I Serve: A Novel of the Black Prince

by Rosanne E. Lortz

  A rainy spring followed the cold winter and we continued to wait for the weather to clear. One day in early May, a ship put in at Bordeaux bearing orders from King Edward. That was not all the ship bore. I stared openmouthed at the emissary the king had sent— Thomas Holland, the Earl of Kent. While the prince, the Captal de Buch, Chandos, and Audley closeted themselves with His Majesty’s letter. I was left to see to the accommodations of the bearer.

  “So, Potenhale,” said Holland, walking beside me a little unsteadily. “I see you have not quitted your master’s service.”

  “Certainly not,” I replied. “I shall always remember my duty to him.”

  “It is well you have a good memory, sirrah,” retorted Holland. “I hope you have not forgotten that drubbing I gave you at Windsor.”

  I looked up at him sharply. His fleshy form no longer inspired the same dread it once had. I remembered the prickly drops of sweat sliding down my face and the sticky apprehension in my mouth when he had first challenged me to joust. I had no such tremors now. I folded my arms across my chest. “Yea, I remember Windsor right well, my lord. You had the advantage of me then. But if you would deign to break lances with me again, I will show you what mettle has been forged in me. You will not take my horse and arms so easily this time, even with such a jade’s trick as an unlaced helmet.”

  Holland looked me up and down. I had come into my full height since the tournament at Windsor, and though I was an inch or two shy of the prince’s stature, I was reckoned tall by many. My shoulders were as broad as Holland’s but knit with younger sinews. My arms and legs gleamed like pillars of bronze. I wore a black scalloped tunic with my silver chevron emblazoned across my taut chest.

  “Ha!” said Holland scornfully, but I sensed a note of hesitation in his voice. “An’ we had time to fight a tourney, I would remind you how it feels to be unhorsed. But we must be about the king’s business, not our own. Leave me, boy. I must rest.”

  I learned the contents of the king’s letter later that night. In it Edward had enjoined his son to make no move from Gascony until Lancaster had time to receive reinforcements in the North. Then Edward desired the two commanders to muster their men, advance toward each other, and meet in the center of France where the two armies would fuse together like bars of molten steel. Our instructions beyond this point were uncertain. Possibly our united forces would then march on Paris. Or possibly we would encounter King John and best him in the field with a second Crecy.

  At the end of the letter the king hinted that he himself might be coming to join Lancaster and to take charge of the expedition. “What response will your highness make to that suggestion?” I asked.

  “A most filial response,” replied the prince. “I shall write how my heart yearns for his presence, and yet deplores the thought of him suffering such care and trouble. I shall lament the hardship he will undergo and express fervent prayers that his health would not suffer in this campaign.”

  “Will that stop him from coming?” I asked.

  “Who can tell?” answered the prince.

  *****

  It was not until the middle of the summer that our plans matured. Lancaster had roused himself in Normandy and was bringing his force down to the Loire valley. The Gascons and we would go up from Bordeaux and meet Lancaster near the city of Orleans.

  Edward, as it turned out, had been distracted by affairs in England and could not cross the Channel to join the army—although he continued to promise his presence later in the season. The prince showed no improper emotion at the receipt of this news, but I doubt not that his highness was glad of his father’s absence. The autumnal raiding party of the previous year had given him little chance to prove his mettle as sole commander. The summer boasted greater promise.

  Holland, having no such pressing affairs in England, had remained with our company in France. “If it pleases your highness,” he had said to the prince, “I shall lead a company in the summer campaign.”

  I listened eagerly, waiting for the prince to refuse him. But my master received Holland’s service with equanimity, or even enthusiasm. “Aye, it pleases me well,” said the prince. And thereupon, he set Holland over a company of two hundred men-at-arms. It was a sound tactical move; Holland had proved himself many times to be an able commander of men. But the matter did not please me. I could not stand to see his highness give preference to Holland, the man who blocked my matrimonial desires like an iron portcullis.

