Cross of Fire

by David Gilman

  ‘By giving you warning of the Count of Armagnac’s move towards you and to commit men against him and stand at your side.’

  ‘I know he has mobilized. My vassal lords have gathered their men. Why would I need English help?’

  ‘How many retained men can you muster?’

  The Count twirled a bejewelled ring. ‘A thousand… perhaps fifteen hundred. They will serve under my banner. Our backs to the mountains, the forests on our flanks.’

  The hunting lord had given himself better odds than were realistic. And Blackstone knew it. ‘Too few, my lord. I believe you overestimate your strength.’

  ‘No, you are wrong, Sir Thomas. My informers tell me Armagnac brings his men from the west. He crossed the Dordogne three days ago. No more than a thousand, perhaps twelve hundred. He seeks to root me out in my territory.

  ‘Then you do not know of the two thousand and more men marching south. King John has committed troops and Marshal of the Army Arnoul d’Audrehem has raised a hundred thousand florins and paid routiers to join your enemy.’

  The Count de Foix looked startled. His levies and vassals’ troops would not withstand such an assault.

  ‘You have been misinformed, my lord. D’Audrehem’s not heading here,’ said Blackstone. ‘He won’t venture into the foothills where he can be outflanked by concealed men. By an army less strong than his own. He’ll fight in the open. My Gascons report he has the Count of Comminges with him, the Lords of Albret, Jean de la Barthe, the Lords of Pardhala. He has drawn more to him than even those noblemen bring to the fight. Armagnac’s men crossed the Dordogne northward away from you. He’ll join up with the others in a place that best suits him. You fight on his terms.’

  He handed the Count the folded list of the feudal lords who would fight at the Count d’Armagnac’s side. Gaston Phoebus looked at the host that would assault him and felt the crushing knowledge that he had already been outmanoeuvred. ‘I have others who will join me—’

  ‘Who? Bertucat d’Albret, Garciot du Châtel? They have deserted you. Armagnac paid them more than you offered,’ Blackstone interrupted, taking a step towards de Foix. Under any other circumstances such behaviour would have earned a harsh rebuke but realization dawned on the Count that Blackstone’s information was more accurate than his own. The common knight humbled him.

  ‘How many men do you have? Who would follow you?’ the Count asked.

  ‘Not enough. Six hundred at best. My own, a few others loyal to the Crown, Gascons mostly and some routiers, men who once came to my aid. They will need payment.’

  Gaston Phoebus nodded in agreement.

  ‘I and my men serve you as a gesture of goodwill from my King and Prince.’ Blackstone dared a gentle rebuke. ‘While you ride at the hunt, my lord, the Count of Armagnac has dug a bear pit and expects you to fall into it.’

  The Count let it pass. There was a more pressing concern than any perceived jibe. ‘If you were he, where would you fight?’

  Blackstone saw the landscape in his mind’s eye. He had raided and fought across great swathes of France. He had pursued routiers down the Rhône Valley and faced a French army that besieged Brignais south of Lyons only months before. Troops moving north to meet those marching south would meet somewhere between Lyons and Toulouse. If he led an army at this time of year, he would avoid the eastern borders and keep the snow and wind at his back. Ride further south. Keep the mountains and forests at bay.

  ‘Where, my lord? On the plain north of Toulouse. Reach the place first and choose your deployment. Prepare quickly and keep our archers out of sight. It’s open ground with little cover. Array an army there and face your enemy and you would see his strength, or lack of it.’

  ‘Like a boil on a whore’s bare arse,’ Killbere blurted. And then winced at his crude remark in front of the feudal lord.

  The Count showed no sign of approval. But nor was there any expression of censure. ‘Then we must lance the boil,’ he said.

  CHAPTER FIFTY-EIGHT

  Blackstone’s men had threaded their way eastwards. They hunched into their cloaks as the wind swept down valleys and roared through forests. Jack Halfpenny knew that if the strength of the wind did not ease, then it would make no difference where Blackstone had decided to fight, the bowmen’s arrows would be little more than a futile gesture against armoured men. And if they could not be deployed as archers and were asked to fight as infantry then they were too lightly armed for many of them to survive.

