CHAPTER 9: ACCURSED ROUEN

CHAPTER 9: ACCURSED ROUEN

        Copyright: Thomas Hoskyns Leonard, Edinburgh, October 2017

                                                                                    

The Grace Dieu sailed gently down the River Ouse with eighty men-at-arms aboard. When

they reached the village of Blacktoft, where the Trent joins the Ouse, another caravel departed from the wharf, also flying the flag of St. George.

The Mon Droit was the larger vessel, and Richard Plantagenet, Duke of York and shifty distant cousin of the king, flaunted himself in all his finery, on its middle deck, surrounded by his ever fawning knights and gawping, enslaved deck-hands. The duke had briefly returned from Rouen to Yorkshire on personal business, and to organize reinforcements from his Castle Sandal in the West Riding.

Richard's upbringing as a ward of his future wife's father had been insecure owing to the procrastinations of his father of Conisburgh and his uncle of York. Consequently, Richard was an irascible, power-hungry mongrel with a wild sense of humour, who occasionally lapsed into civilised behaviour as a patron of a renowned poet-friar of Stoke Clare.

Duke Richard was of impressive physique, with a special talent for forcing his opinion on others. He took after his aggressive ancestor Henry Curtmantle, the first King of England of the Plantagenet line and the hammer of the culturally widely influential Irish. Unlike the wicked Curtmantle, Richard loved the Irish and had fine ideas in his mind for their future.

The Mon Droit and the Grace Dieu sailed together into the open waters of the Humber, past the drab buildings of Kings-town upon Hull, and on towards the green, rippling expanse of the North Sea. In the late afternoon, the ships moored for the night in solemn Skeggi's town, a fishing village on the dour Lincolnshire coast.

Sir Percival de Gasgogne took his lieutenant, Hunk Hunchman and his sergeant, Duncan Cotter ashore for supper in the Boiled Haddock Inn.

“We will be manning a tower and curtain wall overlooking the drawbridge in the splendid Château Bouvreuil, and making sorties into Île de France,” explained Sir Percival, flicking his ginger-painted eyelashes. “Rouen is crawling with crafty Burgundians, though the good Jews have long since departed for better pastures.”

Methinks the coxcomb has a brother-in-law for a Jew, mused Duncan, and a fine gentleman and a scholar at that. Cranky Percy's wee brother, my lost son Harry also has the noble Jew for a brother-in-law. What could be better than that?

“It's where the Duke of York holds court and rules the roost,” explained Hunk, flexing his biceps. “His poxy retainers far outnumber us.”

“And his howling brat of a crappy son lives in Rouen with his pious, scheming mother,” added Sir Percival, holding his ears in jest. “She should return to Ludlow Castle in Stropshire and keep her peace.”

Stropshire, begad! thought Duncan. Is that meant to be a joke?

“How many sergeants will you have among your five score men?” he enquired, supping his beer.

Sir Percival counted his fingers. “Four, with one for each platoon. I've promoted Hunk to be my lieutenant as sweet Flick died of dysentary last month.”

“Splendid!” exclaimed Hunk, out loud. “I intend to capture the town of Les Mureaux for the king after traversing the mighty Seine.”

Hunk sounds like a fog-horn, thought Duncan. He expresses his opinions to all and sundry.

At that very moment, the fork-bearded Duke of York stalked into the room, accompanied by three obsequious lords, all homely in their countenance.

The Goddess Asherah slipped off her surfing plank on the Sea of Yam. What is this reprobate of all ill-born reprobates up to now? she wondered, as she leapt into the arms of the ever handsome Yahweh who was waiting for her on the pebbly beach.

“Greetings, sodden-witted cousin of my motley-minded Neville wife,” growled the duke. “Tell your loud-mouthed, piffling pipsqueak, dear Percy, that my troops in Meulan-en-Yveslines are well able to accomplish the modest conquest he proposes, since we have the knack. There is no need for him to float over the Seine like a duck fit to quack.”

“Greetings, fair Richard,” replied the tight-limbed Sir Percival, grovelling to his feet, “poet extraordinaire, Lord of the Marches, and future King of England.”

“If not me, then perchance my infant son will succeed sloppy Henry to his throne should the king remain childless, and witless too.”

Sir Percival grinned craftily. “I can vouch with certainty that you were in Rouen during the days that your son was by conceived by your dear Cecylle. I saw your fleeting face appear during the Masque of the Twelve Black Witches of Nantes, though the crowd was jam-packed to overflowing. Methinks you'd returned fleetingly from the front.”

The duke ruffled his salty strands of hair with his pock-ridden fingers. “God's zooks! I'll chop your prancing feet off on the block, futile monster that you are! How dare you insinuate by cunning implication that I was away from my dear wife during that splendid time?”

