A Flight of Arrows Read online

  Quettehou, 13th of July, 1346

  Midday

  From the escarpment they could see a massive column of smoke rising five or six miles to the north, boiling into the sky and dispersing slowly on the wind. ‘Barfleur,’ Sir Richard Percy said sombrely. ‘Huntingdon’s men were ordered to burn enemy ships, but it looks like they’ve set light to the town as well.’

  More fires flickered nearer at hand along the coast. The sun glowered red out of a sky dark with smoke and ash. ‘What has the king to say about this?’ Sir John Grey asked. ‘According to him, the Normans are his subjects now. They’re going to be damned unhappy subjects if his troops keep burning their houses down.’

  ‘He is issuing a proclamation banning arson and looting,’ Merrivale said. ‘But only in the towns.’

  ‘Only in the towns?’ Grey stared at him. ‘Do the lives of country people have less value? No, don’t bother to answer that.’

  ‘Nor has he managed to save Barfleur. But then I’ve never known soldiers to take much notice of proclamations,’ Percy said. ‘Have you, herald?’

  ‘No.’ Merrivale looked at the men of the Red Company, standing guard or sitting and cleaning their weapons. ‘You manage to keep your men under control. How do you do it?’

  ‘We pay them well,’ Grey said. ‘In return, we expect obedience. And, they don’t like it when I get angry. How may we serve you, herald?’

  ‘I have been charged by the king to enquire into the death of Sir Edmund Bray,’ Merrivale said.

  ‘So we heard. What do you want from us?’

  ‘You were in the thick of the fighting yesterday afternoon. Did the enemy have archers?’

  ‘No, and that surprised us. Usually when you run across French men-at-arms, they have a few crossbowmen in support.’

  That ended any notion that Bray might have been killed by the enemy, Merrivale thought. He nodded. ‘That has been my experience also. But Bray was shot by a longbow.’

  He waited for a reaction. Neither Grey nor Percy said anything.

  ‘Bray was with you yesterday afternoon,’ the herald continued. ‘My lord of Warwick ordered him to stay with you, but he disobeyed orders. Do you know why?’

  ‘He wanted to prove that he was better than me,’ Grey said. ‘He didn’t like me. I don’t know why.’

  Percy grinned. ‘Plenty of people don’t like you, and you never understand why,’ he said.

  ‘Could his departure have been premeditated?’ Merrivale asked. ‘Is it possible that he was actually riding out to meet someone?’

  Grey thought. ‘Anything is possible, but somehow I doubt it. Nothing in his demeanour said he was anxious, or in a hurry. He was a young, rather vain man who badly needed to show off how clever he was.’

  ‘Which is exactly what he thought of you,’ Percy said, ‘and he didn’t trouble to conceal it. I agree with John. Bray was in a bilious mood, and he wanted to prove himself.’

  ‘We tried to talk him out of it, but he wouldn’t listen,’ Grey said. ‘After he rode away, we sent two archers after him in case he ran into trouble. But they never caught up with him.’

  Two archers. Bray had been killed by two longbow arrows. ‘May I speak with these men?’

  ‘Of course.’ Grey turned to another archer standing nearby. ‘Rob, fetch Matt and Pip, will you?’

  The two archers arrived a moment later, touching their foreheads in salute. They were both in their late teens, Merrivale guessed, slender, with fine features; they looked like brothers. They wore plain jerkins and hose and rough boots, with quivers full of arrows strapped across their backs and knives tucked into their belts.

  ‘You wished to see us, sir,’ said Matt, the taller of the two.

  ‘Sir John tells me you were instructed to follow Sir Edmund Bray yesterday afternoon. Did you do so?’

  ‘Yes, sir,’ said Matt. He had a light, pleasant voice and spoke with a strong Midlands accent. ‘That is to say, we tried, sir. But he was riding hard when he set out. We ran after him, but was he still faster than us.’

  ‘Which direction did he go?’

  ‘Down the road towards Valognes, sir. Straight towards the enemy, as it happens.’

  ‘Did you find his body?’

  Pip shook his head. ‘No, sir. We didn’t get very far, not more than half a mile from the rest of the company.’

  ‘Oh? What happened?’

