The Firedrake

by Cecelia Holland

  “I plead your pardon,” he said.

  “And I yours, my lord.”

  “For what do I plead your pardon? Hitting you, or saying what I said?”

  “Saying that. Nothing more. What you meant to do.”

  “You are a damned, damned man. Get out.”

  “As you wish, my lord.”

  He went to the door. William said, “Sir Laeghaire. The blow. Count it an accolade.”

  Laeghaire went out. He laughed in the hall. He went down to his horse. Fitz-Osbern was in the shadow of the gate. Laeghaire mounted. He put on his helmet. He waved to Fitz-Osbern. The stallion tugged at the bit. Laeghaire took a strong hold on the rein. The stallion reared and Laeghaire spurred him. They bolted out the gate. The dust of the street billowed up under the driving hoofs. They charged across the half-empty market-place and out of the town onto the field. In the middle of the camp Laeghaire brought the stallion to a stiff-legged stop. He bent him in a wild, plunging circle. The men cheered suddenly. Laeghaire made the stallion rear and lunge three great jumps on his hind legs. He stopped the stallion and sat panting in the saddle. His men were all around him.

  Jehan shoved through them. Jehan looked up.

  “A berserker with a horse, too. Did he make you a count?”

  “It’s between him and me. Where’s wine? Shall we get drunk? Wait until I get out of this mail.”

  Four days later, after Mass, they all set out for Maine. They moved fast, as fast as they could with the foot soldiers. They reached a town called Bellême in three days, marched straight through the town, and met the seigneur at the gate of the fortress. Laeghaire saw William speaking to this lord, up by the gate, and heard nothing. William turned and called up his captains.

  “We’ll camp here the night,” he said.

  They dispersed their men to find campgrounds and water. Laeghaire went down with Karl to the common pasturage outside the town. He ordered his men to camp near it.

  “What’s this all about?” Karl said.

  “Who is the lord of Bellême?”

  “Robert, I think his name is. He’s a great lord.”

  “Whose man is he?”

  “No man’s man.”

  “Then that’s what. He doesn’t want them tricking him. Now he’ll have hostages of him.”

  “Oh,” Karl said. He unbuckled the pack harnesses. “He’s a clever man.”

  “That’s the truth.”

  “What are we going to do when we get to Maine?”

  “Ride against a village called Le Barb. The rest—they’re going to Mayenne. Or so he says.”

  “Le Barb?”

  “There’s a fort there. Get me some wine. I’ll make the fire.”

  They rode on the next day. First William sent twenty knights back to Rouen with two younger sons of the house of Bellême. The land was hilly and they could not move as easily or as fast. William sent out his scouts ahead of him. They rode in a tight mass, with the scouts set out before them like the feelers of a bug.

  Once they came on a village, and it surrendered to them as soon as the people saw how many they were. Laeghaire and his Flemings were in the front part of the army. They reined in and waited while Fitz-Osbern rode out to accept the surrender of the town. The Duke sat his horse at the head of the army. He talked with Odo, his half brother.

  The sun was bright. Laeghaire turned his shoulder to the village. He hooked his right knee over the pommel of his saddle and stretched.

  “Wine, my lord?” Karl said, and unslung the jar from his saddle.

  “Good.” Laeghaire took it and opened it. He drank.

  A horse gallloped by him, headed for the Duke. Laeghaire tossed the jar to Karl.

  “My lord,” the rider said. He wheeled to a halt. “Are we going to plunder?”

  Laeghaire turned and looked at the men around him. None of them seemed surprised. He heard their voices, muttering, just as before.

  “No,” William said.

  Laeghaire put his foot back into the stirrup and spat.

  They rode through the town, but they neither pillaged nor burned, and out again on the other side. Soon after, Jehan rode up looking for Laeghaire and fell in beside him. “Surprised?”

  “Who’s he to deny me my rights?”

  “Nothing there anyway. By the way, you have two new members in your force.”

  “Oh, no. He can comfort and carry his own hostages.”

  “These are his orders. You take them and you hold them.”

  “He’s mad.”

