Read Chapter 24: The War of Copies

Brother Matthieu became a commander without touching a sword.

He organised scribes.

Chainbreak's chapel filled with tables. Monks, clerks, notaries, and literate merchants copied the Saint-Bertin documents day and night. Each copy was witnessed by multiple names and sealed where possible.

Then they sent them everywhere.

To abbeys.

To town councils.

To guilds in Bruges and Ghent.

To officials in Calais.

To French treasurers.

To cathedral chapters.

To noble households excluded from Concord profits.

Martin discovered that scandal, like grain, depended on distribution.

Rochefort tried to stop it.

Couriers disappeared. Roads were blocked. Priests were ordered not to read Free Hound claims publicly.

The copies multiplied faster.

A cloth merchant carried one sewn inside a bolt of fabric. A pilgrim hid another beneath a saint's image. Will Hobb memorised key figures and taught soldiers a rude song containing the names of bribed officers.

“You cannot arrest a song,” he said.

“You can arrest singers.”

“Then we need more singers.”

Within weeks, Concord members began denying one another.

Some claimed signatures were forged. Others insisted they had invested only in lawful security. Marconne publicly accused Rochefort of abusing the Concord for personal expansion.

“You are enjoying this,” Martin told him.

“Immensely.”

“Do not mistake usefulness for forgiveness.”

“I never do.”

Pressure forced limited investigations in both English and French administrations. Not justice—self-protection. Officials wanted to know whether rivals had profited more than they had.

Still, it weakened Rochefort.

He responded by consolidating his armed companies at a fortified depot near Saint-Pol.

Five hundred mercenaries gathered there.

Reports said he was moving grain, silver, and records east.

“If he escapes with the treasury,” Ysabeau said, “he rebuilds somewhere else.”

Martin nodded.

They had to stop him.

The Free Hounds could field two hundred and forty soldiers. The Millers' League promised six hundred militia, but most had farm tools and little armour.

Then unexpected help came.

Sir Thomas Greybourne escaped captivity.

He arrived at Chainbreak with his left arm in a sling and twenty English archers.

“How?” Martin asked.

“My captors argued over who would receive my ransom. I left while they calculated.”

Two days later, Arnaud arrived as well.

He had not escaped.

He had been released because his superiors suddenly found it inconvenient to appear close to Rochefort.

He brought eighty French soldiers unofficially.

Martin looked at the mixed force gathering beneath Chainbreak's walls: French men-at-arms, English archers, mercenaries, peasants, mill workers, town militia.

No king would recognise it.

No herald could describe it properly.

Hugues would have laughed.

“What banner do we march under?” Arnaud asked.

Martin looked at the broken chain.

“Ours.”

Greybourne raised an eyebrow.

“I am English.”

“For three days, try not to make it your whole personality.”

Even Arnaud laughed.

They marched for Saint-Pol at dawn.

The copying campaign required more parchment than Chainbreak possessed. For three days, the most urgent military problem in northern France, as far as Martin was concerned, was finding enough scraped sheepskin.

Ysabeau purchased old account books, scraped failed contracts, and sent riders to monasteries for discarded leaves. Some copies were made on cheap paper imported through merchants. Others were abbreviated into lists small enough to hide in clothing. Matthieu devised symbols so essential names and sums could be checked even when a full text was unavailable.

“Rochefort has cavalry,” Will Hobb said. “We have stationery.”

“Try not to lose the war for want of ink,” Martin replied.

They almost did.

A courier named Perrin was captured west of Arras carrying three copies. Concord men cut off two fingers and released him with a warning. Perrin returned to Chainbreak, had the wounds bound, and asked for another packet.

Martin refused.

“I can still ride.”

“You have done enough.”

“That is why they cut me. If I stop, it worked.”

Martin let him choose.

Perrin rode the following morning with documents hidden inside a saddle tree.

That decision troubled Martin for weeks. Leadership meant protecting people, but protection could become another way of denying them agency. Hugues had never taught a rule for that.

As copies spread, reactions became unpredictable. A noble family excluded from the Concord used the scandal to attack rivals. A bishop condemned price manipulation while quietly ignoring an abbey that had profited. Town merchants demanded reform but resisted limits on their own margins. There was no clean coalition of good people against bad.

Martin ceased expecting one.

He needed overlapping interests strong enough to constrain the worst behaviour.

The first major breakthrough came from Bruges. A guild council, concerned that Concord control threatened cloth exports and credit markets, opened an inquiry into three merchants named in the documents. Their action mattered because it did not depend on French royal authority or English military command.

Rochefort's network crossed borders.

So did resistance.

Greybourne later called it “the first battle in which accountants deserved hazard pay.”

Matthieu corrected him: “They always did. Soldiers simply noticed late.”