VIII

in jewels and ornaments housed in a well-guarded tent called The Flagon, several hundred yards away. I will need it when I play host to Emperor Maximilian – I am determined to make an impression.
    When I return to the centre of the camp, they have finished putting up my timber house, which has travelled from England in sections that pack flat into carts. The place has two rooms, lantern-horn windows, and fireplaces and chimneys. Its outside is painted like brickwork, and the inside is hung with golden tapestry. My bed is full size, carved and gilded, and hung round with cloth-of-gold curtains.
    Compton helps me out of my wet clothes and into a nightgown that has been warming by the fire. I climb into bed and he pulls the hangings closed. Even in the dark, the gold threads glow.
    ♦   ♦   ♦
     
    Strangely, the bed starts to trundle. It seems to be on wheels.
    I dream that I am in a fountain made of russet satin, curiously decorated with snakes, modelled in paper and painted; around me eight gargoyles are spewing cloth-of-silver water from their mouths. I am trying not to laugh. Not that anyone could see it, beneath my helmet – but sitting in my armour like this, with the lower edge of my cuirass pressing into my thighs, laughter is painful.
    Brandon is in a litter somewhere behind me, and is, I know, wishing he had drunk slightly less wine. As we are drawn round the tiltyard, the crowd cheers and there’s a thunder of stamping on the wooden boards of the grandstand.
    With a great noise of trumpets, my fountain stops in front of one of the many triumphs of Harry Guildford’s carpentry team. It’s a huge fortress: entirely black, with The Dolorous Castle written above it in silver, on a painted wooden board cut to look like a waving pennant. Standing high on the battlements there’s a knight in coal-black armour, with black ostrich plumes sprouting from his helmet. Though the visor is down, concealing his face, I have a nagging feeling I should know who he is. I just can’t for the life of me remember.

 
♦  ♦  ♦  IX   ♦  ♦  ♦
     
     
    “Enemy troops are assembling some distance to the south, sir, near Enguingate. It looks to me like an attempt to resupply the city.” Sir John Neville’s hair is standing up in spikes; he has his helmet, just now pulled off, under one arm; with the other he holds the reins of his horse, which is stamping and shifting beneath him.
    “Then for God’s sake let’s stop them,” I say. “The city will hold out indefinitely if supplies continue to get through.”
    It is dawn. After ten days’ march, we have reached the city of Thérouanne, to which the foreward and rearward of my army have spent the past month laying siege. A well-fortified French stronghold, it sits on the north bank of the river Lys six miles upstream from Aire. Emperor Maximilian has made a strong case to me for its capture.
    Now my bodyguard of mounted archers parts to let Francis Bryan ride in; I give him permission to speak. “A messenger’s just arrived, Your Grace, from the Earl of Essex and Sir John Peachy. They took a prisoner three miles south of here – he says the French will come in from the north and south simultaneously.”
    “They’ll distract our troops on the north side – and make a quick dash in with the food on the south. That makes sense,” says Brandon beside me, his horse’s harness jingling as it tosses its head. “They will think the south wall is still unguarded.”
    I nod, looking down from the hill we stand on, to where long columns of men, horses and wagons are snaking slowly across the river. “Then we have the advantage of surprise.”
    Until our arrival with the last section of the army, my troops have not been able to encircle Thérouanne completely – and so the French have continued to resupply the city. Now my section – the middle ward – must move to the south of the city to complete the stranglehold; this means taking sixteen thousand men and all our wagons, tents, artillery and ordnance across the river, which skirts the southern wall of the city.
    With timber brought from England the carpenters have spent the night constructing five bridges; now, in the hazy light of dawn, the army is making its crossing.
    I turn to Bryan. “Instruct the troops on the north side to prepare themselves for battle. Rhys ap Thomas can take a detachment of cavalry forward to engage the French first. He may be able to hold them off entirely.”
    As