Authors: Dorothy Dunnett
The first reports indicated a sullen silence, as he expected. In a few days, that had changed. The boy, said Thomas (Thomas!), was
amazingly quick on his feet, and he would thank everyone to give him first call on him. It emerged, as time passed, that Henry was not only fast but eager and biddable. Give him your spurs to get ready, and they were shining like mirrors. If you fancied an onion, he’d find a garden and dig till he got one. He’d groom the dirtiest horse; run the most strenuous errands; lug water; start fires; find fresh straw for the bedding. After one little jib, he’d even started to empty the night soil. And all with a smile, as sweet as you please, with that dimple.
A pretty boy. Naturally, after all that had been said, none laid a finger on him. But the women of the camp chucked him under the chin, and pulled him close on the grass for a cuddle, and he always smiled, with that high-flushed rose-leaf skin and the glowing blue eyes. A lovely boy, who only looked sad when someone mentioned the sieur de Fleury. It began to be discussed in the tents, how he had come to be beaten so badly by the padrone. If the two had been intimate in the past, there was no sign of it now. The boy would not talk, but somehow the rumour went round that he had been asked to do unspeakable things, and at length had refused. Certainly, on the few occasions when he had to report to the sieur de Fleury’s own tent, the spring left the boy’s step and he loitered, with despair on his face, not a smile.
The rumours reached Nicholas through Astorre. He confirmed them for himself, witnessing the boy’s bright face and willing manner, and also the change that occurred if their glances happened to meet. Standing before him in his tent, Henry cut a figure both timid and brave; at times he would shiver. On his face, for Nicholas alone, there would be fixed an expression of mockery: an almost irresistible invitation to hit him. It pained Nicholas, almost, to disappoint him.
For a boy of eleven, it was clever: it was diabolically clever. But he was only eleven, and even when driven by hatred, could not deny his nature for ever. The day came when, his head turned by the rough camaraderie and the increasing show of goodwill, he volunteered shyly to share in some of their games. The fierce ones were beyond him, but his accurate eye and superb training gave him an advantage with the bow and even the crossbow that they thought at first freakish, and then greeted with good-natured praise. He should have accepted it, and returned to his tasks. Instead, day by day, he continued to vie with them, and sometimes to beat them. Then, when he sat with the women, he boasted.
At Beauvais, he received a black eye, and Astorre went to see Nicholas in his tent. ‘The brat’s in trouble.’
‘No longer everyone’s friend?’ Nicholas had guessed most of it.
‘He got tired of that. Now he’s trying to play them off one against
the other. Soon they’ll realise what he’s up to and do for him. He’s disrupting the company.’
‘At eleven?’
‘I’ve seen one woman do it,’ said Astorre. He paused. ‘If you don’t care what happens, do nothing.’
‘It’s all right,’ Nicholas said. ‘I’m arranging for him to go. Meantime let’s give him to John to look after.’ He had seen Henry up at the battery, watching the fast, heavy work and the thundering roar as each cannon spoke. His face had been avid, intent. Neither gunner would care for it much, but John had more patience than d’Orson, and would stand for no nonsense. And given something to master, the boy might forget his vendetta.
It was about then, or just before, that Nicholas chose not to contradict the rumour that had spread about Henry. It had arisen, he supposed, as a result of the tales about Jordan at Hesdin. It was known that he had brought a young son to camp. Few people would remember what he was called, or his age. And thinking Henry that son, men would – perhaps – stop short of actually killing him. It might also persuade them that his tales of abuse were unreliable. There were other potential benefits.
It worked, after a fashion, during the first weeks of their investment of Beauvais. During two weeks of continuous firing, Henry learned something of the art of gunnery, and grew to treat John with a mixture of hate and respect to which John remained exasperatingly indifferent. It ended when the Duke, casting aside all the protests of his officers, assembled his entire force before the gates of de Bresle and de Limaçon, and ordered them to take Beauvais by storm. It was dawn, on the twenty-eighth day of June.
Had it been launched in the first two days of the siege, the attack might have succeeded. As it was, six score Burgundians were killed and a thousand more injured before the Duke’s men were flung back by the solid force of seasoned defenders within. During the assault, the heavy artillery was directed away from the walls and the bridges, and latterly was unable to fire, for fear of killing men in retreat. It was late that evening when, resuming his post at the gun-battery, John le Grant noticed that something was wrong.
