by David Gilman
‘Look!’ said Perinne, squinting into the morning sun, pointing to a lone figure emerging from the mist and stumbling across the open ground a half-mile away. The men stopped work and watched the man stagger, raise an arm and then fall. Caution made the wall builders hesitate. The woodland that lay three hundred paces to the man’s flank might conceal an enemy. Whoever it was that had fallen could be bait for a trap. A war horse jumped the low wall, scattering the men. Its dappled black coat looked as though it had been singed by a fire’s embers, part of the reason for its reputation of having been sired in hell.
‘It’s Jack!’ cried Blackstone as he spurred the bastard horse on. Meulon and Perinne grabbed their weapons and ran after him. The fluttering wings of a raptor caught Perinne’s eye as it suddenly beat its way skywards from the forest. It made no sound until it found an up-draught that spiralled it above Blackstone’s race towards the fallen Halfpenny. Perinne’s heart shuddered, not from exertion but from a long-held belief that the screech of a buzzard beckoned death as it called for a man’s soul. And now it circled above Blackstone.
As the two men ran forward, Blackstone’s centenar Will Longdon rallied the others behind the defensive wall. ‘Stand ready!’ he ordered. Archers and men-at-arms swiftly prepared themselves for any attack that might surge from the woodland.
Feet crunching on the hard frost, their breath billowing, Meulon and Perinne reached the fallen man at the same time as Blackstone’s squire. John Jacob had caught up to them with one of the pack horses. Blackstone’s belligerent mount would never allow another to be put onto its back and if Jack Halfpenny lived then he’d need a horse to bring him into the protective wall of the old barn.
‘He’s alive,’ cried Blackstone. He picked up the unconscious man as if he were a child. John Jacob steadied the pack horse as Blackstone draped the wounded man over its withers. Meulon and Perinne had gone twenty paces beyond them, ready to guard against anyone who might have been in pursuit of their fallen comrade. If the buzzard’s alarm was a portent of death for Thomas Blackstone then the forest might cloak the enemy.
Blackstone led his horse alongside John Jacob’s slow-moving mount, which now carried Halfpenny. Once Perinne and Meulon were satisfied there was no ambush they rejoined the others. Perinne kept glancing skyward but the raptor had disappeared as quickly as it had appeared. As the five men made their way back to safety the squire glanced at Blackstone.
‘If Jack has made it back what of Sir Gilbert?’
Blackstone looked around at the gentle undulating landscape. The countryside was plagued with routiers and it was easy to be caught in the open. ‘Meulon, you and Perinne run ahead and take ten men back a couple of miles,’ he said. ‘Scout out the foresters’ tracks through the woods. If there’s no sign of Sir Gilbert and the others get back here quickly. And tell Will to ready a bed for Jack. He needs his wound attending to.’
The hulking Norman spearman ran off with Perinne at his side. The air from the big man’s breath freckled his beard with frost.
Blackstone laid a hand on the unconscious man as the horse swayed. ‘They might have run into skinners,’ he said. Some of the mercenary bands numbered in their hundreds and a small detachment of men such as that led by Killbere could have been overwhelmed. France was more dangerous now than when the English had fought the French armies. Violence swept across the unprotected towns and villages and the slaughter would continue until King Edward claimed what was rightfully his, and until the French King had reached a settlement with those who committed such carnage without fear of retribution. Or were foolish enough to believe they could cause harm to any of Thomas Blackstone’s men with impunity. ‘But if those bastards at Saint-Aubin have betrayed us I swear I’ll burn it to the ground and kill every last one of them.’