  As in the previous expedition, our English army was augmented by an even larger force of Gascons. The Captal de Buch would have joined us at their head; however, spies brought word that the Comte d’Armagnac had mobilized his forces once again. “Viper!” boomed Audley. “He’ll come slithering into Gascony the moment we turn our backs.”

  “And for that reason,” said the prince firmly, “de Grailly must stay behind.”

  “But your highness!” pleaded le Captal de Buch, his moustaches wagging in pathetic remonstrance. His excitement over the upcoming campaign was second no man’s. “Have we not fought together these many months? Are we not brothers of the sword?” His eyes brimmed over with tears at the thought of the prince leaving him behind in Bordeaux.

  “Aye, we are sword brothers,” replied the prince kindly. “Yet you are also the seneschal of Gascony. You must serve where you are called, not where you wish. My heart is sore to forego your company, but you must remain at your post to deal with d’Armagnac when we are gone. It would be a pretty folly to report to His Majesty that we had moved our forces to the Loire valley, only to lose the heartland around the Garonne.”

  I saw then that the prince rejected the Captal de Buch’s company for the same reason that he had received Holland’s. He had found the place where each man might best serve, to the end that he himself might render better service to his father.

  Once we received word that Lancaster was on the move, the prince struck north immediately. In the raid of the previous year, the prince had tolerated some of the natural disorderliness of the men—not so on this expedition. In words as firm as granite, he commanded the men to keep to their ranks. “I forbid any man to wander about the countryside unarmed,” said he. “At all times, you will keep the armor of leather and steel upon your breast, and the armor of penitence and the Eucharist upon your soul. At all times, you will be ready to fight those who have rebelled against the rightful rule of my father. And at all times, you will live in worldly honor so that dying you may enter eternal honor.”

  I took the prince’s admonishments to heart. There was a comfortingly familiar ring to them. Here were the same precepts that Sir Geoffroi de Charny had enjoined me to follow. Here was the code that keeps the soul of a fighting man in brighter polish than the soul of a monk. As the pace of our northward journey increased, I increased the frequency of my confessions and strove to purify my mind of evil desire.

  But though I succeeded in ridding myself of many sinful passions, there was one passion too fiery to be quenched. Try as I might to be at peace with all men, I could not eradicate my rancor toward Sir Thomas Holland, the Earl of Kent. In earlier days, the sting of his scorn had often lashed me into a fury of indignation. Now, the indifference with which he treated me cooled my anger not one whit. When in confession, I prayed fervently that this malice might pass from me. When out of confession, I hoped just as fervently to see Holland meet his demise in this campaign.

  The prince himself took meticulous charge of the camp. Each morning he supervised the camp’s dismantling and ordered a forward march once the road had been deemed safe; each evening he oversaw the camp’s placement and erected measures for defense. During the nights, the prince saw that the watch was kept. Frequently, he went around from station to station, ensuring the vigilance of the sentries, and assuring his own mind that there were no gaps in the defense.

  The prince appointed Sir John Chandos and Sir James Audley as scouts for the army. With their companies of trained knights, they rode ahead of us each day, scouring t
he woods for ambushes or signs of the enemy. It would be ill fortune to meet with the French army before joining our forces with Lancaster.

  Under the prince’s strict shepherding, our army of nearly seven thousand men, passed quickly northward through the counties of Berry and Poitou; for nearly four weeks we marched. We took what supplies we needed from the countryside, burning as we went, but deviated little from our set path in search of plunder. It was near the end of August, when we halted alongside the noble city of Bourges to take stock of our position.

  The prince had called a council of war in his pavilion. Brocas was there, Salisbury, Holland, and me. Others continued to trickle in after they had seen to the defenses in their sector of the camp. We sat on makeshift chairs around a large unrolled map. The faded vellum showed the soft outline of France. The rivers and their crossings, the cities and larger towns were labeled with the blue and gold lettering of Gothic script. A tall chess piece—the queen from the prince’s ivory chess set—stood regally in the middle of the map. It marked our position in the land of France.