  ‘Here,’ said Meulon. ‘Sir Thomas should be over that ridge.’ Blackstone would be waiting in the lee of the low rising ground, little more than a sloping hill. The land had become increasingly flat and Beyard had led them successfully across the country he knew best, riding west of the city of Toulouse that had paid patis to a routier horde for protection. Venturing too close to the city walls might alert the mercenaries and jeopardize Blackstone’s plans. Meulon turned in the saddle and looked at the column of men. They were rested and fed; some, like Gisbert de Dome’s, were fresh. Each of the captains had gone to their designated towns and villages and collected the pockets of men, some as few as thirty strong, others numbering seventy or eighty, and then they had come together and ridden as a column to meet up with Blackstone. It seemed a pitifully small force to deploy in battle but he knew that if Blackstone had convinced the Count de Foix then an army, even though few in number, would be gathered to face the Count d’Armagnac’s strength.

  They broached the crest and saw the Count de Foix’s banner. His feudal lords were camped on the plain below. Pennons fluttered beside pavilions; shields and lances were laid outside every knight’s tent; blazons of varying hues caught the light as campfire smoke buffeted the waiting soldiers. Blackstone’s tent was next to the Count’s, and the blood-red banner, although hoisted respectfully lower than the Count’s, beckoned more strongly than any other.

  Blackstone watched the column approach the camp. ‘Gilbert, they’re here.’

  Killbere looked up from where he was sharpening his sword. ‘Like fleas on a dog’s back, Thomas. Too few to cause much more than an irritating itch.’

  ‘We must be grateful that commitments were made, and that they turned up,’ said Blackstone. He strode forward and raised a hand. Beyard and Meulon edged their horses through the camp. Will Longdon joined Blackstone. ‘Any more archers among them other than our own lads?’

  ‘Not that I can see, Will.’

  ‘Ah, well then, better that way. Less difficult to keep under control.’

  ‘Yes,’ said Blackstone. They both knew how desperate they had been for bowmen. ‘More arrows for every man this way.’

  Will Longdon nodded and frowned. ‘I’ll make our lads shoot quicker when the time comes.’

  Beyard and Meulon reined in their horses. ‘Sir Thomas,’ said Meulon. ‘Are we to fight here?’

  ‘No. A day’s ride away. We leave at first light tomorrow. Horses over there with the others and our men together here. Is this everyone?’

  ‘Aye. We didn’t wait for anyone who wasn’t at the place they should have been.’

  Blackstone patted the horse’s neck. ‘It’s enough.’

  Meulon grinned. ‘That’s what I thought.’

  ‘Get them fed and rested.’ Blackstone turned back with Killbere. ‘We need to get ahead of Armagnac. He’s closing on us. We’ll abandon the supply horses; they can follow on. We won’t need them if we’re dead or captured.’

  ‘The Count likes his comfort.’

  ‘He’s fought a crusade without home finery – he knows what’s at stake. What would he rather have: a full stomach and silver plates to eat from in the field or to lose everything?’ He called to his centenar. ‘Will?’

  The archer ran across from where he was directing Jack Halfpenny and the bowmen where to camp. ‘Thomas?’

  ‘Have every archer check his arrows. Make sure each has as many as we carry with us because once the fighting starts there will be no resupply. We need to have you out of sight b
efore Armagnac arrives. Is there trouble with any of the Welsh?’

  ‘A more vicious bunch of bastards I haven’t seen for a long time. They’re just what I need,’ said Will Longdon.

  ‘Have all the archers mounted and ready before first light. No drinking tonight. We’ll ride hard.’

  Will Longdon nodded and went back to the archers. ‘Will?’ Blackstone called after him. ‘How many do we have?’

  ‘I haven’t done a final count. Looks to be about ninety-three, including our own.’

  Blackstone walked towards the Count’s pavilion. ‘We need to find a place where our bowmen will remain unseen until they’re needed.’

  ‘He won’t like you telling him what to do, Thomas,’ said Killbere, stopping short of the tent.

  ‘He has no choice,’ said Blackstone. ‘We leave first. We’ll decide the place. By the time he arrives it will be too late.’

