1356

She doesn’t need your help.’
    ‘She is a woman,’ Roland said harshly, ‘and has no freedom outside her master’s will.’
    Thomas nodded towards the castle. ‘Who owns that? Me or your master?’
    ‘You, for the moment.’
    ‘Then for the moment, Roland of wherever it is you’re from, the Countess of Labrouillade is free to do what she wishes because she’s inside my castle, not yours.’
    ‘We can decide that,’ Roland said, ‘by fighting. I challenge you!’ He tugged off his gauntlet and threw it onto the wagon.
    Thomas smiled. ‘And what does the fight decide?’
    ‘When I kill you, Thomas of Hookton, I shall take the woman.’
    ‘And if I kill you?’
    Roland smiled. ‘With God’s help I shall kill you.’
    Thomas ignored the gauntlet that had come to rest between two of the barrels. ‘You can tell your fat master, Roland, that if he wants his woman back then he’d better come and fetch her himself, not send his juggler.’
    ‘This juggler,’ Roland retorted, ‘has been charged to perform two deeds. To reclaim my lord’s lawful wife and to punish you for insolence. So, will you fight?’
    ‘Dressed like this?’ Thomas asked. He was in hose and shirt with loose-fitting shoes.
    ‘I will give you time to put on armour,’ Roland said.
    ‘Jeanette!’ Thomas called to one of the girls at the well. ‘Drop your bucket down the well,
chérie
, fill it, then haul it up!’
    ‘Now?’ she asked.
    ‘Right now,’ Thomas said, then stooped to pick up the gauntlet, which was made of fine leather and plated with scales of steel. He handed it to Roland. ‘If you’re not out of this town by the time Jeanette hauls that bucket out of the well, I’ll let my archers hunt you down. Now go and tell your fat master to come and take his woman for himself.’
    Roland looked at Jeanette, who was hauling her bucket’s rope with two hands. ‘You have no honour, Englishman,’ he said proudly, ‘and I will kill you for that.’
    ‘Go and dunk your head in a latrine pit,’ Thomas said.
    ‘I shall …’ Roland began.
    ‘Sam!’ Thomas interrupted him. ‘Don’t kill his horse. I’ll keep that!’
    He had shouted in French and Roland at last seemed to take the threat seriously because he turned his destrier and, followed by his standard bearer, spurred downhill towards the town’s southern gate.
    Thomas tossed a coin to Jeanette, then walked up to the castle. ‘What did he want?’ Genevieve asked.
    ‘To fight me. He’s Labrouillade’s new champion.’
    ‘He would fight to get Bertille back?’
    ‘That’s why he was sent, yes.’
    Brother Michael came running across the courtyard. ‘Did he come for the countess?’ he asked Thomas.
    ‘What’s it to you, brother?’
    The young monk looked confused. ‘I was worried,’ he said limply.
    ‘Well, you can stop worrying,’ Thomas said, ‘because tomorrow I’m taking you away.’
    ‘Away?’
    ‘You’re meant to go to Montpellier, aren’t you? So at dawn tomorrow we leave. Pack your things, if you have any.’
    ‘But …’
    ‘Tomorrow,’ Thomas said, ‘at dawn.’
    Because Montpellier had a university, and Thomas needed a learned man.
     
    The Lord of Douglas was angry. He had brought two hundred of Scotland’s best warriors to France, and instead of launching them against the English, the King of France was holding a tournament.
    A bloody tournament! The English were burning towns beyond the frontiers of Gascony and besieging castles in Normandy, yet Jean of France wanted to play at soldiers. So the Lord of Douglas would play as well, and when the French suggested a melee, fifteen of King Jean’s finest knights against fifteen Scotsmen, Douglas took one of his warriors aside. ‘Put them down fast,’ Douglas growled.
    The man, gaunt and hollow-cheeked, just nodded. His name was Sculley. He alone among the Lord of Douglas’s men-at-arms was not wearing a helmet, and his dark hair, streaked with grey, was worn long and twisted into pigtails into which he had inserted numerous small bones, and it was rumoured that each bone came from the finger of an Englishman he had killed, though no one ever dared ask Sculley the truth of that statement. The bones could just as easily have come from fellow Scotsmen.
    ‘Put them down and keep them down,’ Douglas said.
    Sculley smiled, all teeth, no humour. ‘Kill them?’
    ‘Christ, no, you bloody fool! It’s a goddamned tournament! Just put them down hard, man, hard and