  The tent flap opened to admit one more. “No word from Lancaster,” said the Earl of Warwick glumly. He threw himself wearily into a chair within the inner circle. His words unfolded slowly like the petals of a flower. I could not tell if his hesitation came from doubt or exhaustion. “Will your highness continue north?”

  The prince was silent.

  “We must continue north!” said Holland vociferously. The rigors of the campaign had redeemed some of his flaccidity, and he spoke with his former forcefulness. “Lancaster is waiting for us, and we must not disappoint him. United, we can advance on Paris. Without him, we can do nothing.”

  “But we have gone nearly two-thirds of the distance between Bordeaux and Normandy,” argued Warwick. “Surely, Lancaster, if he were able, would have met us before now. There is no doubt in my mind—he is beset, perhaps even destroyed.”

  “Even so,” contended Sir Holland, “there is still the king!” For Edward continued to dangle possibilities of landing a third army on the northern coast.

  “Well, highness?” said the earl of Salisbury preemptively, before Holland and Warwick’s discussion could gain more momentum. “These two say no more than what we all already know. It is for you to decide what must be done.”

  “I am loath to cross the Loire without news of Lancaster,” said the prince slowly. “If we continue north, then cross it we must. Lancaster may not be there to meet us, but I daresay the French will be; then we shall be trapped between the river and their swords.”

  “Well said!” commended Warwick, and Holland grunted in acknowledgment of this concern.

  “But I will make no decision without the advice of my scouts,” continued the prince. “Potenhale, did you not summon Chandos and Audley to my tents?”

  “Aye, highness,” I replied. “But they are not yet returned from their foray. You must remember that you gave them orders to range afield as far as the town of Aubigny today.”

  “That is not so far from here,” said the prince. “They should have returned before now.”

  His words acted like a conjurer, for he had no sooner spoken than the tent flap parted to admit the two grizzled scouts. In their company was a third man, bigger than both. Like the scouts, he wore full armor, but his surcoat was bespattered with mud as if he had fallen from his horse. His gray hair curled voluminously like the coat of a ewe, and I learned later that this had earned him the sobriquet Grismouton. I saw at once that he was a Frenchman and surmised that he must be their prisoner.

  “Your highness,” said Chandos formally, “allow me to make known to you Sir Philip Chambly.”

  Sir Chambly bowed in a courtly fashion.

  “Welcome, Sir Chambly,” said the prince courteously, and he gave him his hand to kiss. “How come you to be in the company of these gentlemen?”

  “Through the mischances of war,” he said, shaking his woolly head ruefully. “My company was deployed to Aubigny and your captains surprised us there. Mais par le sang Dieu, it was a hard battle! There are eighteen of my company brought into your hand, as many more dead on the field—and Christ knows whither the rest have flown!”

  The prince turned to his scouts. “So you have taken Aubigny?” he asked with a gleam in eye.

  “Aye, highness,” said Audley in a tone of satisfaction. “We’ve taken her, torched her, and left only blackened rubble in the place.”

  Chandos, his black hair lined with streaks of gray, nodded in concurrence with Audley’s words. There was a slight stoop in his shoulders that I did not remember—but then it was nearly ten years since I had served him as a squire.

  The prince resumed his questioning of Sir Chambly. “You say you were deployed at Aubigny—who sent you there, and from what place?”

  Sir Chambly hesitated. He dropped his eyes before the prince like a sheep who has stumbled into a clearing and found himself face to face with a wolf.

  “There is no harm in telling his highness what he asks,” said Audley roughly. His stocky arms gestured contemptuously. “I have already questioned your men and they say that you come from Orleans. King John is there in arms, with a grand company of pennants en route from Chartres.”

  “Sweet Mary!” said Brocas with a sharp intake of breath. “He’s at the Loire waiting for us.” And indeed, it was so. Your French king had chased Lancaster to and fro across the southern border of Normandy till the harassed commander had retreated to the coast of the Contenin. Now, having peremptorily prevented our army from converging with our comrades, he straddled the river like a mighty colossus waiting for us to swim between his legs.