CHAPTER TWO
Jack Halfpenny had quickly regained consciousness when nurtured with Will Longdon’s broth and the gash in his side had been treated and bound. Those who served with Blackstone no longer packed their wounds with cow dung and grass because they had learnt better ways to treat their injuries from a woman who had once been thought a witch. She had been a herbalist and accompanied Blackstone when, a year before, he had gone into Milan to kill the man responsible for ordering the death of his wife and child. The so-called Witch of Balon had taught the men well and shown them how to gather plants and herbs, even in winter, and to dress wounds without bleeding the wounded. That she had died under her own hand to save Blackstone made the men honour her memory. Halfpenny had insisted the slash in his side be bound tightly and that he ride with Blackstone despite his hurt. Once Halfpenny had recounted the betrayal anger swept through Blackstone’s camp. Men seethed with desire for vengeance. They wanted Saint-Aubin razed to the ground. Blades were sharpened and talk was of the slaughter to come. They waited, alert and impatient, at the camp while Blackstone took his captains to reconnoitre the town’s defences.
Blackstone and his captains were lying on the cold ground on the edge of a forest in the shade of its bare branches. They ignored their discomfort as they studied the walls of Saint-Aubin. Their friends’ bodies still hung there in a grotesque symbol of defiance against the English King. Halfpenny squatted next to Blackstone and Will Longdon.
Blackstone had questioned him carefully about Killbere’s fate but the archer had only been able to tell what he saw. Killbere had been beaten into the dirt. ‘We rode in through the east gate. Bernard de Charité stood on the gatehouse wall and welcomed us. Said he accepted the payment for the town and would sign the treaty himself.’
Will Longdon spat. ‘Now the whoreson has taken the payment and killed my archers.’
‘And the men-at-arms,’ said Blackstone quietly, without censure, keeping his attention on the high walls behind which half of his force had been betrayed and slaughtered.
‘Aye, I wasn’t forgetting them,’ admitted Blackstone’s centenar, who despite his rank had had only sixty archers under his command, a number now reduced to forty. Those twenty dead men who could loose a dozen and more yard-long bodkin-tipped shafts in rapid succession were precious resources lost to any group of fighting men. The men-at-arms who laboured in hand-to-hand combat stank of sweat and piss as they took the fight to their enemy, but an archer – merciful Christ, Will Longdon crossed himself – an archer was worth his weight in gold and no other man’s stench ever smelled sweeter. ‘But our bowmen, Thomas, they can’t be replaced as easily as a man-at-arms.’
Blackstone looked back at him. Longdon shrugged. The truth was the truth. ‘A man like Sir Gilbert was worth ten men-at-arms, Will, let’s not forget that,’ said Blackstone and then crawled back deeper into the woodland to receive the reports from Perinne and Meulon’s scouts.
One of the captains, the German man-at-arms Renfred, shook his head. ‘There is no way to scale those walls, Sir Thomas. Fifty feet high at least and over there’ – he gestured to where he had just returned from his reconnaissance – ‘they have cut the forest back even further. Open ground for at least four hundred yards. If they don’t invite us in then I cannot see how we breach the walls. There’s a lake that covers the other half of the town. No drawbridge. No postern gate to give access to the water.’
John Jacob studied the battlements and took the twig he was chewing to point out the irregular shape of the town’s defences. ‘And even if we got under their walls with ladders they would have us in enfilade. Their crossbowmen would cut us down as we assembled the ladders.’
‘And we cannot get close enough to mine the walls,’ said Meulon.
‘This is why Chandos wanted it under the King’s control. It’s a stronghold worth depriving his enemies of,’ said Blackstone. His stonemason’s eye studied the walls. They were of recycled stone, a usual means of building up fortifications over the years. Such construction didn’t require the skill of a stonemason’s cut, but of sufficiently experienced men to lay the stone with mortar. The walls at Saint-Aubin were well built. The expertise of earlier stonemasons who
once cut stone for another building nearby, probably a manor house or convent, benefited those who came later. Demolish the old and rebuild the new. Good walls, but once Blackstone was inside them he knew how to bring them down, even though John Chandos and the King wanted the fortress to remain intact.
