I Serve: A Novel of the Black Prince

by Rosanne E. Lortz

  “That is not true,” she said, pushing me away from her but not hard enough to loosen my grip. “I may comfort her in her suffering and give her the courage of mind to stand against his wickedness. I alone knew of her secret marriage to Holland. I alone bore the anguish of her soul when she was betrothed to Salisbury. I alone stood beside her in the birth of her children. Whither she goes I will go, and her people will be my people.”

  “You take too much upon yourself,” I said angrily. “Such devotion to an earthly mistress is unnatural!”

  “Would you leave your prince if I bade you?” she retorted.

  “Yes, a thousand times yes!” I answered. As the words left my mouth, I knew they were false.

  We halted at the door of the hall.

  “Then stay behind when your master leaves,” she said. She looked me full in the eyes, and then came closer to stroke my face with a sudden burst of passion. I tried to pull her into my arms, but she turned and fled the other way.

  Entering the hall, I sat down to eat; the food was as dry as chalk within my mouth. At the high table, the king complimented Sir Thomas on his well-managed estate and predicted that Joan’s imminent childbirth would produce another son. The prince entered anon and joined his father at the high table. He greeted Holland with civility, and the two exchanged perfunctory conversation on the state of affairs in France.

  Margery did not come in to supper that night, and I did not go to seek her afterwards. The red glove was still in my bosom, but I knew now that neither I nor its owner was willing to give up our masters for the sake of each other. Margery’s challenge had showed me that much. As long as my prince required my service, I would follow the pennants of war. And as long as Joan needed comforting, Margery’s love for me would bow to the dictates of duty.

  We retired early to sleep, and on the morrow I saddled my horse to ride back to London beside my prince. The rest of the household was still abed, but Sir Thomas came out to bid us Godspeed. His body had become exceedingly fleshy in recent years. Great jowls hung down from his throat, and his round belly sagged beneath his broad tunic. The savage leer that his eyes once held had softened a little into a self-satisfied smirk.

  Holland made his obeisance to the king, and raised his hand in farewell to our entourage. My eyes followed him morbidly as he turned to enter the manor house. “This man here,” said I to myself, “is the cause of all our suffering.”

  The morning was cold, and the ground was icy; I watched Sir Thomas slip on a glassy puddle that stood before the door. He reached out a hand to recover himself, but it was some time before his ponderous weight could regain its balance. “If only he had fallen a little harder,” thought I. “Many a man has broken their neck ere now on an icy day.”

  I wondered what it would be like to fight him in tournament now. I would wager a hundred crowns that the old bull could no longer turn and charge as he used to. My mind flitted back to the melee at Westminster when Sir Thomas had come directly in the path of the prince. He had as much reason to wish Holland dead as I. Why had he avoided him? Why had he not struck? Another had done it. I saw the image of myself—King Edward in Potenhale’s armor—rising up in the stirrups to deliver a buffet upon Sir Thomas’s helmet. Again and again the sword descended! I remembered how Holland had swooned from the fearsome blow of the blunt blade. But how if it had been sharp instead of blunt? I imagined blood cascading down Holland’s fat face. I watched his body jolt heavily onto the ground, never to rise again.

  THE RETURN OF THE CONQUEROR

  1355 – SEPTEMBER, 1356

  13

  Our souls had ample time to grow dusty again after the cleansing that the holy sites had provided. King Edward’s pilgrimage proved premature. The invasion of France was postponed yet again. A second squabble between Charles of Navarre and King John had seemed promising, but the quarrel had been hastily patched together, ending almost as soon as it had begun. King Edward was forced to wait a while longer for a suitable opportunity to invade France. In the early months of the next year that opportunity came—but not in the form of the Navarrese alliance.

  England, as you know, possessed three main outposts in the continent at that time: the city of Calais, a small strip of Normandy, and the province of Gascony. The area of Gascony, a tattered and diminished relic of what used to be the country of Guienne, has no strong ties to France. The people themselves speak a different dialect, the langue d’oc, and have no desire to be ruled by a Parisian king. The Gascon nobles are comfortable with English rule, and when that rule is threatened, they are the first to complain to the English king.

