The Abbaye Notre-Dame de Boschaud nestled in the heart of Aquitaine between the Prince’s palace in Bordeaux and the seneschal at Poitiers. If routiers or the French struck, Blackstone was well placed to retaliate. What prompted this summons south? Defence or attack?

‘You wanted a fight, Gilbert, perhaps we are being given one.’

*

Below the castle walls Agen’s honey-coloured brick buildings glowed in the day’s late sun, rays of gold enriching the great river that served as the city’s trading route and defence. Blackstone’s hundred iron-shod horses clattered up the cobbled approach to the castle as guards peered down from the high walls. The Prince’s banner furled in the clear air above the white-slaked landscape stretching to the far horizon and Navarre’s Pyrenean kingdom.

‘Even colder up here,’ said Will Longdon. ‘I hope there’s meat and wine waiting for us. My arse aches and my stomach growls.’

‘Pottage and Gascon wine if we’re lucky,’ said his ventenar, Jack Halfpenny.

Killbere half turned in the saddle. ‘If you’re lucky enough to be fed you keep your bows with you. We’ve a Spanish lord and his men inside these walls and what they can’t take as a trophy in battle they will steal. An Englishman’s bow is a prize.’

‘And a Welshman’s,’ called Meuric Kynith, Longdon’s other ventenar.

‘Any damned bow, you heathen Celt,’ said Killbere. ‘Any archer loses his bow to a scab-arsed Navarrese thief, I’ll have him flogged.’

Blackstone glanced at the veteran knight at his side. ‘Gilbert, our archers wouldn’t relinquish their bows even in the grip of death. There’s no need to lecture them. Think of the years we have fought together. Not once have we seen any of them cast aside or lose a hemp cord, never mind their bow.’

‘They’ve been wintering these past months, Thomas. You kept them busy, I’ll grant you; building walls and exercising horses keep a man’s muscles taut, but it softens their brain. They need a kick up the arse every once in a while.’ He looked over his shoulder. ‘Especially archers.’

‘And you kicked my arse often enough when I was a lad and pulled a bow for the King,’ said Blackstone.

‘You deserved it. And it did you no harm. I take pride that my boot and the flat of my hand kept your senses sharp. How else would you have become the King’s Master of War?’

‘How else?’ Blackstone smiled as the gates opened.

CHAPTER TWO