“Mille regrets, dear cousin. I know for a fact that it was your well-bearded relative of Little Muddlesworth who appeared in a scarlet costume in Caen.”

Duke Richard grunted and grumped. “Apologies accepted, I suppose. You may wash the warts on my back when I bathe on the quarterdeck tonight.”

Not even Sir Percival could stomach that. “I have to respectfully decline, Your Grace. Hunk and I have already paid a buxom wench good money to share for the night.”

“I doubt that you can even raise it to the vertical, goblin of nothingness,” roared Richard, Duke of York, stomping away to the heavily-laden beer table.

A couple of days later, the two caravels sailed into the Trough [the English Channel] by Beachy Head. They hugged the Sussex coast before rounding the headland at Dungeness and tacking proudly into the magnificent harbour at Rye at the silted mouth of the River Rother, a town that was almost completely surrounded by sea.

Hunk Hunchman explained to Duncan that while nearby New Romney had been regarded as the main Cinque port in the past, that honour was by then bestowed upon Rye. That was after the Rother twisted and turned like a wandering snake leaving New Romney isolated and stranded inland.

Consequently, two royal warships, the St. Edward the Confessor and the Righteous George, were waiting in Rye Harbour to escort the caravels south to Le Havre the following day.

The Mon Droit sailed straight to the wharf, leaving the Grace Dieu to drop anchor in the picturesque harbour. After attending to their toilettes, Hunk, Duncan and Sir Percival were rowed ashore in a clinker-built skiff by two perky deckhands who Sir Percival eyed up with due pomposity. After climbing the barnacle encrusted harbour steps they headed for the Plough Inn, where Richard, Duke of York was holding forth to his powerful nobles. Duncan quickly realised that they'd walked straight into a brouhaha of the highest order.

“The cowardly Count of Provence has written to me saying he wishes a truce,” stuttered Baron Rupert Régress of Rachedale, a spotty youth. “The big, fat ponce would like to spend more time in Marseilles cracking his horny whip.”

“The highly devious René of Anjou is up to his tricks again,” replied the street-wise Richard of York, with a piercing look. “He wishes to retrain his troops since so many have deserted him in the field.”

A homely lord with a wart on his chin gave Baron Rupert a harsh glare, and removed a dog-eared piece of parchment from his satin and leather purse.

“This letter was intercepted by one of my Burgundian spies, Lord Rupert,” announced the hawk-eyed fellow. “In it, you invite the dastardly Count of Provence to stand ready to invade Normandy via Flanders from Lorraine.”

“Barnacles!” raged Baron Rupert. “Poppycock! It's all damned lies,”

“You are the cockalorum who tastes poppies!” retorted the homely lord. “You state that you will advise Count René concerning any plans which Duke Richard might have to cross the Seine into Île de France. This would of course leave Rouen relatively defenceless and at the mercy of the French.”

Sir Percival de Gasgogne licked his lips and crouched like a tigress ready to pounce.

“Forgery!” shrieked Baron Rupert, in terror and horror. “A forgery by my enemies to discredit me to my duke.”

Sir Percival ran up, and smacked the baron's spotty face with his thorny hand. “Traitor! Traitor to your duke! Traitor to your king!”

“No!!!!”

Sir Percival caught the baron with a flimsy backhander across his chin and gave him a slick side-kick in his groin.

“The beast deserved it!” wailed Baron Rupert, floundering on the ground. “Duke Richard stole our family estates in the Wolds from my great grandmother when I was an orphaned infant. He deserves to die!!”

“You pass sentence out of your own mouth, dear Rupert,” the duke replied, with a flick of his right pinkie, “like my dear father of Conisburgh did when he to his death in Southampton went.”

“Mercy! Mercy! I lick the dust before your feet!”

“No mercy! Ask your worthy retainers to take him outside and secure him in a tree, dearest Percy. Thereupon, cut him to death in whatever magical ways you can conjure, and throw his bleeding morsels into the sea. But leave a trophy, a mere trifle for me, so that I may hang it on the portcullis of Sandal Castle in my own cherished Riding.”

“But what will happen to my family in Rachedale House?” howled Rupert Régress. The wretched baron was in such a tizz that he gushed pish down the insides of both his hairy legs.

“We'll burn that place,” roared Duke Richard, giving Regréss a hearty belt around his mouth.

What happened outside wasn't nice. Sir Percival started by cutting Rupert's pimples off his face...

The St. Edward the Confessor and the Righteous George flanked the caravels from York the following morning, when they set sail to the south from Rye. They resembled two Persian galleons and each had a six foot cannon secured to the deck near the prow. The wind was fair set, and the small fleet made excellent progress through the choppy blue waves, though Duncan suffered the mal de mer and Sir Percival puked over the gunwale.

