Caprice and Rondo (103 page)

That crossing, at the bridge of Bouxières-les-Dames, was the one the Duke was to take, and the honour of racing ahead to secure it fell to Astorre’s men. He took half the company with him, and Thomas, leaving Julius to lead one half of what was left, and Nicholas the other. Astorre rode up, his sewn eye scarlet with pride, his sword at the salute, to take leave of his Duke, who lifted his sword in response as he rode. Nicholas saluted the captain as well, raising his arm to the men at his back. Then the little force had spurred off like demons. The bridge was five miles away.

‘A happy man,’ Julius said, looking after Astorre. ‘They’ll give him a province to govern.’

‘He wouldn’t mind that,’ Nicholas said. ‘He might get a bit bored, once he’s trained the cooks and had all the girls.’ But there wasn’t much time to talk, because the riding was so hard and the enemy troops, now in frank pursuit, were coming up between them and the river. Shortly after that, Nicholas sent Julius’s contingent, with Tobie, to try to take the forest route. There was no sense in wasting men. And he didn’t like what was happening.

A rout is not a pleasant thing. It was no advantage to be well-mounted when overtaking hundreds of staggering men and packs of riderless horses whose fallen owners were already half drowned in their armour. The plan had been to lead the Duke back through the depleted camp before Nancy, but a group of desperate riders warned them against it. Dying Nancy, swiftly apprised of the victory, had already opened its portals, and sent its people, to the sound of carillons, to hack through the Burgundian tents and carry back anything that could be devoured. The Duke’s own household had already gone, taken prisoner in the tents before Jarville.

It was hardly two hours after midday and the light was failing; the skies darkening moment by moment with promise of renewed snow.

There was no word from the bridge. The Duke’s brothers, with a small party, rode off in the gloom to discover why, and did not return. A half-crazed soldier, lunging at the Duke’s horse, caused it to throw its rider and canter back, in its jewelled housings, the way it had come — the famous Il Moro, prize enough to break up the first wave of pursuit. The Duke was pulled to his feet and stood glaring accusingly after it. His surcoat hung in shreds, leaving the bulk of his magnificent armour exposed, and his florid helmet lay burst on the ground, the golden lion knocked from its crest.

The horse that Nicholas was riding was one of Astorre’s best, and he offered it. There was no time to shorten the stirrups. While the Duke was heaved into the saddle, Nicholas strove to catch himself a replacement, using the flat of his sword to fend off competitors. The fear-crazed mare that he stopped would have been hard enough to mount without the encumbrance of half-armour. The pair of strong hands that helped haul him up into place belonged to Robin. Nicholas filled his lungs, and said, ‘Give me the sea and Paúel Benecke any day,’ and saw Robin grin. Then they turned to rejoin the Duke as the snow started to fall, white as a spear-phalanx from the darkness above, white and pink on the terrain below, where it sank upon the last moments of the retreat and the first of the approaching carnage.

Nicholas had almost caught up with the Duke when his fate finally touched him. At first, he was merely intent on forging his way through to Charles. It was possible to see that de Bièvres, the best and most loyal of men, had taken command of the dozen noblemen still surrounding the Duke, with Diniz and the small band of Charetty soldiers beside them. De Chimay had gone. Someone had found a bright yellow sash and knotted it across the Duke’s cuirass: an identification. A man cried, ‘My lord!’

Nicholas knew him. The wounded man on the stumbling horse at his side was a squire of the Bastard’s — the Duke’s half-brother Anthony. The man said, ‘I have to find my lord Duke. Is he there?’

‘In front. What is it?’ said Nicholas. He thought he could guess. He learned the truth as a sick man hears it from his physician. The Duke’s brother Baudouin was captured. The Bastard Anthony was missing, and the son who had been with him was dead. They had been waylaid on the way to the bridge of Bouxières, the Duke’s only safe exit to Metz. And the bridge, they now knew, was not open, or amenable to being occupied and secured by any company, however gallant, however determined, however well trained. The bridge had been blocked and manned for the last twenty-four hours by the Count of Campobasso and his three hundred mercenaries, avid for ransom.

