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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 mercenaries and they called themselves the Hellequin, the devil’s beloved, and they boasted that they could not be defeated because their souls had already been sent to hell.
    And Brother Michael, after witnessing his first fight, believed them.

Two
     
    The Count of Labrouillade was eager to leave Villon and gain the safety of his own fortress, which, because it possessed a moat and drawbridge, was safe from
le Bâtard
’s method of opening gates with gunpowder, and the count needed to be safe because
le Bâtard
, he was certain, would soon have a quarrel with him. And so he had left the bishop’s men to hold the newly captured castle at Villon while he and his force, sixty men-at-arms and forty-three crossbowmen, hurried home to Labrouillade.
    His journey, though, was slowed by his captives. He had contemplated beating Bertille in Villon, and had even ordered one of his servants to bring a whip from the castle stables, but then had delayed the punishment to hasten his return home. Yet he wanted to humiliate her, and to that end he had brought a cart from Labrouillade. The cart had been in the stables for as long as he could remember, and on its bed was a cage big enough to hold a dancing bear or a fighting bull, and that was probably why it had been made. Or perhaps one of his ancestors had used the cart for prisoners, or for transporting the savage mastiffs used to hunt boars, but whatever its original function, the heavy cart was now a cage for his wife. The Count of Villon, bloody and weak, was being transported in another cart. If the man lived the count planned to chain him naked in his courtyard as an object for men’s laughter and as a pissing post for dogs, and that prospect cheered the count as he lumbered slowly southwards.
    He had sent a dozen lightly armed horsemen eastwards. Their job was to trail
le Bâtard
’s mercenaries and return with a report if the Englishman pursued him. Yet that now seemed unlikely, for the count’s chaplain had good news. ‘I suspect he has been summoned by his liege, sire,’ the chaplain told the count.
    ‘Who is his liege?’
    ‘The Earl of Northampton, sire.’
    ‘In England?’
    ‘The monk had travelled from there, sire,’ the chaplain said, ‘and reckoned
le Bâtard
is ordered to join the Prince of Wales. He said the message was urgent.’
    ‘I hope you are right.’
    ‘It is the best explanation, sire.’
    ‘And if you are right then
le Bâtard
will be gone to Bordeaux, eh? Gone!’
    ‘Though he might return, sire,’ Father Vincent warned the count.
    ‘In time, maybe, in time,’ Labrouillade said carelessly. He was unconcerned, for if
le Bâtard
did go to Gascony then the count would have time to raise more men and strengthen his fortress. He slowed his horse, letting the carts catch up so he could stare down at his naked and bloody enemy. The count was pleased. Villon was in agony, and Bertille could expect an adulteress’s punishment. Life, he decided, was