  ‘As we were following Sir Edmund, sir, another horseman came down the road towards us. Man-at-arms, he was, and riding like the wind. When he saw us, he turned his horse and rode back the way he had come. We thought he might be an enemy scout, so we followed on carefully.’

  ‘If you thought he was an enemy, why didn’t you shoot?’

  ‘We thought he might be,’ Matt corrected. ‘But we weren’t certain. Things were a bit fluid out there. We didn’t know for certain who we might be shooting at.’

  ‘Very well. What happened next?’

  ‘Well, sir, it wasn’t more than a few minutes later that we spotted the enemy. There was one company coming down the road towards us, and more over the fields towards Quettehou. We didn’t know what had happened to Sir Edmund, but there was nothing we two could do against so many, so we legged it back to report to Sir John and Sir Richard.’

  ‘The company on the road was a flank guard,’ Grey said. ‘We saw them off, and moved across the fields to join the fighting at Quettehou. The rest you know.’

  ‘The first man-at-arms you spotted. Did he have a coat?’

  ‘He did, sir,’ said Matt. ‘A red lion upright, with his paws like so. On white.’

  A red lion rampant on white. Merrivale searched his herald’s memory, trying to think who might bear this device. It was no English coat that he knew. He studied the two men. For ordinary archers, they are very confident, he thought. All of the Red Company bore themselves like professionals, but these two were different, in a way he could not quite put his finger on.

  ‘Are you quite certain you never saw Sir Edmund again after he left your position?’

  ‘Quite certain, sir,’ said Pip.

  Matt looked at the herald, searching his face. ‘Pardon me for being presumptuous, sir,’ the archer said. ‘But are you thinking we might have killed him?’

  ‘The thought crossed my mind,’ Merrivale said.

  Pip shook his head. ‘No, sir. We didn’t know Sir Edmund, and we had no score to settle with him.’ He looked at Merrivale with clear brown eyes. ‘And if we had, sir, we wouldn’t have wasted a second arrow. One would have been enough.’

  ‘Don’t be impertinent,’ said Sir John Grey, but he sounded amused rather than angry. ‘All right, both of you, dismissed.’

  ‘How well do you know those men?’ Merrivale asked when Matt and Pip had gone.

  ‘They joined our company last winter,’ Percy said. ‘Our master archer recruited them in Warwickshire. They’re good archers, among the most reliable we have.’

  Warwickshire, the herald thought. A long way from Cheshire. Bray had not been killed by the enemy, and the idea that he had died as a result of some family feud was looking weaker and weaker. Like the smoke that boiled up from the ruins of Barfleur, his suspicions were growing steadily darker.

  Quettehou, 13th of July, 1346

  Afternoon

  The looters had become bolder. The houses of Saint-Vaast had so far been spared, thanks to the fact that the king was camped nearby, but as Merrivale rode back down the hill, he saw the first flames spurting from the roofs of the town. By the time he reached the beach, clouds of smoke and ash were rolling through the camp. Around him, men were already striking tents and packing wagons. The livestock the royal kitchens had brought with them, cattle and sheep and pigs, were all clamouring with fright, and as Merrivale passed one wagon he heard chickens clucking frantically in their crates.

  ‘The household is moving to Morsalines on the other side of the bay,’ said Andrew Clarenceux, the royal herald. He was a serious man, with tufts of grey hair fring
ing a bald head. People sometimes asked if he had taken holy orders. He did not find this amusing. Around him his staff were packing up, flinging parchment rolls into chests and carrying them outside. ‘The king is furious, as you can imagine. He keeps calling for the looters to be hanged, but every time the serjeants go out to arrest them, they disappear.’

  ‘Andrew, I am looking for two men-at-arms. I know their devices, but I don’t recognise them, and I am hoping you might know who they are. The first is a red lion rampant on white.’

  Clarenceux considered. ‘How was the head positioned? Guardant or combatant?’

  ‘I fear I do not know.’

  ‘If it was guardant, it might be one of the Lestranges… but no, none of them are serving with the army. If it was combatant, I have no idea.’

  ‘Could it be a French device?’

  ‘That is entirely possible. I know the coats of all the important French nobles, of course, but there are thousands of provincial knights. I haven’t yet managed to memorise all their devices.’

