King Richard and these mysterious Knights of Arcturus had been at Philippe de Loup’s tower early in March. Was the late king one of the Thirteen Nobles? Were the two who had hastened away with him? It seemed likely. For some reason, the trio had left separately and been rowed out to a waiting ship by the dark guard. The rest of the knights might have left later that night, or the next morning, or they might have stayed on for a few days. For sure, they had not been there when Josse and Gus had gone into the tower, and there had been no sign of recent occupancy. Nevertheless, Josse had no way of knowing when Philippe de Loup last left his tower, or his present whereabouts. Not that it really mattered, because he did know the subsequent movements of one of the others. King Richard had gone from the Ile d’Oleron to Chalus, where on the evening of 26 March he had been struck by the arrow that subsequently killed him.
In the absence of any other option, Josse made up his mind to follow in the late king’s footsteps. There was really nothing else he could do. With that decided, he turned on his side and was soon asleep.
It was well over a hundred miles from Oleron to Chalus. Josse and Gus had covered a good part of the journey in their fast ride the previous evening and now Josse reckoned they had less than eighty miles to go. They might make it in two more days if the weather stayed fair and no mishap occurred.
On the morning of the third day, they climbed a low ridge and from its summit looked down on the devastation that had once been the peaceful land surrounding the castle of Chalus. The castle itself was still standing, although the gaping holes in its walls and the blasted, ruined entrance showed clear evidence of the besiegers’ fury. Broken siege engines stood on the churned-up earth like the skeletons of some huge, nightmarish monsters. Some distance from the castle, under the eaves of an area of thin woodland, there was evidence that a long, deep pit had recently been dug and filled in. Beside it, there was a group of women kneeling in the mud. They were weeping. Whatever use might have once been intended for the fields around the castle must surely now have been abandoned, for the land was deeply scarred and every living thing upon it, from grass to tall trees, had been blasted away.
This, Josse reflected sadly, was what happened when a castle was besieged by a man like King Richard.
He and Gus rode on. Ahead of them on the track, two men were trying to get an ox cart out of a deep rut. One man was pushing at the right-hand wheel of the cart, the other dragging at the oxen’s harness, calling out encouragement to the beasts and, when that failed, swirling his whip high in the air and bringing it cracking down on their pale backs.
Gus was off his horse and running to the man pushing at the wheel. ‘I’ll help!’ he cried. ‘No need to whip the oxen, master — ’ he turned to the other man — ‘they’re doing their best.’
Josse saw the man’s frustration turn to anger. He too dismounted and, hurrying over, said to the man with the whip, ‘Forgive my young friend — he meant no criticism.’
‘Hmm.’ The man was still scowling.
Josse hurried to join Gus. ‘We’ll both help you,’ he said firmly. ‘With three of us heaving at this wheel, we ought to get it out of the rut.’
The man with the whip apparently saw the sense of that and reverted to pulling on the oxen’s harness and reminding the animals what was in store for them back in their pen. Soon the combined efforts of Josse, Gus and the other carter got the wheel moving and the cart trundled on its way.
The man who had been pushing at the wheel hung back, sweating and panting, to thank his unexpected helpers. ‘That’s a rare act of Christian kindness,’ he observed, wiping his face with a dirty scarf. ‘And we haven’t seen many of those around here of late, I can tell you.’
Nodding at Gus to see to the horses, Josse fell into step beside the man as he slowly followed behind the cart. ‘Looks to have been a bad business,’ he remarked, his gaze turning to the ruined castle. ‘He was after treasure, or so I heard.’
‘He was,’ the man agreed. He seemed as reluctant as Josse to refer to the late king by name. ‘Not that there was any. They say there was a pot of old coins, but I never saw hide nor hair of it. The rest of it — all that talk of huge gold statues and the like — was just a wild story. I have no idea who or what began it,’ he added piously.
I wonder, Josse thought. It seemed highly likely that something had started the rumour; people didn’t normally invent such things totally out of the blue. Perhaps some man out ploughing with his ox team — this ox team? — had turned up something else besides the gold coins and, although he had tried to hide his discovery and keep his new-found riches to himself, word had leaked out and, in time, reached the ears of the king. It was possible, Josse thought.
‘So the king ended up empty-handed,’ he said.
‘The king ended up dead,’ the man corrected him. ‘God save his soul,’ he added, giving Josse a crafty glance.
‘Amen,’ Josse murmured.
‘The aftermath was vicious,’ the man said heavily. ‘Oh, not straight away after he was shot — it all went quiet then, while everyone waited to see if- to see what would happen. The king, he sends for the archer who shot him and asks why, and the archer says, “Well, you killed my father and my brothers, and you were doing your best to kill me too, so do what you like with me and I’ll gladly accept it if it means you’ll be dead at the end of it, because it’ll be worth it.”’
‘That was quite a speech,’ Josse said, impressed.
‘The king thought so too. He forgave the archer and said he was to be released.’
‘Surely that was a Christian act?’ Josse said.
The man gave a bitter laugh. ‘It would have been, if the king’s orders had been obeyed.’
‘Oh. Weren’t they?’
‘No, of course not. Soon as he was dead, that captain of mercenaries of his got the archer back, flayed him alive and hanged him.’
Josse, who knew of the mercenary Mercadier and his reputation, said nothing.
‘They stormed the castle the night the king died,’ the man went on matter-of-factly. ‘Those who didn’t die in the fighting were hanged from the battlements.’
‘Nobody was left alive?’ Josse was hardly surprised; it was the usual way if a besieged castle refused to surrender and was ultimately defeated and, this time, the fury of the king’s men would have been further fuelled by his death.
‘Not a one, out of those caught inside.’ The man sighed. ‘They do say a few slipped out by night once it was certain what would happen, but who knows what’s become of them?’ He shrugged.
Who knows indeed? Josse thought.
They walked on in silence. Glancing round, Josse saw that Gus was pacing along behind, leading the horses. He said to the man beside him, ‘I’m looking for a knight by the name of Philippe de Loup. Have you heard of him?’ It was a long shot to suggest that if King Richard had come here to Chalus, then de Loup had come with him, but it was worth a try.
Immediately Josse was very glad he had made that try, for the man turned to spit in the ground and said, ‘Him. Yes, I have.’
‘I heard tell — ’ Josse lowered his voice to a murmur — ‘that he belongs to some strange group called the Thirteen Knights, or something, and I-’
‘I don’t know nothing about the Thirteen Nobles,’ the man said very firmly, although his unconscious correction of ‘Thirteen Knights’ to ‘Thirteen Nobles’ suggested quite the opposite.
‘But you know of de Loup?’
After a pause, the man said, ‘Yes.’
‘He has lands around here?’
The man shook his head. ‘Not that I know of. He came with the king, along with a few others including that light-eyed friend of his