  It was approaching Easter of 1355 when an embassy arrived in England from the Gascons. Jean de Grailly, the leading noble of the region, was petitioning His Majesty for aid against the incursions of the French. De Grailly, whom you may also know by his honorary title le Captal de Buch, confirmed what we English had already heard rumored. King John’s French lieutenants had been steadily working to pare down the size of Edward’s continental domains, trimming the borders off Gascony as one trims the rind off of a wheel of cheese. The Comte d’Armagnac was the worst of these predators. His ruffian knights constantly patrolled the Gascon border, terrorizing peasants, ousting manorial lords, and seizing castles. And all things they did in the name of d’Armagnac so that King John could not be accused of truce breaking.

  The Captal de Buch outlined the predicament with all the suitable histrionics. He was a small, wizened man, with long moustaches that came down below his chin. He was theatrical—a typical Gascon trait—but well respected by all for his sagacity and valor. He had been one of the first to receive the Garter when the order began.

  “And I tell you,” said de Grailly before the council of His Majesty and English lords, “that if you allow d’Armagnac to carry on like this unhampered, he will carve off the best parts of our fair Gascony and leave only a bare skeleton for Your Majesty’s table.”

  Edward heard his words in silence, then bounded to his feet and paced about the room. “We must take action, my lords. But how?”

  “A full invasion!” urged William Montague, the Earl of Salisbury. Like the prince, the earl had grown surer of his own judgment with the passage of time. His disappointment over the thwarted marriage with Lady Joan was as distant as a childhood memory. “Let us have Crecy all over again and remind them that English mettle is not to be toyed with.”

  “Aye,” said Sir John Chandos, my old master, “but let us strike this time from Gascony, and use Normandy as the counter feint.”

  “A reversal of tactics!” boomed Audley, for in the expedition of nine years ago, the king’s force in Normandy had been the main army, while Lancaster’s force in Gascony had been a mere diversion.

  “Sire,” said the Earl of Warwick, who had helped the prince in his first command at Crecy, “give me the command of the Gascon force. I will make for Bordeaux immediately and make this Comte d’Armagnac repent that he ever laid hands on Your Majesty’s demesne.”

  “No!” said a voice, loud and clear. The chair directly in front of me resounded with it. All eyes turned to the prince as he stood and assumed the center of the room. “Give me the command in Gascony, my liege. Let it be my command—all mine—and I will show you what sinews you have bred in me. It is an honorable thing for a knight to defend his own rights or the rights of his lord. Let me have this honor, and let me have it in Gascony among worthy men with a worthy cause.”

  The Captal de Buch looked at the prince with shining eyes. His moustaches waggled with emotion and he pumped the prince’s hand vigorously. “God bless you, your highness, for we Gascons will surely pray for your soul.”

  The king fingered his beard in consideration. I marveled that he did not agree at once with the prince’s request. “Would it not be more prudent to send Lancaster again to Gascony?” he asked the prince. “He has the experience of the territory there. And you, my son, have the knowledge of the Norman coast.”

  “Not so, not so!” sai
d the Captal de Buch wildly, forgetting all decorum as he contradicted the king. “The prudence of the matter is entirely the other way around. Think you how greatly it will encourage the spirits of my people to see the prince—Your Majesty’s eldest son!—at the head of the Gascon forces. It has been seventy years since an English king or his son has set foot in the land of my fathers! Seventy years! And will you now deny us the presence of your son when he begs this command of you? We must have him, Your Majesty! Do not deny us.”

  The king smiled beneath his beard, and I saw that he was well-pleased with both the audacity of this Gascon and the resolution of his heir. “What more can I object?” he said to the Gascon lord. “You run at me like a fighting cock, de Grailly, and I must acquiesce or be pecked to death.” He turned to the Prince of Wales. “The command is yours, my son. May God be with you in this endeavor and bring you swiftly to victory.”

