by Dan Davis
Rob laughed as he approached Walt and clapped him on the shoulder. “Black Walter, it is a wonder that you are still alive.”
Walt glanced at me. “You don’t know the half of it, Rob.”
Rob had done well for himself. He had saved enough of the money he had earned during his years fighting to set himself up well in a three-bay house with a good-sized hall. The outside was covered in smooth plaster, freshly painted. Inside the dark hall, the central fire burned well with little smoke, and the mouth-watering smells of food filled the air. Rob gave me the best seat at the head of his table and he sat on my right while Agnes sat on my left and Walt sat opposite. The children sat at their own table nearby and Rob’s servants busied themselves with the food, directed by Agnes. It was a well-ordered home. The plastered walls inside were even painted a bright white, and the rushes on the floor were mixed with copious amounts of lavender and other fresh herbs. The table was well laid with bowls, ceramic jugs and even silver serving spoons.
The food was good, hearty stuff and well-prepared. They must have spent a considerable sum on the fish and the meat and spices, perhaps in honour of my dining with them. We spoke of men we had known who had died, during the wars and during the Pestilence. The deaths of so many local landowners had been a benefit to men like Rob who had been able to buy up parcels for very little and his future was looking rather bright.
“God spared many of our family,” Rob said, indicating his wife. “My wife’s brother and his children excepted, of course.” Agnes lowered her head in grief.
“There has never been anything like it in all the world,” I said, though I thought of Priskos as I said it and recalled how he claimed to have seen even greater mortalities during his long life. “Though it is passed, now, and we may at last continue with our lives.”
Rob seemed to catch a deeper meaning in my words and looked at me keenly.
Rob’s eldest son approached toward the end of the meal. “Excuse me, sir,” he said as he sidled up to me.
“Dick, leave the lord alone,” Rob said.
“It is well,” I said, smiling. “You are a well-made lad. How may I be of service, Master Dick?”
“Father says often that he saved your life in the wars against the French and swears he speaks true but my mate Will down Scatborough way reckons that ain’t nought but a bunch of gooseberries.”
“Richard Hawthorn!” Agnes snapped. “You mind your tongue, young man and beg the pardon of Sir Richard this very instant. Pray, forgive us, my lord, and know that he shall be thoroughly whipped for his impudence.”
I tried and failed to keep a straight face. “Forgive me, madame. You must do as you see fit but do not thrash the lad on my account. Rob, may your boy join us at table?”
Rob had his own hand across his mouth as he nodded his assent and shifted aside on the bench, catching a look of some sort from his wife as the young master sat next to me.
“Dick, you should know that it is indeed the truth that your good father did save my life in the war and not merely once but many a time.” I spoke a lie but it was not dishonest in spirit, for had I been mortal then Rob’s loyal actions would have indeed saved me. “Once, a French knight’s lance caught me just so, on my flank, and forced apart my armour where the buckles had loosened during battle. The lance sliced deep into the flesh of my belly and I do not mind admitting to you, young master, that the wound laid me low. Blood soaked me, belly and loins, and I would surely have perished that day, had your father not carried me, armour and all, upon his shoulder, away from the danger. He found me wine, clean water, and later he even persuaded a surgeon to come to heal me.”
Young Dick’s face was a mask of enraptured attention.
“You will have seen your father shoot, so you will well know what a fine archer he is. But you may not know that he has the strength of five men, and the courage of a lion. Do you know that I fought with the greatest Earls of England and even with Prince Edward of Woodstock and yet, I swear, lad, that there is no man I would rather have fighting at my side than Robert Hawthorn.”
The boy slowly turned away from me, eyes bulging, to look up at his father.
After the meal, Rob offered to show me the new orchard he had planted and at once I agreed. The moment we were out of earshot of his house, he turned to me.
“Where?” he asked. “When?”
“Dartmouth,” I replied. “Four weeks, if you can make it.”
“I will be there. Who joins us?”
“So many of our company fell to the pestilence. Yet I hope we will have Hal, Ralf Thorns, Reg, Osmund, and Fair Simon, at the least. Also, Diggory and Fred Blackthorpe, if they are still at their farm. Gerald Crowfield is said to have returned, finally. Adam Lamarsh, if he is not in gaol. I would hope also to get Roger, Osbert, Watkyn, Jake, and Stan. I have sent a messenger to each but would you consider speaking to them?”
“I’ll get them there, sir.”
“Hear me, Robert,” I said. “This raid is not sanctioned by the King. In truth, if the King were to know, he would likely forbid it.”
“This is a personal quest, sir?”
“I never stopped hunting the man with the black banner, who killed our men that day near Crecy. Yet, I grew complacent. I did not try enough. No longer. I will tear France to pieces to look for him and then I will take revenge.”
Rob’s face grew tight. Unclenching his jaw, he nodded. “Deryk Crookley was my cousin, sir. And I fought with Paul since we were lads. The whole company loved them like brothers, Sir John, too, and were heartsore indeed when they got killed. All of us who remain will join you. Do not doubt that, sir.”
His easy commitment worried me. I wished to make him understand what he was agreeing to.
