by David Gilman
The archers formed their line, bent their bows and fixed their bow cords. Arrows were readied.
‘Wait,’ said Longdon to his bowmen, watching Blackstone gather the half-dozen men-at-arms, ready to plunge downhill into what would surely become a frantic fight for life as the men below realized they were cut off from the vanguard. Santa Marina men and women were forcing iron bars under unstable boulders; others put their weight behind rotting trees, tipping them into an increasing avalanche of debris onto the mercenaries.
Cries of alarm mingled with frantic commands from those trapped, whose horses bolted, slipped and went down as riders fought to control the panic. Footsoldiers rallied quickly and began to clamber uphill towards their attackers. Unarmed peasants would soon turn tail.
Blackstone watched as the mercenaries regrouped. They were trained to turn and attack an ambush. If the villagers held their ground then Killbere and the others would have the advantage as the Visconti men tried to fight uphill. The mercenaries’ lumbering carroccio was an ox-drawn wagon bedecked with their commander’s banners – a command post worth seizing – and which now made it difficult for those ambushed to make any quick response. The oxen that pulled the war wagon sat squarely in the middle of the road, helping to further divide the main force.
The carroccio swayed, unsettled by the frightened oxen as men ran past and the wagonmaster hauled on their reins. The breeze unfurled the flags enough for Blackstone to see the Visconti viper twist and curl, as if in that moment swallowing a child.
Blackstone wanted that banner. He raised Wolf Sword in command and heard Will Longdon bark his order to the archers.
‘NOCK! DRAW! LOOSE!’
The creaking war bows, their waxed hemp drawn back, were as much a part of Blackstone as the muscles in his body. When the twanging bowstrings gave flight to the bodkin-tipped arrows, Blackstone ran as if propelled from the straining heartwood of yew.
Shock reverberated through the mercenaries who had clambered up the opposite hill. They were about to wreak slaughter on defenceless peasants, uncertain why the armed men who stood yards behind had not advanced to engage them. And then they understood. Arrows thudded into them, the force of their impact driving through bodies cloaked in mail. Men fell and writhed, contorted in agony. Many were dead within seconds, gasping those last few breaths, choking on blood as heart and lungs were pierced. Those who survived the first arrow storm faltered, then turned back, seeking out the archers. Another terrifying hammer blow fell on them. And then Killbere advanced through the stunned villagers who had never before seen what violence archers could inflict.
Blackstone ran hard. Those on the track had realized they had been outflanked and turned to face the attack. Now they had armed men in front and behind and they could see that the archers were firing further down the trapped column as riders tried to make their escape. Blackstone saw Killbere and Jacob in the centre of an extended line as they hacked their way downhill. Meulon and Gaillard speared and jabbed as the townsmen and women scurried behind the killing, finishing off wounded men with knives.
The Visconti men were being overwhelmed by the ambush and the weight of townsmen who still hurled rocks and beat them with staves and scythes as they went down. The peasants raised their voices again: men shouted; others screamed. Blackstone and Perinne were confronted by four men who had formed a wall of shortened lances. Neither had a shield and, armed only with swords, they would not be able to get past the five-foot-long sharpened lances. Perinne bent and picked up a rock and threw it into one of the men’s faces. He stumbled back. Blackstone followed the Frenchman’s lead and hurled sharpened flints at the men, who seemed surprised that their ranks could be broken in such a manner. Trying to avoid the rocks they raised their shoulders and turned their heads, which made their lances waver and gave Blackstone a way forward. Once behind the lethal points he and Perinne cut down the panicked mercenaries.
Enemy riders spurred their mounts into the attack, and three of Blackstone’s men went down, but the mercenaries could see there was no escape unless they made a break through the archers’ storm and tried to rejoin the vanguard that lay beyond the boulder-strewn curve in the track. As one of the riders charged forward, Blackstone and Perinne grabbed a lance, bent their backs into it and took the horse deep in its chest. The rider fell amidst thrashing hooves and Perinne nimbly danced to one side and plunged his knife into the injured man’s throat.
