by Dan Davis
Edward held on to a few of the richest leaders but all the other survivors were given a hunk of bread, a cup of wine and a kick up the arse as we sent them south into France without a penny to their names. Those emaciated, humiliated men were an announcement to the people of France that their king could not protect them and that they would do well to consider welcoming a king who could.
Calais was thus emptied completely of Frenchmen and immediately repopulated with Englishmen and the city became a true part of England from that day on for over two hundred years.
The war was not over. Indeed, it grew heated again, for I was ordered to begin making deeper raids into France in preparation for our army’s next advance. Not just my company, of course. Henry of Lancaster led a huge force to capture a town thirty miles away. Even the Prince of Wales, God love him, rode at the head of a raiding party into Artois. He made a lot of noise and burned plenty but no one wanted him to range too far from safety. He was our golden prince, after all.
And I was free to take up my hunt for the immortal knight once more.
***
The search for the knight of the black banner continued and yet it foundered as we entered the autumn of 1347. People still travelled in bad weather, of course they did, but with nothing like the frequency of the summer. And the banditry and general lawlessness that gripped France following the loss of the battle continued.
But then at the end of September, a truce was agreed by both sides which was to last until July 1348. Of course, Philip wanted a truce because he had no hope of beating us militarily. But my men could not understand it. They felt as though they had been cheated of their ultimate victory and I could understand why that was their view but I explained that we had reached somewhat of a strategic impasse and the nine-month break would allow a reduction of the appalling cost and logistical effort it took to keep our vast army in the field.
They were just annoyed that they were going to miss out on all that booty.
It meant that my operations in France were suddenly curtailed. We were going home, and a few men were pulling back into Calais but maintaining my company in the field was out of the question. It would threaten the treaty and to defy it would be treasonous.
When we returned to England, I gave the men of my company their final payments and dismissed them. They returned to their homes and their families, if they had them. Some claimed they were now rich enough to find a wife and start a family. Others went into the degenerate filth of London to spend their relatively huge wealth on drink and women and to waste the rest.
For a time, I returned home and set things in order there. It was a terribly wet summer and the rain fell and fell and there was never enough time between downpours for anything to dry out so that everyone and everything was damp all the time, even indoors. My fields turned to mud and the wheat and barley was much battered by the deluge. The common people grew tense because they could sense that a famine may have been coming.
King Edward and the lords of England, on the other hand, spent that wet summer in a series of sumptuous tourneys across the country. In many ways, Edward was on top of the world. And why would he not be? He was thirty-five years old, and a fifteen-month campaign had brought him the glory that he had been seeking for so long. The leaders of England were rather joyful after such a series of victories. Our small nation had bested the mighty France again and again, in battle and in tactical manoeuvres, overall strategy and even in politics. As soon as winter was over, the tournaments began at Reading, Bury St. Edmunds, Lincoln, Eltham and Lichfield. It was an endless cycle of feasting, competition, dancing, drinking and travelling. Round and round the country they went in an orgy of consumption and splendour.
“As much as I respect the King and the young lords he has cultivated,” Thomas said to me during a feast at Windsor in July, “I despise witnessing how they squander their wealth and deck out their bodies with the trappings of frippery, buffoonery and lust.”
“Keep your voice down,” I warned him, aware that he had unusually consumed rather a lot of wine.
“They celebrate themselves, Richard,” he continued, heeding me not at all. “Not one of them seem to realise that their victories were a gift from God, who is the true benefactor of the chivalry of England.”
I took his cup from him and pressed food into his hand. “Eat some bread, brother.”
Although I was sympathetic with his opinion, I could not hold those elaborate displays against Edward, for he was behaving precisely as a king should. He was demonstrating his power and his majesty to the people of his kingdom, from the great to the common folk. A king’s magnificence reflects onto those he rules and so every man no matter how lowly rejoiced to see the astonishing pageantry and splendour.
Thomas saw empty glamour and vanity but then he still carried within him the heart of a monk and his personal distaste for rampant consumption blinded him to the necessity of it. A king who acts with frugality is not loved by the common man. The pageantry was kingship, perhaps just as much as victory in battle was. Both ends of the scale enabled and enhanced the other.
But my pride was mostly in how my people were growing in stature on the world stage. The lords of Christendom had witnessed the King repeatedly overcome the first ranked military power west of Constantinople. The English had become the foremost warriors of Europe and suddenly every prince in Christendom cried out for Edward’s attention, whether it was to arbitrate disputes between kingdoms or to offer him marriages for his children or beg for military aid.
The King of Castile betrothed his heir to the Princess Joan who was fourteen years old and as pretty as a picture and as charming as any of her lauded ancestors.
While dreading to hear of it as if I was a young girl myself, I kept an ear out for news of any betrothal that Lady Cecilia might have made to some lord or other but there was nothing. She was almost never travelling with the court and never when I was in attendance, although I was sure that was merely bad luck.
Oftentimes a widow could postpone her next marriage by claiming to still be consumed by grief for her last husband but when a lady was as great a prize as Cecilia, that could only get her so far. I had little doubt that her brother Sir Humphrey was doing everything in his power to arrange a match.
