Three Great English Victories: A 3-book Collection of Harlequin, 1356 and Azincourt. Bernard Cornwell
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given a foretaste of hell. There was little fire, for men wanted the houses to be plundered rather than burned, but there were devils aplenty. Men begged for the honour of their wives and daughters, then were forced to watch that honour being trampled. Many women hid, but they were found soon enough by men accustomed to riddling out hiding places in attics or under stairs. The women were driven to the streets, stripped bare and paraded as trophies. One merchant’s wife, monstrously fat, was harnessed to a small cart and whipped naked up and down the main street which ran the length of the island. For an hour or more the archers made her run, some men laughing themselves to tears at the sight of her massive rolls of fat, and when they were bored with her they tossed her into the river where she crouched, weeping and calling for her children until an archer, who had been trying out a captured crossbow on a pair of swans, put a quarrel through her throat. Men laden with silver plate were staggering over the bridge, others were still searching for riches and instead found ale, cider or wine, and so the excesses grew worse. A priest was hanged from a tavern sign after he tried to stop a rape. Some men-at-arms, very few, tried to stem the horror, but they were hugely outnumbered and driven back to the bridge. The church of St Jean, which was said to contain the finger-bones of St John the Divine, a hoof of the horse St Paul was riding to Damascus and one of the baskets that had held the miraculous loaves and fishes, was turned into a brothel where the women who had fled to the church for sanctuary were sold to grinning soldiers. Men paraded in silks and lace and threw dice for the women from whom they had stolen the finery.
Thomas took no part. What happened could not be stopped, not by one man nor even by a hundred men. Another army could have quelled the mass rape, but in the end Thomas knew it would be the stupor of drunkenness that would finish it. Instead he searched for his enemy’s house, wandering from street to street until he found a dying Frenchman and gave him a drink of water before asking where Sir Guillaume d’Evecque lived. The man rolled his eyes, gasped for breath and stammered that the house was in the southern part of the island. ‘You cannot miss it,’ the man said, ‘it is stone, all stone, and has three hawks carved above the door.’
Thomas walked south. Bands of the Earl of Warwick’s men-at-arms were coming in force to the island to restore order, but they were still struggling with the archers close to the bridge, and Thomas was going to the southern part of the island which had not suffered as badly as the streets and alleys closer to the bridge. He saw the stone house above the roofs of some plundered shops. Most other buildings were half-timbered and straw-roofed, but Sir Guillaume d’Evecque’s two-storey mansion was almost a fortress. Its walls were stone, its roof tiled and its windows small, but still some archers had got inside, for Thomas could hear screams. He crossed a small square where a large oak grew through the cobbles, strode up the house steps and under an arch that was surmounted by the three carved hawks. He was surprised by the depth of anger that the sight of the escutcheon gave him. This was revenge, he told himself, for Hookton.
He went through the hallway to find a group of archers and hobelars squabbling over the kitchen pots. Two menservants lay dead by the hearth in which a fire still smouldered. One of the archers snarled at Thomas that they had reached the house first and its contents were theirs, but before Thomas could answer he heard a scream from the upper floor and he turned and ran up the big wooden stairway. Two rooms opened from the upper hallway and Thomas pushed open one of the doors to see an archer in the Prince of Wales’s livery struggling with a girl. The man had half torn off her pale blue dress, but she was fighting back like a vixen, clawing at his face and kicking his shins. Then, just as Thomas came into the room, the man managed to subdue her with a great clout to the head. The girl gasped and fell back into the wide and empty hearth as the archer turned on Thomas. ‘She’s mine,’ he said curtly, ‘go and find your own.’
Thomas looked at the girl. She was fair-haired, thin and weeping. He remembered Jeanette’s anguish after the Duke had raped her and he could not stomach seeing such pain inflicted on another girl, not even a girl in Sir Guillaume d’Evecque’s mansion.
‘I think you’ve hurt her enough,’ he said. He crossed himself, remembering his sins in Brittany. ‘Let her go,’ he added.
The archer, a bearded man a dozen years older than Thomas, drew his sword. It was an old weapon, broad-bladed and sturdy, and the man hefted it confidently. ‘Listen, boy,’ he said, ‘I’m going to watch you go through that door, and if you don’t I’ll string your goddamn guts from wall to wall.’
Thomas hefted the falchion. ‘I’ve sworn an oath to St Guinefort,’ he told the man, ‘to protect all women.’
‘Goddamn fool.’
The man leaped at Thomas, lunged, and Thomas stepped back and parried so that the blades struck sparks as they rang together. The bearded man was quick to recover, lunged again, and Thomas took another backwards step and swept the sword aside with the falchion. The girl was watching from the hearth with wide blue eyes. Thomas swung his broad blade, missed and was almost skewered by the sword, but he stepped aside just in time, then kicked the bearded man in the knee so that he hissed with pain, then Thomas swept the falchion in a great haymaking blow that cut into the bearded man’s neck. Blood arced across the room as the man, without a sound, dropped to the floor. The falchion had very nearly severed his head and the blood still pulsed from the open wound as Thomas knelt beside his victim.
‘If anyone asks,’ he said to the girl in French, ‘your father did this, then ran away.’ He had got into too much trouble after murdering a squire in Brittany and did not want to compound the crime by the death of an archer. He took four small coins from the archer’s pouch then smiled at the girl, who had remained remarkably calm while a man was almost decapitated in front of her eyes. ‘I’m not going to hurt you,’ Thomas said, ‘I promise.’
She watched him from the hearth. ‘You won’t?’
‘Not today,’ he said gently.
She stood, shaking the dizziness from her head. She pulled her dress close at her neck and tied the torn parts together with loose threads. ‘You may not hurt me,’ she said, ‘but others will.’
‘Not if you stay with me,’ Thomas said. ‘Here,’ he took the big black bow from his shoulder, unstrung it and tossed it to her. ‘Carry that,’ he said, ‘and everyone will know you’re an archer’s woman. No one will touch you then.’
She frowned at the weight of the bow. ‘No one will hurt me?’
‘Not if you carry that,’ Thomas promised her again. ‘Is this your house?’
‘I work here,’ she said.
‘For Sir Guillaume d’Evecque?’ he asked and she nodded. ‘Is he here?’
She shook her head. ‘I don’t know where he is.’
Thomas reckoned his enemy was in the castle where he would be trying to extricate an arrow from his thigh. ‘Did he keep a lance here?’ he asked. ‘A great black lance with a silver blade?’
She shook her head quickly. Thomas frowned. The girl, he could see, was trembling. She had shown bravery, but perhaps the blood seeping from the dead man’s neck was unsettling her. He also noted she was a pretty girl despite the bruises on her face and the dirt in her tangle of fair hair. She had a long face made solemn by big eyes. ‘Do you have family here?’ Thomas asked her.
‘My mother died. I have no one except Sir Guillaume.’
‘And he left you here alone?’ Thomas asked scornfully.
‘No!’ she protested. ‘He thought we’d be safe in the city, but then, when your army came, the men decided to defend the island instead. They left the city! Because all the good houses are here.’ She sounded indignant.
‘So what do you do for Sir Guillaume?’ Thomas asked her.
‘I clean,’ she said, ‘and milk the cows on the other side of the river.’ She flinched as men shouted angrily from the square outside.
Thomas smiled. ‘It’s all right, no one will hurt you. Hold on to the bow. If anyone looks at you, say, ‘‘I am an archer’s woman.’’’