‘Where were you last afternoon?’ Baldwin asked.
‘I was here in the city.’
‘Is there anyone who could vouch for you?’
Don Ruy looked at Baldwin with loathing. ‘I was alone in my chamber.’
‘You see, we have heard from another witness that you left the city, on a horse. You were seen following a young woman, this lady’s maid, who was murdered a short while later.’
‘I know nothing of this!’ Don Ruy spat.
‘I knew it!’ Dona Stefania shrieked, and pointed with a shaking finger. ‘You took my money, and you killed my messenger! You’d have murdered me as well, if I’d been there, wouldn’t you? Murderer!’
Chapter Eleven
As he waited, Sir Charles stood in the shade of a great vine that had been trained over some beams. He had plenty of time, but he did wish other men would be a little more punctual.
Behind him, sitting at a table with a jug of wine, his man-at-arms Paul worked at honing his long-bladed knife with a stone. The edge had grown dull with fine rust during the downpours of the last couple of days and Paul, who was nothing if not meticulous with his weapons, had undertaken to give them all a good polish. His bow was already beeswaxed, the string carefully treated and packed in a waxed cloth to keep it dry; his arrows had been inspected individually, the line of each checked for curves, the fletchings stroked to see that they remained flexible. Now he was putting a fine edge on his knife again. ‘A man who looks after his weapons knows that they will look after him,’ he was proud of reciting. It was one of the lines he had been taught many years ago when he had been a squire in training, and he had the annoying habit of bringing up such homilies every so often as though they carried the weight of Gospel truth, rather than being the utterings of a rather boozy and impecunious country knight.
Paul had been brought up in Gloucestershire, where his father had installed him in a noble household so that he might learn the arts of war, but then his old man had made a classical and unfortunate mistake. Just at the time that the lonely, widowed old King was falling for attractive young women, Paul’s father had made a joke about one. His fall from grace was rapid and he had plummeted so far, he had to leave the country.
His son, though, had flourished. Paul was adept with all weapons and soon learned the finer skills of horsemanship. He was one of those men who have an immediate affinity with horses, and could guide his mount almost without conscious effort. Better than that, he was also a thoroughly efficient squire. In the thick of a battle, he never lost his nerve or panicked. Sir Charles was happy to fight knowing that Paul was behind him as a support. If Sir Charles lost his horse, Paul would be there with a remount; if Sir Charles lost a mace, his axe or sword, Paul would canter up with a new one. He almost seemed to know in advance when a weapon was required, and appeared at the instant he was needed, never too early, never late. He was the perfect squire.
They had met when Sir Charles had been a knight in the service of Thomas, Earl of Lancaster, and had remained together even after the trials caused by Boroughbridge.
Earl Thomas was a great lord, and uncle to the King, Edward II. It was said that he was the richest man in the kingdom after the King himself, and Sir Charles believed it. If anything, Earl Thomas was the wealthier of the two. He had none of his nephew’s spendthrift habits, like throwing money at his latest boyfriends, playing with peasants, pretending to act on stage with his pretty boys and the like. It was true that Earl Thomas’s wife had run away, but the Queen herself would have done so too, if she had had the chance. At least Earl Thomas’s woman couldn’t complain about being deserted in her own bed. Queen Isabella didn’t even have the opportunity to take a lover, since all the courtiers were of the King’s sexual persuasion, or so Charles had heard.
It was certainly true that Earl Thomas knew how to win loyalty. He might be more careful than the King with his money, but he didn’t hoard it. He believed in the old system, in spreading his wealth and distributing largesse. Earl Thomas had thrown banquets which put the royal ones to shame, held tournaments in which the prizes were greater than any elsewhere — especially since the monarch had sought to ban them. Everything that Earl Thomas tried, he achieved, and living as part of his household meant that some of his glory was reflected upon Sir Charles. He and Paul were very content there, with plenty to eat, even during the famine, good quality weapons, women to bed, and two new tunics each per year. Few men were so well looked after.
Sir Charles was not troubled by the actual sequence of events. All he knew was that one day, his master, Earl Thomas, had lost favour with the King. He neither knew, nor cared, what possible cause there could be. It didn’t matter a damn. What happened was that the two men had fallen out, and suddenly the King attacked. Earl Thomas’s life came to an end at Boroughbridge, when his men tried to flee by passing over the bridge, only to be opposed by that bastard Andrew Harclay. He and a small force of dismounted soldiers held the bridge and prevented their escape. The King caught Earl Thomas, and executed him.
When the disaster struck, and when they heard of the defeat of the army, Sir Charles and Paul realised that there was no point in their remaining. There was not even a widow to protect; she had left six years before. Sadly, the knight and his man-at-arms joined the long lines of broken men marching away. There was no telling how a vengeful King would treat them, and Sir Charles and his squire left the country, taking a ship to France.
The pair initially hoped that they would find a new master very quickly. There were always petty wars going on up and down Europe, and Sir Charles started out confident that he would be able to find a post which would suit his skills very soon — but apart from a talk with a man who said he knew Roger Mortimer and had planned Mortimer’s release from the Tower of London, hinting that he would raise a host to defeat the King himself, there was no offer of a position. Even war appeared thin on the ground. Sir Charles reluctantly concluded that either the man was mad, or stupid. He would need more than a couple of disgruntled knights and their squires to be able to attack England and supplant the King. The fool was even boasting that he had the support of the French King and his daughter, Isabella, who was Queen of England — but Sir Charles couldn’t believe that. What would the Queen see in a fellow like Roger Mortimer?
Sir Charles and Paul soon left Paris. It was not a city in which they felt comfortable, and after hearing the recruiting story of Mortimer’s man, they agreed that they should seek employment elsewhere. If there were men trying to build an army, the King of England’s spies would not be far away, and rather than have Edward believe that he was the King’s determined and sincere enemy, which would probably lead to a short life and death in a darkened alley, Sir Charles chose to ride eastwards. He had heard that there was money to be earned in Lettow. The Order of Teutonic Knights was keen for new companions, and there were rumours of vast wealth to be won.
It was while he was on his way there that he met Dom Afonso.
Sir Charles had been bemoaning his shortage of funds. The last of his plate had been pawned in Paris for a pittance, to buy bread and cheap cheese, and he and Paul had nothing left. Neither was prepared to starve or suffer the pangs of thirst, and so, when they saw a deserted tavern by the side of a road, they entered and drank their fill. Dom Afonso was there too, a grim-faced man with staring eyes. Sir Charles saw him and wondered what sort of a man he might be, but then some French peasants entered and Sir Charles’s fate was sealed.