Nicholas let the man spur off to the Duke. Robin said nothing. Around them, the air was white, the struggling figures grey flecked with white, the cries increasingly muffled. Nicholas said, ‘He will have to try to make for the north, over the swamps. I can do no more for him.’

He did not say what he was going to do. He supposed he did not have to.

Robin said, ‘I will come with you.’

The bridge of Bouxières should have been impossible to find, but was not. Nicholas rode as if his pendulum hung in the wild air before him: a pillar of light; the spindle of Necessity, whose daughters release souls to new lives, sending them spinning like stars to rebirth.

It was a certainty denied to the others floundering, plodding, hurrying in the dimness all around them. Many were injured, and destined to die, or to freeze in a swamp. Some of the invisible, fleeing army which filled the leagues between the Meurthe and the slopes by the forest knew that to the east and ahead, if they could find it, there was a bridge, a crossing that would take them over the river to safety. Others did not know where they were, or where they were going. No one could tell how close the enemy was, except that its cavalry was north of Nancy, and hence on their heels. And what was pursuing them was not a well-disciplined battle force under orders. It was an excited vanguard of Lorraine and Alsatian knights, some of them hoping for lucrative prisoners, some of them riding the chariots of joy, launched upon triumphant killing. And behind these would be the mountain irregulars, greedy only for the wealth of dead men; apt to kill a man for a button, unless he sported the cross of Lorraine.

A mile short of the bridge, the new dead began to appear underfoot, white as sheep, their blood still fresh on the snow. The first man Nicholas stopped by was a stranger. The second and third were Charetty men.

Robin said, ‘It must be over. They would never have run, otherwise.’ He cleared his throat. Other riders pounded heedlessly past them, either blind to the signs, or beyond fear. Through the snow, there was no sound of fighting.

‘Campobasso’s men pursued them to here, then returned to the bridge,’ Nicholas said. ‘Do you want to come with me?’ Then he saw Robin’s face and said, ‘I’m sorry.’

Before they got to the bridge, they knew that the company Astorre had brought here was finished. Experienced, stubborn old warrior that he was, he was the last man to fall for an ambush. The signs were that he had tried a feint, and tested at least one way of getting across. Then he had, in his ebullient way, simply issued a challenge to battle. Had Campobasso’s men been half the number, and battle-weary, he might have carried the bridge. As it was, he had achieved a fine, perhaps a satisfactory fight, and left his mark on the ambushers. There were more Italians than Charetty men among the bodies still piled round the approach to the crossing.

No one had come out yet to deal with the dead: it was more rewarding to trap the rich and throw into the part-frozen water the innocents attempting to cross, or to send out swift bands to round up those who held back. Two men could do nothing to retaliate, or not today. But they could, under cover of flurries of action, and God-given flurries of snow, number the fallen, and make sure that no one was living, and find at last, in the bloodiest heap, a broken-backed poke of red plumes and another of blue, which showed where Astorre and his henchmen had died, as they
had irritably fought, side by side. Astorre’s sewn eye was shut, but the other was open, fixed round and white in a final, ferocious wink.

Nicholas closed it. After a while Robin said, ‘Sir.’ And indeed, it was time to go. The hundred men lying here would be many times multiplied by the end of the day.

He did not even remember, afterwards, conferring over what they should do. He and the boy — Kathi’s husband — simply turned and rode back to where they judged they might intercept Diniz and the Duke, and the men of their company — his company — who were now in his charge.

It was crazy, of course, because in turning back, they faced the last of the refugees and the first of the oncoming pursuit. It was more ludicrous still when he learned, from someone he knew, that the Duke was still south of Nancy, trapped in the marshy rectangle between streams, and attempting to cross to his old lodging at the Commanderie of St John. If the besieged men of Nancy had raided the Burgundian tents, they would surely have stripped the Commanderie. But there was only one way to find out.

It was only three hours after noon, and Nicholas felt as he had done in the past after many hours of hard riding and hand-to-hand fighting: his sword-hand swollen and aching, his body spent, his mind numb. This battle had lasted only minutes. It was the aftermath which bludgeoned and killed.

