1356

‘So Billy wants us to find the treasure.’ He sneered as he said the last three words. ‘And when we find it we’re to deliver it to the Prince of Wales.’
    Genevieve frowned over the letter. It was, of course, written in French, the language of England’s aristocracy. ‘The Seven Dark Lords possessed it,’ she read aloud, ‘and they are cursed. He who must rule us will find it, and he shall be blessed.’
    ‘The same nonsense,’ Thomas said. ‘It seems the Black Friars have got excited. They’re spreading the tale everywhere.’
    ‘So where do you look?’
    Thomas wanted to say nowhere, that the nonsense was not worth a moment of their time, but the Abbé Planchard, the best man he had ever known, a Christian who was truly Christ-like and also a descendant of one of the Dark Lords, had an elder brother. ‘There’s a place called Mouthoumet,’ Thomas said, ‘in Armagnac. I can think of nowhere else to look.’
    ‘“Do not fail us in this,”’ Genevieve read the letter’s last line aloud.
    ‘Billy’s caught the madness,’ Thomas said, amused.
    ‘But we go to Armagnac?’
    ‘Once we’re finished here,’ Thomas said.
    Because before the treasure could be sought the Count of Labrouillade must be taught that greed has a price.
    So
le Bâtard
set up the ambush.
     
    It was raining in Paris. A steady rain that diluted the filth in the gutters and spread its stink through the narrow streets. Beggars crouched under the overhanging houses, holding out skinny hands to the horsemen who threaded through the city gate. There were two hundred men-at-arms, all big men on big horses, and the riders were shrouded in woollen cloaks with their heads protected from the rain by steel helmets. They looked about them as they rode through the rain, plainly astonished by such a great city, and the Parisians sheltering beneath the jutting storeys noted that these men looked wild and strange, like warriors from a nightmare. Many were bearded and all had faces roughened by weather and scarred by war. Real soldiers, these, not the followers of a great lord who spent half their time quarrelling in castle precincts, but men
who carried their weapons through snow and wind and sun, and men who rode battle-scarred horses and carried battered shields. Men who would kill for the price of a button. A standard bearer rode with the men-at-arms and his rain-soaked flag showed a great red heart.
    Behind the two hundred men-at-arms came packhorses, over three hundred of them, loaded with bags, lances and armour. The squires and servants who led the packhorses wore blankets, or so it seemed to the onlookers. The garments, little more than matted and grubby rags, were thrown over a shoulder then wrapped and belted at the waist, and the servants wore no breeches, though no one laughed at them because their belts carried weapons, either crude long swords with plain hilts, or chipped axes, or skinning knives. They were country weapons, but weapons that looked as though they had received much use. There were women with the servants and they were dressed in the same barbaric manner, with their bare legs muddied and red. They wore their hair loose, but no Parisian would dare mock them, for these ragged women were armed like their men and looked just as dangerous.
    The horsemen and their servants stopped beside the river at the city’s centre and there they divided into small groups, each going to find their own lodgings, but one group of half a dozen men, attended by servants better dressed than the others, crossed the bridge to an island in the Seine. They twisted down narrow alleys until they came to a gilded gatehouse where liveried spearmen stood guard. Inside was a courtyard, stables, a chapel and stairways leading into the royal palace, and the half-dozen horsemen were greeted with bows, their horses were taken away and they were led up stairs and down corridors to their quarters.
    William, Lord of Douglas and leader of the two hundred men-at-arms, was given a chamber facing the river. Sheets of horn covered the windows, but he knocked them out to let the damp air into the room, where a great fire burned in a hearth carved with the French royal coat of arms. The Lord of Douglas stood by the fire as servants brought in bedding, wine, food and three women. ‘You may take your choice, my lord,’ the steward said.
    ‘I’ll take all three,’ Douglas said.
    ‘A wise choice, my lord,’ the steward replied, bowing, ‘and is there