after the silence had dragged. ‘I’ve never seen you look so akin to a whipped hound before!’

‘I was just thinking, with a number of new men, it’ll be a tough job to teach them how to march and fight in one month. It’s a shame we don’t have Berenger with us. He was always good for beating the dullards into shape, as well as sorting the planning and provisioning.’

Denisot, the Bayle of Domps, was eating his breakfast when Poton arrived. At first the bayle thought that he could discount the tale as the ramblings of an old drunkard.

Poton was well known for drinking too much and brawling with men much younger than himself. Usually, Denisot knew, the fellow would pick a fight with a man much more competent than he, and would end up nursing a battered and bruised face while grumpily denying responsibility. Denisot would listen and, after a suitable pause for reflection, impose a fine.

This was different. The news that Poton brought of an unknown girl’s body hanging in the woods was enough to make Denisot set aside his meal and listen carefully. Denisot was a thin man in his mid-thirties, with an overlarge nose that he pointed like a hawk’s beak. His eyes were dark, and perpetually narrowed when speaking, as though he was straining to remember his companion’s name. Some thought it was a device he nurtured, hoping always to unsettle those who would try to conceal information from him, for Denisot was responsible for the law in this poor, troubled land.

‘Where was this body?’

‘In the trees at the bend in the road, just before the old fish ponds,’ the man said.

Poton stood with his hat in his hands, resentful at the attention he was being given. He was a bent old man, one of the last of his family of free men, but still forced to slave for the seigneur. All men must labour, as Denisot knew, but not all appreciated the laws that demanded so much. Poton was one of those who could remember the last uprising here, when men had been forced to rebel through hunger and poverty. When a man saw his wife and children die of starvation while the fruits of all their efforts went to feed the knights and men-at-arms who infested the lands about, it was hardly surprising that the fellow would snatch up a weapon. But the fights were short-lived. Since their enemies had suits of armour and better, sharper weapons, the contests ended all too swiftly.

‘And she was hanging, you say?’

‘She was nailed to a thick board, with iron nails in her palms and elbows. They had bound her elbows, too, with thick hempen cords.’

‘Rope as well?’

‘Yes, Bayle. The nails were poor, with small heads.

Perhaps the man who did this thought they would rip from her flesh.’

Denisot nodded. The rope meant the child would be forced to endure her death agonies: they would support her weight and she would have no opportunity for escape.

‘You didn’t cut her down? She might yet be alive,’ Denisot said, to take his mind away from that thought.

Poton clenched his jaw. ‘Her eyes were already gone, and peck-marks showed where the carrion birds had feasted. If she had breath in her body, the crows and ravens would not have gone near her. You think it possible she was alive? Maybe you know more than me, but I’ve seen sheep and cattle with their bodies eaten like that, and never once were they alive still.’

‘I see. Well! You will have to take me to her. It is late. We should go in the morning.’

The old peasant inclined his head and turned to leave, but Denisot called him back. ‘Before you go,’ he said, ‘were there any signs of men about the road and tree? You saw nothing of soldiers?’

‘I didn’t look. I saw her body there, and hurried away.’

‘And you saw no evidence of an army?’

‘I saw no English,’ Poton said, meeting his eyes at last and grimly holding his gaze. It was Denisot who looked away.

He drank the last of his goblet of wine, stood, and said, ‘Return at dawn. You must take me there.’

Poton nodded. He had no desire to see that corpse again tonight. Tomorrow would be too soon. Later, when talking of the body with friends, he would tell how the girl swung in the tree with every little soughing breeze, but he never mentioned how the fingers seemed to move as the board twisted gently, the rope cracking and squeaking like the doors to Hell, nor how it looked as if the child’s hands were beckoning the peasant to join her.

Denisot rode on his pony while Poton ambled at his side. It was a dark day with great, blue-black, angry clouds overhead. Their journey was rich with the scent of soil and the thick, cloying odour of rotting leaves, but the humidity was building all the way, and Denisot was soon aware of the sweat trickling down his back in the thundery air. They had little light, but their journey was not long, and they reached the body within the hour.

Denisot stopped his pony beneath the figure. Just then a gust of wind rattled the branches of the trees nearby, and the plank turned until the eyeless, ravaged face of the girl seemed to stare at him. The movement made crows feasting on her face leap into the air, their feathers rustling like the winding-sheets of a long-dead army, their raucous cries the taunts and jeers of devils on the wind.

She was hanging from a wooden cross-piece that dangled by a rope thrown over a limb high on the tree, and tied off nearby. Her body was slumped like a crooked crucifix in the lower branches of the tree, her head bent, her arms stretched to either side and up, her body dangling unsupported.

‘Dear God!’ Denisot muttered, and crossed himself. ‘Untie the rope,’ he called. ‘Let us free this poor chit.’

The rope ran from the limb to a smaller oak nearby. It had been tied securely, and with the weight of the body, Poton could not release the knot. He had a little knife in a sheath at his waist, and set it to the rope. It parted with a ripping sound as the fibres were sheared. Denisot climbed from his horse to see the body fall to the ground.

The girl had fallen face-down, and Denisot pulled the plank over, hauling the body with it.

‘Do you recognise the child?’ Denisot asked.

Poton shrugged emphatically. ‘I’ve never seen her before.’

‘Nor I,’ Denisot murmured.

Once she had been a pretty little thing. Her hair was that red-gold that catches the sun with sparkles of fire, and it was thick and curled madly over her shoulders. She would have been three and a half, perhaps four feet tall in life, but the horrible damage done to her had left her looking shrunken and shrivelled.

Close to, her injuries were enough to make even the bayle gag. There were long scrapes where her flesh had been torn away. Her chin was raw to the bone, and her elbows too. Each injury had been expanded by the pecking beaks of the crows and ravens, but the initial scars were still just visible.

‘What happened to her, eh?’ Poton asked.

‘I think she was dragged here behind a horse,’ Denisot guessed. ‘That’s why she has lost so much flesh. Look, there are still pebbles and gravel in the wounds.’

Poton peered more closely, nodding, while Denisot studied the body carefully, trying to prevent his stomach’s rebellion.

‘She was only eleven or twelve, I would say,’ he reflected.

‘Who could have done such a thing to her?’

‘And why?

‘I expect she was raped.’

He began to study the roadway, looking for evidence of large groups of men, but the roadway was well used. After the dry spell of the last few weeks there was no mud to be churned, only dry soil. He could tell nothing from the ground about here.

Poton stood by the corpse while Denisot continued his futile search for signs of the men who had committed this crime. There were plenty of powerful men in the area who could afford to have annoying peasants removed, but this was baffling. A knight or nobleman would take a man’s head off without thinking, while a servant might stab in the back on his master’s command, but to drag a child like this for some distance and rape her, then kill her in this most horrific manner, crucifying her, that spoke of unthinking brutality beyond anything Denisot had seen.

The two lifted the body onto the back of his pony, using the trailing rope to secure the figure in place, and started to trudge homewards.

As they walked, Denisot could not help but look at the body slumped over the pony’s back. She was so young, so small. The sight of her little body made an unfamiliar anger kindle in his belly.

He wanted to avenge her, but there was little he could do. The kingdom was being torn apart by ravenous brutes: English, Guyennois, Flemings – there were all too many who would come here to steal, rape and murder.

What could a provincial official like him do against so many?