by David Gilman
‘Then he’s not there, is he?’ asked Blackstone. ‘He can’t be if his family is in jeopardy.’
De Ferrers began to realize that Blackstone’s presence might somehow be connected to the French royal family. ‘No...’ he said hesitatingly. ‘He withdrew to Meaux and we think he’s made his headquarters there, but where his family is we cannot know.’
‘Then we travel east of Paris,’ said Killbere. ‘Forty, fifty miles or so. What about skinners?’
The Captain of Calais drew his finger across the map. ‘There are mercenaries here and... here, as far as we know, but they are so widespread it is impossible to be exact.’
Blackstone’s eyes stayed on the map, reading what he could of the countryside. Rivers and canals were better marked than many roads, some of them little more than tracks that could be washed away in storms. ‘What of these peasants? How organized are they? Are they anything more than lynch mobs that will burn themselves out once they have what they want?’
‘They are called Jacques, or the Jacquerie, led by a man called Cale, from somewhere near Clermont. He seems to have some education. He’s no arse-in-the-mud peasant, but they’ve turned to him for leadership. They swarm to the north and east of Paris,’ he said, running his finger across the map. ‘Far enough from Calais not to cause trouble, but close enough for Paris to see flames on the horizon.’
Blackstone and Killbere studied the map. They knew the routes from Normandy into Picardy; both had ridden and fought their way across it years before, but how they were to avoid the raiding bands of routiers was uncertain. No matter where they looked, the brigands were as big a threat as the marauding Jacquerie.
‘Come on, my lord, let’s not squeeze a dog’s bollocks until it yelps and bites. How do we reach Meaux? Due south and east, or can we ride around these murdering bastards?’ demanded Killbere.
‘Who knows? The mob swarms. More to the east, the last we heard.’
‘Damn. There’s no avoiding them, Thomas. We’ll have to ride right through them.’
‘You won’t get through,’ said de Ferrers. ‘It’s an area more populated than elsewhere, so they have little trouble recruiting. God knows why they’ve taken to slaughtering on that side of Paris. Those are rich agricultural domains held by tenant farmers and there’s little reason for the violence to take hold there.’
‘He’s right,’ said Killbere. ‘Tenant farmers prosper from buying land and employing their own peasants. Why destroy that?’
De Ferrers’s knowledge of the rampaging peasants gave him a brief moment of superiority. ‘Thousands of Jacquerie have gorged themselves on murder and looting with their women alongside them. The women are no different; you’d be a fool to think otherwise. They urge atrocities against their own sex and children. These women are not like ours, they’re enslaved to hardship even in their own homes. They breed like vermin and, if they don’t have enough food for another mouth, they think as little of suffocating their own newborn as of relieving themselves. Once the rampage had begun their brutality became as violent as the men’s.’
Blackstone’s stare made the man avert his eyes. He was in no mood for a gatekeeper’s opinion. ‘A mob surges; a man throws in his lot. These people are tired and enraged. It’s a blood-lust against the nobility. As simple as that,’ said Blackstone.
Killbere glanced at him. Was Blackstone saying he understood their grievance? Blackstone knew that questioning look, but this was not the time or place to argue. Killbere turned his attention back to de Ferrers. ‘What’s their strength?’ he asked.
‘Rumour has it that they number in their thousands and grow stronger every day,’ said de Ferrers, ‘but they split and re-form. Hundreds into thousands and then fracture again as they seize and burn.’
Blackstone thought deeply for a moment. His task was impossible. A hundred men could not fend off thousands. ‘I have thirty-three mounted archers with me. I need extra arrows. At least two sheaves a man. Can you sell them to me? A penny for every shaft.’
‘The going rate is a penny and a half and arrowheads are five a penny,’ he said.
Blackstone nodded. ‘All right. I’ll take what you can give me.’