‘Jack?’ he said, turning to the bandaged archer who sat propped against a tree, his hand pressing the wound, which still seeped blood. ‘What can you remember about the layout? How do we get to de Charité’s keep?’
Halfpenny’s brow furrowed. He shook his head. ‘Like a whore’s heart, Sir Thomas. Impossible to reach. A portcullis after the main gate, winding streets. Alleyways and small cloisters running along the street. Some of the merchants plied their wares under them. Stalls and suchlike. I remember them selling bread off one. That smell of baked bread was the last thing I remember before the killing started.’
‘Then they’ve enough grain and fuel for their ovens,’ said Will Longdon. ‘They’ll have months’ worth to withstand a siege.’
‘No one’s going to lay siege,’ said Blackstone. ‘I want to get inside the whore’s heart and cut it out. Jack?’
Halfpenny nodded, knowing the more he could recall the better their chance would be of successfully storming the town. He also knew from experience that his archer’s eye always took in more than at first he realized. ‘The houses are tightly packed on one side of the street they took us down. That’s where they ambushed us,’ he said. ‘We couldn’t turn the horses. We had no chance and Sir Gilbert had men swarming over him. We fought as best we could but when I tried to reach him he commanded me to escape. I hid in a small overhang, that’s where I left my bow.’ He glanced at Will Longdon. ‘I don’t want any barrel bow,’ he insisted, disdain for the army’s replacements, all painted white and packed in barrels, in his voice. ‘Mine belonged to my father and I want it back.’
Blackstone placed a hand on his shoulder. ‘And you will, but we need to know more.’ He turned back into the forest. ‘Renfred, take me to the north walls. I want to see for myself.’
The men skirted Saint-Aubin along foresters’ tracks. What they saw convinced Blackstone that an assault would be impossible without a greater force prepared to suffer casualties. By the time they reached the edge of the lake it was obvious that the Lord of Saint-Aubin had been blessed with a surrounding landscape that offered him maximum security. As Renfred had said, the open ground was cleared back to the forest by four hundred yards, and from where the men now huddled in the dank gloom of the forest, the frozen lake stretched the same distance to the base of the sheer walls.
Halfpenny pointed towards those imposing walls. ‘Where I hid there were steps close by that took me up to the wall head. They hanged the lads from the walkways behind the parapets. I looked over those walls when I escaped but knew I couldn’t drop down into the lake. I’d have died under the ice. That’s why I went over the south wall.’ He turned to look at the bodies that still hung there. ‘There’s a kitchen window in the north wall, forty feet up. It’s a big place and on the other side is a walkway like a narrow bridge across the street below. It connects the kitchen to the main house. It leads through the pantry on this side and the buttery on the other. Once you’re through that passage you’re into the great hall.’
‘How could you know that?’ said John Jacob.
‘I was lying in an alcove beneath that walkway. I could hear everything that was being said by the servants. I could smell the food and heard what was to be taken where. They were laughing, talking about how de Charité had fooled us. They were leaving their duties to go down into the square. They took ladles, kitchen knives and cleavers. Sir Thomas, I saw what they did to the men they hanged. The lord of the town let the people mutilate and beat them. Two of my wounded men, Haskyn and Fowler, were chased around the square until they were hacked to death. The crowd pissed on their bodies before they died. Those bastards in Saint-Aubin hate the English.’
‘And I will give them an even greater reason,’ said Blackstone. ‘But you didn’t see Sir Gilbert’s body?’
‘No. I saw him struck down, but nothing more.’
‘The King wants that town, Sir Thomas,’ said Meulon. ‘It’s important to him. Him and Sir John.’
‘Aye, well, the King can’t always have what he wants,’ added Will Longdon. ‘And Sir John Chandos might be a Knight of the Garter and the King’s negotiator with these scum but he can kiss my arse if he thinks we’ve ladders long enough to clamber up any of them walls with their crossbowmen picking us off. And that ice wouldn’t take the weight of a fairy’s fart let alone men and ladders.’
