Master of War

by David Gilman

  The weather turned colder, blustering winds came and went, as indecisive as Blackstone’s feelings about the presence of so many nobles. There were some who were similar in age to de Harcourt himself; others had ten years or more on him. These older men must, Blackstone thought, have more influence on events than those who were younger. Blackstone kept himself in the training yard out of sight, left alone by Jean de Harcourt, who now spent his time with his guests. When they didn’t hunt they stayed in the library behind closed doors. It seemed to be less of a festive celebration than a council of powerful lords. If the women did not join their men riding out to hunt they gathered in Blanche’s rooms or were entertained in the great hall by minstrels, summoned by de Harcourt from Paris to entertain his guests and to pass on the news or gossip gleaned from the capital.

  Lord de Graville, grey twists in his beard, sat hunched in his cloak. His page and squire, in charge of two pack horses loaded with their lord’s personal weapons and gifts, were smoothly practised at their duties. They knew the castle, asked no directions, and ordered de Harcourt’s servants and grooms with an ease borne of long-standing superiority. De Graville was a voice of authority in Normandy, as was the man who rode through the gates with him that day – the Lord de Mainemares – whose face seemed to be set in a permanent scowl, even when greeted by de Harcourt. The men embraced and kissed, and it was obvious that the guests were trusted friends and both believed in the divine will of God. Blackstone would see them go to pray in the chapel three times a day, more on a holy day. Blackstone knew these devout nobles were about the same age as Sir Godfrey, the renegade of the de Harcourt family.

  Each nobleman’s arrival would be marked by another feast with music, and so it went on over the course of a week. Christiana spoke with more candour than Marcel ever could, and warned him that these Normans swore allegiance to those who would benefit them the most.

  ‘You sound bitter,’ he told her as they watched another group arrive.

  ‘My father is an impoverished knight. He holds no land and serves his lord in the west, and his allegiance was to the King of France. These men who come here can be bought. He could not.’

  Blackstone felt a shiver of uncertainty whenever she mentioned her father. The English had swept down the Cotentin peninsula and beaten French forces back at every turn and Sir Godfrey, his benefactor’s uncle, had been in the vanguard, pursuing and destroying those loyal to the French crown using Killbere and the mounted archers.

  ‘I still don’t know what’s happened to him,’ she said. ‘I’m hoping one of these lords can tell me.’ She touched his arm. ‘Be careful of that man, Thomas,’ she said fearfully, pointing out one of the nobles, a man no more than twenty or twenty-one years old.

  ‘Who is he?’

  ‘William de Fossat. He rode at the side of the Count of Alençon at Crécy.’ Her voice was tinged with dislike. ‘They slaughtered the Genoese bowmen so they could charge at your Prince.’ She smiled. ‘Perhaps it’s just as well – otherwise you might not be here today.’

  ‘They were helpless anyway. We’d killed so many of them it made no difference,’ he said, aware as soon as he’d spoken that his words were emotionless and matter-of-fact. The English were exhausted when Alençon made his charge, but they had stopped him anyway. And killed him. Blackstone watched de Fossat pull off his riding gloves and take Blanche de Harcourt’s outstretched hand, his lips hovering above her fair skin. His face reminded Blackstone of Jean de Harcourt’s falcon – a sharp, beaked nose and eyes that never settled. William de Fossat, she told him, had fallen foul of John, Duke of Normandy, the King’s son, and lost most of his estates.

  ‘He’s been known to commit murder,’ she added.

  ‘Soldiers die in battle.’

  ‘No. He killed his cousin for refusing to meet a challenge and then killed the man who made that challenge. Most of these men in their own way are dangerous, Thomas. Stay away from them.’

  Blackstone had done his best to do just that. Whenever de Harcourt and the lords rode forth or returned he kept out of sight. He had become invisible to everyone except Christiana, who now spent more time with the other women, all revelling in the opportunity to gossip, since they so often lived alone in their husband’s manor houses or castles, with no other women of equal rank for company, save perhaps a daughter. It was an ideal time for Blackstone to take advantage of the men’s absence and the women’s gathering in order to use the library. The servants barely had time to notice him being there, but piles of warm ash in the fireplace told him that de Harcourt and the nobles were spending hours locked in the room.