  “Well, he’s probably right. He’s always right. You can leave them in the first village you take.”

  “Hunh.”

  They talked about Burgundy for a while. Jehan was happy. Laeghaire could see it in him. Jehan liked being a fighting man and being admired and having nothing to worry about. He wished Jehan was coming with him.

  They reached the point where the army was to split up. William sent for Laeghaire. He, rode up toward the little council of mounted men. He saw the band of scouts on their fleet ponies wandering along the creek bank. His men were bunching together, away from the Normans; and his own scouts, Thierry and his men, were near them; he thought he felt them watching him.

  Fitz-Osbern was talking to William. The other captains turned and rode off. No one else was around except Fitz-Osbern, the Duke and Laeghaire. Laeghaire dropped the rein over the horse’s withers. He put his hands on his hips. Ahead of them there was nothing but the long rolling plain and the trees. He could see the mountains, off to his right, like clouds, only thicker than clouds, sailing on the horizon. The sky was a hard brilliant blue. He knew he had sat in his saddle like this before, waiting for his instructions, on different plains, in hills, by rivers. He remembered them, one after another and all together and jumbled. This was no different. The Duke of Normandy was no different from the Duke of Thuringia, the Earl of Wessex, the Count of Burgundy, all of them, all the others. He pressed his palms against the bones of his hips. It was no different. It was no different.

  When Fitz-Osbern turned away, neither he nor the Duke said anything to Laeghaire for a moment. They did not look at him. He thought it was logical. For a moment he thought that they could not see him.

  Laeghaire took his Flemings straight down against Le Barb. It was the biggest of the villages he was supposed to take. It had a solid fort in the center of the village. Laeghaire’s scouts came back to him the night before he attacked it, and they told him that it was bright with torchlight, shining, and that more men walked the walls than were supposed to be in the whole garrison. Thierry, the chief of the scouts, was worried, and he kept talking about that: that Le Barb should be so strongly fortified. He said he thought there was something important there, some man perhaps.

  “They know we’re here, then,” Laeghaire said.

  He sent the scouts in to sleep, and thought about this thing. The spies William had bought from Maine had told him, Laeghaire, that Le Barb’s fort could maintain no more than one hundred and fifty men, with all their gear and horses. Certainly they knew that this army was out here, in the darkness. He saw Thierry’s face in his mind, clear as if Thierry were there, with the three deep grooves in his forehead.

  Just before dawn, Laeghaire led out his men. Le Barb was bright, all torchlit, flaming. He saw the men on the walls.

  He sent in his men to fire the huts of the village and burn the fields south of the fort. He rode down with them part of the way. His hornbearer, Lodovic, stayed with him. The fortress shone, and the sentries on the wall gave the alarm. Laeghaire heard the bell ring. He called Karl to him and sent him to bring Thierry. The fort remained closed. Some archers shot at Laeghaire’s men from the walls, but the knights inside did not come out to drive them off.

  “Thierry. Go with the scouts and burn the rest of the fields. Stay out of bowshot.”

  Thierry went, still worried. Laeghaire called in his men and made them form regular lines. He sent four of the squires to find a log to use as a ram. They
waited there until the fires on the south side had dimmed down and the fires on the north and west had grown up. They attacked in the false dawn, in the haze. The smoke floated over them. The gate crumpled in and they swarmed through the fort and drove all the defenders into the courtyard. There were only one hundred men in the fort garrison.

  Laeghaire thought it was a good omen. He sent a scout to William with the news. Thierry and Iris men went to scout the north. For a while Laeghaire stayed in the fort, with all his men but the scouts. He locked up all the Mainards in the dungeon. After a week or so, most of them consented to join his army. He made them into a special band and told them that they would be the first to attack in any fight and if they showed any reluctance they would be killed. He stayed a while longer, arranging everything, and when he left he left fifty of his men in the fortress to hold it.

  He and his men went northwest after that, and attacked two little villages and burned them down. He went around Rougemont, the walled town, and captured three villages around it. All of these villages gave in as soon as they saw him, and he left ten men in each, to keep order and make sure the people did not turn against him. It was planting time and the peasants were interested only in their fields. They stayed quiet.

