by David Gilman
The boy looked uncertain for a moment. To hear such praise from his father and to be told that the hard-bitten men who served him regarded him with esteem was an honour he could not have imagined.
‘I had better get back to my duties. But I still hope that you do not die.’
Blackstone gave him a reassuring smile. ‘I’ll do my best,’ he said.
*
Within the hour trumpet calls and the shouts of the army commanders had men strike camp. All along the line banners were raised. The archers were placed ready to shower the walls with their lethal missiles. Blackstone’s captains quickly had their men in position as Will Longdon ran with his archers and placed them in a sawtoothed formation between them. It was a tried and tested disposition that had defeated the French in two major battles.
‘Why are we doing this?’ said Killbere as he fussed at the strapping on his saddle. ‘This is a defensive formation.’
Blackstone was already mounted. He looked down the line of the army’s ranks. It swelled and shuffled as sergeants and captains barked their commands. Flags signalled the King’s orders. The drums began a steady beat, building in volume until the ground began to tremble. Men would soon march across the open plain to their rhythm.
‘I don’t know,’ said Blackstone. ‘If the French are going to attack then we’re in a good position, but if we’re to make a run for those walls, then I’d rather be closer. And there’s still no sign of scaling ladders.’
‘Well, the whoresons are waiting for us,’ said Killbere and pulled himself into the saddle.
The walls were thick with defenders.
Further down the line the Duke of Lancaster eased his horse forward, leading his men.
‘Lancaster’s taking the vanguard,’ said Killbere. ‘Merciful Christ, are we to sit on our arses and let the King’s favourites have the glory?’
‘Don’t be so impatient to get us all killed. He’s not attacking.’
They watched as Lancaster’s division rode out into the open and then turned.
‘Where do they think they are? It’s like they’re parading at a tournament,’ said Killbere.
Trumpets and bugles blared, the cacophony rising up to those on the walls.
‘It’s a show of strength, Gilbert.’
‘What?’
Blackstone gestured down the lines where ranks of soldiers had followed their commanders and began to troop across the open ground. ‘Battalions are marching beneath the walls.’
Killbere looked perplexed. ‘Showing our peacock feathers is one thing. Where will we strike?’
Blackstone eased back into the saddle and pulled off his gauntlets. The truth had slowly dawned on him. ‘There’ll be no attack. The supply wagons left in the night. The King is covering their withdrawal. This is all for show while they make some distance.’
‘Bollocks,’ said Killbere. ‘He’s here for the crown.’
‘No, Gilbert, I’ll wager we’ll soon be following them. He needs more time to negotiate but he had to show his strength to help him get what he wants.’
Killbere scowled and watched the pageantry parade before him. ‘This is your damned fault, Thomas. You told him it was impossible to fight through the city and he’s listened to you. It’s you who should bite your tongue.’
Blackstone slapped his friend on the shoulder. ‘I can be blamed for many things, Gilbert, but stopping this attack cannot be laid at my door. The King knows when common sense prevails and when God is on his side.’ He turned his face to the freshening north wind. ‘The moment has gone, and so has this good weather.’
CHAPTER THIRTY-SEVEN
The vast column of men trudged and rode south-west across the vast plain on the Chartres road. By the following day they were within sight of the towers of Chartres cathedral. The army had made impressive time in covering the seventy miles to where the King would encamp and continue negotiations with the Pope’s envoys. Blackstone and his men rode halfway back on the army’s flank. For the first time he could see why the King might have decided not to assault Paris. Food had been in short supply and fodder was still desperately needed for the horses. As the army passed by him he realized Edward could not fight a major battle unless supply lines were established more effectively from England. Blackstone’s instincts had proved correct: the weather had shifted and great rumbling thunderstorms pursued them. Had they launched an attack the army would soon have been brought to its knees when the threatening storm struck them.
Blackstone turned and looked at his men. They were spread out using the open ground to ease their horses’ passage, not following in the churned ground of the mount in front of them. Veils of steam rose from the animals as they laboured through the heavy mud, turning the riders into ghosts. A small town lay a few miles to their right.
‘John,’ Blackstone called. ‘How far to Chartres, do you think?’
John Jacob rode close by, Henry behind him. ‘Twenty miles, perhaps a bit less?’ Jacob answered.
‘There’ll be little for our comfort there,’ Killbere complained, ‘except more damned priests.’
Blackstone asked the same question of Will Longdon. ‘A dozen miles,’ the centenar answered once he had gazed at the distant towers.
‘It’s between the two,’ said Blackstone, ‘but it makes little difference. We’ll not get there before this storm breaks.’
‘It would be better if the French army had numbers twice those of us and were in pursuit rather than that storm chasing us across the sky,’ said Perinne.