As the pitiful screams of horses began to fade along with those of dying men, one of the cavalrymen rode through the chaos and snatched the Visconti banner. Defeat would bring its own penalty from his master, but to salvage the flag from the hands of their enemy might purchase some grace. Blackstone picked up a fallen shield and fought through men disorientated by Killbere’s advance. As he rammed home Wolf Sword’s blade into the back of a man who had turned to face Jacob and the others, he knew it was too late to reach the battle flag. He watched the rider spur his horse into a gully and then found scrub that would hinder those on foot. The fluttering viper took flight.
Survivors turned to escape when they saw the flag carried away. They had to run the gauntlet of peasants and Blackstone’s men, but some made it into the forest to find their way across the blocked road. Blackstone heard Killbere’s voice demanding those who surrendered to be spared. Ransom would be paid, so they were worth more dead than alive. Reluctantly the peasants did as ordered. The fierceness of their own assault now diminished.
*
The tumult settled into the stillness that always followed a battle. This had been little more than a skirmish, but Blackstone’s men had attacked a column of the enemy three times their own number and, with the help of those from Santa Marina, defeated the main force of well-trained mercenaries. Close to three hundred enemy dead lay scattered on the road and hillsides and as the peasant women went among the corpses to strip them of clothing, belts and weapons, their men turned the great ox-carts around and loaded their plunder. Sacks of grain, cloth, saddles and bridles, bags of coin and armour. Some of the loose horses ran wildly on the slopes; others stood eating grass. All told, more than two hundred of them would be caught. Twenty-eight townsmen were dead, half again wounded. Blackstone had lost only three men.
A town had been saved; revenge inflicted; plunder taken. And those who had suffered the defeat would know it was Thomas Blackstone, condottiere of Florence, the outlawed English knight, veteran of Crécy and Poitiers, who had inflicted it upon them.
3
Blackstone and his men wintered in their own place of safety in the mountains, guardians to the rich city of Florence that lay to the south. Italian lords despised the foreigners among them, who fought with such savagery as to revolt any citizen of a civilized state. They were reviled, but also respected for what they could do. These men seemed impervious to harsh weather; they would fight through winter snows or the worst of summer heat. Fighting was their reason to live and reward for their efforts would come in this life rather than the next.
Santa Marina’s misfortune had been caused by a broken treaty. A bad debt had needed to be collected by the Visconti in Milan, and although the city republics contracted their condottieri to work within the confines of their own territory, agreements were occasionally made between opposing forces to allow an enemy to cross another’s territory. There were times when it suited opponents to agree a safe passage as those who gave the indemnity might one day require the same permission in return. Florence had agreed to let the Visconti recover money owed from an unpaid ransom. Conditions of payment were agreed, a fair price would be paid for any damage to crops or livestock along the way, but when the Visconti forces were returning home they had altered their route and the rearguard of the column, foraging for fresh supplies, entered Santa Marina, where they argued with the townspeople about the price of the food they wanted to buy. Knowing the viciousness of these men and that they had deviated from their journey home raised an alarm that brought Blackstone and his men to enforce the terms of
agreement. However, by the time Blackstone received the news it had already been too late for most of those in the town.
Now the history of the battle he and his men had fought those months before had been written by monks in their scriptorium, and the Battle at Santa Marina had covered the townsmen with glory. The deeds of Thomas Blackstone and his mixed force of English, Welsh, French and Gascon, already known for their belligerence in battle, were now inscribed on parchment, though in the writing the fight became more about the courage of the townspeople and less about the condottieri. Some rumours even blamed Blackstone for instigating the violence. Such gossip eventually reached the ears of his men.
‘We are obliged to fight by our contract,’ said John Jacob as they sat around the fire in Blackstone’s quarters. The Englishman’s strength and courage had been tested many times and never found wanting. He had been honoured in the past by Blackstone choosing him to carry out tasks that might deter lesser men. Years before he had led men up a castle’s sheer walls to help rescue Blackstone’s family. John Jacob’s men soon learned to trust the stalwart fighter.