  “It’s just as I said,” said Warwick triumphantly, although it was an unhappy happenstance to triumph in. “Lancaster’s overturned. There’s only disaster if we continue north.”

  “It’s not confirmed!” objected Holland sulkily, unwilling to give up his position in the argument. “If we can get across the Loire we can still get to Lancaster—or to His Majesty’s landing party.”

  “And how might we do that?” demanded Warwick, “with the entire garden of French chivalry planted in Orleans at the crossing?”

  “Well, what do you propose?” Holland blustered loudly. “You would have us turn tail and run back to Gascony like a frightened child who’s shitted his breeches!”

  Warwick turned an inarticulate shade of red.

  “Come now, milord,” Salisbury remonstrated with the Earl of Kent. “That is something too round of a description.”

  The prince held up his hand before the wrangling could begin afresh. “Gentlemen,” said the prince calmly. “I have made my decision. It was in my mind to do this ere now, and this new intelligence only confirms me in my resolution.”

  All eyes turned to the prince.

  “We go west,” said the prince. His long fingers closed around the ivory queen upon the map. He picked her up and moved her three inches to the left. “Tours,” said the blue lettering with leaf of gold. A serpentine line sliced through the city name like a scimitar. The map marked rivers as well as cities, and Tours lay just south of the Loire.

  The prince calmly surveyed the council of captains and nobles, his subordinates in rank and blood but superiors in the matter of military experience. He did not need them to approve his decision. He would not change it if they frowned upon it. “We move on the morrow, milords,” said he. And rising from his chair he exited the tent with strong, purposeful steps.

  The others lingered a little longer in the tent to discuss his highness’s decision. “So we are abandoning Lancaster then!” said Holland. “We are circling round to return to Bordeaux.”

  “Perhaps,” said Brocas archly. “Or perhaps we are merely sidestepping the French army to continue north. I believe that one can cross the Loire at Tours as well as at Orleans, can one not, Sir Chambly?”

  “You English are well informed,” said our French prisoner wryly.

  “Nay, we’ll not be traveling north again,” sa
id Audley. “That’s not the prince’s intent. Tours itself is a rich enough reason to turn to the west. If we can sack that city before returning to Gascony, our summer’s foray will not have been in vain.”

  “She’s as rich in fortifications as she is in funds,” remarked Chandos. “We’ll not see the inside of that castle easily.”

  The talk rambled on to the battlements and breastworks of Tours. Our guest, having ridden all day on horse, yawned, shook himself, and showed other signs of fatigue. “Come, Sir Chambly,” said I. “I will show you to your quarters.”

  “Gramercy, young sir,” said the great ram inclining his wooly head toward me. “I think these gentlemen would retire to their beds as well if they knew how hot my king is to catch them and do battle. Sacre dieu, they will have need of their strength when next they see our Oriflamme.”

  THE FALLEN FLAGBEARER

  SEPTEMBER, 1356

  14

  Our English army cut a wide westward swathe of destruction as we left Bourges and made for Tours. We paused for five days at Romorantin to besiege the castle there. Warwick gritted his teeth at this, for Romorantin sat closer to Orleans—and to King John’s army—than was to his liking. Holland, also, chafed at the delay. He still hoped that the prince intended to continue north from Tours. He knew we must arrive there before the French anticipated our plan.

  Romorantin surrendered, but only after we used siege engines to set fire to her keep. In the meanwhile, our scouts brought word that the Comte de Poitiers was fortifying Tours against our imminent arrival. “We must hurry!” said Holland brusquely, “before he destroys the bridges across the Loire.” The prince agreed to increase the army’s speed, but by the time our seven thousand men reached the outskirts of Tours, three more days had passed. The Comte de Poitiers, just as Holland had feared, had acted both expediently and expeditiously. He dismantled the bridges across the river like a boy tearing the wings off a fly. Then he retreated behind the walls of the city to gloat proudly over our advancing army.