  *

  The wind had exhausted itself by the next morning as Blackstone led the bastard horse through the Count’s encampment. Cookfires glowed and pottage bubbled in iron pots. The pre-dawn breakfast put warmth into a man’s belly for their march to Blackstone’s chosen place of deployment where the Count’s soldiers would have their last meal until after the battle. High cloud like a newborn’s caul stretched across the moonlit sky. Will Longdon and Jack Halfpenny with Meuric Kynith led the archers behind Blackstone and Killbere. Some of Gaston Phoebus’s men, readying themselves to follow when the Count ordered, jeered at the archers, declaring they should abandon their war bows and take up sword and shield and fight like men. The antagonists looked to be untried in battle, younger men who followed a feudal lord and lacked the hardened look of those who had fought so close to a man that the stench of his death raised bile and vomit.

  ‘If you’re still alive or haven’t turned tail and run back to a suckling teat, you mewling whoreson, then I will show you how an archer castrates the likes of you,’ said Kynith.

  ‘The likes of him don’t have balls,’ said Jack Halfpenny. ‘These are women from the village dressed in hose and jerkin masquerading as men.’

  ‘Looking for a cock, is it?’ Kynith taunted.

  The men called after the slow-moving horses and their riders: ‘Archers will be the first to die in this fight, you scab-arsed bowman.’

  Will Longdon turned in the saddle. ‘Enough now, lads. Let’s look to the way ahead,’ he told them, quietly satisfied that the disparate archers had come together as a fighting force who knew that when battle loomed they were the jewel in any lord’s crown.

  Meulon and the other captains with their companies followed the archers and as they passed the antagonists he jabbed the end of his spear into one man’s chest. ‘If you’re still alive by the end of the fight, you will say a prayer of thanks to Our Lord Jesus for sparing you and to King Edward of England for these bowmen who slaughtered so many and gave him victory.’ He grinned. ‘And then you can kiss their arses.’

  CHAPTER FIFTY-NINE

  It was the coldest winter in years and man and beast felt it in their bones. It froze the rivers and hardened the ground of the great plain north of Toulouse that spread before Blackstone. His memory had guided him as true as a bodkin-tipped arrow towards an enemy. The gently sloping hills to the west showed scattered hamlets where distant clumps of forests huddled against the north wind. A fissure in the ground ahead of where Blackstone studied the landscape opened a narrow jagged tear. It channelled a frozen shallow stream that fed an ancient copse of trees half a mile away. Further north and west the low-roofed houses of the small town of Launac rose from a dormant patchwork of fields.

  ‘This is the place,’ said Blackstone.

  Killbere grimaced. ‘Yes, we’ll see and hear the bastards approach.’

  Blackstone pointed out the copse. ‘Will, your archers will get into those trees. Horses behind our lines. If you’re overrun use the ditch to break out – a knight won’t risk breaking a horse’s leg trying to reach you.’

  ‘Thomas, Armagnac is no fool. He’ll stay clear of the trees,’ said Longdon.

  ‘Would he think Phoebus has archers under his command? This is an armoured knights’ battle, each with their own infantry,’ said Meulon, easing his horse alongside.

  ‘Will is right and so are you,’ Blackstone told them, ‘but we will give Armagnac a juicy bait he cannot resist.’

  Killbere leaned on the saddle’s pommel and let his horse have a long rein to dip its head and nuzzle frost from the grass. ‘That would be us.’

  Blackstone smiled. ‘We’ll make our stand a hundred yards or so in front of the trees. With luck, Armagnac will expect us to be holding our horses in the forest so that when we turn and run – once we’ve held for a charge or two – Phoebus will press from the front and left flank forcing him onto us.’

  The men stayed quiet as they pictured the trap Blackstone planned.

  ‘God’s tears, Thomas, we are dead men if Phoebus falters,’ said Killbere.

  ‘There’s nowhere else we can hide the bowmen, Gilbert.’ He turned to Longdon, Halfpenny and Kynith. ‘Armagnac outnumbers us. If they trample over us, they will swarm into those trees, so if you see us go down it is already too late. Make your escape as best you can. No one will help you.’

  ‘Some of the lads have never faced a charge, Thomas, and I remember my first time. I was so afraid I pissed myself. When the earth moves under your feet and the war horses thunder towards you it takes grim courage to stand your ground,’ said Will Longdon.