  *****

  The prince, though he was determined to be the sole commander, desired company on the expedition to Gascony. Warwick, who had requested the command himself, he invited to come along, as well as Salisbury, Chandos, Audley, Brocas, and others. He had twelve lords in total in his train, though Holland was not among them.

  One part of me wished he was—it is easier for a man to lose his life in the fields of war than the in the fields of peace. Of late, I had a growing fascination with the idea of Sir Thomas’s death. How much misery would be ended if his life were cut short! But Sir Thomas did not go out with our expedition, and it was useless to dwell on the accidents that might befall a man in battle.

  While the king busied himself with procuring a force for Lancaster’s diversionary army, the prince and the lords who accompanied him made shift to assemble their own army. The prince put together a company of a thousand men, a combination of men-at-arms and archers, while his nobles together produced the same amount or more. It was a mere handful compared to the force that Edward had brought to Normandy nine years ago, but it did not need to be any larger. “Your army is only the grain of sand in the oyster,” the Captal de Buch had said, “and our Gascon men will cluster around it till it becomes a pearl of immeasurable value.”

  “He has a high opinion of himself, that Gascon!” Audley had complained later. “We the grain of sand, and his men the pearl!”

  It was not until the ninth of September that the fleet was ready to sail. It had taken several months both to collect and to arm the men. The prince, whose estates had produced poorly in the years following the plague, was forced to contract a great deal of debt to provision the company. He had mortgaged his lands up to the hilt; should he die on the venture, they would go to his creditors instead of to his family. “No matter,” said he, “for if I die, I die wifeless and childless, and my father has land enough.” Though the lack of an heir from his own body might have been disheartening, the debt itself was not. The prince blithely assured Warwick that the French plunder they would take would more than repay the costs they had incurred.

  It was the third time that I had left the shores of England for the land of France. The first time I had gone as a beardless squire. The second time I had gone determined to become a Benedictine. And now, the third time, I went as a knight in the full strength of my powers. I was twenty-five years old. The Prince of Wales trusted me as his companion-at-arms. I had made a name for myself with the capture of Geoffroi de Charny. What further glories lay in store?

  By the time our army had reached Gascony and set up a base in Bordeaux, the first signs of the winter chill had already appeared. Whatever was to be done must be done quickly before the weather circumvented our purpose. The day after our arrival the prince swore an oath before the nobles of Gascony that as the king’s deputy he would observe the rights, liberties, and customs of all citizens of Guienne. Then, assured of his commitment toward them, the Gascon nobles and merchants wholeheartedly committed their vassals and goods to the prince. A council of war commenced.

  Warwick was for striking northward against the domains of King John; but the Captal de Buch insisted that since the Comte d’Armagnac was the one who had violated the borders of Gascony, the Comte d’Armagnac must be the one to feel the fury of the English (and Gascon) army. The prince agreed that the interests of the Gascons must be put first. In two weeks he found his army augmented by four or five thousand Gascons ready to press forward into the territory of d’Armagnac.

  The army, once it passed over the border of Gascony, was separated into three parallel groups by its commander. Nine years ago the prince had watched his father’s army march from the Contenin to Calais, and he had not forgotten the manner of its marching. Fanned out along the Garonne River, our army cut a wide swath through d’Armagnac’s territory, burning and plundering everything in our path. The three armies, marching side by side, met town after town, castle after castle, stronghold after stronghold. Most were taken and destroyed with barely half a day’s halt.

  One town, a place called Bassoues, belonged to the archbishop of Auch. The town surrendered as did the others, but the prince would allow none of the army to enter it for plunder. “We fight against France, not the church,” said he. The prince put a small sum of money into the hand of Sir John Chandos and bade him enter the town to seek supplies. The prince knew that Sir John Chandos was a pious man, and that the property of the church would suffer no scathe from his intrusion.