  ‘The other is three red eagles displayed on white, with elevated wings. It was his men who brought Bray’s body into camp yesterday afternoon. I wondered if that might be an Irish device.’

  Clarenceux nodded. ‘Sir Nicholas Courcy, from Kingsale. He is in Northampton’s retinue. Is this about Bray, then? Do you really think you can find out who shot him?’

  ‘Yes,’ said Merrivale.

  The first wagons were already rolling away. A man and a girl herded the cattle behind them, the girl calling to the cows and waving a long stick. She looked barely more than a child, Merrivale thought.

  The town was burning hard now. Smoke blew across the bay in clouds, and the sails of the fleet shimmered through haze and heat waves. Still the landing went on, boats grounding in the shallows and men coming ashore. Some of them laboured around a boat, dragging a portable blacksmith’s forge up onto the beach; others carried hurdles and bundles of faggots and coils of rope. Further on, another group were unloading wooden barrels and heavy stone spheres, piling them up at the head of the beach next to four long hollow wrought-iron cylinders. The barrels were marked with black arrowhead brands, signifying that they were the property of the royal armoury.

  More smoke blew around them. ‘Jesus, cover those powder kegs!’ a man shouted. ‘One spark on those and we’ll all be seeing paradise a damned sight sooner than we’d like. Quickly now!’

  Men rushed to drag a tarpaulin over the barrels. Merrivale looked at the shouting man and noticed with surprise that he was one of those who had brought in Bray’s body, wearing the same scuffed leather jerkin and cracked boots. He saw the herald, and grinned. ‘Serpentine,’ he explained. ‘It’s the very devil to handle. Too wet and it won’t burn at all, too hot and it burns when you don’t want it to. Have you heard of gunpowder, herald?’

  Merrivale nodded. ‘Master Mildenhall the armourer told me about the new guns the king has ordered. Do you work with him?’

  ‘From time to time, when needed. I dabble in alchemy, so I know a wee bit about powder.’

  ‘I am looking for your master,’ Merrivale said. ‘Can you tell me where to find him?’

  The other man smiled. ‘Sir Nicholas Courcy knows no master but God,’ he said.

  ‘You are Sir Nicholas?’

  Grey eyes twinkled in a broad, handsome face. ‘The devil himself.’

  ‘Do you mind if I ask you a few questions?’

  Courcy waved a negligent hand. ‘At your service, sir.’

  ‘Thank you for recovering Sir Edmund Bray’s body. Where did you find it?’

  ‘Out on the Valognes road, perhaps two miles from here. One of my fellows, Donnchad, spotted him and realised he was a man of worth. I recognised his coat and knew he was the Prince of Wales’s man, so we brought him in.’

  ‘Then you disappeared before anyone could talk to you.’

  ‘Aye, well, we weren’t interested in hanging around. To tell you the truth, we were hoping there might be a reward. But when the prince walked off, we realised nothing was coming our way, so we got back to work.’

  ‘You are of course due some recompense for your services,’ Merrivale said. ‘I will speak to the prince’s steward. What were you doing out there? Were you involved in the fighting?’

  Courcy grinned again. ‘Indeed we were. Afterwards, once old Bertrand had retreated, we decided to take a look around. You know. In case someone had left something behind.’

  ‘Looting,’ Merrivale said.

  ‘Don’t be too hard on us poor fellows, herald. My father’s family are richer than Midas, but I was born on the wrong side of the sheets. I must make a living however I can.’

  ‘Then you missed a chance,’ Merrivale said. ‘Bray had quite a valuable ring on his finger. Did you not notice?’

  ‘I still have some pride, herald. I haven’t taken to robbing corpses. Yet.’

  ‘I have a theory that he may have run across a party of looters and confronted them, and they killed him.’ He looked Courcy in the eye. ‘What do you think?’

  Most men would have been offended at the insinuation; some would have exploded with rage. Courcy just grinned again. ‘I think that’s unlikely now, don’t you? Me and Donnchad and the boys were the first ones into that area after old Bertrand and his lads cleared out. And Bray was already dead when we got there.’

  Merrivale waited. ‘Ah, I see now. You think we might have killed him. But why would we go to the trouble of bringing in the body with all that nice expensive armour still on it, and that grand big ruby on his finger? That wouldn’t be good commerce, herald.’