About that time, the sky lightened, and the snow stopped. They were then on the northern bank of a pool; part of the deep-trenched stream that took its name from the Commanderie and formed, with its parallel brethren, an icy and unforgiving barrier to the north. Some had successfully crossed: the snowy sides were gouged black by their trail. Others had not. The lighter bodies adhered to the slopes; those more expensively armed had slipped into the trough and lay, submerged or embraced by the water, which was already congealing about them.

On the edge of the pool, one of the bodies wore a bright yellow sash.

Robin cried ‘No!’ and dropped with a thud from his horse. Mounted, he might have been safe. But the cry and the flash of his cuirass drew the attention of the scavenging soldiers now streaming up to the far side of the ditch. One of them lifted a crossbow and fired, once at Robin, and once at the silhouetted figure of Nicholas, crashing down from his horse. Then someone lifted a handgun.

The bolts struck: the first smashing through Robin’s thigh below his half-armour, and the other throwing Nicholas back, half concussed. He saw Robin begin to fall and was struggling to reach him when the hackbut exploded. He would have taken the ball if he could, but it was not aimed at him. Robin screamed as he was hit, and again as he sank to the ground. His fair-skinned face, drenched with blood, turned once towards
Nicholas, in apology, in farewell, in love. Then his shining eyes closed. The next moment, a handgun spoke again, and Nicholas knew nothing more.

A
T
SEVEN
THAT
EVENING
, René, Duke of Lorraine, rode into his capital city of Nancy through the Porte de la Craffe and made his way by torchlight to the collegiate church of St George to give thanks for his victory. Behind him, on the site of the battle, lay nearly four thousand dead, not yet buried. Among the throng of his captives, he could now count the Bastard Anthony, taken in the forest of Haye, and the Comte de Chimay, the Duchess’s captain, and his son.

The one blight on the joy of the evening was the disappearance of Duke Charles himself, whom none had seen since the flight from the battle. The following day, devoted to pillage, the mystery of the Duke’s place of refuge continued: polite messengers sent even to Metz returned with negative answers. Overnight, a page produced some story of having seen the Duke slain. It seemed unlikely: one did not harm the ruler of the richest lands in the world when there were so many attractive alternatives. Nevertheless, the following morning, a search party went out, taking with it a small group of the Duke’s friends and servants who could, if called upon, confirm his identity. His physician, Master Matteo, was among them, and the young half-Portuguese fellow from the Banco di Niccolò, Diniz Vasquez.

It was again bitterly cold. Diniz, who had not felt warm for a day, rode with the others in silence. The Duke had been alive when Diniz had been captured, but he had not thought of him since. Diniz himself was safe, and would be ransomed, together with those Charetty men who were with him. He found it hard to be thankful. John had gone. No one knew the fate of Tobie and Julius. They all knew about Campobasso’s blockade at the bridge of Bouxières, and that Astorre and his company had died there. Also that Nicholas and Robin, who had gone to find them, had not returned.

They were riding past the Commanderie of St John and down to the banks of the stream that ran past it. This had frozen since Sunday, forming at one point a wide pool of ice, humped with bodies. Others lay, pale as sweetbreads, on the rimed mud and frosty meadows about them. All were naked. Some had died from the cold, some from wounds taken in battle, and some had been stripped while alive, and then killed. A man’s voice said, ‘This is my lord.’ He spoke from the edge of the pool, and others dismounted and hurried towards him. After a moment, Diniz did the same, and looked down on the same sight.

He thought he would have known Charles of Burgundy, but he saw
only a thickset body in ice, whose profile, half protruding, had been gnawed by some animal, leaving cracked white bone and flesh like congealed wool. When they chopped it out of its tomb, you could also see the original hatchet blow to the head, and the places where a pike had been driven hard: once through the buttocks and once through the groin. That had been done, the doctor said, before death, by those who had robbed him.

They had left a ring, which someone recognised. The body displayed fingernails of unusual length, particular to the Duke; an ingrowing toenail, recently treated; an old wound; and a recognisable fistula on the penis which had proved so infertile these latter years. The Duke’s physician and valet expressed themselves soberly as convinced. Here lay the Grand Duke of the West. Beside him, his skull sheared across also, lay Jean de Rubempré, sire de Bièvres.

‘You are not shocked,’ said a voice in Portuguese. Master Matteo, wiping his hands.