The heavens were now as black as death.
Blackstone turned away from the column. ‘We need shelter,’ he said, his breath already steaming against the sudden drop in temperature. Urging the bastard horse into a fast canter, his men wheeled and followed without question. Spikes of cold rain were already being hurled from the strengthening wind. As Blackstone raced for the shelter of the town the army trudged on, heads lowered, shoulders hunched against the impending storm. The vast plain offered no shelter but if the advance guard of the King and the Prince were already in Chartres then they were safe from the threat.
By the time Blackstone’s men had reached the town the rain had turned to sleet that flayed their skin and obscured some of the buildings on the far side of the small town. Fearful faces appeared at doors and windows that were quickly slammed closed as the horses surged between the buildings. Blackstone rode straight for a large barn in the centre of the town and quickly dismounted. ‘Find shelter for horse and man! Anyone resists, kill only in self-defence!’ he commanded. Some of the men followed him while others led their horses into nearby cow byres and stables and whatever cover they could find as the wind whipped the smoke from roof vents. Men stayed with their horses trying to calm them as the thunder rolled and lightning cracked with terrifying force, tearing aside the black clouds. No one dared venture out as the sleet turned to salt-like hail that stung and blinded anyone caught outside and death-rattled against doors and stone walls.
Sixty-odd men had pressed their horses into the vast barn. Blackstone threw his cloak over his horse’s head and every man did the same with jupons, blankets, anything that would help calm the frightened animals. The men muttered words of comfort to their mounts, their hands close to the beasts’ soft muzzles so they might be calmed with a familiar smell. John Jacob pulled Henry to stand between him and Blackstone. The boy would be crushed if the horses panicked.
Steam rose from beast and rider as a cold surge of air swept over them. The temperature plunged and the hail became stones the size of a man’s fist that punched through thatch and slate, thankfully slowing their impact before striking man and horse. The ice hammered louder than the rolling thunder, a drumbeat heralding heaven’s destructive power. As it tore through the roofs some men were struck and went down beneath the impact. The violent wind tore the barn doors open. Half a dozen horses broke free and ran into the storm only to be felled by the icy missiles. Blackstone saw Meulon use his great strength to stop two hors
es bolting and Gaillard and Perinne laboured to pull the barn doors closed again.
Men crossed themselves and prayed while others cursed. The wind gusted, its eerie malevolent howl making the bravest men tremble as it tore away more of the damaged roof. Three women and two men ran desperately from their house only yards from the barn. Their abandoned children ran after them screaming for their parents. Hailstones had destroyed the family’s roof but before they had taken a dozen strides towards shelter the hurtling ice felled them. Their skulls broke from blows heavier than a mace and their scalps were torn into a bloodied mess. One of the children, a small girl, stopped in her tracks at the horror of her parents being bludgeoned. She survived for a few moments longer; then the storm’s dark angels, showing no mercy, battered her head and face into the ground.
*
The great storm took thirty long minutes to sweep across the plain. As the clouds and thunder eased the sound of dripping wet thatch and the gurgling of flooded streams through the town’s streets enticed the men outside. The saturated bodies of the fallen family lay bedraggled on a bed of hailstones. One by one the men led their horses into the open and called out to those who had sought shelter in other buildings. Three of the men in Blackstone’s barn had been knocked unconscious but they were alive, unlike four others who had been sheltering in a flimsy lean-to on one of the houses. Not one roof remained undamaged in the small town. Blackstone had his dead men tied across their horses and then led them away, ice crunching underfoot, to the edge of town. The gentle slope leading down to the English army’s route glistened with packed hail and soon showed the devastation wrought by the freak storm. Some of the men in the column had dashed for shelter in nearby woods and had survived, while others lay scattered across the plain like fallen leaves. Wagons had sunk up to their axles in mud; mules lay dead in their traces. As far as the eye could see men lay slain; and horses: the mud on the great plain they crossed had sucked away the last breaths from their flaring nostrils. Survivors staggered from one body to the next, searching for anyone who might still be alive; it was obvious to Blackstone’s eye that, amidst the vast army, some thousand men or more had perished. Perhaps as many horses, weak from lack of forage, had gone down beneath the heavens’ onslaught. Soaking-wet survivors gathered their weapons but abandoned their plunder and supplies. Already weak before the storm, now the freezing air and battering had nearly brought Edward’s great army to its knees. Leaving behind their dead comrades they made their way towards Chartres.