Around lunchtime a shot rang out from the prow of the Righteous George, and smoke spewed across the surface of the sea. A long-ship flying the Vytis flag of the Grand Duchy of Lithuania promptly splintered into two and more pieces, and the valiant Prince Kestutis of Trakar fell, pierced by shards, on the quarterdeck.

“I didn't know we were at war with those Mongols,” said Sir Percival, with a smirk, as the crew of the alien long-ship floundered unassisted in the water.

By mid-evening, the English flotilla was approaching the coast of Normandy, and Duncan spotted the comically shaped lighthouse outside the great seaport of Le Havre which guided the pilots towards the mouth of the Seine. The ships moored in Honfleur on the southern side of the estuary, and Duncan Cotter stepped onto Norman soil for the first time in his or Richard de Liddell's life.

The following day, the two warships sailed back towards Rye, and the oarsmen on the Grace Dieu and Mon Droit were put to work as their vessels progressed at pace up the Seine.

After Notre-Dame-de-Gravenchon, the Seine swivelled and turned, like a peaceful grass-snake, through forests and parkland, and Duncan wondered whether he was in Paradise. When the sun began to sink rosily behind them, they saw the spires of the great city of Rouen in the distance. The rowers laid into their oars as the current became swifter.

Duncan got into conversation with a youthful trooper who'd been told to swab the decks. Lieutenant Hunk Hunchman glared at the lad as he scrubbed the dirty planks on his hands and knees, and grinned. There was something mysterious about the boy, and Duncan even wondered whether he was a Zoroastrian from Persia.

“Hello, I'm Duncan Cotter,” said the rugged Scot. “I'm from East-Lothian.”

“Yes, Sergeant Cotter,” replied the lad, deferentially nodding his head. “Lieutenant Hunchman tells me that you're to be the sergeant of my platoon. I'm Baggy Ash, and I was born in Lincoln. My real birth name is Bagoas.”

“Now there's a name steeped in history. One of King Alexander of Macedon's favourite companions was called Bagoas.”

“Was he? I don't know anything about the uncultured Romans.”

Duncan remembered some of the bits and pieces which Samuel Hart had told him about Baggy's birthplace, and decided to change the subject.

“The people of Lincoln are a bit strange aren't they? They worship Almighty God, and yet they can be very cruel to many of their kind.”

“Only like any other city. But my ancestors were mistreated for years. They were enslaved and abused in heathen ways by the de Bruins of Crankcroft Manor, and thought to be witless. My more recent forebears hewed the ore from the iron mines near Nettleton; the snook-ridden nobles kept their labourers' noses in the sludge and their knees in the shit.”

“How prepostorous!

“It was utterly appalling. But I could be as successful as the best of those beef-witted cozenors if I was given half a chance. I've taught myself to read and scribble, and to speak pidgeon French. I could become a learned scholar.”

I wonder whether the handsome fellow's Jewish? deliberated Duncan. Maybe the English didn't throw out all of the Jewish labourers during the mass expulsion of 1290, perhaps because they still wished to profit by them. There's a thought!

Lieutenant Hunk Hunchman strolled up and tweaked Baggy's shoulder blades.

“I appreciate your help, Baggy. I'll give you an extra ration of scrumpy later.”

Baggy gave Hunk a delightful smirk.

“Why thank you, Hunky. Perchance we could play a game of Karnöffel together later.”

What an endearing young man, thought Duncan. I will protect him well.

The City of Rouen was situated, in large part, on the northern banks of a curve in the Seine, and the triple towers of its cathedral, Notre-Dame de Rouen figured prominently at its epicentre.

After they'd moored their caravels in the decaying naval dockyard, the knights and their troopers marched jauntily into the city from the west, with a laissez-faire attitude from the citizens.

Baggy Ash nudged Duncan Cotter's shoulder and advised him that the Château Bouvreuil was built at the behest of King Philip le Magnifique of France after he recovered Normandy from the evil King John of England in 1204.

“I don't understand,” said Duncan, touching the nape of Baggy's neck. “I thought that King Edward of Windsor ruled these parts much later than that.”

“Who cares?” said Baggy, giving Duncan an affectionate peck on his cheek. “But the English re-occupied Normandy yet again after King Henry's stroppy Papa whopped the frog-eaters at Agincourt in 1415.”

The château was a Castle of Dreams constructed in the remains of an old Gallic-Roman amphitheatre. The gable-roofed portcullis tower was set into the lofty front of the roughly rectangular castle, flanked at a distance by two strong towers adorned with turrets. The far corner of the castle to the left was protected by an even larger tower, the castle's dongon, known as le Grosse Tour.

The bold soldiers from Yorkshire headed straight for le Grosse Tour and drank mead and scrumpy and played cards into the night.