  The room was not large – big enough for a bolstered chair, stools and a table beneath the window. The fireplace dominated the room, candle holders the main source of light. There were rolled documents tied with ribbon, layered like firewood on shelves, and cut sheets of parchment, stitched and bound, laid like a stonemason’s dry wall. A woven rug covered the tiled floor instead of cut reeds. The room suggested a sanctuary for the lord of the manor.

  On an age-polished slab of chestnut that served as a table was a rolled parchment. Blackstone made sure that there was no activity in the yard that might herald de Harcourt’s return, and then unfurled what turned out to be a crude, hand-drawn map of France, an uneven line sketched down one quarter of the country, splitting the kingdom. Blackstone traced his finger down from Paris and located Castle de Harcourt. There were dozens of marks made on the map, speckling the parchment – small red crosses, black dots and circles spread like the pox down from Normandy, across to Brittany and south into Bordeaux.

  They were locations marking something of importance, and if Castle de Harcourt had been identified then perhaps, Blackstone thought, these were other castles scattered across the countryside. He worked out where the English army had landed and the route he must have taken as he fought his way across Normandy. There was no mark for Crécy, and he had no idea where it might lie. Only the cities of Caen, Rouen, Paris and Bordeaux were shown and in his mind’s eye he tried to imagine what lay beneath his fingertips. He had never seen a map like this before and his imagination took him like an eagle soaring across the route they had marched.

  He rolled the map and went back to the shelves, running his fingers lightly over the parchments and bindings. How could one man read so many books? On a lower shelf he found sheets of drawings embellished with Latin text, bound with an illuminated cover showing a monk wielding a sword. Blackstone eased it from its resting place and moved to the window for better light, and to watch for de Harcourt’s return. As he turned each sheet he saw that the images were drawings showing the guard positions that Jean de Harcourt had taught him. It was a book on swordsmanship. Blackstone slipped the manuscript beneath his jacket. He had found a book that interested him.

  It seemed to Blackstone that the guests would be staying for some time. Christmas seemed an on-going feast, one to which he had not been invited. He took his meals in his room, brought by a servant, sometimes joined by Christiana, who gently continued to coax his table manners. It was a far cry from the Holy Day’s rest in his village, when the local priest would give them a serving of Christmas ale, and they would rest for a day, and be brought together in prayer in the church that was as cold as a grave. They were good memories of hard work and brotherly love, such as the Christmas when Richard Blackstone had bent that malformed face of his into an idiot’s grin and bellowed with joy as he skinned and gutted a snared rabbit for the Christmas pot.

  Dear Lord and all Your angels, Blackstone’s thought went out in prayer, look after my brother as I could not.

  ‘Thomas?’ Christiana asked, breaking his reverie.

  ‘What?’

  ‘Where were you?’

  ‘Remembering another time.’

  She moved closer to him, her fingers touched her lips and then laid them on his scar.

  ‘It’s healing well. When summer comes and you get some warmth on your face there’ll only be a white line.’
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  He held her to him and lowered his lips to hers. ‘How long must I wait?’

  ‘Until it’s time,’ she said, her voice almost a whisper, but she did not turn away.

  He pressed her against him, her lips softened with balm, and he felt them part as the tip of her tongue gently teased his own. And then she eased back.

  ‘Too tight. You crush me,’ she said softly.

  He hadn’t realized how hard he held her, and once again his clumsiness embarrassed him. ‘I’m sorry.’

  ‘You’ll learn. I’m not as frail as I sound, it’s just that you’re stronger than you realize. Now, we must go.’

  ‘I’ve no place to go.’

  ‘You’ve been invited to the great hall.’

  He pulled away from her as if she had slapped him across his wounded face.

  ‘Don’t be alarmed. You know how to behave,’ she said.

  ‘With you and Countess Blanche perhaps, but not with all those noblemen and their wives. Why?’

  ‘You know why. You’re a curiosity. You’re a common man blessed by a King. They want to take the measure of you.’

