The Ill-Made Knight by Christian Cameron Page A

falling darkness. ‘Are you taking my apprentice cook, Sir Thomas?’ he asked.
    They exchanged a look, and I knew that Abelard had, somehow, made this happen for me.
    We didn’t take Tours.
    What happened instead was not good. The King of France marched to Blois and crossed the Loire to our side. We heard about it from scouts about the hour of matins, and by the end of matins we were packing to move south, abandoning the siege of Tours, if one failed assault can be called a siege.
    I didn’t understand at the time – in fact, I was bitter that we were retreating – but Marshal Clermont had roughly our numbers inside Tours, and the King had twice our numbers and was coming up behind us. They held all the crossings over the Loire and cut us off from the Duke of Lancaster absolutely, so there was no way we could face them. Thus we turned south, abandoned most of our booty and ran for our lives.
    I’ve heard it made to sound more glorious, but that’s how it was. I lost two of my three copper kettles, but not one of my gold or silver coins, which should give you a fine idea of how accurate Master Peter’s advice was.
    In the suburbs of Tours, I did pick up a donkey. Talk about the miracles of God – a healthy donkey, wandering free, in the middle of a war. I loaded her as much as she could bear with Sir Thomas’s goods and a few of my own, and we ran south. As a former cook and a provident squire, I foraged food as we went.
    We crossed two rivers in a single day.
    River crossings are an army’s nightmare, and the rivers were high for early autumn. The fords were about four horses wide and stony enough, but the slowness of the crossing made the whole army nervous and caused us to huddle up. By this time, the army had added a train of servants – French boys desperate for food – and whores – French girls desperate for food – and they huddled along with us.
    At the second river, the Prince ordered them driven away from the army. This was military routine – we couldn’t feed them any more and we were going to move fast. No one questioned it and yet, to me, it seemed the most brutal thing we’d done. We had, in effect, taken these people by force, to show that the King of France could not protect them. Now we could not protect them.
    Bah, perhaps I should have been a monk. I was glad I’d sent Marie north, because I’d have died in my heart as a knight to drive her away from me with the flat of my sword, as I saw other men – even men wearing the spurs and golden belts – do.
    At any rate, we crossed, and when the French appeared to harass our rearguard, Sir John Chandos and a few knights and a hundred archers drove the French right back north up the road.
    You may note in this tale that the French always seem fearsome as individuals, but not nearly so preux in bodies. It is hard to say why. Man for man, their best knights were better than ours – not the Prince or Sir John Chandos, but most of the rest of ours. They feared our long bows, but I seldom saw a French knight with an arrow in him. I’ve heard dozens of stout yeoman who’ve never loosed a shaft in anger tell me that the bent stick won us our territories in France. Perhaps. I was always happy to have the archers close to hand, but fights are won sword to sword. And sword to sword, the French should have been our betters, but they never were.
    We were usually fed, often paid, and most nights we got some sleep. The same men led us in the field and ate with us in camp. That wasn’t the way with the French, and I think that eating, sleeping and getting paid are fundamental to war.
    But then, I was a cook.

    We halted at Montbazon, where the French cardinal Talleyrand met our army. He’d been to England, trying to negotiate peace for the Pope, but his bodyguard were all Frenchmen and greedy bastards to boot. Considering how intimately I later came to know part of the papal court, I wish I could tell you that I met Talleyrand, but I didn’t. He was