The Retreat (medieval historical fiction)

Chapter 4 In the Name of Christ

The bridge was slick with blood. Hands stained red, our peasants and elderly men and women were hurriedly searching bodies for coins and the unworthy thought occurred to me that they were like flies gathering on the dead.

'Aha!' Rainulf, still covered in gore, pulled a corpse clear. It was that of the purple-clad commander who had talked to me less than an hour ago. Likely the man's death was a result of Jacques having fulfilled his promise, the haft of an arrow protruded from the commander's ribs. If so, Jacques had my admiration for the shot, while the dead man had my commiseration for his ignoble end.

Having gathered the corpse's long brown hair in his left hand, Rainulf struck at its white neck with an axe held in his right fist. Three messy blows and the head came off.

'What the Devil are you about? Playing with that unfortunate man's body?' Gerard was splashed in blood around the waist and legs, but his balding head was freshly washed and glistened in the sun.

'This is going to hang over the gate.'

'Why?'

'What was it he said?' Rainulf looked up at me from his grisly trophy, 'something about having his head on the gate if he let us past? Well, it turns out that was to be his fate either way.' He grimaced a kind of grin, showing the famous blue incisor that gave him the nickname 'Bluetooth'.

'Hurry your men. Let's get everyone across and burn this bridge.' Gerard was unsmiling.

The burly man straightened up slowly, as though his muscles ached from the battle. 'Since when do you command the mutur?'

'I do not. But you know as well as I that woe comes to the thief who sleeps in the house he has robbed.'

Rainulf did not reply, but went back towards the city, swinging the pallid head by its hair. One or two of the mutur shouted jests towards him. Back on the bridge, Gerard watched Rainulf for some time, with an expression on his face that was hard to read. Not quite anger, but something like it.

There were dozens of men and women hunting through the dead around me, taking whatever they found of value. Any of them would have done, I suppose, but I saw a girl about my age. She was pretty, with pale skin and long curling raven hair that was almost as lustrous as that a noblewoman, although her clothes were coarse and patched.

'Hey girl.'

'Me?'

'Yes.' I waited while she pulled away a leather pouch from the body she was accosting. As she looked at me expectantly, I tried to imagine myself in her eyes (her deep brown, attentive eyes). A victorious knight on horse, one who had just fought valiantly in battle, I was, perhaps, someone right out of a chanson.

'Well?' she looked back at the bodies, no doubt impatient to get back to her search.

'I'll pay you to look after my sergeant. He's wounded and will need to be attended to on a cart while we travel.'

'Attended to?'

'Cleaned, fed.'

'Is that all? Not bedded?'

'Not bedded? What, do you think me a whoremaster? He is a brave man in need of care.'

'I know what you knights are like. You think you can take us whenever you want.'

'Look, that's him over there against the tree. Arnulf is his name. He could be dead in a week from that wound. He's not going to ravage anyone.'

'All right. Two pennies a day and you bring the meat for us all.'

'Granted.' I turned my horse away from her, disappointed. In truth, I had expected her to show more admiration for me and more pleasure in having been singled out to serve us. Without us, she would have no hope of returning home. Where was her gratitude? Such thoughts I quickly checked, they were vain and unworthy. Perhaps in her past were events that justified her assumptions about the lust of noblemen.