“This is where Jeanne D'Arc was beaten and tortured,” spluttered Baggy, choking on his scrumpy.

“Why?” asked Duncan, a touch befuddled by his mead.

“She was thoroughly mistreated after the sleazy Burgundians captured her,” replied Baggy, touching Duncan's knee, “and the poor, wretched girl was left ransomed by her traitorous king.”

“Waesucks!”

“It certainly does,” replied Baggy, wafting his scent. “God dammit! Why don't we share a bunk in the turret tonight?”

“Gad's budlikins!” exclaimed Duncan, taking a sniff.

And while Duncan could have done without the pong, he appreciated the sleepy cuddle.

In the morning, Duncan couldn't help noticing, while Baggy was scrubbing himself in a large pewter bath, that the young fellow was lacking his foreskin. That got Duncan to thinking even more about the Jews of Lincolnshire together with the ways in which they'd been expelled and maltreated. He was glad that the Jews had never been expelled from Scotland, though he'd met scant few Children of Israel in his own country apart from the Rabbi of Dene who still guided him occasionally in his dreams.

Sergeant Duncan Cotter and his platoon spent the next few weeks patrolling the curtain wall which stood below the castle donjon and forty feet above the moat. They were attired in fine red and white tunics, wore long daggers in their purple sheaths, and wielded ferocious-looking pikes.

Baggy Ash was quickly promoted from the ranks for his youthful enthusiasm. The fresh smelling Corporal Bagoas strutted to and fro making himself sound very important indeed.

There was little action with the enemy since Normandy's border with the rest of France was miles away. Duncan therefore whiled away his time observing the to-ings and fro-ings across the drawbridge, particularly when prisoners of war were brought in from Île de France.

One night, Bagoas and Duncan were indulging in some amusing horseplay together in the turret, when Bagoas suddenly sat back on his haunches.

“But why do men like men, despite what Moses tells us in Leviticus?” he asked, tickling Duncan's foot.

“It is an attraction which is enhanced by peace, but can be catalysed by violence,” replied Duncan. “It is in all of us. Moses simply wanted to prevent noxious diseases passing between us,”

“But we all love women too, do we not?”

“That is, in all verity, as God wishes it to be. It is written in Genesis that we are all born in His image, male and female alike, and that was thereby established long before even the Babylonians.”

“Thank you. But which way round the bush of thorns should the two of us play, should we achieve our divine destiny in ecstasy? That is the burning question.”

“Egads! What confounded cheek!”

“But…”

“Don't you dare!”

Duncan spent some of his free time praying in Notre-Dame de Rouen, only a few streets away from the Seine. The Coq et Dauphin Tavern, nestled between the compact town-houses on Rue Beauvoisine, was even more tempting, and Duncan was attracted by the huge stuffed dolphin above the doorway.

When Duncan ventured into the tavern with Baggy, they were greeted by the proprietress Mistress Audrey Hobson, her hair in combs, her dress all awry.

“Ar be Mistress Audrey,” she drawled, in Devonshire brogue. “Ar ain't real English. Ar be from Tawi on the top of der Moor, where we be a' minin' copper and arsenic for der boss-eyed Bishop of Exeter. And dis be Meg Tuppen, bain't she? She be from Meavy where dey eat der dinner inside der older of der two oak trees and pee on t'other.”

“When did you arrive in this fair city?” Duncan courteously inquired.

“Trust yer to arsk! We sailed out of Sudtone 'Arbour in a crappy long-ship fully three years a' back when der Cornish from Gunnislake were giving us mighty flack in der Toll Bridge Inn on Stonehouse Creek, b'aint dey?”

“Do you favour the citizens of wondrous Rouen?” asked Bagoas, doffing his feather cap.

“Dey ain't der cat's whiskers, puppy dat yer be. Der native Norman's 'ere are mealy-mouthed, der Burgundians spew shit out of der zides of der mouths, and der snotty English give me too much lip. Pour 'em some beer, Meg, while I roast 'em two pipin' 'ot pot-pies and fry 'em a pork sausage with eggs a' top.”

Duncan and Bagoas struck up an excellent friendship with Mistress Audrey and her maid Meg. The good mistress gave Bagoas a hearty hug and told him the tale of the pixies of Tawi when they the road to Tavistock around the stone circle took.

That night, pretty Meg Tuppen crept up the stairs into the turret of le Grosse Tour, and slipped into Duncan's and Bagoas's cramped bunk.

When Duncan woke up in the morning, he didn't know which way to turn.

“My goodness!” exclaimed Bagoas, when Meg suddenly stirred with a start. “I wasn't expecting that.”

Meg was a slim, wiry girl with dark hair and an effervescent personality, and her features were remarkably similar to Bagoas's. Her mother's family, previously called Bernheim, had come to Plimmuth from La Rochelle in an open boat during the purge of AD 1291, and Meg secretly regarded herself as Jewish.