“We will be alone, Rob. We will be cut off from supplies and if we wish to retreat, we shall have to fight our way through. But we shall be a small enough band to evade pursuit while we live off the land and we will move rapidly. I do not know how long we will be there. How long it will be before we return home.”
Rob looked back at his house. It was a good home. A home that all men wanted. A dutiful wife, a strong son, pretty daughters. I felt a keen stab of jealousy for the kind of life that I wanted more than any other. Though I knew it could never be, I thought for a moment that I would even live as a common man if I could have such a family. Without a home, without sons, I would never feel truly whole, no matter how many centuries I lived or how much glory I won in battle.
Rob sighed and chewed his lip. “Agnes will not understand.”
I nodded. She would be right to be confused and hurt by him leaving. She would feel betrayed and rejected. Agnes would feel abandoned. By God, she would be abandoned. Rob was a man who had everything he needed to be happy and fulfilled. He had an heir to carry his name and continue the family, he had daughters to bring him joy, and his young wife could no doubt bear him more. He had over forty contiguous acres and more elsewhere in the hundred he had bought up. Already a man of good standing, and chief tithingman, he could easily become the bailiff of the hundred in time and his son would grow up to take full advantage of his father’s wealth and status. Who knew how far young Dick would rise with such a start and with his father to guide him? His daughters might make excellent marriages, to merchants or lawyers or even the poorer sort of esquires.
It was certainly everything a man needed to be happy and fulfilled.
Except, of course, it was not.
A man also needed war. If you had fought in battle, and if you enjoyed it, then it was something you could never throw off. Even though war would bring you discomfort, pain, terror, and misery, it would also take you to a state of being that was far beyond anything that could be found in peace. Men like Rob knew, even if he may never have been able to put it into words, that war brought a man closer to God. It also brought you further into the world so that colours were more vivid and edges were sharper, before, during and after a battle. It brought you closer to the men you fought beside, the men you marched a
nd rode with through burning sun and freezing rain, the men you shared your last piece of stale bread with, the men who picked you up when you were broken and roared your name when you won glory. It brought you closer to your brothers in arms than you were even to your wife and your children, or your father and the brothers you were raised with. Once you tasted that life, you could never be complete without it.
Even though it might leave his family without a husband and father, Rob Hawthorn could not resist going to war. He had to.
And he was right. His wife would never understand.
***
Although I knew that the best thing to do would be to cut off Lady Cecilia from all contact, I could not help but call on her before I left. Being cruel to be kind, I should have sent a terse letter but I could not bear the idea of her thinking badly of me and so I kept her dangling by a thread.
It was astonishing that she had rejected so many suitors as she was not growing any younger and she had to marry soon else her value would decline so far that she might spend the rest of her days as a widow before entering a convent. And that, I thought, would truly be a terrible waste.
Though I had only ever treated her rather badly, Cecilia seemed overjoyed to see me and rushed across the hall to me when I entered. She looked wonderful and if anything was even lovelier than I remembered. Truly, I marvelled as she approached, she was of elegant deportment and very pleasing and amiable in bearing. She displayed well the manners of the court and was so dignified in behaviour that she was more than worthy of reverence.
She held my hands and looked up at me expectantly, as if she hoped I would ask for her hand in marriage there and then.
“I must go away,” I admitted. “For a long time.”
“I see,” she said, dropping my hands.
Of course, the poor woman was expecting I had come to ask her, simply to be disappointed once more. At least, I thought, it would be the last disappointment she would get from me, for surely she would accept one of her other proposals while I was gone. Especially if the King publicly denounced me once he heard where I had gone and what I was doing.
She escorted me to a fine chair in her hall and I sat while the servants brought food and wine before withdrawing to a respectful distance. I reflected that the lovely place I was in could have been mine. The servants could have served me and Cecilia every day and I could have shared her chamber every night. It would become my place and hers and our marriage would be a place for our hearts.
But it would forever be empty, of children and of hope for the future.
“Because I do not know for how long I will be away,” I said, “I thought it best that I come. To speak to you.”
“How kind,” she said, pressing her lips together. “And where is it that you go, sir?”
“I am afraid I cannot say.”
“Oh?” She was angry. “So it appears that you have said all that you came to say, sir, and you may now take your leave.”
“My lady, you must understand that I do not tell you in order to protect you.”
She laughed, bitterly. “You protect yourself, Richard. Do not pretend otherwise with me. I am not some two-penny prostitute who will nod and smile at your lies.”
I paused, astonished at her vulgarity. Clearly, I had wounded her grievously.
“It is to France that I must go,” I admitted, “but I cannot say more than that. Truly.”
“France?” She gasped. “Has the war taken some new course I am not aware of?”
“No, no. Nothing of that sort.”
“Then why do you go, sir? Is it merely to be free of me?”
“Cecilia, please. How can you say such a thing? It would not be fair to you for us to be married, we have spoken of this.”
“You have spoken of it but it did not make sense then and it makes less sense now. You are running off to some woman in Normandy, I know it. Do not deny it.”
“Where did you get this notion? I have no woman, my lady. None but you.”