The aftermath of any battle is a chaotic affair. The garrison of Beauvais, firing steadily from the walls, had made the withdrawal as dangerous as the assault had been, and the retrieval of the dead and the wounded went on for some hours. Nicholas, who with Julius had taken his share, and had seen his own men drop around him, stayed in the field with Astorre until all the company had been returned or were accounted for. It had been a wasted effort. Everyone knew it.
Astorre, bending over this pallet and that, spoke in tones that were heartily cheerful, but walking back to the tents he cursed under his breath and his shoulders were bowed. Nicholas felt the same weight of anger and weariness and parted from him without speech. He had almost reached his pavilion when John le Grant came running up in the half-light and, shouting, pulled him aside.
Nicholas, hitting the ground, thought at first that John had lost his mind and attacked him. Then the roar of an explosion cracked through the air, and his shadow lay black on the dust which everywhere else had turned a flickering red. He rolled over and turned. Behind stood a column of fire where his pavilion had been. The screaming came from his horses, and descending fragments of cloth were already setting light to the tents next in line. After the first shock, men had begun running with water. Julius raced calling among them. ‘Oh my God. Is he dead?’
‘No, I’m not dead,’ Nicholas said, and stood up, his eyes fixed on John’s. ‘You knew.’
‘He’s in my tent,’ le Grant said. ‘I found the culverin covered with gunpowder, but managed to put out the fuse. He couldn’t help bragging about what else he’d done.’
‘Who?’ said Julius.
‘No one,’ said Nicholas. ‘It was an accident. Spread the news. I don’t suppose anything can be saved?’
‘What do you think?’ Julius said. ‘Both your horses have gone. No men – your servants were lucky. What else did you have?’
‘Papers. Nothing,’ said Nicholas.
Papers. A poem. A drawing. He did not need to ask whom John le Grant had caught and confined in his tent. In a moment, he was confronting him.
Henry was not now the shivering assassin of seven who, seized with mindless horror and joy, had stood with a bloody knife in his hand, waiting for this same man to denounce him, to drop. Now Henry knew what he was doing, and was ready to answer for what he had done. He remembered his father’s face, Simon’s face, smiling on him that day, caressing, praising him for killing his enemies. Sitting there, with his arms bound behind him, Henry looked Nicholas in the face with the same insolence he had managed to show ever since Veere.
He said, ‘Next time, I shall time the fuse better.’
‘Leave us,’ said Nicholas. He heard John hesitate, and then go. He found John’s campaign bed and let himself down on it. His sleeve was sodden with blood not his own.
The boy said, ‘You don’t want witnesses.’ He was jeering again.
Nicholas said, ‘You planned to blow up the battery?’
‘All the guns,’ Henry said. ‘It would have destroyed half the camp. It would have ended the war. We should have won.’
‘We?’
‘Us. The Scots and the French.’
‘John le Grant is Scots,’ Nicholas said. ‘Perhaps he beat you while he was teaching you?’
‘He was fighting for the enemy,’ Henry said. ‘He is a traitor, like you.’
‘And like you,’ Nicholas said. ‘You had a Burgundian mother.’
The boy reddened. He said, ‘I despise the van Borselens. I renounce them.’
‘Your father doesn’t,’ Nicholas said. ‘He sent you to Veere to be educated in chivalry, and instead you attacked your own baby cousin.’
‘He was a coward,’ said Henry.
‘I think,’ Nicholas said, ‘that all men are cowards at three. Your father will be ashamed of you. Instead of the mortification of seeing you imprisoned in Brabant, he will suffer the disgrace of what you have done today, and the penalty you must suffer.’
‘You can’t,’ Henry said. ‘I’m a prisoner waiting for ransom. It was an act of war. It was legal.’
‘My dear Henry,’ Nicholas said. ‘I am your uncle, and you are here to be trained in the military arts. You chose to come, rather than suffer the Steen. You have been fed, warmed and sheltered by this company and none of them, I think, has treated you with unbearable harshness. Yet you were willing to kill or hurt them at random – not just me, not just Master John, but the boys, the pages, the servants, even the women. That by itself is something that very few men could forgive. But you say you did it for France, and that is even worse, for it makes you a spy. And the penalty for spying is the most ugly of deaths.’
