A Flight of Arrows A.J. MacKenzie (black authors fiction TXT) 📖

considered this. ‘You are bold with your demands,’ he said. ‘Perhaps I should take the bishop’s advice and hang you.’

A cold finger of doubt crept down Merrivale’s spine, and he wondered if he had overplayed his hand. ‘That is your lordship’s decision,’ he said.

‘It is,’ Eu agreed. ‘I wish you a good evening, Sir Herald.’

Caen, 25th of July, 1346

Evening

Time passed, and the wall of smoke grew closer. The sun, dipping into the west, was obscured by its clouds. Today, dusk fell early in Caen.

Macio Chauffin was the man who had arrested them outside the city walls. He had stripped off his surcoat and most of his armour, but still wore a mail tunic over a padded doublet. His balding head was fringed with dark hair like a monk’s tonsure. Merrivale guessed he was in his early forties.

‘Thank you for coming to see me,’ the herald said. ‘I am sorry I have no refreshment to offer you.’

‘I am here at my lord’s command,’ Chauffin replied. His face and voice were both wary, like a man expecting to be attacked.

‘If you will permit me, I have a few questions for you. I believe you met with Jean de Fierville on the road from Quettehou to Valognes the day we landed, the twelfth of July. During this meeting, did you see anyone else?’

Chauffin looked surprised, as if this was not the question he had been expecting. ‘Yes, I did. Just as we were finishing our… conversation, another English man-at-arms came riding up from Quettehou. I wasn’t expecting him, and I could see Fierville wasn’t either.’

‘What did you do?’

‘I thought it might be a trap, and I turned my horse and rode away. But I had only gone about a hundred yards when I heard Fierville calling me back. I turned again and saw the other man lying on the ground. He was dead by the time I rejoined Fierville.’

‘Did you see the men who killed him?’ Merrivale asked.

‘Yes,’ Chauffin said. ‘I did not see the actual shooting, but there were two archers standing only a few yards away, with strung bows and arrows at the nock. It was obvious that they were the killers.’

A gust of wind wafted through the windows, smelling of smoke. ‘Could you identify them?’ the herald asked.

Chauffin shook his head. ‘They wore no badges or blazons.’

‘Did either of them wear a red iron cap?’

‘No, they wore no headgear. I am positive of it.’

The caps could have been removed, of course. ‘Was one of them bald? With a scar across his scalp?’

Chauffin shook his head again.

‘What happened next?’ Merrivale asked.

‘Nothing. Fierville told the two archers to go, and they ran off. We debated about what to do with the body; he wanted to hide it, but there wasn’t time. Bertrand’s men were already coming down the road and hell was about to break loose. So we rode away and left him. Poor fellow,’ Chauffin said. ‘So young, too. His family will miss him.’

Merrivale looked at him sharply. ‘Did you recognise him?’

‘No.’ It was said so quickly and abruptly that the herald was quite certain he was lying.

‘You met Fierville by arrangement, I assume. Who told you where and when to meet him?’

Chauffin scratched his ear. ‘Does this have anything to do with the murder?’

‘It might.’

‘The letter arrived a week earlier,’ Chauffin said. ‘It came from someone in your camp, but I don’t know who.’

‘Might it have been Sir Thomas Holland?’ the herald asked.

Chauffin’s head jerked back in shock. ‘I don’t know who you are talking about.’

‘You and Sir Thomas and the Count of Eu served together in Prussia,’ Merrivale said. ‘You were together for about a year, first in Königsberg and then out on the frontier. At Allenstein and Rössel, I believe.’

Chauffin stared at him, lips clamped tightly together.

‘I am a herald,’ Merrivale said. ‘I know Fierville gave you information, and I know Sir Thomas Holland is betraying his country, but these matters do not fall within my jurisdiction. All I want to know is who killed that young knight.’

‘Holland is not a traitor.’

‘Fierville and yourself were go-betweens,’ the herald said, continuing as if Chauffin had not spoken. ‘Fierville carried messages from Holland to you, and you passed them on to the count; who, let us not forget, is also Constable of France. If this correspondence had come to light, Holland would have been attainted and executed. He would do anything to stop that from happening. His archers were keeping watch when you met Fierville that day, and when Sir Edmund Bray discovered the two of you together, they killed him.’

Chauffin’s eyelids flickered.

‘Yes, that was his name,’ Merrivale said. ‘You recognise it, don’t you?’

‘Yes,’ Chauffin said quietly.

‘How? Where had you heard it before?’

‘Fierville told me. When I rode back to join him.’

Another lie, Merrivale thought. ‘You are quite positive that you did not recognise these archers? They were not from Holland’s retinue?’

Chauffin stood up and walked to the door. ‘I know most of Holland’s trusted men,’ he said. ‘They were with us in Prussia too. The men I saw that day I had never seen before in my life. And you are wrong, Sir Herald. What Sir Thomas did was not treason.’

Merrivale raised his eyebrows. ‘No? But then treason is so often a matter of perspective, don’t you think? Did you know that, as well as delivering messages to you, Fierville was also reporting directly to Robert Bertrand?’

The look of astonishment on Chauffin’s face gave him the answer. ‘Fierville betrayed Godefroi d’Harcourt’s plans to the enemy,’ Merrivale said. ‘You must pray, messire, that he did not also know about the plot your master is hatching with the Queen of Navarre. Because if he did, that plan is also known to Bertrand, and probably by now to King Philip in Rouen. Tell your master this, and ask him where he wishes to place his bet.’

Caen, 26th of July, 1346

Morning

Now the smoke was very close, hanging over the faubourgs of the city and drifting in clouds above the