Both Duncan and Bagoas looked forward to kipping with wholesome Meg one more time.

During a wintry day in December of 1442, the bombastic Richard Plantagenet, Duke of York, the cunning John Beaufort, Duke of Somerset, and two companies of troopers returned from a skirmish on the road to Magny-en-Vixen with four cartloads of prisoners-of-war, and Duncan and Bagoas ran down the steps to the castle quadrangle with the similarly curious Sir Percival de Gasgogne to see what was happening.

Three Portuguese mercenaries were decapitated on the spot, and the French prisoners dragged away to the dungeons, leaving two freezing Scottish mercenaries standing there forlornly waiting for their death. They were from Aberdeen and from Fife.

The Duke of York grinned one of his most fearsome grins. “These degenerates are traitors to our king, and should therefore die a traitor's death.”

“But my allegiance is to King James the Second of Scotland,” protested the soldier with the leather stirrups, “like all good Scots an auld ally of the French.”

“That loon's cocksure Papa copped it in a dank basement with a dagger in his pompous belly,” chortled Duke Richard, “and he'll grow up to be a red-faced leprechaun himself.”

“The Scottish minions are vassals to their overlord, Henry of England and France,” roared John Beaufort, grabbing a flaming torch from one of his troopers.

“Mercy, my Lord,” wailed the trooper in the red vest. “I have a family of thirteen to support in royal Dunfermline.”

“More the fool you for spawning thirteen brats as noisy as yourself,” sniggered Beaufort, winking in the direction of Sir Percival de Gasgogne.

Sir Percival took his cue. He leapt forward like a tiger, twisted his dagger into the talkative trooper's gut, and disembowelled him on the spot

“Well twisted, sweet Percy,” exclaimed Richard of York, preening his eyebrows, “and now treat t'other barbarous Scot the righteous same.”

But Sir Percival had sprained his wrist with his first thrust. “Skewer him like a pig, Corporal Ash,” he commanded, “and spread his offal o'er the filthy cobbles with his dripping shit.”

Duncan watched in horror as Baggy strode towards the other Scottish soldier nervously brandishing his dagger.

But the lad from Lincoln thought better of it.

“I cannot slay another of God's creatures in this heathen way,” he asserted. “To do so would run counter to my eternal conscience, so help me Moses and Elijah and all the prophets of Israel.”

“We'll put you on bread and water for the week, daft stripling,” howled John Beaufort, thrusting his burning torch into the soldier's face.

And Duncan Cotter wept tears when the two Scots were gruesomely dispatched to their Maker on the tips of four red-hot pikes.

Why are the cursed English my paymasters? agonised Duncan, Scotland, Scotland, where art thou noble Scotland? Come back to me, cherished Alba!

During March 1443, the worthy Duke of York, who enjoyed sallying forth to turn the tables on the enemy, ordered his troops to engage in a mock sortie, as he feared that the French might attack Rouen's underbelly from the south.

Following Duke Richard's detailed requests, Duncan and Bagoas unlocked a small wooden door on the inside of the curtain wall in front of the keep. They discovered a narrow staircase descending steeply downwards, and led their platoon of men into the bowels of the earth. Most were carrying shields and pikes and some holding lanterns.

After about sixty feet, Duncan peered through a metal grating and saw three grisly skeletons hanging upside down in a deep dungeon. Soon after that the staircase broadened out and became more stylish and less steep. Duncan thought that it was quite Romanesque. Then, after curving downwards for another hundred feet, the troops emerged into a cavernous chamber lined with statues of Roman gods and goddesses.

Sir Percival de Gasgogne and Lieutenant Hunk Hunchman followed quickly behind with the remainder of their company of troopers. Within a few minutes, they were joined by the Dukes of York and Somerset and two further English companies.

“Welcome to the Hall of Hyperion,” announced Richard, Duke of York, caressing his forked beard as if it were his wife's pretty face. “It was hacked out of the rock by Caesar's battalions when Rouen was Rotamegus, and Caesar, the weak-kneed 'Queen of Bithynia', was scared shitless of Vercingetorix.”

“What next?” inquired the Duke of Somerset, irritated by the delay.

“You have ants in your pants, Beaufort,” snorted Richard of York, with a rude twist of his hips. “We will proceed to the village of Le-Petit-Quevilly on the southern banks of the Seine and beyond the city walls, and assume military formation.”

The troops marched up a spacious, winding passageway lined with traces of the ores which were once mined by the Gauls, and after lots of panting and puffing they reached a marble staircase. This they majestically climbed, only to emerge behind the altar of the Chapel of St. Julien. The villagers of Le-Petit-Quevilly cocked a snoot when the troops came out into the daylight. So the bold soldiers created a diamond formation in a field while a flock of sheep watched in disbelief.

