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way out to the steps of the tower where he breathed the smoky night air. He wanted to get farther away, but some of the count’s men had found an ox in the castle’s stable and were torturing the beast, prodding it with spears and swords, skipping away when it lumbered around to face them, and he did not dare try to thread his way through the vicious game. Then the screaming began in the hall behind.
    A hand touched his shoulder and he turned, raising the heavy staff, only to see it was a priest, an older man, who offered the monk a skin of wine. ‘It seems,’ the older man said, ‘that you do not approve of what the count does?’
    ‘You do?’
    The priest shrugged. ‘Villon took the count’s wife, so what does he expect? And our church gave its blessing to the count’s revenge, and with reason. Villon is a despicable man.’
    ‘And the count is not?’ Brother Michael decided he hated the fat count, with his greasy hair and heavy jowls.
    ‘I am his chaplain and confessor,’ the older priest said, ‘so I know what he is.’ He sounded bleak. ‘And you,’ he asked the monk, ‘what brings you to this place?’
    ‘I bring a message for
le Bâtard
,’ Brother Michael said.
    ‘What message?’
    The English monk shook his head. ‘I’ve not read it.’
    ‘You should always read messages,’ the older man said with a smile.
    ‘It’s sealed.’
    ‘A hot knife will solve that.’
    Brother Michael frowned. ‘I was told not to read it.’
    ‘By whom?’
    ‘By the Earl of Northampton. He said it was urgent and private.’
    ‘Urgent?’
    Brother Michael crossed himself. ‘It’s said that the Prince of Wales is gathering another army. I think
le Bâtard
is ordered to join it.’ He shrugged. ‘That would make sense, anyway.’
    ‘It would.’
    The conversation had distracted Brother Michael from the terrible screams that sounded inside the hall. Those screams slowly subsided, became a pathetic whimpering, and only then did the count’s chaplain lead the monk back to the flamelight in the pillared chamber. Brother Michael did not look at the naked thing on the bloody floor. He stayed at the back of the hall, hidden from the gelded man by the crowd of mailed soldiers.
    ‘We are done,’ the Count of Labrouillade said to
le Bâtard
.
    ‘We are done, my lord,’
le Bâtard
agreed, ‘except you owe us the money for capturing this place swiftly.’
    ‘I owe you the money,’ the count agreed, ‘and it waits for you at Paville.’
    ‘Then we shall go to Paville, my lord.’
Le Bâtard
offered the count a bow, then clapped his hands to get his men’s attention. ‘You know what to do! Do it!’
    Le Bâtard
’s men had to collect their own wounded, pick up their dead, and retrieve the arrows shot in the fight, because English arrows were hard to find in Burgundy, Toulouse and Provence. It was dawn before
le Bâtard
’s men filed out of the city’s ravaged gate, crossed the bridge in the valley and turned eastwards. The wounded were carried in carts, but every other man rode, and Brother Michael, who had snatched a few hours’ sleep, could at last count
le Bâtard
’s company. He had learned that some of the Hellequin were still guarding the castle at Castillon that was their refuge, but
le Bâtard
still led a formidable force. There were just over sixty archers, all of them English or Welsh, and thirty-two men-at-arms, mostly from Gascony, but some from the Italian states, a handful from Burgundy, a dozen from England, and some from further away, all of them adventurers who sought money and had found it with
le Bâtard
. With their servants and squires, they formed a war band that could be hired by any lord who had the resources to afford the best, though any lord who wished to fight against the English or their Gascon allies had to look elsewhere because
le Bâtard
would not help. He liked to say that he helped England’s enemies kill one another, and those enemies paid him for that help. They were