‘I knew you would kill me,’ said Henry.
‘If John or I wanted to kill you,’ said Nicholas, ‘we should take you now from this tent and denounce you before all those you were planning to murder. You would never survive to be hanged.’
‘You wouldn’t dare,’ Henry said. ‘I am a St Pol of Kilmirren. They wouldn’t touch me.’
He was breathing hard. At moments like this you could see Katelina in him: her proud spirit so fatally combined with the insensate flamboyance of Simon. What else lay there undeveloped it was impossible to say, and there was no time to find out. To reach him would be the work of years rather than months. And Nicholas could not bring himself to use force, to break that pride and that spirit together.
The only force he could use was the ordinary kind, which would be misconstrued, but which must be applied. Nicholas said, ‘You have threatened the lives of many friends of mine who have not harmed you, any more than Jordan had harmed you. To be a good soldier, you must learn to be just, and you must accept punishment when you do something wrong. I am not going to take you outside. I am going to beat you. It will be no more than you can bear, but it will be a heavy beating, because you deserve it. And if I am questioned by any man, your father included, I shall explain what you did to provoke it, and they will tell you that you are fortunate to have escaped with your life. Are you ready?’
‘I expected it,’ Henry said. ‘My father will thrash you. He will kill you. You are a fool.’
‘In that,’ Nicholas said, ‘you are probably right.’
He called John into the tent after it was over, and caught the flash of surprise, and the even greater surprise on the face of Julius when he learned what had happened. He wondered if they had expected him to cut the boy’s throat. He had the doctor visit him, and gave orders to have him well guarded in case someone else thought they’d repair the omission. Outside he found they had cleared up the carnage and set up a tent for him nearby, furnished with bits of other people’s equipment. Astorre had got him a horse, and some food, which he didn’t want, and a lecture which he didn’t want either. Eventually he rolled into bed, but couldn’t sleep.
The boy remained in John’s tent, and Nicholas returned, in the following days, to the concerns of the Duke and the siege. A good watch was kept, but nevertheless in the early hours of one morning a small number of men from the garrison, mostly mounted, made a surprise sally under cover of darkness and succeeded in crossing the ditch to the encampment. There they scattered, slashing and stabbing among the nearest tents of the besiegers, as if looking for someone. The action did not last long; the tent-ropes tripped and slowed down the horses, and as soon as the camp started to rouse, the men of Beauvais turned to go.
Nicholas was already out, fully dressed with his sword, when he heard the high voice screaming above the clash of metal and the hoof-beats and the shouting. Henry, his hair aureoled by the lamplight, had burst out of John’s tent and was racing towards the French soldiers. ‘There! There! Here is the master gunner d’Orson! There is the banker de Fleury!’
The finger pointed at him. The riders faltered and some of them turned. A sword flashed, and he saw d’Orson fall. Then a horn blew, and with a surge they were off, all but half a dozen who closed round
the boy. A man’s voice shouted a question; the boy replied, his voice shrilling with eagerness. The next moment a mailed arm came down, and the boy himself was swept up and thrown over the saddle. Nicholas saw his face, bemused, looking back at him, and lifted his sword, braced for the thundering hooves and the blade wet with Jacques d’Orson’s blood.
They did not come. The last he saw of them was a tight knot of men riding back over the ditch to the portals, with a glint of fair hair bobbing among them.
‘What?’ said Astorre. He leaned forward, staring at Nicholas. ‘What are you pulling faces about?’
‘Nothing,’ Nicholas said. ‘I told you I was arranging for him to go.’
‘The French have got him,’ said Captain Astorre. ‘The French have taken the brat into Beauvais.’
‘I know,’ Nicholas said. ‘And as soon as the Duke decides to get on his way, I think I might make a little journey as well. As I mentioned to Julius, I’d rather like to visit Bessarion. You’ll manage without me.’
Since this was true, Astorre didn’t deny it. He said, ‘You think they’ll let you cross France right down to the Loire?’
‘They ought to,’ Nicholas said. ‘The Duke doesn’t mind if I go, and King Louis has provided me with an extremely elaborate safe-conduct. In fact, I feel for Henry’s dilemma: we are either all traitors these days, or we are loyal to everyone.’