De Ferrers looked through the window that gave him a view of his domain. He might hold the keys to France for his sovereign, but he knew that Calais was not impregnable, no matter how quickly the King could send reinforcements. What if brigand and peasant joined forces? Would Charles of Navarre bring them together? That would be a formidable force. Double walls and two ditches that could be flooded with seawater were his main defence. The vital harbour was formed by a piece of land jutting east, which served as an additional defence to the north. At the extreme north-west was the castle whose fortifications merged with the town walls. In the centre was the marketplace and outside, a suburb stretching east, south and west. If ferment stirred within the walls how quickly would he be able to suppress it? The arrival of these two knights had now nudged him into doubt. No merchant was allowed to bear arms, not when his garrison consisted of only nine knights, forty squires and thirty archers. Archers were the gold in a king’s crown. It was not beyond the realm of his bureaucratic imagination to know that such a small force could be overwhelmed. He should be more forthcoming with Blackstone and Killbere, but not with vital arrows.
‘I have no surplus,’ he said, and rolled the map. ‘But I will tell you that they are not simply an unruly mob, despite their blood-lust. They have help,’ he said. A man’s betrayal of his class was always a bitter thing to admit. He was familiar with many French knights who had shared crusades and tournaments, and it was not unusual for some families to have common ancestors. ‘Allegiances can no longer be trusted. The peasants have military skills that can only come from educated men – noblemen, minor noblemen. I have heard that when they burned the castle at Beaumont-sur-Oise there were knights who were part of the mob. Men have turned themselves into devils to save themselves from death at the hands of the Jacquerie. The Duchess of Orléans barely managed to escape to Paris; more than sixty castles were destroyed in her area alone.’
Killbere ran his tongue over his teeth. ‘God’s blood! I thought we had slaughtered enough of their nobility over the years. Now there’s more to be done. Come on, Thomas, let’s get out of this dank place and leave the clerks to their scribbling and Sir Ralph here to his ordinances. Time spent here can make a man old,’ he said, looking at de Ferrers. ‘Old before his time,’ he added for good measure.
Before de Ferrers found the wit to answer Blackstone raised one more question. ‘Have you seen a German knight by the name of von Lienhard? A big man, fair-haired above the shaved sides of his head, wears his beard short. He bears a harpy on his coat of arms. He and others like him had safe passage for the King’s tournament, but he broke the code of conduct and fled England.’
De Ferrers shook his head. ‘There is so little honourable behaviour left,’ he said with a disapproving look that had not altered since Blackstone had entered his quarters. ‘We’ve had many knights travel on the King’s safe conduct, but no one of that name. If he has lost his honour he’ll no doubt be found with the routiers. What else is a man like that to do?’
The meaning was not lost on Blackstone but there was little more to be gained from staying any longer within the walls of Calais. Von Lienhard would one day want his revenge, but not anytime soon, Blackstone reasoned. There would be little chance of the German tracking him down amid the present chaos. Savagery gripped France, tearing at it with a ferocity that spared neither life nor honour, and if King Edward wanted to inherit a nation that had not bled to death, then the Dauphin’s family might serve as the balm to heal its wounds. And where the nobility gathered to hide from the terror was where he might find Christiana and his own family. Beyond that he could not say what lay ahead.
34
Christiana stumbled along the roadside ditch, dragging an exhausted Agnes behind her. The nine-year-old child had listened to her mother’s desperate explanation t
hat they had to escape the rampaging hordes of murdering Jacquerie.
Earlier, they had sought shelter in a knight’s manor house, but when they reached the turn in the road the acrid smell of the burnt-out buildings told her she was already too late. She had foolishly dismounted and left Agnes with the horse as she carefully made her way through the ruined house in search of food. There was nothing to be salvaged. In the wreckage she saw scorched bodies curled like sleeping children. She had known those who lived there and she could only guess that the remains were those of the knight’s wife and offspring. As she dragged her dress through the charred timbers she tripped and fell headlong into the burnt and mutilated carcass of the knight himself. She cried out, recoiling from the roasted meat that still clung to his ribs and the black mess of the man’s innards. Terror snatched at her and the acid surge of bile forced itself from her throat. She choked and retched.