She scoffed at my words. “But you do not have me, do you, Richard.”
“I wish that I could. But we cannot be married.”
She came to me and knelt before me. “Not in law perhaps. But who shall give a lover any law? Love is a greater law than any written by mortal man. We could pretend to be married,” she said, speaking softly. “Just for one night.”
She looked up at me with those huge, dark eyes and long black lashes. Her pink lips were slightly parted and her breathing fast and shallow.
I wish I could say that I did the honourable thing.
But I am not as chivalrous as all that.
Her wanton passion and her remarkable ability in the bedchamber was startling to partake in. Tearing off her clothes with the help of her red-headed servant, she stood before me in joy and pride in her own nakedness. It was all I could do to keep up with her. She used her mouth over every inch of my skin and demanded the same from me. I was only too pleased to oblige. In fact, I obliged her all of the night and half of the next day. Thus in this heaven I took my delight and smothered her with kisses upon kisses until gradually I came to know the purest bliss.
While she rested in between bouts of passion, she had her maidservants bring us wine and fruit and she never once troubled to cover herself. We spoke of small things and laughed, though she also attempted to tease more from me regarding how long I would be absent, though she protested she was but making idle conversation.
“You were so very terse with me when first we met, My Lady,” I said as she reclined in my arms. “I would never have known how sweet your lips could be.”
She raised herself on one elbow and turned to peer at me, right close. “Men may shield their bodies with brigandines and mail but women must use cunning.”
“Ah, so you were merely acting the hard-hearted creature when in truth you wanted me from the moment you laid eyes on me?”
She slapped her hand on my chest over my heart and poked me there with her sharp nail. “I had heard how you were a raging barbarian, sir. A vicious monster who delighted in murder and the ravaging of women. I had to show you with the cold steel of my words that I was not a lady to be trifled with or to be taken advantage of.”
“And yet your cold steel warmed when you felt my mighty arms about you.”
“Ha!” she scoffed and pinched my skin. “It was not your mighty arms but your kindness, sir, your gentleness that showed me what sort of man you truly were. A chivalrous man. A knight in your heart.”
She kissed me on the spot where she had twisted and poked at me.
“Come here, then,” I said, pulling her to me. But she pushed me off and reached away from me to find refreshment from the bedside. After wine and fruit, she aroused my passions from me once more with her breasts, her hair, mouth and hands.
Although I was in Heaven itself, by midday I had to take my leave or I risked missing my own boat. When I raised the issue, she commanded me to leave without saying farewell and pushed me from her chamber before I could say more than a few words. The lady was wiping her eyes as she heaved her door shut with a slam.
A porter at her front door gave me an eyeful of judgement as I left the house but I heroically resisted knocking his teeth out and slamming his head into the wooden frame.
“Good day, sir,” he muttered, bowing his head.
Outside, the sky pressed down like a sheet of melted lead. I dragged myself into my saddle, as weary and heartsick as a king that just lost his kingdom.
“You alright, sir?” Walt asked me on the road to the coast. “You look a little worse for wear.”
“Shut up, Walt.”
My company awaited us.
I had the immortal warriors Thomas, Hugh and Walt. I had twenty-one veteran archers commanded by Rob Hawthorn. With nine men-at-arms, their squires and the servants, I had fifty-two men.
Fifty-two men with which to invade France and find the knight of the black banner.
This time, I thought, I will not fail. No matte
r the cost.
But I had more to lose than I knew.
18. Brittany
My company crossed from Dover to Calais. My men brought their armour and weapons, we brought food and wine and equipment. I even brought across our best horses, which cost a fortune and quite ruined them for days afterward. It took five ships to get us all across and to avoid suspicion each left on a different day so that we appeared to be no more than the ordinary traffic to our little piece of England on the French coast.
It was still ours.
Earlier, in July 1348, the first truce ended and King Philip sent his greatest knight, Sir Geoffrey de Charny, against us. The Burgundian knight who had borne the Oriflamme in the army that fell back from Calais in 1347 was one of the commanders of an army sent to cut off Calais from our allies in Flanders. They were hampered by the terrible summer rains that had so threatened to spoil Edward’s endless tourneys in England.
De Charny built a fort outside Calais and cut that road through the marshes to Gravelines that I had spent months keeping open the year before. But the appearance of the pestilence had cut short his campaign before he could follow up on his initial moves. Instead, the French moved to attack the cities of Flanders and so cut off our vital allies not just from Calais but from the entire war and that was where they had focused ever since.
My men claimed it was not for strategic reasons but because they were afraid of us and demoralised with their endless failures whenever the French went up against us.
Either way, Calais remained in English hands and so we crossed to there.
The town was a hive of activity and regular shipments brought a steady supply of timber, building stone and lime so that construction and repair could continue apace. What is more, bows and arrows were stocked in great abundance, as were spears and lances. Carts and wagons were unloaded in pieces, and oxen were driven down narrow gangplanks with much bellowing and cursing. A significant fraction of it all was organised by Stephen and the merchants who operated on his behalf. He was making a great deal of profit from the venture, while also fulfilling the King’s strategic objectives.