De Vrailly returned to his knees.
Sometime in the night, all the Harndon militia marched away from the army.
Chapter Ten
The Company
Bad Tom and Ser Michael and Long Paw and Gelfred pushed the column like daemons from hell. The captain was everywhere-up and down the column-from the moment they passed the gap under an arch of trees and took the road north to Lorica.
He had a brief officers’ call in the saddle. He was terse, dividing their small force into a vanguard under Lord Corcy with his powerful force of knights-local men who knew the road and the ground around it, a main body under Gavin, and a rearguard under Tom Lachlan.
Twice, Michael and Tom turned and laid an ambush in the greenwood, with archers and a dozen knights filling the road, but no pursuit threatened them. At three in the afternoon, Gelfred launched back down the road with five of his best foresters-Will Scarlet, Dan Favour, Amy’s Hob, Short Tooth and Daud-to scout.
But for the rest of the column the afternoon passed in a haze of dust and sun and horse sweat.
Bad Tom would roar, “Halt! Change horses!” and they’d have five minutes.
Bob Twill learned to eat while holding his horse. He learned to piss while holding his horse.
Worst of all, he learned to ride.
The Queen seemed to grow with every mile they rode-louder, larger, and happier. She rode the dusty lane with her babe clutched to her, and sang him songs in Occitan and Gallish, songs of chivalry and love. Her singing was a tonic, and when she came to one the men around her knew, they’d sing the chorus-Prendes i garde or C’est la fin quoi que nus die, which made the woods ring.
Lady Blanche-they were all calling her that in the exuberance of victory-rode with all the skill of Bob Twill, and her pretty face could not hide her annoyance at the Queen’s constant correction of her seat and her hands. But she cleaned the baby and changed his linen, and at some point during the third halt, in a moment of vexation, she balled up the child’s filthy towels and threw them into the woods.
“Fie! And linen towelling so dear!” The captain was just behind her, at the edge of the trees.
She flushed. “I’m sorry, my lord.”
“I’m not. It’s the most human thing I’ve seen from you all day.” He tossed her an apple. “Toby!” he shouted.
Toby appeared, carrying the captain’s standard. He was still mounted, although the rest of them were on foot.
“Clean shirt,” the captain said. “And my towel. Give them to Lady Blanche.”
Toby didn’t ask questions. He reached behind his war saddle, to a very small leather trousseau. He extracted a linen shirt that smelled of lavender, and a slightly soiled damp towel.
“I used the towel to shave this morning,” the captain admitted.
Blanche caught the work on the shirt-mice teeth on the cuffs, embroidered coat of arms, beautiful fine stitching as good as her own or better. “What’s this for, then?” she asked. “My lord?”
“Tear the shirt up for swaddling,” he said. “The towel’s so you can wipe your hands clean before you eat the apple.” He smiled.
She did just that. Then she tossed it to him-as if they were peers. He caught it and threw it to Toby, who shied away.
“Afraid of a little baby poo?” the captain cried.
Toby blushed furiously. He rolled the towel very tightly and put it away behind his war saddle as if afraid of disease.
He smiled at her and rode off down the column.
By nightfall, Michael and Tom had begun to use the rougher sides of their tongues, and the captain was the calm, cheerful one. Bob Twill was found to have stayed on the ground at a halt. Bad Tom rode back, scared him almost to incontinence, and got him on his exhausted horse.
Cat Evil, never the best rider, complained of the pace and found himself docked a day’s pay.
“Mew mew mew!” Tom roared. “I don’t hear nowt from the babe but laughter, and you lot-old soldiers-cry like babies. A little fight an’ a few hours in the saddle-” He laughed. “We’ll shake the fat off you.”
Cat Evil, who was as thin as a young girl and had the long hair to match and a very nasty disposition, put a hand on his knife.
Tom laughed again. “If you ha’ the piss to face me,” he said, “then ye’re not e’en tired yet. Bottle it and keep riding.”
Most of the older men expected they’d halt at last light. Even Cully, who, as an officer and a trusted man, was careful not to vent his irritation at the pace, muttered that with no pursuit and no danger, it was cruel hard.
Ser Michael reined in. “Think it’s possible that the captain knows something you don’t know, Cully?”
Cully looked resentful, like a good hunting dog accused falsely of stealing food. But he kept his mouth shut, and didn’t rise to Cuddy’s open mutiny when they kept riding into the moonlight.
“We’re going all the way to Lorica, then?” Michael asked. Ser Gabriel was up and down the column, and where Tom and Michael used ridicule and open coercion to keep men moving, Ser Gabriel was everyone’s friend.
So far. He grinned at Michael, his teeth white in the moonlight. “Look ahead of you,” he said.
In the middle distance, the cathedral of Lorica rose above the town’s walls, which gleamed like white Etruscan marble in the moonlight. Just short of the walls, fires burned.
He waved, and turned his horse-his fourth of the day-back down the column. “Less than an hour now, friends,” he called.
Outriders greeted them well outside the silent town. Ser Ranald embraced his cousin, and then dismounted and bent his knee to the Queen and her son.
The Queen gave him a hand. “It was you-in the darkness,” she said.
“Not just me, your grace,” he said. “But yes, I was there.”
She smiled in the moonlight, and for the first time that Gavin had seen her, she seemed older, with lines around her mouth and under her eyes. Not old-just not the vision of youth she had been that afternoon, riding in the shadow-spackled sunlight.
“Will you command my son’s guard?” she asked.
Ranald grinned. “I have the better half of it right here,” he said. He waved in the direction of the camp.
But Ser Gabriel forbade any kind of ceremony. “Unless your grace overrules me directly,” he said, “I want everyone to bed.”
But Lady Almspend-Becca, to the Queen-was at Ranald’s side, and there were more hugs, and the Queen all but fell into her friend’s arms.
The captain rode up almost between them. “I’m sorry, your grace, but there’s two hundred men who have fought for you this day, and they want to be asleep.”
The Queen sat back. “Of course-I’m thoughtless. Go!”
But despite this admonition, men and women were roused as the column entered camp. Blanche was surprised at how orderly was the apparent chaos. Sukey, who she had thought ere this to be a decorative camp follower or possibly the Red Knight’s lover, stood by the palisaded gate with two pages at her shoulders with torches and read off tent assignments. When Tom Lachlan rode up, Blanche was close behind. Too close.
Sukey graced him with a pleasant smile.
“Not my tent, Ser Tom,” she said.
He grimaced.
“You’ll find Donald Dhu and all the beeves he has yet unsold just a long bowshot to the west, by the river,” she said.
“And if I don’t want to ride any further, woman?” he asked.
She tossed her hair. “There’s space in the ditch outside,” she said. “Next!”
She put the Queen in the captain’s pavilion, on his feather bed, and she was waiting when the Queen’s woman-the tall blonde-came out of the pavilion with an armload of smelly linen.