Her cry had startled the horse, already nervous from the smell of death, and it tore itself free from Agnes’s grip. Christiana heard her child’s shout of distress and ran after the galloping horse. Blackened, muddied and exhausted, she turned her anger on the tearful girl.
‘I told you to tie the reins!’ she shouted at the wide-eyed Agnes. ‘I told you!’ she yelled again, knowing that she was being unjust. As her daughter’s lip quivered, trying to hold back a sob, Christiana knelt and pulled the trembling girl to her. Everything they had in the world was tied to the horse’s saddle: food enough for two more days, a wineskin and a bedroll. That was all they could salvage when those first men had torn through the palisade around her own house and her steward had fallen beneath staves and knives. It had been a modest home to afford her independence and yet stay within easy riding distance of her friend and mentor Blanche de Harcourt. The Countess had lost her Norman lands when her husband was executed, but she was a countess in her own right and held title in the county of Aumale. It had been by God’s grace that Blanche and the younger of her children were away from home when the killing started.
Miles away from Christiana’s house a ploughman had returned from the fields to find his lord’s bailiff and three of his soldiers stripping what few sacks of grain the ploughman held in his barn. It was a command that had come from Paris, because the Dauphin had closed off routes into the city. The waterways had been blockaded to stop provisions coming into the capital; the supplies were to be taken instead by dozens of fortified garrisons to stop the savage hordes of routiers under Charles of Navarre’s command getting any closer to the city. The ploughman heard nothing – he was deaf to the reason, his spirit broken. His wife lay ill; his children had barely enough to eat to carry them through the day’s work, let alone the approaching autumn. It was as hollow an existence as the permanent hunger in his belly. And when, finally, the family withered and died the lord of his manor would seize all that remained. Every tool, bowl and animal they had. Under the right of morte-main, everything, including his labour, belonged to his master. The Church already took its tithe in kind, demanding grain, hens and eggs – it was a tax owed to God, he was told, and then he was threatened that his soul would burn in eternal hell if he did not also obey the demands of his own domain lord. On that fateful day when the bailiff arrived, the ploughman’s flailed soul consumed him.
He said nothing as the last of his hens and jars of lard were loaded and his breeding sow was tied to the back of the cart. He stepped and raised his hand that held the scythe. The three soldiers ignored his approach, but as he hacked the bailiff to death they cursed and turned on him. It was not the first killing of a peasant family, but it sparked a fire that took hold as quickly as had the ploughman’s thatch.
Across the countryside the peasants’ discontent had been slow to erupt, but the years of suppression had festered; their plight had been made worse by the ravages of the routiers. It was bad enough that they could barely feed themselves, but the roving brigands took what they wished and killed anyone who resisted. The French King was still a hostage in England and their cries for protection fell on the deaf ears of lesser nobles who had few means to aid them and who seized what they could for themselves. And those who could not help joined forces with the brigands. The peasants’ distress found its release in anger and accusation at the cowardly knights and lords who had betrayed them by surrendering to the English Prince, and made their lives an even worse hell than before. No priest’s threat could be worse than what they now endured.
The lynch mobs grew and those knights and their families whose homes stood in their path were the first to die. No one was spared.
A horse whinnied. ‘Get down!’ Christiana said quickly, pulling Agnes into the ditch. Someone cried out in the distance, perhaps at the sight of the galloping horse. There was no chance of running across the track towards the forest. The land between had been cleared of trees over the years and stumps and brambles would have ensnared them, holding them helpless for whoever was approaching. She cradled Agnes in front of her and pulled her muddied cloak over them both, gripping the knife in her hand as hoofbeats thumped along the track. She heard a voice cry out.
‘Too late!’
