Jake sneezed hard into his hand: blood mixed with mucus into his palm. At one point, the heavy rain took him away.
‘You are dogs and devils,’ the old woman yelled, pulling on her left stirrup. She yelled a few other words in a hoarse, scratchy voice, and shook her fist at Jake. The rainwater ran down the furrows of her face like a waterfall of tears.
“I don’t speak your stupid French,” he yelled at her in English. His horse twitched under him and he yanked on her kidneys to stop him. The old woman tugged on her left leg.
‘Get off, old lady!’ Jake yelled.
Burnell, the tall man-at-arms, dismounted and walked toward her. With her studded leather gloves on hers, he slammed her hard into her face, drawing blood from her, knocking out the last of her teeth and leaving her plunging from her with a splash in the mud. Burnell sat on her stomach, pulled out a dagger, and brought it to the old woman’s throat.
“Now, old hag,” Burnell said, “tell us where they’ve hidden the food or I’ll kill you right now.”
Jake spun as Burnell hit the woman again. He heard the pig squeal of her last breath escaping from her as she slit his throat. Jake’s jaw clenched; he hated this war.
Jake sneezed over and over. He covered his nose with one hand, but lost control of his kidneys as his horse snorted and kicked in annoyance, and another sneeze erupted from his aching nostrils. Damn you annoying old man, Jake thought, I know you’re hungry too; be patient. He hadn’t named the horse; he hadn’t thought it worth it since they died so quickly from lack of fodder.
Jake managed to control his sneezing. The other men in the small foraging party led by Sir Robert searched among the houses, sheds, and barns. Sir Robert had taken what was left of his small retinue, three men-at-arms and six archers, including Jake, and abandoned the main army two days ago under cover of night. He had said that the villages in the hills might have food, and perhaps some manor house that might offer an opportunity for plunder. But every village they found had been like this one: empty of people and devoid of supplies. The old woman who was now lying dead in the mud was the only living person they had found so far.
Jake! Lower. We’ve worked to do it,’ Burnell said.
As he dismounted, thunder rumbled like a hellish cannon, and lightning flashed in a bright sheet across the narrow skies between the wooded hills. Both Burnell and Jake jumped in surprise. Burnell cursed. He and Jake grabbed their horses’ halters and ran with them to the nearest stable. The rain hammered down and quickly the path turned into a muddy torrent. The others also found refuge there. They said little to each other, each lost in their own thoughts.
As the rain subsided to a minor torrent, Sir Robert rose from a bale of sodden straw and pointed an ax up the hillside. I think the villagers are up there in that manor house on the hill. Surely his lord protects them and their supplies.
The men looked up the hillside, where the dark walls and great drum tower of a fortified manor house could be glimpsed above the thick lightning-lit forest through the gloom of the storm.
“It looks more like a castle than a house to me,” said Thomas Wheeler, one of the archers.
It is not as big as it seems. If there are more than one or two combatants in the residence, I would be very surprised. The nobility around here are poor at best. Come on, stragglers, get to your horses. We will be eating around the manor’s fire tonight.
The small troop of English soldiers rode up the path that wound around the wooded hillside, their stomachs dreaming of food. Jake’s thoughts were dulled by hunger and cold and fatigue, but inside him an unpleasant emotion gnawed at his heart: a flame of resentment against his comrades. Rape and robbery were not what he expected from war, but day after day he had seen little else. There were no real fights to speak of, none of the excitement and heroism he had dreamed of when he signed his contract with Sir Robert’s company in May. Back then, military life had been a way of escaping the disappointments of life at home, but now those problems dwarfed the dance of evil that had gripped him, the English and French armies, and the thousands of inhabitants of France who had the misfortune to live in his way.
The band halted at a signal from Sir Robert. They were halfway up the slope when Sir Robert, at the head of the column, saw a widening in the track where the track came to a bridge over a steep ravine that cut into the slope like a deep, terminal wound. Sir Robert had learned the hard way to be cautious and considered this a good place for a French ambush. No words were spoken, but with a series of hand gestures, the six archers quickly dismounted and strung their bows. Two of the men-at-arms, Clifford and Burnell, raised their great shields and advanced with the archers hunched behind them, checking the woods on either side for any movement. Sir Robert and his lieutenant Richard waited with the horses and watched the progress of the others. Staying out of harm’s way, Jake thought, as he watched Sir Robert move to the rear of the group.
Nothing moved on this side of the heavily overgrown ravine, but they could see a strange sight on the other side. Less than twenty paces away, across the narrow wooden bridge, was a colorful pavilion of alternating broad stripes of blue and red silk, wet from rain, but still fine-looking. Beneath the canopy at the entrance to the pavilion sat a lady, also dressed in silks, with a conical headdress and a fine chiffon veil that covered her dark hair that fell from her neck to her shoulders. She was preoccupied with some kind of detail work on her hands, perhaps embroidery.
But in front of her, blocking the farthest exit from the bridge, and clad in dull black plate armor, stood a tall man-at-arms, in full jousting helmet. He froze with his arms folded in front of him. Behind him was a tethered warhorse, also black, and a rack of weapons: spears, swords, polearms, maces, and axes. Neither the gentleman nor the lady gave any indication that they had seen the English soldiers.