  ‘They can go to hell.’

  ‘They’ll pay a priest to save them from that,’ she said, soothing his fear as best she could. ‘Listen, my love, these are some of the most powerful men in Normandy and you are under Count Jean’s protection.’

  Blackstone turned away from her.

  ‘Thomas, don’t act like a child,’ she said carefully.

  He spun around, anger ready to explode, but she stood her ground and smiled, waiting patiently for the man she loved to appear before her. Her demeanour stopped him.

  ‘I can’t go down there,’ he said, already defeated before he had stepped beyond his own room.

  ‘When you served Sir Gilbert and your centenar that you told me about…’

  ‘Elfred.’

  ‘Yes, Elfred. What did they teach you when you fought?’

  ‘How to kill my enemy.’

  ‘In anger?’

  ‘No, for each other and the love of my King.’ He paused and then understood. ‘In a disciplined and determined way.’

  ‘Then that is all you have to do tonight. If you lose your temper you confirm why they despise you.’

  ‘Do they?’

  ‘They despise the brutal archer you were, but they’re intrigued to see the man-at-arms you’re being trained to become. Find that place inside you that is disciplined and determined and you’ll have beaten them.’ She kissed him tenderly. ‘Again,’ she added.

  Shadows danced across the great hall’s walls from two huge iron chandeliers, ten feet across, their metal rims hoisted by pulleys to the ceiling, each holding forty or more candles. Around the hall spiked iron stands impaled candles the thickness of a man’s arm and the fireplace crackled and roared from blazing oak and ash logs.

  At the high table Jean de Harcourt and Blanche sat with the nobles and their wives. As Blackstone walked past the cloth-covered trestle table near the entrance, the half-dozen squires, most of them older than Blackstone, stared at the Englishman who had already gained knighthood and honour without their years of service and training. Blackstone barely saw them from the corner of his eye, his attention fixed on the far table and the nobles who displayed their wealth and power with fur-edged, richly embroidered clothing and jewellery. He stopped, knowing he was expected to kneel. These men were his superiors. Instead, he stood defiantly and looked at each face in turn, noting with some satisfaction the glare of annoy­ance from each of the Normans and the ripple of discomfort at his ill-mannered and contemptuous behaviour. I am a humble English archer in this great Norman hall and I’ve faced you and your kind before – and beaten you. His thoughts resonated as though they had painstakingly been chiselled in stone. Only when his eyes moved back to Jean de Harcourt did he bow his head and then kneel before him.

  Jean de Harcourt made him stay on his knee longer than was usual. The wound would soon complain but Thomas Blackstone needed to be taught a lesson.

  ‘Join us,’ de Harcourt said at last.

  It still took effort for him to rise but he disguised his discomfort as best he could. There would be little satisfaction given to the Frenchmen. The usher guided Blackstone to the furthest seat at the end of the table and placed Christiana at his side. The gathered nobles and their wives could not take their eyes from him; he was physically bigger than any grown man at the table, which made the petite girl at his side look more frail than she was.

  ‘I have never had a man of such low status sit at my table,’ said one of the nobles with apparent disgust. He was a barrel-chested man, with a full beard and jet black hair, thick as a horse’s mane, brushed back onto his shoulders. Blackstone could see the dark eyes glaring, but also noticed the man’s strength. Without doubt he was a fighter.

  ‘Then we are both at a disadvantage, my Lord de Fossat,’ said Blackstone, pleased to see the man react to the fact that he knew his name, ‘because I have never dined in such distinguished company.’

  His response caused a ripple of amusement.

  ‘And with the greatest respect, this is my lord, the Count de Harcourt’s table.’ There was a murmur of intrigue at the English­man’s impertinence, which Blackstone quickly turned to his advan­tage, adding, ‘Unless, of course, he’s sold it to you.’

  Jean de Harcourt laughed, and the others followed, even de Fossat smiled.

  ‘I told you he had a mind of his own,’ de Harcourt said, and then urged his guests to eat, but as they did so their eyes kept glancing to the far end of the table.

