April Munday Read online

  His Ransom

  by

  April Munday

  First published in 2012 by April Munday

  Copyright © April Munday 2011

  The moral right of April Munday to be identified as the author of this work has been asserted by her in accordance with the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act of 1988.

  All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording or otherwise, without the prior permission of the copyright owner.

  This novel is entirely a work of fiction. The names, characters and incidents portrayed in it are the work of the author’s imagination and not to be construed as real. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, events or localities, is entirely coincidental.

  Chapter One

  Chapter Two

  Chapter Three

  Chapter Four

  Chapter Five

  Chapter Six

  Chapter Seven

  Chapter Eight

  Chapter Nine

  Chapter Ten

  Chapter Eleven

  Chapter Twelve

  Chapter Thirteen

  Chapter Fourteen

  Chapter Fifteen

  Chapter Sixteen

  Chapter One

  Late October 1356

  By the end of the voyage Richard had discovered two things about himself. The first, which he had long suspected, but never had the opportunity to prove one way or the other, was that he was not a sailor. He was neither disappointed nor surprised to discover this. For most of his life he had had no reason to step foot in a boat or to cross any kind of water save the small river that ran between his father’s castle and the nearest town and he did not think that his experience of the small boat that operated as a ferry had prepared him in any way to cross the British Sea. This discovery that he was not a sailor had, however, been made at great cost and weeks of seasickness seemed a disproportionately large price to pay for such a small amount of self-knowledge. In addition, there had been the humiliating awareness that everyone on board knew his weakness. He, alone it seemed, had suffered and the sailors had laughed at his discomfort. The soldiers had laughed even more. If any of them had been ill, they had managed to keep it hidden from everyone else. It was not enough, it seemed, that he must drag his injured leg about, getting in the way of the crew and passengers, but he also had to be ill, rarely making it all the way to the upper deck before his exhausted stomach gave way. He no longer had servants to look after him and if he made a mess he had to clean it up himself. He did not find it humiliating to have to look after himself; he had had enough practice on the battlefield. The humiliation was in knowing why he had no servants to do it for him.

  The journey from Bordeaux had not taken long, but Richard had felt every minute of it. If he had ever thought about it, he had assumed that the motion of a ship would be like the motion of a horse, a gentle sway from side to side. Experience now proved that not to be the case. The late autumn storms had buffeted them almost from the moment they set sail. The motion of the ship was violent and unpredictable. It was almost too late in the year to be travelling by sea. It was unlikely that anyone else would be following them from Bordeaux up the coast of France and on to England. The duke had been determined that either he or some news of him should reach home before winter set in and they had waited as long as they could before the duke had made them leave without him. The delay meant that they had lost the good weather, although Richard doubted he would have made a better sailor in better weather. The journey up the French coast had seemed interminable, but the day had finally come when the captain had announced that they were safely on the English side of the British Sea and no longer at risk from pirates or French ships. There had been days when Richard had prayed that they would be attacked by pirates who would put him out of his misery, but that had not happened. Nor had the ship sunk, nor had the winds blown the ship onto a more friendly coast. No, he was going to England and there was nothing he could do about it.

  The second discovery, which had come as a surprise to him and was even more galling than the first, was that his command of English was much less than he had assumed. For the first few days he could not understand any of the conversations that the other men had between themselves. The only person with whom he could communicate was Sir Thomas, who spoke a form of Norman French that was almost as much a foreign language to Richard as English. When he wasn’t being seasick he mused at his inability to speak the language that he had learned as a child from his mother’s servants. Although his mother had only spoken French to him, the servants that she had brought with her from England had taught him English. But as the years had passed they had gradually been replaced by French-speaking servants and when the English king had declared war on France twenty years ago English ceased to be spoken in Richard’s home at all.

  Nonetheless, he had always assumed that he would have no difficulty in conversing with people from his mother’s homeland, high born or low. Obviously, those who were highest born would speak some from of French, but he had always thought that he would be able to speak in English with everyone else. He had thought that this would give him some advantage in battle – to be able to understand what was being said by and to the English archers and the men at arms, but now that he was on a ship to England, he found he had no advantage at all. Richard had forced himself to pay attention and to make sense of the conversations that he heard and by the time the English coast came in sight, he was able to hold his own in a simple conversation. Sir Thomas had impressed upon him that it was important that he speak English and understand it, for as the war had made English unfashionable in France, so it had made French unfashionable in England. “They’re even writing books in English now,” Sir Thomas had said and Richard had snorted, amused that anyone should think it worthwhile to write things down to be read by others in such a barbaric language. And it was barbaric; the words were hard to form and sounded too heavy to his ears. Everyone knew French was the language of poetry and his own language – the langue d’oc – was the only language for love songs. He wondered how these Englishmen got their tongues round their harsh sounding words. How much gentler and more expressive was the langue d’oc. How did they manage to convince their women of their love with English? He had heard the sailors singing as they worked, but he did not think they sang songs of love.