  In one incident, the prince resolved to spend the night in a captured citadel. The soldiers were so eager to fire the town the next day that they applied the torches before the prince and I had awoken and taken to horse. “Allons!” shouted Brocas rushing into my room. “Hurry if you don’t want to be roasted!” I had barely time to throw on my clothes and snatch up my sword before the fortress was filled with smoke. It was a Gascon company who had fired the town, and the prince minced no words when he berated the company commander for his incompetence. From this time forward on the campaign, he always made a point of sleeping in the field, and I roundly cursed the Gascon stupidity that forced me to sleep inside of a tent when there were beds enough to be had in the cities.

  Wherever we went we met with only shallow resistance. The Comte d’Armagnac had hidden himself away in the fortified city of Toulouse. Aware of the prince’s arrival in Gascony, he had provisioned and garrisoned Toulouse to withstand all assault. The prince was unwilling to besiege such a well-fortified city, so he continued his depredations on the countryside. The Comte would be a shabby suzerain indeed if he did not come out of hiding before all of his fief was in flames.

  Carcassonne, though not as wealthy as Toulouse, was as populous and prosperous as the English city of York. The prince spent two days there laying siege to the castle before he gave up and set fire to the town. The destruction of Carcassonne failed to adequately stimulate the Comte so we pressed forward toward the even richer city of Narbonne.

  The people of Narbonne fled from us as if from a crowd of lepers. They quitted their thatch-roofed homes and retreated into the castle, sending frantic messages to their liege to succor them. These cries finally produced a response. D’Armagnac, who would not encounter us on his own strength, had received reinforcement from King John. He exited Toulouse and drew near to Narbonne to draw off our army from thence. “He’s left his den at last,” said the prince eagerly. Casting Narbonne aside as a boy does with a nut he cannot open, we turned about to face the Comte D’Armagnac.

  Though the Comte had spent much time marshalling his forces, those forces had spent little time marshalling their courage. Our alacrity in accosting them dismayed them; they took refuge behind the river and cut down all the bridges to prevent us from crossing. It took us a day to repair the bridges, and when we crossed, we found that they had drawn back even further into a little town. We advanced and camped for a whole day in front of the town waiting for our adversary in full battle array. No one came. On the morrow we entered the town and found that the French had withdrawn yet again.

  When it became apparent that the Comte�
�s men would do no battle with us, the prince called a council to decide our course of action. “It’s nearly Christmastide,” reminded Chandos, “and the weather’s been louring of late.”

  “Aye, highness,” said the Captal de Buch regretfully. “Let’s retire till spring, and if those bâtards of D’Armagnac will meet us then, we’ll have a proper battle.”

  The prince acquiesced to their wisdom, and we returned to Bordeaux for the winter. Although the Gascons were happy to see the Comte D’Armagnac punished for his depredations, the prince’s extensive raid had done little to improve the English holdings on the continent. Lancaster’s foray into Normandy had been as ineffective as ours. Realistically, the expedition had commenced too close to winter to accomplish anything significant. But the new year held brighter promise. The king approved of the prince’s plan to wait in Gascony till spring. And so we stayed.

  The winter months passed slowly. While the weather was too unpredictable to stage a large-scale assault, dry spells often afforded opportunities for swift sallies. Raiding parties led by the Earl of Warwick, by Sir John Chandos, or by the Earl of Salisbury crossed into French territory and illuminated the night sky with their fires. On one occasion, when the prince’s warband approached a small town, the inhabitants sent out a bishop to buy us off with a chest of gold.

  “What do I want with your money?” the prince replied in scorn. “The king of England, by God’s grace, is rich enough to supply for my needs. I will not take gold and silver for such a cowardly arrangement. No! I will do what I came to do—to chastise, discipline, and make war on all inhabitants of this duchy who are in rebellion against their father! If you men of Guienne will not recall your former allegiance, I will make you recall it by force of arms.”

  It was a grand speech, gallant in its defiance. But for all that, I was wondering if it were not better to take the bribe. The prince’s coffers had run very low indeed; and though he boasted that his father was well able to supply us, that boast carried more bravado than verisimilitude.