“Charge!” cried the grand Duke of York, with his sword borne upright before him, and the sheep were cut to ribbons as their wool fluffed through the air.

What does this portend for the future? deliberated Duncan. Are sorties at all wise? Or could they lead to a quiet, or not so quiet, demise?

In the early Spring of 1443, news reached Rouen that an allied force from Beauvais, the capital of the Oise, had crossed the Normandy border, lead by Duke Louis of Savoy, a shadow of his father Amadeus and a vassal of the French. The French and Savoyian troops had occupied Gourney-en-Bray and were pillaging the village and laying waste to the surrounding countryside.

Having decided to march on Gourney the following morning with five companies of troopers and a band of archers, Richard of York held a council of war in the Coq et Dauphin tavern on Rue Beauvoisine during the evening, with his officers and knights.

Mistress Audrey Hobson poured the claret wine for the knights, Meg Tuppen the beer for the officers, and Duke Richard drained a flagon of malmsey.

“We will camp south of Gourney-en-Bray by nightfall, and attack them with five rotating diamonds before the crack of dawn,” pontificated the duke. “We will impale them to the ground while they sleep and throw their writhing bodies into the bushes while they quake.”

“Any questions?” asked a misshapen knight with a gold nose, who bore a resemblance to the hunchback Bossu himself.

“What if they are awake and waiting for us when we attack?” asked a slick sergeant from Harrowgate with the look of a Turk.

“Thrust forwards with your pikes, you fool,” slurped Duke Richard, “and rip their guts open with your daggers. The knights will clear up the bits and pieces.”

“I'm sure that we'll be able to organise our attack a bit better than that,” ventured John Beaufort, Duke of Somerset.”

“Horse's feathers!” howled Duke Richard, with a shake of his fist. “You always stir the shit.”

“Any other questions?” asked the knight with the gold nose.

“I have a question,” chortled Duke Richard, his chops all 'a slubbering. “Who is that slovenly broad who pours the ale?”

“I'm Meg Tuppen from Meavy-on-the-Moor, if you please, Sire,” replied the wiry maid, though quite taken aback. “Would you care for an hors d'oevres or a boiled leg of rabbit?”

“Tuppen? That's a name for a yokel! Come and sit on my lap and let my energy sap.”

“If you please, Sire,” replied Meg, acquiescing as she believed she was supposed to.

“Now tell me about the Satanic rites of the Druids when they sacrifice the human flotsam on the top of the Moors of the Dart,” chuckled the duke, making a greedy grab in his drunkenness.

“You can't do that, Sire!” protested Corporal Bagoas Ash, running up waving his fist. “A woman is a lady for all that whether she's from noble or peasant stock, or wherever.”

“On your knees, moron!” roared the Duke, angrily rising to his feet. “I'll attend to you when I've finished courting this craven wench.”

“My forefathers scorched the ore for your swords from the iron mines by Nettleton,” raved Bagoas, striking the duke full in his face, “and I'll ne'er answer to any prince or duke who blasphemes God's Holy word on these matters.”

“Aaaaaaaaarg!” exclaimed the assembled gathering, falling to their knees in supplication.

“He has struck our holy duke in his ennobled face!” howled a sergeant from Corby.

“He has defiled our line of command!” raved a knight with a purple feather in his cap.

But Corporal Bagoas simply stood there, with an imperturbable expression on his serene countenance.

After a full minute's deathly hush, a knight with cauliflower ears ran up and secured Bagoas from behind by his wrists.

“Should I take the stupid loon outside and cut off his nose, Sire?” growled the knight, to general murmurings of approval from knights and officers alike.

A horribly vicious thought sneaked into the noble duke's mind, but he wisely discarded it, for the moment at least.

“The quality of mercy is all that concerns Almighty God,” replied the duke, wiping his brow, “and mercy I now show to this totally undeserving sewer monkey. He can keep his ill-gotten nose. Merely throw the delinquent over that beer barrel and flagellate him like an errant monk.”

“You are too merciful in God's eyes, Your Grace,” burbled a shifty corporal from Whitby Bay, with a token grovel.

“It comes with my good humour, my son, but it will please me to watch the grovelling worm quiver and shake.”

When a kindly lord with the wart on his chin chafed Bagoas with his horse whip, he didn't lay into the brave lad as hard as many might have.

Bagoas tautened his muscles, gnawed his lower lip, kept his upper lip stiff, and sulked. Duncan retched and Meg burst into tears when they saw the blood drip.

“Just watch him wriggle,” exclaimed an old knight from Doncaster.

“And now, on that tender note, for the coup de grâce, Prince Arthur of Brittany,” announced Duke Richard of York, with a dark gleam in his eye.