  They had been sailing along the southern coast of England for some days now, at sea during the day and putting into port each night and Richard welcomed the respite this gave him from the sea. It was only when people came on board hawking their wares the first afternoon they docked that he realised how slowly everyone on board had been speaking to him. He had not realised that they had been so kind to him. He could not follow what these people said at all.

  He was not mollified when Sir Thomas explained that these people spoke a different form of English to the people on the ship. Evidently there were as many different types of English as there were of French. “Don’t worry, you’ll be fine when we get home. They all speak like us there.”

  Richard doubted he would be fine, but he smiled and nodded. Sir Thomas had been kind to him and he did not want to hurt his feelings. He took to eating as much as he could in the evening and fasting all day. It brought his tortured stomach some relief, but he was surprised that after all that time at sea he was not more comfortable with the motion of the ship. One of the sailors had joked that he couldn’t expect to get his sea legs since he only had one good leg. Richard knew that the man had not meant to be cruel; he had expected Richard to enjoy the joke. But Richard did not need to be reminded that he was not a whole man; the constant pain he suffered did that. He had ne
eded a crutch to walk when he had first come on board, but it had proved easier to hold onto ropes and planks as he moved around. Which was as well, since the crutch had gone overboard during one of the more violent storms.

  Now the end of the journey was near. This morning the sense of anticipation among the sailors had been so great, that even if Richard had not been able to understand what the sailors were saying, he would have known that today was to be the last day of their voyage. Sir Thomas and the other soldiers carefully made sure that everything was ready for them to leave the ship and every man on board who was not otherwise occupied spent all their time looking out along the shore, trying to spot familiar landmarks. It was just after midday when the atmosphere changed. No one said anything, but Richard knew that they had sighted something that meant they were almost home. He joined Sir Thomas on the deck and looked out across the water for the first glimpse of his prison. “There!” said Sir Thomas, pointing out an inlet on the coast. “That’s the River Flyte” and Richard felt a moment of queasiness as the ship changed course one last time and turned into the river.

  He was dismayed by his eagerness to catch sight of the Duke of Winton’s castle. He had no idea how long he would remain there as the duke’s prisoner, but it was the thought of leaving the ship that fuelled his eagerness. He might be going to his prison, but at least it would not move beneath his feet or be at the mercy of the winds and his stomach would have peace at last.

  Richard had no idea what he was looking for as he searched the banks of the river for his first sight of the castle. He was sure that someone had told him that English castles were very different from the one in which he had grown up. It would probably be green with mould, he reflected humourlessly, if the rain of the past few days was any indication of the normal climate in this part of the world. Perhaps it was something that his mother or his father had told him, or perhaps it was Thomas. He knew little about England, but he knew that it always rained here and everything was damp all the time. And it was cold. The men were short and rude and the women were uglier than the men. He knew this last was not true. Even now, in her late forties, his mother was still beautiful. He grimaced. She would know by now what had happened to him. She would worry about him and his father would curse him, but he knew he had done the right thing.

  His stomach turned again. This time it had nothing to do with the motion of the ship and everything to do with homesickness. He had known when he had started this journey that he would never see Charimaux again, but now he believed it. The men on the ship had confirmed most of what he knew about the English. They kept their hair short and their faces bare. Their clothes were dull browns and greens, their cloaks thick and heavy. Their accents were barbaric and their songs rough and their speech full of blasphemy. Since he had learned what little English he knew from servants, these were the words with which he was most familiar. It had amused the duke’s men to discover that the Frenchman only understood what they were saying when they were swearing and that he was perfectly capable of responding in kind. It had been a way of communicating with them, at least. Richard missed the gentle sounds of the langue d’oc, the courteous songs of the troubadours and the warmth of the sun on his face. Even this late in the year the sun would shine on the Comte de Charimaux’s castle. It did not shine in England.

  He looked up at the sky. It had been grey almost from the moment they had crossed the British Sea, except when it was black and the storm clouds were threatening death and destruction. Richard had pictured his death many times before he had been captured and it was usually a glorious death in a great charge during a battle that would save France from the ravages of the English. He had never thought that he might drown in the British Sea. He had never thought he might drown at all. He had quickly learned not to show his fear, then he had learned not to be afraid. If the crew did not think they would perish, why should he? He accepted their judgement about the seaworthiness of their ship and their ability to sail it. This knowledge did not, however, stop the seasickness.