  It was a wet spring. The Flemings did not like riding around in the mud and spring rain. All of them wanted to be town garrisons, and they would come to him and plead with him. He let Josse assign the garrisons, but the men screamed favoritism, and he had to do it himself, by lots. One night, just outside the last northern village he was supposed to take, the whole army suddenly sat down and would not move. It was raining and the rain was warm and sticky. Laeghaire rode into the middle of the camp and dismounted.

  “The weather is bad,” he said. “I don’t like it either. At least you aren’t starving.”

  “When are we going to take something worth pillaging?” somebody said.

  Josse stood up. “This is stupid. You’ve all sworn an oath of loyalty to the Count, and he sent us all down here. Are you going to sin against God and your lord, merely because you are uncomfortable?”

  A man from Ypres leaped up and began to argue furiously with him. Laeghaire turned and saw Karl, sleek-faced from the rain, staring at the two arguing men in surprise.

  Other knights quickly joined in the argument, and their voices rose like braying, higher and higher. Laeghaire grinned at Karl. He went forward slowly and shouldered his way into the growing knot of arguing knights. He pushed between Josse and the man from Ypres—Raoul, his name was—and looked at both of them. Raoul fell silent at once. The others quieted down. Josse, aware that he was getting in the last word, shouted, “—be rich and go home and live like—”

  Laeghaire bent, scooped up a handful of mud, and threw it into Josse’s face. Josse choked, coughed, and sat down. The other men burst out laughing. Laeghaire stood over Josse. Josse clawed at the mud in his eyes and mouth, spitting. He tried to get up and slipped. Laeghaire helped him up. Josse’s eyes were bright with anger. He stared at Laeghaire a minute.

  Laeghaire began to laugh. Josse fumed, stared, and grinned. He wiped off his cheek.

  “The rain will wash me,” he said.

  Laeghaire went back to his horse and mounted. “Let’s ride,” he said. They all mounted and rode out after him.

  They took that northernmost village a few days later. It surrendered easily. Laeghaire left ten men with it. He and the others rode back to attack Rougemont. On the way he heard that the village to the north had revolted against his garrison and sieged them in the church tower, and was trying to burn them out. He turned around with his army and rode back. They burned the village to the ground and chased the villagers into the forest. Laeghaire had his men trample back and forth in the young grain and throw garbage into the wells and the springs. They rounded up all the animals and drove them off before them. Laeghaire would not let the village priest say a Mass for the dead villagers, but threw them all into a ditch and covered them with ash and dead coals from the burned huts. He took the priest prisoner and brought him back with the army to Rougemont.

  Rougemont, cut off from help and raided now and then from captured villages all around, had sent out some of her knights to try to take the captured villages away from the Flemings, but the Flemings, always knowing when they were coming, would ambush them and drive them off. The town’s garrison was no more than one hundred and ten. Laeghaire circled her entirely and did not attack. He had only four hundred men, besides the Mainards from Le Barb. These men had fought well against the other villages, but Laeghaire still did not trust them. They made a lot of angry talk in the army, saying that they wanted to get some loot for all the dangers they faced. Laeghaire wished he could get rid of them. He sent them off once to raid, a good four- or five-day raid straight into the middle of Maine, but they came back, and they even had some loot, which incited the rest of the army.

  Rougemont was obstinate. The fields went untended and the people inside the wall had little to eat, but the town did not surrender. Laeghaire sent off parts of his army in turns to raid. He decided that he had learned something from the Maine knights’ raid. He did not want to attack Rougemont.

  The leader of the Maine knights was named Gabriel. He was big and blond and ugly, and he had a voice like a horn; he could be heard all over the camp. One night Laeghaire heard him talking and went over to see what was going on. Gabriel sat by a fire, with some fifteen Maine knights and four or five Flemings. He was saying that he would take Rougemont if he were leading the army and not—he went off in French about Laeghaire. Laeghaire did not recognize some of the words. He went as close as he could without being seen, sat down on his heels, and listened. Gabriel was not very clever. He kept saying the same things about Laeghaire. The Flemings said nothing, nothing at all. The Mainards laughed in the beginning. They grew silent after a while. Gabriel paused only to drink wine. His voice got louder. Finally Laeghaire stood up. He saw many more men around him, listening. Laeghaire came quietly through the men, past the fire, and faced Gabriel. Gabriel looked up at him.