  ‘You were involved in the fighting, you say. Did you see any archers among the enemy?’

  ‘Not a one. A pother of men-at-arms, no more.’

  ‘And do you have any archers in your own retinue?’

  Their eyes met. ‘No, herald. My gallowglasses don’t approve of killing at a distance. They like to get in close and see the whites of their enemy’s eyes before they ram a spear through his guts.’

  The gallowglasses were Courcy’s Irish followers, professional soldiers. ‘During your travels, did you happen to see a man-at-arms bearing a device of a red lion rampant on white?’

  ‘No.’ It was said quickly and definitely.

  ‘One more question, if I may. The shafts of the arrows had been broken off. Were they like that when you found the body?’

  Courcy nodded. ‘I reckon someone tried to pull the arrows out, but the shafts snapped. The heads were lodged very deep in the body.’ He paused. ‘That must have been some powerful bow. Either that, or the archer was standing almost within touching distance. The poor fellow was wearing an iron backplate over a mail coat, and the arrows drove straight through both of them.’

  ‘Yes.’ That also ruled out Warwick’s idea that it had been an accident. Bray had been killed deliberately. ‘Thank you,’ Merrivale said. ‘I hope my questions did not give offence.’

  ‘Not in the least. If you’re trying to catch the fellow who shot him, good luck to you.’ Courcy eyed him for a moment. ‘Do you not carry a weapon, herald?’

  Nearly every other man in the army wore a sword or a knife at his belt, but the herald was unarmed. ‘The laws of war forbid it,’ he said.

  ‘Do they now? I seem to recall that a herald is permitted to wear a blunted sword.’

  Merrivale shook his head. ‘A sword that has no edge is not a sword, just a useless encumbrance. I prefer to do without.’

  ‘But surely you are allowed armour.’

  ‘My status as herald gives me all the protection I need.’

  ‘Sure, now. To attack you would be an offence against God, and a breach of the laws of war. All the same, herald, let me give you a piece of advice. If you intend to investigate this matter, watch your back. That tabard won’t keep out a longbow arrow any more than Sir Edmund Bray’s armour did.’

  Morsalines, 13th of July, 1346

  Evening

  The smoke hung thick, ob
scuring the view across the bay. Ships and boats moved slowly through drifting clouds full of sparks and ash. Merrivale could taste the smoke in his mouth, and his clothing and hair stank of it. At his tent he called for water and washed his face and hands thoroughly, but could not rid himself of the smell.

  He dined with the prince’s household in a pavilion outside Morsalines. The young men talked eagerly about how well Saint-Vaast had burned, and Barfleur. A minstrel came in and sang some old verses by the troubadour Bertran de Born about the joys of war and plunder.

  Love wants a chivalrous lover,

  Skilled at arms and generous in serving,

  Who speaks boldly and gives generously

  And knows what he should say and do

  In his hall or outside it, as befits his power.

  A lady who lies with a lover such as that

  Will be cleansed of all her sins.

  The prince and his companions cheered raucously and began to play a drinking game, shouting and laughing. Lord Rowton was right, the herald thought. Edmund Bray will soon be forgotten.

  After the prince withdrew, unsteady with wine, Merrivale rose and went out into the hot evening, where the crimson bars of sunset competed with the glow of fires. The prince’s bodyguards bowed as he passed. Further on, a man stepped out of the shadows with a jingle of mail, inclining his head.

  ‘Good evening, Sir Edward,’ said Merrivale.

  ‘And a fine evening to yourself, herald,’ said Sir Edward de Tracey of Dunkeswell. He smiled a little. ‘I enjoyed the singing.’

  ‘Did you?’ said Merrivale. ‘I remember that Dante consigned Bertran de Born to the eighth circle of hell. He appears naked, carrying his severed head in front of him glowing like a lantern.’

  The other man chuckled. ‘Dante had quite an imagination, didn’t he? To be fair, I believe the punishment was for Bertran’s role as a sower of discord rather than for his sirventes.’

  ‘That may be so,’ said Merrivale. ‘Your memory is better than mine. Were you waiting for me?’

  ‘I was hoping to have a word with you, yes. Rumour has it you are looking for a man with a particular device. A red lion rampant, head combatant, on white.’