“Please don't geld him!” shrieked Meg, in utter consternation.

“Yer could be John Lackland 'is self!” raged Mistress Hobson, brandishing her rolling pin.

Prince Arthur haunts this city and its castle with Jeanne D'Arc, like a ghost kept from Heaven, lamented Duncan Cotter, after William the Bastard cursed it rotten during his ignoble, gutless, death in the God-damned Priory of St. Gervase. Begone, accursed Rouen to Orion's stars!

Hummmmm, mused Duke Richard. Crafty John was my Plantagenet ancestor by my own male line. Maybe a streak of him survives in me.

“No!!!!!” shrieked Corporal Bagoas. “Not that!”

That is verily so, mused Duke Richard, when he was next sober: the she-devil John Softsword, Henry of Winchester, Edward Longshanks, the ignoble Edward who died according his wife Isabella's merciless, red-hot whim, Edward of Windsor, Duke Edmund of York, my dear lamented father Richard of Conisburgh, and me. Thereby flows the blood.

The next morning, Sergeant Duncan Cotter gladly marched east out of Rouen with a dark-haired soldier from Brummagem, and with a wet-eyed Corporal Bagoas Ash, who was favouring his right leg, his face an unholy mess, and the blood moistening the seat of his pantaloons, after his cruel lambasting of the night before. To Bagoas's good fortune, Duke Richard had nurtured a punishment less painful than gelding in his tortuous mind.

“How are you feeling this morning, Corporal?” inquired Duncan, handing his companion a mug of rainwater.

“I dunno wot to feel,” mumbled Bagoas, ice cold in his sulk. “I dunno which side to fight.”

“I know not what to think either,” said Duncan, “'Tis a living Purgatory for me.”

“What's hurting where and most?” asked the trooper from Brummagem.

“The pain in my brain,” answered Bagoas, with a blink. “I'll compose a refrain.”

After a stiff march of some forty English miles, the Duke of York's small army approached the enemy-occupied village of Gourney-en-Bray, close to Normandy's border with the territories north of Île de France which were controlled by the French. The English veered to the south, and set up camp north of the recently evacuated village of Saint-Pierre-es-Champs.

The French and Savoyian soldiers came out through the cottages about a mile further to the north, and a bolt from a crossbow sped fifty feet or so above the English knights' heads. The English archers ran forwards and went to work with their longbows, and the enemy soldiers and crossbowmen disappeared swiftly from sight.

The start of many a battle is delayed by lack of organisation and crass tomfoolery. The next morning, the cocks had crowed thrice before the cocksure English knights, troopers, and archers advanced from their camp in broad daylight, leaving behind a single platoon of men to guard the baggage train.

An eerie silence befell Gourney as they approached the thatched, white-painted cottages. When Hunk Hunchman crawled ahead through the undergrowth with two sprightly troopers, they discovered that the place was almost entirely deserted, though not by the sleeping dogs, the lazy cats, and several aging villagers who were obstinately drinking at a table outside the Vache et Taureau Tavern. The four companies of troopers thereupon marched in triumph through the village, while the archers dispersed themselves ahead and the knights rode casually behind.

But beyond the village there lay an enormous Capuchin monastery next to a pine forest.

“There they are!” yelled Lieutenant Hunchman, as the enemy soldiers and chivalry appeared in full view, amassed in full battle order on a sloping meadow to the south of the forest.

The Duke of York directed his troops to advance steadily toward the French and Savoyans, with their pikes at the ready. When they were close enough, the English archers let loose their arrows, and an entire company of French troopers was decimated within several seconds.

That was enough for Louis, Duke of Savoy, the lilly-livered commander of the enemy forces. He set off in full flight across the River Epte and announced his imminent defeat as soon as he achieved the safety of the City of Beauvais.

After that débâcle, the English victory was achieved in short order, though those of the enemy troopers who were not summarily dispatched were permitted to escape across the border.

A couple of hours later, Duncan and Bagoas joined quietly in the raucous celebrations in the Vache et Taureau Tavern, while keeping well clear of Richard of York. The victorious duke had already succeeded in consuming a huge botte de bière, as large as a soldier's boot, and he'd switched his attention to the Madeira.

While Duncan and Bagoas were downing their second tankard of ale, several men-at-arms hauled two haughty prisoners of war into the tavern. At first Duncan thought that the prisoners were French knights, but he was gob-smacked when he realised who they actually were, though they'd aged somewhat since he last met them. They were none other than Sir Cuthbert Arbuthnot and Sir Peregrine Flynn, the erstwhile Scottish crown agents who'd arrested and injured Duncan and dragged him to the torture chambers in a large net, when he was called Sir Richard de Liddell and soon after the tragic deaths of his wife Ingibiorg and squire Cedric.