  It was very quiet. The fire crackled. Gabriel’s face tightened, all over. Even his eyes looked smaller. He started to stand up. Laeghaire put his hand on Gabriel’s shoulder and threw him face down on the ground. Laeghaire put his foot on Gabriel’s back. Gabriel tried to break loose. He rolled and flailed with his arms. Laeghaire lifted his eyes and looked slowly all around at the men who watched. They said nothing and their faces turned away from him. He drew his dagger. He took his foot from Gabriel’s back. Gabriel stood up, turning. Laeghaire stepped close to him. He put his dagger into Gabriel’s belly and tore upward. He stepped back. Gabriel fell slack. He fell almost in sections. He lay touching Laeghaire’s right boot. laeghaire wiped his dagger blade on his surcoat and went off.

  Rougemont surrendered less than a week later. Laeghaire stayed in the town waiting for reinforcements. He made his garrisons stronger, and from Rougemont sent out raids. But by this time—by midsummer—they had despoiled much of the land around, and there was little to loot. After Laeghaire killed Gabriel, none of the knights said anything about the campaign and what should be done with it.

  Even Josse was careful when he talked to Laeghaire, for a while. Karl acted as if he had never heard about it. He came back now and then from the town to the place where Laeghaire was staying, and told Laeghaire jokes he had heard or some news he had heard, but he never mentioned Gabriel.

  The reinforcements came—one hundred and fifty Normans—and they brought news of the southern campaign. William had chased Geoffrey and Walter of the Vexin out of the city of Mayenne and driven them south, fighting almost every day. These Normans come to Rougemont were all older knights, tired of fighting, and Laeghaire decided that William could afford to lose them. He scattered them throughout the chain of villages, packed up all but seventy of the Flemings and Maine knights, and rode out, going south.

  Saint-Marc, this village was. Over the earthwork around it Laeghaire cou
ld see a single light, probably on the church tower. Thierry had said they had a church here. He turned to look back at his men. In the darkness he could not tell exactly how they were spread out. There was no moon. Except for the single light in the village, everything was blank and dark.

  Once, fighting in Thuringia, he had ridden out to check a report from one of his scouts. He rode almost a day away from all his men, alone, and in the dusk came up over a ridge and looked down, and there, on the plain, the whole camp of the Slavs lay, a thousand fires. Women and children and old men and warriors, spread out over the plain. He remembered standing on that ridge, in the trees, looking down at it, and he remembered something of the feeling, but not the feeling itself. The next day, riding back, he had been afraid.

  He arched his back to shift the weight of the mail. His left arm had gone to sleep. He made a fist and opened it. His whole arm tingled. He adjusted the shield over it and tightened the higher strap. It was hot. His fingers slipped from the buckle and he swore. Just as the tongue of the buckle slid into the hole he heard Josse’s horn.

  “Lodovic,” he said, and lifted his hand with the rein.

  Lodovic blew two hard blasts on the horn. His cheeks puffed and emptied. Immediately the brown stallion lunged forward, throwing himself up the last few yards of the slope. Laeghaire heard the rising sound of the horses behind him. He drew his lance closer under his arm. The brown stallion swung into a full gallop. Lodovic was galloping to Laeghaire’s right and a little behind him.

  The village was only a few hundred yards away. Laeghaire spurred the stallion. He swung up his shield to protect his head and the stallion’s withers and neck. He bent. The stallion veered to the left, abruptly, and Laeghaire felt and heard an arrow bounce off his shield. The noise was all around him: the whining of the arrows in flight and the slap of their striking the shields. There was a great commotion ahead of them, in the village, and the church bell began to ring. The noise of the bell, the rhythm of it, overrode all the rest of the noise.