‘Aye, there’s a code of law and we’ll be forfeit if we don’t,’ Killbere agreed.
‘If another bloody town gets into a shit pit, we’d do better to negotiate a settlement with the bastards who started it. Why fight to the death?’ said Will Longdon. ‘No harm in making a few florins on the side. Lift a few sacks of grain, take some horses – they’d only be nags, but it all adds up. And I’ll wager there’s always a few men in the town with something worth having.’
‘We were supposed to rescue the town, not ransom it,’ said Jacob.
Will Longdon poked the burning logs with a fire iron. ‘I’ve a right to my opinion, and if I see an opportunity where we can gain without risking injury or death, then we should take it. Ransom rather than kill. A man who surrenders forfeits all property.’
‘Will’s right,’ said Blackstone.
‘I am?’ Longdon said, unable to keep the surprise from his voice.
‘But not about Santa Marina,’ Blackstone told him. ‘There’s no negotiating with Visconti’s men. They’ll never show or ask for quarter. You have to kill them first.’
Killbere sat with his feet outstretched towards the flames. His cloak was pulled around him and he wore a fur-lined velvet cap, said to have come from the land of the Russians. This cap had once graced the head of a merchant from Bologna who had thought to travel through the mountain passes to Lucca.
‘We are paid well for what we do,’ he said. It sounded as though his words were tinged with regret.
‘Winter rations always make you discontented,’ said Blackstone. ‘Though we’ve eaten well these past few months. There’s been plenty of forest boar.’
‘Which has started to taste like old goat. I don’t much care for these Italian winters, Thomas. The truth is I don’t much care for any of it. The wine is weak and the peasant food barely enough to put flesh on a cur’s ribs.’
‘But the women here have the flesh,’ said John Jacob. ‘They give me warmth and comfort.’
The others murmured their agreement as Meulon bent to stack more logs on the fire. His great frame shielded the heat. ‘Spring is here, Sir Gilbert. The sun already gives us warmth.’
‘And you tell me you don’t hunger for something other than that?’ answered Killbere. ‘You and Gaillard. I hear you talking about Normandy. Sweet Mother of God, we are all homesick and that’s the truth.’
It was always difficult getting the men through winter. No matter how much raiding or defensive work they did, the season ground every man down.
‘We are alive, fed and paid without question,’ added Gaillard. The other captains nodded their agreement. How often did lords of their manor or even their sovereign neglect to pay their fighting men?
‘Paid by clerks who keep a tally. As if we were shepherds,’ said Killbere.
‘Who leave us well alone,’ answered Blackstone. ‘The Florentines ask little of us. We choose who we raid. Who we fight and when. We give our loyalty; they give us money.’
‘And there’s always a bonus to be had somewhere along the way,’ said Jacob. ‘We captured seventy whores from that brothel in Monte di Castellano last summer.’
‘And we give a firm hand when it is needed,’ added Gaillard lamely.
The men laughed.
‘Gaillard, your calloused palm would take the skin off a pig,’ said Will Longdon.
‘I didn’t mean the whores. I meant keeping other bastards in check,’ Gaillard retorted.
‘We know that, my friend,’ said Meulon, ‘just that your mouth was a pace behind your brain.’
The conversation was running dry. They had complained enough.
‘The day’s routine awaits us,’ said Jacob, getting to his feet.
Routine. The very word was a heavy burden, but one that the captains used to keep short-tempered soldiers out of trouble.
A sentry’s cry echoed up from the streets below.
And then a dwarf on a white donkey rode into view.
4
Thomas Blackstone hated cities. To him they were forests criss-crossed with animal tracks where violent beasts waited in shadows. An enemy was best confronted on open ground. He gazed down at the bristling towers clustered behind high walls from where he camped in the mountains north of the Italian city-state of Lucca. The air was heavily scented with wild jasmine and yellow-flowered gorse. The city shimmered in the unexpected heat of the spring haze.
Lucca. A place of enormous wealth. And treachery.
‘It’s a trap,’ said John Jacob, sucking a piece of meadow grass, gazing down across the vast plain.
