“No need for us to fight,” the redhead said. “The woman’s strong enough for both, and I’ll share the jug of coins they have put away.”
“Filth,” said Jean, and leaped.
Too late he saw the clenched fist open and hurl dirt and straw into his eyes. Jean cried out and twisted to avoid the steel swiping at him. His booted foot caught in a root, and he pitched sideways. The blade intended for his head flicked past his arm, slicing the linen shirt.
Jean rolled along the ground, over and over.
The redheaded man only laughed and ran for his horse. He mounted up and banged heels into his mount. Jean came up to a knee, watching him ride off across the meadow. Excitement was still a pounding tide in his blood. He wanted to go after the man—the black gelding could have caught the heavier animal in a hundred yards.
The sobbing in the hut made him hesitate. He climbed to his feet and walked to the door. The interior was dim, lighted only by errant shafts of sunlight peeping between wall chinks and through the thatchwork roof.
A naked woman was kneeling weeping above the body of the man who had been held captive by the bandits in the yard. She was young and fair, and her skin was very white below the neck. Long yellow hair made a curtain around the face of the dead man. A pool of blood lay under him, soaking into the dirt floor.
Jean watched her a moment, wondering what kind of man he had been to make a woman like this care for him so much. From what he could see of her body, mostly back and pale hips, she seemed very lovely.
“I’m sorry,” he said softly.
She lifted her tear-stained face to stare at him. She had a beautiful face, with slant gray eyes and a ripe red mouth that reminded him uneasily of Marie Louvet. Her hand scrabbled in the rushes that served as her bed to lift torn brown wool and hold it in front of her heavy white breasts. She was quick to cover herself, but Jean nevertheless saw dark bruises on her upper arms and across her ribs.
“Burgundian bastards!” she whispered brokenly. “May le bon Dieu strike all of them dead!”
“Amen,” he said and smiled crookedly.
Her eyes focused on him for the first time. “He was my husband. We were married three months. Red Gui chased us out of Beaulieu so we settled here.”
“Red Gui? The one who killed your husband?”
“A brigand of the worst kind. He gets his name not so much from the color of his hair as from the blood of the Armagnacs he spilled in Paris six or seven years ago, during the massacres.”
“I remember. The Burgundians took me prisoner then.”
Surprise transfixed her kneeling body. “And they didn’t kill you?” Her glance moved over his leather jerkin, the frayed linen shirt under it, the taut brown breeches above his cavalier boots. With a toss of her head she said, “You don’t look like an important person.”
He laughed at her honesty. “I’m not important. I was—in those days. It’s a long story.”
“There’ll be plenty of time for you to tell it to me,” she informed him. “I’m coming with you. Now turn your head while I get into what’s left of my dress.” When she saw the hesitation on his face she asked dully, “Would you leave me here for Red Gui to find when he comes back?”
“I ride alone,” he muttered. “I ride to kill three men. I don’t know where they are.”
“Burgundians?”
“Retainers of the dead Duke John. They serve his son Philip now, I’m told.”
“Good. I’ll help you kill them.”
He stared at her, shrugged, then moved out into the forenoon sunlight. His eyes were caught and held by the two dead bodies in the yard. He supposed that this scene was being repeated, except as to small details, all over northern France from the Seine to the Channel. This was English territory now, its people helpless before the hordes of soldiers turned loose from the English and Burgundian armies and allowed to roam at will in robber bands across Picardy, Champagne and Normandy.
It was not an uncommon sight to come upon dead men swinging from tree limbs, nooses tight about their throats, or lying impaled on spears in their farmyards these days. All France groaned under the heel of the invader, from the Loire to the Strait of Dover. No man was safe in his home, be it rolling farmland or some twisting city alley. The English did not bother to check the bandits; in a sense they were their allies, for they kept the people in a servitude more frightening than any army of occupation could have achieved.
Life was hard enough for the serfs and peasants, even in time of peace. It was unbearable now. A woman could expect rape as a daily hazard from the leaderless bands of routiers, just as a man could expect death. The lucky ones might buy their liberty, but after a while the supply of deniers ran out, and without money the common people were helpless.
Pride was an ugly taste in Jean’s mouth. He spat.
This was his land, this France. These people—the dead man in the hut and his blonde wife—were his people. On his own estate of Vaubernais, in the province of Dauphiné, the villeins were free men. So far to the south there were no brigands.
A footfall made him turn. The blonde woman stood in the doorway, a lighted torch in her hand. The brown wool tunic was patched and sewn, but her legs were bare above rawhide car b a tines and her long hair still held bits of straw and rushes.
Slowly she walked around the little hut, touching the flaming torch to the dry thatch, finishing the task the bandits had begun and then abandoned for a better sport. When the hut was burning fiercely, she hurled the pitch-soaked stick through the doorway. She turned and looked at him out of red, swollen eyes.
“I’m ready now. Let’s go kill those Burgundians.”
CHAPTER TWO
WITH THE blonde woman riding one of the brigand’s horses and Jean on the black gelding leading the spare, they moved along the dusty road toward Senlis. This was rolling farmland, with the river Oise to their right and the last traces of the forest world of Compiègne stretching away toward Soissons. From time to time Jean glanced at his companion, discovering a remoteness of spirit in her stare and in the lax manner with which she sat her saddle.
As if aware of his regard, she turned suddenly and smiled at him. “I ride with you without even knowing who you are. It speaks well for the determination in me.”
“Determination?”
“To kill my enemies, who are also your enemies.” Her gray eyes moved over his wide shoulders and lean hips. “You look like a fighting man. Are you?”
“I fought at Beauge four years ago when the English whipped us. And again at Verneuil.”
“That was last year, wasn’t it? And it was another English victory. Why do they beat us all the time? Are we all cowards?”
He smiled faintly. “Some of us are fools. Ever since Crécy the English longbows have been cutting us down. I think we need a new idea, a new kind of weapon. Nobody’s come up with that new idea yet.”
“So you’re a soldier. You look like a nobleman.”
His shoulders moved inside the leather jerkin. “In a way, I suppose I am. My father was a duke, my mother the wife of a wealthy noble. Obviously then, I was born out of wedlock.”
His tone of voice dared her to make comment, but there was no emotion at all on her placid face. Bastardy was more common than not in her way of life. No one thought anything of it; indeed, most of her friends never knew whether they were legitimate or illegitimate, and, if they thought of it at all, it was with an utter lack of concern. Life itself was enough to give them worry these