What a gut-wrenching surprise! Since the Scottish knights were undoubtedly French mercenaries, Duncan guessed from previous experience what would happen next.

“So what's your excuse, villiagos?” inquired Richard, Duke of York, stroking un épagneul français which was licking his dirty boots.

“I have no excuse to offer, Your Grace,” Sir Cuthbert boldly replied, straightening his flowing, white locks. “I am glad to die for my cause, honourably and with God's grace, as a Knight of the Silver Sceptre of Madrid, and a proud Embronian gentleman at that.”

“Good!” exclaimed Duke Richard, with a regal sneer. “I admire your bravery as a true Scot.”

“Thank you, Your Grace!”

“Excellent! Take this painted savage outside, Sticky Percy, circumcise him with a long saw, and shove a red-hot marlingspike down his throat.”

“Your wish is my duty to fulfil, Sire,” replied Sir Percival de Burgogne, nodding at two husky troopers. “At the spur, Sire.”

But when they took the elderly Sir Cuthbert outside, Sir Percival released him and let him run for his life. Sir Cuthbert's fragrant niece was married to Sir Percival's bullish second cousin, and family relations are so important for all that.

“Why, it's Sir Peregrine Flynn,” exclaimed the Duke of York, while Sir Cuthbert was being hustled through the door. “We met more than a few years back when your sassy king was captive in our Royal Court. What do you have to say for yourself?”

Sir Peregrine gulped, and smiled stiffly. “My family would be able to offer you a thousand gold crowns for my release, Sire, and the tenure of my estate in Derbyshire.”

“I have no need of your filthy lucre,” yelled the duke. “I have vast lands and estates of my own to nurture.”

“In that case, I humbly throw myself at your mercy, Sire.”

“Throw him into the conciergerie down by the river, Lieutenant Hunchman, while I consider his case further,” howled the duke. “The ugly oaf from Toulouse will keep him good company.”

“You're not actually planning to spare the Scottish merkin, are you, Sire?” raged a lord with jagged teeth, following Sir Peregrine's speedy departure. “He's slain twelve good English knights in his time and put a couple of Plantagenet prisoners in the lime.”

“Of course not, sweet Havers,” replied the duke, giving the French spaniel a biscuit to nibble. “I simply want the Pictish bastard to sweat. Sir Peregrine will be brought out when the church bells ring once again for Evensong, and blood-eagled in front of the troops.”

Half an hour later, Duncan Cotter took Bagoas Ash, who was still favouring his right leg, for a quiet chat under the pussy willow tree.

“I have decided to desert from the English army and to throw myself at the mercy of the French,” whispered Duncan. “Although Sir Peregrine is by no means perfect, he has a lovely young daughter, and I'm planning to try to save him from his dire fate if only for her sake. Do you think that I'm raving bonkers?”

Bagoas nodded to himself for a full quarter-minute.

“Not in the slightest, dearest Duncan,” he replied. “You must always protect your own kith and kin, and you do not owe an iota of allegiance to my dastardly countrymen.”

Duncan grasped the much-battered corporal by his shoulders.

“And would you care to accompany me on this bold venture, dearest Bagoas?” he inquired, clearing his nostrils.

To Duncan's surprise, the stripling gave him a luscious kiss on his cheek and ran his finger down the front of his chest.

“I would follow you to the ends of the Earth,” replied Bagoas, in a flush, “and I also need to escape from these barbaric murderers before they harm me further.”

Duncan hugged the lovely boy as tightly as he could without hurting him any more, and kissed him unexpectedly passionately. Thank goodness the Rabbi of Dene is still guiding me in my dreams, thought Duncan.

Awhile later, Duncan and Bagoas, descended the steps to the Conciergerie on the west bank of the Erte, with a mug of ale and a large, juicy ham roll for the guard on duty, a crass bully from King's town on Hull with a sullen smile and a haggard face. He'd already beaten up his prisoner from Toulouse and cut off two slices of his flesh.

While the greedy trooper was devouring the ham roll, Duncan drew his dagger, crept up behind him, and slit his rattle-some throat. Bagoas grabbed the keys to the cells and scampered inside to release Sir Peregrine Flynn.

“Who're you?” inquired Sir Peregrine, rubbing his eyes, when he walked back into daylight.

“Just call me Duncan,” came the reply. “I remember your darling daughter in Embro, and we're here to take you back to the French.”

At that, the motley trio charged over the wobbly footbridge. Sir Percival de Burgogne saw them running, and tried to pursue them waving a jagged marlingspike, but tripped and fell crashing into the River Erte.

Bagoas turned, laughed, and yelled “Have at you, ticklebrain!” before heading with his two companions, in close bonhomie, for the road to Beauvais.

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