Their family was not a great one and their family was small, surviving the generations with just an heir or two but their wealth was considerable and her beauty was famed so it was likely she could find an older man looking to replace a dead wife or a young lordling who would not object to an older widow, considering all her other attributes.
More than once I sat down to pen a letter to her but I always stared at the confused words in my appalling hand and ended up tossing the letter across the chamber in irritation. What was it that I wanted from her? Her love, of course, but I knew that would never be possible for even if in some mad passion she wanted me, I could never condemn her to a marriage with an ageless knight who could never give her children. It could never lead to happiness.
And so, with the war on hold and the search for the black knight finding only shadows, I commanded that the members of the Order of the White Dagger meet at our house in London to discuss what was to be done next.
***
Myself, Thomas, Hugh, Stephen and Eva were in attendance. Without the good humour and energy of John, it seemed to me to be rather quiet and dour in the hall as we ate up our bread and drank off the wine.
I dismissed the servants for a while so that we could speak freely and I commanded Stephen to provide a full account of his search. And Stephen swore blind that he was doing everything he could to locate the knight but there was the fundamental problem that we had so little to go on.
“I did discover the truth about the squire of the black banner knight who held the red shield,” Stephen said. “As you stated, the shield was red with three white sub-ordinary escutcheons and this being the blazon of Sir Geoffrey de Charny, one of the most famed knights in Christendom, we believed it may have
been painted in order to distract or deceive us or others on the battlefield. However, the shield truly was one of de Charny’s. This does not incriminate the great knight himself, of course, because the shield had in fact been stolen.”
“Stolen from de Charny?” I was suspicious. “Who would steal a shield?”
It was true that Sir Geoffrey de Charny was one of the most famous knights in Christendom. A lord who was honoured for his chivalrous acts in peace and in war. But the story of a stolen shield seemed like something a guilty man would make up to defend himself in court.
“A man in need of one?” Eva said.
“Sir Geoffrey was not at Crecy,” I said to Stephen. “So how could his shield have been?”
“I am cognisant,” Stephen said, holding his palms up to me. “I had the story from one of de Charny’s squires but, even though de Charny’s reputation is impeccable, of course I would not take such a thing on face value. On the day before the battle, Sir Geoffrey’s second-best shield was found to be lost and the squire gave the servants a sound thrashing for the loss. And de Charny was diverted from the battlefield itself by King Philip and so he was not present. Other witnesses confirm that de Charny had his squires and servants whipped around that time, presumably for the lost shield.”
“How far away was he?” I asked.
Stephen nodded. “The heralds state that de Charny was not present and my contacts say he was on his way to Flanders on the day of the battle. A servant in the King’s household said Sir Geoffrey was tasked with ensuring the Flemings could not come to our aid. Sir Geoffrey’s squire, on the other hand, suggested King Philip was jealous of the fame and glory that his lowly knight would no doubt win against the English and so he sent him away.”
“Both can be true,” I muttered. “But why would anyone steal it at all? Who would have the opportunity to do so?”
“As for opportunity,” Stephen replied, “there were tens of thousands of Frenchmen roaming north of Paris during those few days before the battle. As to why take it all, I do not know. Perhaps it was misdirection, as we thought. Or perhaps it was meant to inspire those who saw it. Whether they thought de Charny was present or not, laying eyes upon a famed standard could stir the hearts of lesser men, could it not?”
I smiled at Stephen’s woeful attempts to appear wise in the ways of war.
“Indeed,” Thomas said earnestly, for he somehow remained free from cynicism despite decades of experience, “and ever since, the French have said that if Sir Geoffrey de Charny had been present, the battle would have been won.”
I scoffed. “Even a perfect knight like de Charny could not have changed the course of that battle.”
“Is he?” Stephen asked, jerking his head up to look at me.
“Is who what?”
“Is Sir Geoffrey the perfect knight, as they say? Or were you speaking in jest? It is often rather difficult to tell, Richard.”
“In jest, yes, but it is not entirely untrue. He fights as well as anyone, in tourney and in battle and acts with honour, so far as I know.”
“He is a man filled with the experience of years, as much as a mortal man can be,” Thomas added. “His family blazon of a red field represents Iron, and the god Mars who was the pagan god of war. He is gifted with profound wisdom and the spirit of adventure and by common repute, a knight more skilled in the art of war than any man in France.”
“An exaggeration,” I muttered. “Most probably.”
“Well then,” Stephen said, speaking carefully and watching us closely, “would he not be an ideal member of the Order?”
Thomas snapped his head up at that.
“Have you two been speaking about this?” I asked Stephen and Thomas.
“Indeed, we have not, Richard,” Stephen said, his face the picture of sincerity. Thomas would not meet my eye.
“As you well know, Stephen, I would not make a man one of us,” I said, “without him being on point of death, as Thomas was, or if he begged me for it knowing everything that it would entail, as you did. And I cannot see Geoffrey de Charny giving up all he has to join us, no matter how honourable we know our cause to be.”