  A servant placed a large loaf of bread in front of Blackstone. He instinctively reached out to tear a chunk from it, but as his hands went forward he felt, rather than heard, Christiana’s intake of breath. Blackstone corrected himself and carefully sliced a piece of bread.

  Christiana’s knee pressed against his beneath the tablecloth.

  He had learnt some manners.

  All he had to do now, Blackstone thought, was to learn to stay alive among these powerful men.

  Blackstone managed to get through the meal without causing offence from any lack of table manners, though it was not without help. When he was about to stab a piece of meat Christiana quite casually mentioned that she always thought he preferred a less tender cut. Blackstone gratefully followed her prompt and passed the finer cuts of meat to others. Her influence was so natural it went unnoticed, except by Blanche de Harcourt whose smile of encouragement settled Christiana’s own nervousness. No one spoke to Blackstone, no one included him in their conversation, and he was glad of it. Being ignored allowed him to keep his eyes down and his ears open. Snippets of conversation filtered through the chatter; gossip about the King and his anger that his son John, Duke of Normandy, had not marched quickly enough from the south to fight in the great battle of Crécy; that the King’s wife was too young; that widows from the war left with great estates now looked for younger men to wed so their inheritance might be defended and then passed on when their children came of age. The war had torn France apart. Perhaps those who chattered didn’t care what he heard. To them Blackstone was still little more than a servant whose blindness and deafness were guaranteed if he wished to continue to be fed with a roof over his head. But when Blackstone did raise his eyes he caught some of those around the table glancing in his direction; nervous looks, penetrating stares that darted away quickly when he looked back. The dinner seemed to go on forever as course after course arrived. Blackstone had never washed his hands so often and the rich food churned his stomach. A hunk of bread and cheese and a bubbling pot of pottage was all he wanted – that and a mighty thrust of Wolf Sword to burst this bubble of chivalric behaviour that seemed more important than anything else.

  Blackstone’s own charade was nearly exposed when the musi­cians were commanded to play dance music and the nobles took their wives to where the reeds had been swept aside, exposing the tiled floor. Guy de Ruymont’s wife, long-faced, her wimple bound so ti
ghtly on her forehead that Blackstone wondered if the blood had been cut off from her pale face, leaned across to him and said, ‘Will you be asking any of the ladies other than Christiana to dance, Master Thomas? I suspect we all are rather frightened of you, but something as gentle as a dance might soothe those fears.’

  Blackstone could barely hide his panic. Guy de Ruymont saw it and knew that his wife was playing devil’s advocate. Dancing, or the lack of it, was one element of Blackstone’s tutoring that would expose his common character.

  ‘My dear lady, you expect too much of Master Blackstone, you must remember he still bears his wounds.’

  ‘Of course, forgive me, how could I forget that you fought at Crécy?’ she said, but this time there was a chill in her voice and a frown on her thin-lipped face as she brushed past him.

  ‘I’m grateful, my lord,’ Blackstone said to de Ruymont as he passed by.

  ‘I’ve seen fear in men’s eyes before,’ de Ruymont said. ‘We are all soldiers in the field of battle, and dancing doesn’t come easily to many of us, as you might observe when I accompany my wife.’ He took a pace away but then, almost as an afterthought, and to explain his wife’s jibe, he said, ‘She lost her brother and four kinsmen at Crécy. Time has not yet healed her wounds.’

  In that brief moment Blackstone felt an enormous gratitude to the French nobleman whose gentle manner and quick thinking had saved him from the embarrassment they had all been waiting for. He was also under no illusion that he was seen as the butcher who sat at their table, and who had slaughtered their loved ones. How far could their civility be stretched before someone drank from the poisoned chalice and betrayed his presence to the French court? Jean de Harcourt was seen as a loyal subject to King Philip but harbouring an Englishman, and an archer at that, could easily lead to a charge of treason. De Harcourt risked a great deal to fulfil his uncle’s wishes, and Sir Godfrey himself would be beheaded if he were ever captured by French forces. Why, Blackstone wondered, had Jean de Harcourt exposed himself to such a risk by inviting these influential men to his home for Christmas and allowing them to see him? Whatever the reason, it would unfold in its own time.