something so one-sided and foolhardy, and—’
‘And the lads and I said, we’re with you, we want to fight, we’re aching for a chance to draw blood, and—’
‘And so we launched a surprise attack, disarmed and unhorsed four of them, at which the rest fled!’
‘Four?’ Josse d’Acquin had a humorous face, and his generous mouth was quirking into a smile. ‘Sire, I would stake my life on its being six.’ He glanced at Richard. ‘At the very least.’
‘Six, seven, eight, think you?’ Richard was smiling, too.
‘What a day,’ Josse mused, sitting back on his heels.
‘Indeed.’ The King was staring at him, absently noting the muddy puddle water seeping into the seat of the hose and the hem of the elaborately bordered tunic. ‘I never forget a face,’ he said. ‘Knew perfectly well I’d met you before, Josse.’
Josse bowed his head. ‘Sire.’
They remained quite still for some moments, as if suddenly turned into a painting. Some knightly illustration, with the loyal servant waiting, head bent, for the command of his lord. Of his king.
The King, in this case, was thinking. Wondering, in fact, if the vague and general pleas for help which he had been sending up, immediately before this character from the past had reappeared, might just have been answered.
Deliberately Richard stilled his mind, allowed himself to be a receptacle.
After a moment, he had, he was quite sure, received the message he was waiting for.
He reached down and lightly touched Josse d’Acquin on the shoulder. ‘D’Acquin,’ he began, then, less distantly, ‘Josse. Oh, get up, man, you’ve got your backside in a puddle.’ Josse scrambled to his feet, instantly bending into a sort of half crouch; both he and Richard had noticed he was almost a head taller than the King.
‘Josse,’ Richard went on, ‘you’re a local man? Of Norman stock, yes?’
‘My family estates are at Acquin, sire. Near to the town of Saint Omer, a little to the south of Calais.’
‘Acquin?’ Richard ran swiftly through his mind to see if he’d heard of it, decided he hadn’t. ‘Ah. I see. And what of England, our new kingdom over the water? Are you familiar with England?’
‘England,’ Josse echoed, in the manner of someone saying, a pigpen. Then, as if instantly regretting it as less than tactful, when the land’s throne had just been inherited by the man standing in front of him, he said with patently false enthusiasm, ‘England, yes, indeed, sire, I know it quite well. My mother, you see, was an Englishwoman, born and bred in Lewes – that’s a town in the south-east – and in my youth she insisted that I get to know her country, her language, her people’s ways, that sort of thing.’ He smiled faintly. ‘People didn’t say no to my mother, sire.’
‘I know that sort of mother,’ Richard muttered feelingly. ‘So, England and the English hold no fears for you?’
‘I wouldn’t say that, exactly, sire.’ Josse frowned. ‘There’s always fear attached to the unknown. Well, not fear, more apprehension. Well, maybe not even that, but—’
‘A sensible amount of wariness?’ Richard supplied.
‘Precisely.’ Josse smiled openly now, and his teeth, Richard observed, were a great improvement on Bishop Absolon’s. Then, as if remembering where the conversation had begun: ‘Sire? Why do we speak of England?’
‘Because,’ Richard replied simply, ‘I want you to go there.’
Chapter Two
Josse had gone to Richard the Poitevin’s court because of fond memories from the past, not because of hopes for the future. It had been enough, or so he’d thought, to be in that stimulating, action-packed company, where the restless energy of Richard seemed to permeate right through court society, so that you just never knew, from one day to the next, what was going to happen.
And, whenever the court hadn’t had to up sticks and follow Richard off to some distant part of his territory, there was the sheer exuberance