‘Your arse could be offered to them as a target while we assault the south walls. What say you, Sir Thomas?’ said Meulon.
‘Sir Gilbert kicked Will’s backside often enough and I suspect he’d like to do it again. If he still lives. So we had better keep Will’s arse in his breeches.’ Blackstone and his captains eased back into the trees where the horses were tethered. ‘We have to take the town and Sir John is due to join us tomorrow. We need his men.’
A coldness gripped Blackstone’s chest which had nothing to do with the chilled air. To picture his men butchered filled him with a bitterness eased only by the desire to avenge them, but to think of Killbere being slain in such a fashion put steel into his heart. His mind’s eye saw the French Oriflamme, the great war standard raised in battle against the English. He wished he had seized it when he struck out at the French King at Poitiers. He would raise it now. It signalled no quarter.
CHAPTER THREE
What keeps a man alive when he is held prisoner alone without the comfort of comrades or the chance of escape is his own courage and a silent contempt for his captor. When the same man is strapped to a post in the town square, surrounded by the stench of his hanged and mutilated men, it is a determination to somehow find a way to strike back and kill his enemy. They had stripped the injured Killbere down to his breeches and roped him to a post. He had been pelted with human and animal excrement. The chilled air had dried the blood from the blow to his head, encrusting it onto his scalp and beard. No knife or cleaver had been used against him but they had doused him with water and let it freeze on him so that it shrank the ropes that held him even tighter. His muscles had stiffened but he had kept his head raised and stared at his persecutors as they darted forward and struck him with switches. The slender, flexible tree shoots stung as they nicked his flesh.
The children tormenting Killbere scattered when their Breton warlord strode into the square on the third day of his capture to give the veteran knight water.
‘You’re my ransom, old man,’ said de Charité. ‘When Chandos comes knocking at my gates I will make even more money from your King. I know you by name and reputation. You’re worth more alive than dead.’ The Breton nodded to his soldiers, who grabbed Killbere’s hair and pulled back his head so that another could ladle water into his mouth. Killbere choked and gasped, but the water would revive him enough to put strength back into his muscles.
‘You do not taunt the King of England by betraying him, you stupid bastard. I’ll die here at this stake before that happens,’ Killbere gasped. ‘And you’ll be hunted like a sewer rat.’
The Breton was immune to the threat. ‘Killbere, you’re a fool. Chandos will pay. Your King Edward backs John de Montfort to rule Brittany, my King John arms and supports Charles de Blois. I will stay here at Saint-Aubin and hold the roads north to Paris and west to the Breton March. There are hundreds of routiers riding from the east. Some go south to seize what’s left of this country; others ride here to reinforce us. Both Kings seek to bribe the routiers to fight for them and if they cannot be bought then they must be defeated. Chandos needs men who can command. He’ll pay to get you back and he will pay for me to convince those who come to support us that their fortune lies elsewhere.’
Crows fluttered overhead, settling onto the decaying corpses of Killbere’s men. ‘Take down my men and bury them, you vile dog turd,’ sai
d Killbere.
One of the soldiers punched Killbere’s stomach. The veteran knight’s head doubled over the ropes that bound him. He spewed what water he had taken. Sucking air into the pain he forced his head back against the post and sneered. ‘Your men must be used to squeezing a whore’s tit. They hit like parlour maids.’
The soldier raised his arm to strike Killbere across the face but de Charité gestured him to stop. ‘Sir Gilbert, I’ve seen English arrogance before in the face of an overwhelming enemy. It gives you false courage.’
‘We don’t need false courage against murdering scum. And we fought your perfume-sniffing King no matter how big his army and won. Look at me, you Breton whoreson. You spill your seed into whores and breed bastards. One chance is all I need and my face will be the last thing you will see before you die. I will take you limb from limb and then spill your guts while you still live. Your head will be sent to Paris with your puny cock shoved into your ear.’