More hoofbeats rumbled and then slowed as men halted their horses close enough for her to hear their snorting and the jangle of bridle and bit. The men’s voices were muffled. She held her breath as one of them dismounted. Agnes trembled and began to whimper; the cold water at the bottom of the ditch was soaking their clothes, making them both shiver. Christiana pressed her lips close to her daughter’s ear and whispered for her to be silent. The man’s boot scuffed the stony path and she heard a sword drawn from a scabbard.
The squelch of the man’s footfall came along the ditch. The terror in her mind coiled her muscles; she was barely able to control her own trembling, but one thing was certain in her mind – she would not allow her child to be raped and then butchered as had happened to others. The man was almost upon her when she heard his gasp of surprise.
‘Here!’
Christiana pushed herself up and thrashed blindly with the knife towards the man’s legs a yard from her. He cursed and sidestepped as she lost her only opportunity to inflict a wound to buy her time. The soldier moved quickly and pinned her knife hand, twisting her wrist to make her release the blade.
‘Run!’ Christiana yelled as Agnes clambered up the side of the ditch and wove between the legs of the startled horses. As Christiana fought the man who held her, another of the four men jumped down quickly from the saddle and snatched the wriggling and screaming child.
Christiana cried out, despite the man who struggled with her saying something that she could not understand. ‘Don’t hurt her! I beg you!’
Another of the soldiers quickly came down to help the man holding her as she fought and kicked. The second man gripped her face, hard, making her cease trying to smash her head against the other’s chest.
‘Stop!’ the man shouted, but Christiana spat at him, twisted her body, and kicked out. The sudden shock of the man’s slap made her taste blood. There was no way to stop the men raping them now; she was too weak to fight. Dear Christ, she prayed, don’t let them harm my child.
Tears stung her eyes and the pulse of blood pounding through her head muted the man’s words as she watched him mouth words at her. His rough hand pulled away the wet hair plastered over her face. Was this an act of lust before she was thrown to the ground and her skirts ripped away from her? Whatever happens, do not let me see my child raped and killed. By all that is holy, I beg You.
‘My lady, listen to me. You are safe. We are Sir Marcel’s men. Sent to search for you. Do you understand?’
It had been an act of tenderness. The man had brushed the hair from her face as a mother would do for her child – a small gesture to soothe away fear. Christiana blinked, felt the strength seep from her. Her blurred eyes sought out the small crest on the man’s jupon. It was the badge of Sir Marcel de Lorris, a minor lord who held lands in trust for her friend and mentor Blanche de Harcourt. It was where Blackst
one’s son Henry had been placed as a page to be trained in arms and to serve the knight and his household.
The man repeated his question again. Christiana nodded and felt the man’s hold loosen. The soldier lowered Agnes to the ground as Christiana staggered against the bank, soaked, cold and exhausted. She held her daughter to her and wiped the tears from her dirt-caked face. The men stood back, waiting for her to gather her composure. She dragged her sleeve across her running nose and, holding Agnes at her side, looked at the rough-hewn men who could just as easily have been routiers.
‘I beg your forgiveness for hurting you,’ said the man who had slapped her. He was older than the others, wisps of grey in his beard, his helmet enclosing a weather-beaten face that now looked remorseful.
Christiana nodded and spat away bloodied phlegm. This was no time for delicacy. ‘They have killed those in the house. We must bury them,’ she said without thinking.
The man was uncertain for a moment, knowing she was of higher rank than him. ‘My lady, we do not know where the mob is. They swirl across the countryside like a flock of starlings. There’s no telling. We must leave those poor souls as they are for now. My lord commanded me to find you and your child. We found your horse some way down the track. Can you ride? You and the girl?’
‘We should go,’ one of the other riders said.
The man raised his arm to silence him, waiting for Christiana’s answer. ‘If need be we can give you food now, but we should ride if you are able.’
The violence summoned up to defend her child had left her. She nodded. ‘I can ride.’
‘Then one of us shall carry the child,’ said the man.