‘They’ll snare you, Thomas,’ agreed Elfred, his master of archers, pointing towards the distant city. ‘You’ll be gutted and hung from them walls and we won’t be there to stop it. Damned if you can’t see it for what it is. Damned if you can’t.’
Blackstone nodded. Elfred was getting old but he had seen enough killing and stupidity on the battlefield to smell a disaster lying in wait.
‘Meulon?’ Blackstone called to the Norman who had been at his side for these past twelve years, who stood like a sentinel, one foot resting on a boulder, his helmet and piecemeal armour at his feet. The bear of a man pulled his fingers through his beard. He had taken to tying its length with a leather cord. His mane of hair and heavy-set eyebrows, under which his dark eyes stared, made a startling image, enough – it sometimes seemed – to make an enemy falter. A fatal mistake. He turned to Blackstone.
‘You have more enemies than wild bees on summer flowers,’ he said. ‘You cannot take men inside with you. And even you cannot take a city’s garrison single-handed.’ He looked at the others who nodded their agreement.
Perinne, like others among them, had sworn loyalty to Blackstone years before when they fought in Normandy and killed the mercenary leader Saquet. He rubbed a hand across his scarred scalp. ‘Do not go. It means nothing to refuse.’ There was no shame in turning away from a place where a man could be snared like a rabbit.
Blackstone looked at the half-dozen men lounging outside the sweet-smelling cow byre where dung and spring grass gave a pungent, comforting odour. Seasons of Italian sun, wind and rain had burnished their skins and highlighted the scars that had been earned fighting at his side. Each was a trusted companion as well as a captain to his soldiers. Blackstone and his men had forged their way through the Alps less than two years before when he was exiled by the English Crown. The slaughter at Poitiers had been a great victory for the English, but Blackstone’s blood-lust to slay the French King in revenge for the brutal killing of a friend had offended King Edward’s son, the Prince of Wales. He and Blackstone were the same age – men whose destiny had been entwined in battle years before. They had had an uneasy relationship then: a King’s son who owed his life to an archer. A common man knighted on the battlefield from whom an uncommon fighter had emerged. Sir Thomas Blackstone was the scourge of the French and anyone els
e who challenged him. However, his determination to kill King John had blinded Blackstone to the demands of his Prince, who then stripped him of everything – his towns in France and his stipend to feed and arm his men. And in the aftermath of the battle Blackstone’s terrible, long-hidden secret had been revealed and had caused his wife and children to be taken from him.
These men served him; some had known him as both man and boy. Others had benefited from his loyalty and friendship. Each was expected to speak his mind. One of the men pushed himself deeper into the shade of an olive tree. As with the others, the hard life of serving Thomas Blackstone showed in Will Longdon’s lean and sinewy body, but like any English archer, he had muscle packed across his back and shoulders. Few men could pull the 160 pounds’ draw weight of a bow – and none had done it better than Blackstone himself, before his arm had been snapped by a German knight at Crécy. The soldiers of the greatest army in Christendom had been slain in their thousands. Crécy’s slaughter was a memory etched on their souls as jagged as a battle sword’s chipped edge.
‘Pissing against the wind is a drunkard’s foolishness,’ said Longdon. ‘A clear-thinking man would do no such thing. We’ve fought long and hard, and now you’re about to drop your hose and bare yourself to a scabby bunch of bastards who have more money than bed lice in a mattress and servants aplenty to pick snot from their noses. Piss on them, aye, but do it upwind. We could burn down one of their gates and slit a few throats. That’d take their mind off you skulking through them alleyways. And I’ll wager there’d be a few silver and gold rings to be had,’ said the veteran archer who served as Elfred’s centenar. A hundred English war bows were under his command, archers who had been drawn by the reputation of Sir Thomas Blackstone when he had contracted his men’s fighting skills to Florence.
Near enough a thousand men stood at Blackstone’s back now, straddling hilltop towns and fortifications that barred any incursion from the north and west of Florence. A protective barrier of sword, spear and bodkin-tipped, yard-long arrows, behind which Blackstone’s men leaned their weight.