Warlord(87)

There was yet another unpleasantness in store for me – there was no provision for our waste. The prisoners, I learned, merely voided themselves where they sat, and after holding my bladder for most of the night, shamefully but with a sense of guilty relief, I followed their example and released my water to join the slurry that washed around my legs.

In the dirty grey light of dawn, I saw that the man to my left – the cougher – had died in the night. I bundled his corpse into the centre of the cell without even thinking, and shifted my body to take advantage of the increase in space. I extended my long legs, and found them resting on the dead man’s head. They were comfortable, and half out of the lake of filth, and I left them there, propped up on the cadaver. It had taken me less than a day, I thought ruefully, to discover the true savagery of my soul, a pitiful few hours to sink lower than a wild animal.

Soon after dawn, the guards entered the cell – two of them, crouching under the low ceiling with drawn swords, kicking the men’s legs out of their path. One of them shouted behind him, through the opened door: ‘Two more for the river today,’ and a pair of ancient wretches in leather coifs and aprons came shambling into the cell to take the corpses away. Once the dead men had been cleared, and presumably dumped in the Seine, the two old men returned with big, rough wooden buckets slung over their shoulders on yokes – each bucket filled with a sloppy mixture of stale bread, watery soup and a little vinegary wine. As the guards retreated, we fell upon these four buckets like wolves upon newborn lambs; I got an elbow in the cheekbone, and returned it with a punch, but I got my head over a bucket and managed to scoop a handful of watery bread sops into my mouth, and a second and third one, too, before somebody hauled me by the shoulder away from the bucket and forced his head into the space that mine had so briefly occupied. I saw that it was the thief Michael, and allowed him to claim his share, as payment for taking the trouble to speak with me through the long night.

My thirst had only partially been assuaged by the time the buckets had been scraped clean. I retook my place against the wall, reflecting gloomily that if I did not get out of here soon I would not last long. On only a couple of mouthfuls of soggy bread a day, I would lose my strength in a few weeks. Then I would be the one to be plucked from the wall and beaten and kicked to death by a still-powerful newcomer.

The ancient yoke-men retrieved their empty wooden buckets an hour later, and all the prisoners settled down for the day. I dozed a little that morning myself, leaning against the wall, my buttocks and legs submerged in filth, and wondered what my friends were doing. Hanno and Thomas knew that I was in that stinking midden of death and I was certain that they would be striving to secure my release. There was still plenty of money at the Widow Barbette’s house, if some sort of surety was needed, and surely if approached by Brother Michel or Sir Aymeric de St Maur, or even by my squire Thomas, the Provost could be persuaded to set me free in exchange for a generous contribution to his private coffers.

At about noon, the door of the cell opened, and in the bright sunlight that flooded the dim cell, I could see the hulking shape of a man. He was tall and well-made with broad shoulders and a mane of dark hair, and he was not, as I had been, hurled down the steps by the gaolers to sprawl on to the floor of the cell; he descended slowly, cautiously, on short, muscular legs. The door slammed behind him, but in the light from the barred window I could see his face clearly for the first time: unshaven with brutish features, cunning eyes, and several whitish scars around the jaw.

‘That is Guillaume du Bois,’ Michael whispered in my ear. ‘I never thought they would take him alive: he is a bandit from the wild woods south of Paris, a killer, and the leader of a gang of cut-throats. He is a man to be feared.’

This Guillaume stood, so far as he was able, in the centre of the cell, his big head sunk on his shoulders and thrust forward, turning this way and that. He was scanning the faces in that dim place intently – he seemed to be looking for someone. His flat glaze slid over my face and moved on to Michael’s beside me – and I heard my comrade draw in a quick frightened breath – but the big man’s head carried on turning, as his questing continued. Then it stopped and his gaze returned along the line of faces against the wall – to me. He fixed his eyes on me and I stared straight back at him. I knew full well what was going to happen next.

‘You,’ said Guillaume, in a rough, guttural accent that was barely French at all. ‘You are in my place.’

And the big man reached down to his boot and pulled out a broad knife.