“But if, in the wars to come, he is cut down when you are near,” Stephen said, “perhaps then you might—”
I spoke over him. “It would be an extremely unlikely confluence of chance that I be on hand for the man to draw his last breath, and also be alone with him long enough to administer half a gallon of my own blood to his lips, do you not think, Stephen? A man of his standing would be attended by a dozen servants, and many peers.”
Stephen sighed. “I understand. You have it right, of course. But as Thomas and I have been reiterating for many years now, we need more men, Richard. As our difficulties in finding the black banner knight demonstrate rather well. With more men, men who were absolutely trusted with the knowledge of what we truly seek, we could have eyes and ears all across France. And you also have agreed to find us some men, have you not? Men of high quality, as you have said. If such a situation as his death was to occur while you…”
“Yes, yes,” I said, irritated with his presumptuousness and also knowing that what he wanted would never come to pass. “But enough of Sir Geoffrey de Charny. What about the trail of the bloody immortal, Stephen?”
He looked down at his wax tablet, as if hoping that answers would appear there. “We expected that the black banner or his men would commit more murders in order to obtain their blood. But every occurrence I have been able to investigate has led nowhere.”
“Perhaps he has his own blood slaves,” Eva suggested. “We have managed to go entirely undetected for all this time. It is not a difficult thing to procure blood, if you have means and a few private moments.”
I slumped, growing disheartened by the extended failure. I had been so close and yet my momentary lapse in forgetting to close my visor had cost me so dearly. “More likely he has fled France for some other land. He could have crossed into Aragon and beyond, gone over the Alps to Italy and from there, to anywhere.”
“Would he flee so far?” Hugh said, ever hopeful. “Why was he here, fighting in that battle at all? Where did he come from?”
We had no answers.
“What of the assassin?” I said. “Stephen, what came of the dead man in the Southwark stews? Where did his trail lead?”
Stephen hung his head. “It seems he came to the stews from London, as he was seen crossing the bridge. Also, he had no known lodging in the city. So we can conclude that he came either from ship to London or by land from elsewhere in the country beyond the city.”
“And?” I said. “Which was it?”
“None admitted to his coming by ship. But, as you know, it is possible to smuggle ashore many a hidden cargo, including a man, should a shipmaster wish it. But my agents have always been trustworthy before. And so I believe the brute who attacked you was an Englishman from somewhere beyond London.”
“From where beyond London?”
“Ah,” Stephen said. “Of that, I do not know. There was no sighting of him coming in through any of the gates. And none from any road to here, either.”
“Dear God, Stephen.”
“Come, Richard,” Thomas said. “It is hardly Stephen’s fault that the assassin kept to the shadows.”
My frustration grew into anger and although I felt the urge to rant and threaten them all, I resisted it.
They had superior strength and speed and health than mortal men, but their minds had not been enhanced along with their bodies and so I could not expect them to have done any more. Although railing at him further would be futile, I knew it was Stephen’s fault, if it was any man’s. It was he who ran our core network of spies.
But, there was one other resource we had not yet tapped.
“If you are not competent to complete this task, I shall ask Eva to do so.”
Stephen’s eyes bulged and he babbled out a series of notions as to why it should not be done. “But, Richard, Eva’s agents are f
ar fewer than mine. No offence meant, good woman, but it is true. It would take weeks for relevant messages to reach your people and then weeks more before they could act. Besides, the information that your agents provide is of a more general sort, mostly for trading purposes. And also, the fact that you are a woman means you would find it vastly more difficult to operate away from home if you needed to travel to meet them in foreign parts as I have done when necessary.”
“I have managed well enough in years gone by,” Eva said, fixing him with a steady look. “And have counselled you in many a matter when you have needed it.”
Stephen scoffed and threw up his arms. “A woman’s counsel? It was a woman’s counsel that brought mankind to woe, did it not? A woman’s counsel was it that threw Adam out of Paradise, where he had been so merry and at ease. And also—”
“That’s quite enough of that, Stephen,” I said, cutting him off as he searched in vain for some other objection. “You have failed. What is more, you have told us, in essence, that you do not expect to ever be successful. And so Eva shall find the man and then we shall go to him, take him, and force him to tell all about the others that he knows. Now, we will start again afresh, under Eva’s direction.”
Eva simply nodded. “I will begin immediately.”
I had embarrassed Stephen in front of the others and he grew sullen. It is good to consider the effects your words may have on your followers but you should always ensure they are men of character who can accept your criticisms and continue to do their duty. Stephen was quite brilliant but he was never emotionally robust. Perhaps it was due to his common birth that he lacked the depth of character that a man of good breeding will tend to have. Or perhaps it was his lack of dutifulness that was his main weakness of character. He never comprehended, not truly, that doing one’s duty lifts up one’s soul to greater heights than self-interest ever could. Stephen was always keenly aware of his lowborn blood and I believe he resented being beholden to anyone, even--astonishing as it may seem--to a king. It was a flaw that would eventually have disastrous consequences, as he pushed and needled England further away from the proper, natural hierarchies designed by God and toward ungodly, destructive notions of egalitarianism. But that would unravel in the centuries to come and I had only a glint of it at the time.