  The usually robustly spoken Meuric Kynith voiced a quiet agreement. ‘I was on the flank at Poitiers when the horses went through our lines.’ He faced Longdon and Jack Halfpenny. ‘We must get our lads into the trees and tell those who do not understand what they will face.’

  ‘There’ll be a hundred men and more of us standing in front of you. We’ll hold them,’ said Meulon.

  ‘Armagnac and his feudal lords will want more than my blazon offers him,’ said Blackstone. ‘Jack, you will stand with us in formation. They will see your twenty archers spaced between us and think you are all the bowmen we have. Killing English archers is a blood sport for the French. They’ll come for us.’

  Jack Halfpenny nodded his understanding. They all knew Blackstone’s plan was the riskiest part of the battle. If the Count d’Armagnac was drawn in seeing Blackstone’s flank was the weakest point and the Count de Foix did not falter, then d’Armagnac would be crushed. If, though, Gaston Phoebus did not turn in time, then Blackstone and his men would lie dead.

  *

  By that afternoon the Count de Foix et Béarn had led his army to where Blackstone’s men waited. They had not been idle. In front of Blackstone’s position the men had hacked a series of shallow holes in the hard ground. They were not as deep as was normal practice when faced with charging horses but with luck could make a horse stumble and put an armoured knight on the ground where he would be slain more easily. As the Count rode leisurely forward Blackstone strode to greet him, pulling a hand through his damp hair. Despite the cold December breeze Blackstone and his men sweated from their efforts.

  ‘Here?’ said Gaston Phoebus.

  ‘Yes, my lord. Dispose your men in battle order as we discussed. I am there on the flank.’

  Gaston Phoebus beckoned one of his feudal lords and instructed him to deploy the men. A squire ran to his side and took his bridle as he dismounted. ‘What news of Armagnac?’ His enemy’s name was sour on his tongue.

  ‘My scouts report he will be here by morning,’ said Blackstone.

  The Count nodded. ‘I understand what you have explained, Sir Thomas, and I can see that you are at the most risk on the exposed flank.’

  ‘Providing you hold the ground and then sweep around and close the trap we will crush him.’

  The Count seemed disinterested.

  ‘My lord? Are we in agreement?’ said Blackstone, sensing that man’s mood had changed. Going into battle demanded a keenness of heart and mind.

 
The commanders under the feudal lords serving Gaston Phoebus were shouting their orders. Blackstone watched as they drew horses close to where the men-at-arms were taking up positions.

  ‘My lord, we should have the horses to the rear. If we are to encircle Armagnac, we must first stand our ground and defeat his initial waves of attack with infantry and men-at-arms. The ground is too hard for stakes but traps, no matter how shallow, should be dug to make his horses falter. Bring down his knights and, as we kill them, a swift attack by your horsemen from the rear, sweeping his flanks, will trap him. He will have no escape route. He will surrender or die.’ He searched the Count’s face for a sign of acknowledgement. ‘It is what we agreed,’ Blackstone added, with a hint of annoyance.

  ‘Your tone of voice is not acceptable. I made the agreement when you insisted on drawing up my battle formation. I have reconsidered. I will attack with my knights mounted, rather than stand in defence like a supplicant. I must show Armagnac our aggression and determination. Standing on cold, hard ground would chill a man in armour.’

  ‘Leave the damned armour. This is no tourney. We do not need a show of peacocks – we need men in mail with no more than arm and leg plate. They need to move freely. Do you not understand? He outnumbers us. Ride directly at him and you will be overcome by sheer weight of numbers. Stand your men on the ground and we will kill at least the first two waves of horsemen who ride at us. We will butcher his knights and lords where they fall.’

  Colour flushed the Count’s neck and face. He was seething with indignation. ‘Do not dare to dictate my conduct. There is no honour in butchering knights lying crushed beneath their horses. I will defeat Armagnac in a full assault.’

  ‘You may as well ride your men at full gallop into a castle’s walls. His line will not break. It will suck you in and smother you. He has too many men. Your honour remains intact by winning this battle. Dying destroys the dynasty of the House of Foix and Béarn.’