  The day brightened slightly as they neared Corchester and he could see further along the coast than he had before. Richard stood beside Sir Thomas. The knight was grinning. After many months away fighting in France he was returning to his wife and children.

  “You are pleased to be coming home?” Richard phrased the question carefully in his head before he opened his mouth. Some of the questions he had asked had made the other man laugh, despite himself, and he had patiently explained the mistakes that Richard had made. Richard knew that a word used in the wrong context could be an insult rather than a genuine enquiry and had no wish to insult the man who had made his journey bearable.

  Thomas turned to him. “Oh, yes. It has been a year since I have seen my Margaret.”

  Richard already knew that the Duke of Winton had left with the Prince of Wales the previous year to fight in France. Thomas had been with him all that time, until he had been sent home after the battle at Poitiers. It was the end of the France that Richard had known. His king had been taken prisoner, the Oriflamme had disappeared and much of the aristocracy and hundreds of French knights were being held for ransom in Gascony and England, Richard among them. France was ruined, there was not enough money to pay the ransoms and the English chevauchées that set fire to farms and crops and stole the animals had almost destroyed France’s ability to feed itself. There was not even honour left, he reflected bitterly. Many of the aristocracy had deserted the king when the battle had turned against them and most of those who had remained were dead or prisoners or had been ransomed at such cost that their families were ruined.

  At least he had no one waiting for him in Provence. For the first time he was glad that he was alone. Apart from his mother, there was no one who would miss him or worry how he was faring this far from home. His brothers would be glad that he was not there to remind them of what he had done.

  “You are a lucky man,” he said, trying to smile for the young knight beside him.

  “I know. Margaret is a good woman and my children are healthy. Do you have a family?” Thomas looked embarrassed, as if he had not before thought of the man beside him as a real man with family, home and responsibilities. They had not discussed these things before.

  “No.” Richard shook his head. “My wife died in the pestilence.”

  Thomas frowned and repeated the word as if he did not know it. Then he nodded. “The Big Death. Yes. I’m sorry.”

  Richard was taken aback. English might be a barbaric language, but it was expressive. It had been a big death. It had taken most of the people that he knew, but none of that had mattered because it had taken Louise.

  Thomas hit Richard’s arm in excitement, all thoughts of death forgotten. “There! We are home at last.” He pointed and, following his hand, Richard looked up across the river and up the hill that rose beside it. On its summit stood the ugliest castle he had ever seen. It looked as if it had grown rather than been built. No one could have planned such a monstrosity. Where were the clean lines of his father’s castle, the soaring narrow towers, the elegantly sloping roofs, the symmetry between left and right, between darkness and light, the complementary colours? This castle presented one square and two round towers to him. They had obviously been built at different times and the walls that stretched between them were patched with different types of brickwork and stonework. Surely no one could live here in the proper fashion. The castle sprawled across the hill as if its builders had not been quite sure where to stop. There was no beauty, no symmetry, no pattern. Richard’s heart sank. No wonder his mother had been content to marry his father and stay in France if this was indicative of the home that she had left behind.

  He had never visited her former home, nor had the inclination to do so. Even if there had been no war with England, it was so far away. The north was so cold and the English so uncultured. His mother had expressed such satisfaction with the way that things were done in France that he had grown to believe that nothing in England could b
e worth seeing , that the English themselves could not be worth knowing.

  It seemed to Richard that it took an age for the ship to reach the pier that jutted out into the river from the small town that lay below the castle. As soon as they entered the mouth of the river they were sheltered from the winds that had come against them almost constantly since they had left Bordeaux and the ship’s speed dropped. He had grown used to the way the ship moved through the sea and his stomach had been easier the last few days. Now he had a new motion to get used to and he feared that he would be hanging over the side in front of all the townspeople as well as the sailors. At the thought of that greater humiliation he managed to gain control of his stomach. He picked out a spot on the shore and measured their progress against it, refusing to look at the pier again until they were almost upon it. By then his stomach was calm.

  Then it was all shouts and cheers and laughter and ropes were thrown ashore from the ship. The ship’s motion changed one last time, but Richard chose to see it as a return to normality and his stomach mercifully stayed still.

  People came aboard and started unloading the ship. Against all expectation, Thomas had been right; he could understand much of what they said. They were greeting old friends, asking for news of relatives, passing on news of what had happened since the duke and his soldiers had left. A few people stared at him, but no one approached. Then he heard the questions. Who was he? Why was he here? As soon as they heard the word ‘French’ they turned away from him.

  Richard pretended not to understand.

  “They’re just curious,” said Thomas, coming to stand beside him again.

  “I know. Now they have a face for their enemy.”

  Thomas laughed. “They wish all the enemy were like you. Then the soldiers would soon be home.”