1356. Bernard Cornwell
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BERNARD CORNWELL
Copyright
This novel is entirely a work of fiction. The names, characters and incidents portrayed in it, while at times based on historical figures, are the work of the author’s imagination.
Published by HarperCollinsPublishers Ltd
1 London Bridge Street
London SE1 9GF
First published by HarperCollinsPublishers 2012
Copyright © Bernard Cornwell 2012
Bernard Cornwell asserts the moral right to be identified as the author of this work
Maps © John Gilkes 2012
A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library
Source ISBN: 9780007331840
Ebook Edition © September 2012 ISBN: 9780007331888
Version: 2017-05-05
FIRST EDITION
All rights reserved under International and Pan-American Copyright Conventions. By payment of the required fees, you have been granted the non-exclusive, non-transferable right to access and read the text of this e-book on-screen. No part of this text may be reproduced, transmitted, downloaded, decompiled, reverse engineered, or stored in or introduced into any information storage and retrieval system, in any form or by any means, whether electronic or mechanical, now known or hereinafter invented, without the express written permission of HarperCollins e-books.
is for my grandson,
Oscar Cornwell,
with love.
‘The English are riding, no-one knows where.’
Warning sent in fourteenth-century France, quoted inA Fool and His Money by Ann Wroe
Contents
The Sharpe Series (in chronological order)
PROLOGUE
Carcassonne
He was late.
Now it was dark and he had no lantern, but the city’s flames gave a lurid glow that reached deep into the church and gave just enough light to show the stone slabs in the deep crypt where the man struck at the floor with an iron crow.
He was attacking a stone incised with a crest that showed a goblet wreathed by a buckled belt on which was written Calix Meus Inebrians. Sun rays carved into the granite gave the impression of light radiating from the cup. The carving and inscription were worn smooth by time, and the man had taken little notice of them, though he did notice the cries from the alleyways around the small church. It was a night of fire and suffering, so much screaming that it smothered the noise as he struck the stone flags at the edge of the slab to chip a small space into which he could thrust the long crow. He rammed the iron bar down, then froze as he heard laughter and footsteps in the church above. He shrank behind an archway just before two men came down into the crypt. They carried