Three Great English Victories: A 3-book Collection of Harlequin, 1356 and Azincourt. Bernard Cornwell
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were taking place, but when the champion was sprawling on the grass and Sir Simon, untouched, rode on, the crowd took notice.
A second champion challenged Sir Simon and was startled by the fury which confronted him. He called out that the combat was not to the death, but merely a demonstration of swordplay, but Sir Simon gritted his teeth and hacked with the sword so savagely that the champion spurred and wheeled his horse away rather than risk injury. Sir Simon turned his horse in the pasture’s centre, daring another man to face him, but instead a squire trotted a mare to the field’s centre and wordlessly offered the Englishman a lance.
‘Who sent it?’ Sir Simon demanded.
‘My lord.’
‘Who is?’
‘There,’ the squire said, pointing to the pasture’s end where a tall man in black armour and riding a black horse waited with his lance.
Sir Simon sheathed his sword and took the lance. It was heavy and not well balanced, and he had no lance rest in his armour that would cradle the long butt to help keep the point raised, but he was a strong man and an angry one, and he reckoned he could manage the cumbersome weapon long enough to break the stranger’s confidence.
No other men fought on the field now. They just watched. Wagers were being made and all of them favoured the man in black. Most of the onlookers had seen him fight before, and his horse, his armour and his weapons were all plainly superior. He wore plate mail and his horse stood at least a hand’s breadth taller than Sir Simon’s sorry mount. His visor was down, so Sir Simon could not see the man’s face, while Sir Simon himself had no faceplate, merely an old, cheap helmet like those worn by England’s archers. Only Henry Colley laid a bet on Sir Simon, though he had difficulty in doing it for his French was rudimentary, but the money was at last taken.
The stranger’s shield was black and decorated with a simple white cross, a device unknown to Sir Simon, while his horse had a black trapper that swept the pasture as the beast began to walk. That was the only signal the stranger gave and Sir Simon responded by lowering the lance and kicking his own horse forward. They were a hundred paces apart and both men moved swiftly into the canter. Sir Simon watched his opponent’s lance, judging how firmly it was held. The man was good, for the lance tip scarcely wavered despite the horse’s uneven motion. The shield was covering his trunk, as it should be.
If this had been a battle, if the man with the strange shield had not offered Sir Simon a chance of advancement, he might have lowered his own lance to strike his opponent’s horse. Or, a more difficult strike, thrust the weapon’s tip into the high pommel of his saddle. Sir Simon had seen a lance go clean through the wood and leather of a saddle to gouge into a man’s groin, and it was ever a killing blow. But today he was required to show the skill of a knight, to strike clean and hard, and at the same time defend himself from the oncoming lance. The skill of that was to deflect the thrust which, having the weight of a horse behind it, could break a man’s back by throwing him against the high cantle. The shock of two heavy horsemen meeting, and with all their weight concentrated into lance points, was like being hit by a cannon’s stone.
Sir Simon was not thinking about any of this. He was watching the oncoming lance, glancing at the white cross on the shield where his own lance was aimed, and guiding his horse with pressure from his knees. He had trained to this from the time he could first sit on a pony. He had spent hours tilting at a quintain in his father’s yard, and more hours schooling stallions to endure the noise and chaos of battle. He moved his horse slightly to the left like a man wanting to widen the angle at which the lances would strike and so deflect some of their force, and he noted that the stranger did not follow the move to straighten the line, but seemed happy to accept the lesser risk. Then both men rowelled back their spurs and the destriers went into the gallop. Sir Simon touched the horse’s right side and straightened the line himself, driving hard at the stranger now, and leaning slightly forward to ready himself for the blow. His opponent was trying to swing towards him, but it was too late. Sir Simon’s lance cracked against the black and white shield with a thump that hurled Sir Simon back, but the stranger’s lance was not centred and banged against Sir Simon’s plain shield and glanced off.
Sir Simon’s lance broke into three pieces and he let it fall as he pressed his knee to turn the horse. His opponent’s lance was across his body now and was encumbering the black-armoured knight. Sir Simon drew his sword and, while the other man was still trying to rid himself of the lance, gave a backswing that struck his opponent like a hammer blow.
The field was still. Henry Colley held out a hand for his winnings. The man pretended not to understand his crude French, but he understood the knife that the yellow-eyed Englishman suddenly produced and the coins, just as suddenly, appeared.
The knight in the black armour did not continue the fight, but instead curbed his horse and pushed up his visor. ‘Who are you?’
‘My name is Sir Simon Jekyll.’
‘English?’
‘I was.’
The two horses stood beside each other. The stranger threw down his lance and hung the shield from his pommel. He had a sallow face with a thin black moustache, clever eyes and a broken nose. He was a young man, not a boy, but a year or two older than Sir Simon.
‘What do you want?’ he asked Sir Simon.
‘A chance to kill the Prince of Wales.’
The man smiled. ‘Is that all?’
‘Money, food, land, women,’ Sir Simon said.
The man gestured to the side of the pasture. ‘There are great lords here, Sir Simon, who will offer you pay, food and girls. I can pay you too, but not so well; I can feed you, though it will be common stuff; and the girls you must find for yourself. What I will promise you is that I shall equip you with a better horse, armour and weapons. I lead the best knights in this army and we are sworn to take captives who will make us rich. And none, I think, so rich as the King of England and his whelp. Not kill, mark you, but capture.’
Sir Simon shrugged. ‘I’ll settle for capturing the bastard,’ he said.
‘And his father,’ the man said, ‘I want his father too.’
There was something vengeful in the man’s voice that intrigued Sir Simon. ‘Why?’ he asked.
‘My family lived in England,’ the man said, ‘but when this king took power we supported his mother.’
‘So you lost your land?’ Sir Simon asked. He was too young to remember the turmoil of those times – when the King’s mother had tried to keep power for herself and for her lover and the young Edward had struggled to break free. Young Edward had won and some of his old enemies had not forgotten.
‘We lost everything,’ the man said, ‘but we shall get it back. Will you help?’
Sir Simon hesitated, wondering whether he would not do better with a wealthier lord, but he was intrigued by the man’s calmness and by his determination to tear the heart out of England. ‘Who are you?’ he asked.
‘I am sometimes called the Harlequin,’ the man said.
The name meant nothing to Sir Simon. ‘And you employ only the best?’ he asked.
‘I told you so.’
‘Then you had best employ me,’ Sir Simon said, ‘with my man.’ He nodded towards Henry Colley.
‘Good,’ the Harlequin said.
So Sir Simon had a new master and the King of France had gathered an army. The great lords: Alençon, John of Hainault, Aumale, the Count of Blois, who was brother to the aspiring Duke of Brittany, the Duke of Lorraine, the Count of Sancerre – all were in Rouen with their vast retinues of heavily armoured men. The army’s numbers became so large that men could not count the ranks, but clerks reckoned there were at least eight thousand men-at-arms and five thousand crossbowmen in Rouen, and that meant that Philip of Valois’s army already outnumbered Edward of England’s forces, and still more men were