to earn a living, trying to find a morsel of food to fill our stomachs from one day to the next. And now these fat-bellied soldiers had stolen them, stolen the rabbits that they had spent all morning trying to catch. They couldn’t, they wouldn’t get away with this!
She watched dismally as Waleran was boosted up into the saddle behind the youngest-looking soldier, endeavouring to smile at her friend as he looked back at her, eyes pitiful. She refused to succumb to helplessness, to a wavering vulnerability that threatened to encroach her, to weaken her. A few stupid soldiers wouldn’t beat her! Without a doubt, she would find the means to outwit them.
‘Don’t worry, Waleran,’ she whispered, as the horses’ glossy rumps retreated, heading northwards to a dark stretch of trees. ‘I will come for you.’
* * *
Lussac, Count of Belbigny, leaned his elbows against the wooden rail of the forecastle and watched, through narrowed turquoise eyes, as the last of the soldiers, a jumbled mix of hired mercenaries and exiled English lords, made their way to the shore, dutifully following their Queen. Some were fortunate enough to clamber into the few rowboats brought with them across the North Sea from Hainault; others were not so lucky, splashing and stumbling in their heavy armour through the knee-deep waves, raucous curses splitting the morning air. Behind him, taut stay ropes now released, the huge square sail hung limp, ineffectual, beneath the crow’s nest, flapping dismally in the breeze. It had taken two days to sail from the Flanders coast, two long days and nights of churning seas, and an unexpected storm that had thrown the ships off course. Their exact location was unknown; it could be anywhere on the east coast of England north of the wide mouth of the river that led to London.
‘Lussac, come now, you are the last!’ A shout from one of the row-boats drawn alongside the high-sided wooden cog hailed him. He peered over the side, straight chestnut hair falling over his tanned forehead, trying to locate the owner of the familiar voice who shouted to him from the shadows of the vessel.
‘Come on, man! Do you want to go back? The ships will leave directly.’
Lussac smiled tersely, a muscle leaping in the shadowed hollow of his cheek. He had no intention of going back. After four years of battling the demons, of never being able to rid himself of the black bile that clagged his heart, King Charles of France, his friend, had offered him a life-line, a way out. When Queen Isabella, Charles’s younger sister, had announced her intention to overthrow her husband, King Edward II of England, by way of an invasion commanded by Roger Mortimer, Charles had suggested that Lussac travelled on the ships to England, to seek revenge and heal his tattered soul.
Lussac had agreed readily to Charles’s proposition. The passing years had failed to wash away the pain, to dull his memory. The scenes burst into his brain again and again, as if they had happened yesterday, vivid colours etched with dreadful clarity: the pall of smoke rising above his home, the charred rafters collapsing around him in plumes of hot ash. And the running, the breathless sprinting up the steps to find his family... The slipping time seemed only to intensify his feelings of loss, of desperation, of anger. Revenge burned, deep in his solar plexus, coursing through his veins like a sour, bitter liquid; he could taste it on his tongue. Around the bare skin of his wrist, the leather cuff wrapped tight, chafed at his skin, reminding him. Scooped up from the scene of the crime, the only clue to the identity of the English knight who had killed his family.
Ignoring the rope ladder, Lussac placed one lean, muscled hand on the side of the ship and jumped down into the rowboat, planting his feet out to steady himself against the inevitable rocking from his weight. His substantial frame tilted the smaller vessel from side to side, threatening to tip them both into the sea.
‘Careful! You’ll have us over, fooling around like that!’ Philippe clutched at the oars as they threatened to slide, pulling them back into the row-locks.
‘Philippe?’ Lussac sprawled opposite his friend, tilting his head in a quizzical look. He stretched out his long legs, encased in the fine silver mesh of chainmail. The sturdy boots that covered his calves were made of thick Spanish leather and stained with sea-water, each toe carrying a wavering line of white, drying salt. ‘Am I’m seeing things? A nobleman rowing a boat?’
Philippe grimaced, pushing a strand of fair hair out of his eyes. Sweat plastered his fleshy face, mottled cheeks flushed with a greasy sheen. He wore no helmet and the hood of his chainmail hauberk gathered at the back of his neck.
‘Do you think I have a choice?’ he hissed, although they were still some considerable distance from the shore. He wrangled tetchily with an oar, trying to angle it so he could manoeuvre them away from the ship. ‘I don’t think the Queen has any idea who I am! Me! Philippe, Comte de Garsan! She ordered me to come and fetch you, like I was some low-born soldier! All the others are running around, trying to make her comfortable! Look, they’ve even constructed a tent for her, already.’
‘And a fire, too,’ Lussac commented drily. The smoke rose, billowing up from the white-grey shingle, fanning out against the low, ochre-coloured cliffs that lined the shore. ‘Let’s hope the smoke doesn’t draw any unwanted attention; we have no idea whether we are in a safe area or not.’
‘I said that!’ Philippe jabbed the air triumphantly, the woollen tunic that covered his chainmail pulling tautly across his rounded stomach. ‘I told them the exact same thing. But would they listen? Nay, says Mortimer, our Queen is freezing and her ladies are cold after such a horrendous journey and we need to warm them. Christ, I swear that man will do anything for that woman. I know that they want to keep their adultery a secret, but honestly, it’s plain for anyone to see!’ He turned his attention back to his friend, noting the familiar, bleak look in Lussac’s eyes, the shadowed expression. ‘Not that any of this concerns you.’
Lussac shrugged his shoulders, mouth tightening. Philippe was correct. The fact that Queen Isabella had fallen in love with Roger Mortimer, her campaign commander, mattered little. Nothing concerned him. Nothing, that was, except finding the man who killed his family. But the Queen’s campaign to overthrow her husband provided him with the means to travel to England, and for that, he was grateful.
‘Do you want me to row?’ Lussac offered. Beyond the deep shadow cast by the ship, the surface of the sea sparkled, as if studded with diamonds.
‘Gladly,’ Philippe said, wiping his forehead. ‘It took me an age to reach you.’
The two men swapped places, Lussac gripping the oars, dipping the blades rhythmically, easily, in the water. Strings of water glittered down from the pale wood. Philippe sighed, leaning back in the boat, closing his eyes and tipping his face up to the tepid heat of the September sun. The light danced off the water, shining, blinding; with a strange, keening cry, a raft of sea-birds curved in one sinuous movement towards the bouncing sea, before jerking away at the last moment, inexplicably, to head off in a different direction.
Philippe opened his eyes. ‘Thank Christ the weather has taken a turn for the better. I couldn’t imagine sleeping under canvas in the likes of that storm we went through.’
‘I suspect the Queen will call in some favours,’ Lussac replied, twisting around to see how near to the shore they were. ‘I’m sure she has no intention of sleeping under canvas either.’
Soon they were in the long swathes of white surf, shingle crunching and grinding along the bottom of the boat. Drawing the oars in to rest along the sides of the boat, Lussac climbed out into the shallow water, Philippe grumbling behind him about wet feet. The water soaked through their calf-length boots, their chainmail chausses, but Lussac scarcely noticed. He was used to harsh conditions, to being wet and damp and cold, being camped out for days and days in winter, fighting in the borderlands between the English-held Gascony and France. Fighting, battling—they were his modus operandi; without them, he would simply cease to be.
‘Ah, Lussac!’ Mortimer approached, his gait awkward across the sloping shingle. He was a tall, thin man with a rigid, angular frame and everything about him, from his jet-black hair, his brown eyes, to his grey tunic and black flapping cloak, was dark, crow-like. He slapped Lussac congenially on the back, his head making a strange bobbing motion into his shoulders.