A Walk with Love and Death by Hans Koning

Author:Hans Koning [Koning, Hans]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: Hundred Years' War, Anjelica Huston, John Huston, Hans Koning, Hans Koningsberger, medieval fiction, historical fiction, Europe
ISBN: 9781603061315
Publisher: NewSouth Inc.
Published: 2011-09-01T00:00:00+00:00

26

We stood on a hill and saw the Oise River before us, wide after all the winter and spring rain, and very peaceably winding through green low hills. Clouds of birds were hovering over the fields, and the strong wind carried their cries toward us. Then I heard a rising roar in the air, like carts rattling at great speed over a paved road, or perhaps more like wild water in a stream. And after a while I thought that nothing in nature sounds like this, that it was a human sound. It was the roar one hears in a Paris crowd watching an execution, when the hangman holds up an ear or an arm or a head he has cut off; but from farther away and from a crowd of a size I’d never witnessed. I looked at Claudia and said, “Those are the peasant armies.” And in that same moment I saw a group of horsemen ride up to us from very close by; two of them dismounted and very quickly bound our hands behind our backs. I had rehearsed ways to defend myself against something of the kind; now that it happened it went so fast that I didn’t even have time to be angry or afraid. And Claudia looked almost as if she had been waiting for this. The group rode on; one of them stayed and led us down the hill toward the river. He didn’t speak and he rode quite slowly and without pushing us.

We were brought into an encampment on a flat piece of land bordering the river and sheltered by rows of apple trees. It was part of an abandoned farm. The officer, a dark, bearded young man, was clearly a professional soldier and so were the men around him, about a half dozen of them. And then there were at least twenty or thirty peasants, some fitted out with an of piece of mail, or armed, but most of them looking as if they’d just come in from their plowing or harvesting. They were eating, sleeping, wrapping their feet in bandages of cloth, or mending their pattens, cleaning a sword or a pike; our arrival didn’t arouse their curiosity.

I said that I was a wandering scholar and that Claudia was my wife. “We’ll hold you in ransom,” the officer said, “unless you want to join us.”

“There’s no one on earth who’d ransom us,” Claudia said immediately and unwisely.

“Then we’ll keep you as hostages,” the officer said. He beckoned me closer. “We’re just a scouting group,” he said, “our main body of men is up the valley. Up there things are less, eh, calm. So if you’re concerned with your wife’s honor, I suggest you join us.”

“Why are you on their side?” Claudia said in a loud prim voice as if she were asking a question in a convent schoolroom.

He smiled at her. “Because, my dear miss—or is it really madam?—they are winning.”

Our strangely genteel imprisonment lasted less than a day. Other

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