*
Blackstone followed the survivors as they poured into the city, his horse’s hooves clattering onto the cobbled street, leaving the muddied dirt highway outside the gates. Men jostled through the arch of the Porte Guillaume, whose tollhouse leaned as if pushed by the wind. The whole world seemed askew after that storm. The army had divided and entered Chartres through each of the twelve gates around the city. Gabled houses leaned drunkenly over the river, the upper floors clear of those below. Women gaped as the battered soldiers shuffled their way into the city walls and then, after long moments of hostile stares, threw their slops into the river in a gesture that told the English what they thought of them. Windows slammed closed. Chartres would not be assaulted or burnt; its occupants were safe from violation. The ancient city of pilgrimage had been spared by the English King, but that did not lessen its citizens’ hatred for the invaders.
As Blackstone rode beyond the gate into the city the outline of the ancient cathedral on the rising ground in the distance became clearer in the late afternoon light. The air sparkled after the storm and etched its towers on a tauntingly blue sky. The streets between the half-timbered houses were already overcrowded. Soldiers squatted and lay in doorways despite loud protests from French householders, but the exhausted Englishmen’s crude responses and threatening tones quickly made those who hurled the insults slam closed their doors. Who among the citizens would risk aggravating such stinking, mud-stained men? Their fearful appearance would have the burghers on their knees praying even harder in the town’s churches.
A sergeant-at-arms, bearing a blazon of three golden lions on a red background topped by a bar sporting the fleur-de-lys, clattered his horse over a small humpback bridge that spanned the narrow river. He drew up a dozen paces from Blackstone’s advance and said, ‘Sir Thomas. My Lord Lancaster’s compliments. You and your men are to camp close to the Prince with the other lords.’
‘The King and the Prince, they survived the storm unharmed?’
‘By God’s grace, yes,’ said the sergeant. ‘As did my Lord Lancaster, who has secured some of what little food there is for you and your men.’
‘I have four dead of my own,’ said Blackstone.
‘Then they will be accorded the dignity of a burial. There are a number of churches here and priests who serve them.’
Blackstone and Killbere glanced at each other.
‘Food? Is this favour for our work at Paris?’ Killbere muttered with quiet disbelief, unheard by the waiting sergeant-at-arms. ‘Lancaster’s the King’s right-hand man, but every time our arses are warmed by fires close to the Prince’s pavilion we end up in a shit pit of trouble.’
‘Gilbert, you’re becoming an old crone,’ sighed Blackstone with good humour. ‘Unhappy if we are watered and fed and not fighting or miserable when we are tasked to do our King’s bidding.’
‘I’m suspicious of grace and favour is all I’m saying,’ said Killbere. He faced the sergeant, who was waiting patiently. ‘We thank the Duke of Lancaster for his generosity. We will follow your lead.’
Blackstone and Killbere urged their horses after the sergeant-at-arms as footsoldiers leaned precariously against the bridge’s low parapet to avoid Blackstone’s horsemen.
‘You aren’t that concerned about shit pits then?’ said Blackstone.
‘I’m thinking that if it’s an act of gratitude there will be the best of wine and fine cuts of meat. Where my stomach leads, I follow.’
CHAPTER THIRTY-EIGHT
They followed the sergeant through the lower part of the town along the street named after the city tanners; then, skirting the river that ran between the narrow buildings, they edged their way through the areas where artisan guilds practised. The streets the horsemen rode along were named after the city’s tradesmen, felt makers and cordwainers, which merged into narrow passageways where cobblers, saddlers and harness makers plied their skills; here the alleyways also bore the name of their trades. Then they left the artisan area behind and dismounted two streets from the great cathedral where the merchant classes and those who governed the town lived. The open ground around the cathedral was already a field of colour from knights and noblemen’s blazons. The royal standard rose above them all from the King’s pavilion.
Blackstone had not taken his eyes from the towers, each different in design, one slightly lower than the other in its reach for heaven. Gaillard and Meulon barked their orders as the horses were led away to be hobbled on a picket line.
‘There’s fodder for the horses?’ said Blackstone to the sergeant.
‘There’s little to be had, Sir Thomas. The beasts suffer more than us. We at least have victuals here. I’ll see to it that your men get supplies.’
‘We carry enough to feed ourselves, sergeant,’ said Blackstone, never wanting to depend on others.
‘I carry out my orders as they are given,’ he answered and with a nod of respect left the men to camp.
Killbere surveyed the area. ‘It’s good, Thomas. The buildings offer protection from the wind; the open ground allows pickets to stop anyone with a grudge from approaching. And’ – he rubbed a hand across his itchy beard – ‘where’s there’s royalty and nobility there’s usually hot water. A decent soak to rid myself of crotch lice and whatever creatures nest in my beard would be welcome.’
‘I’ll ask the Prince if we can have his bathwater after he and his retinue have used it,’ Blackstone said with a grin.
‘I’ll take the King’s bathwater
and be honoured even if his hunting dogs have been through it. A man feels better if he’s scrubbed the dirt from his skin before battle.’
Blackstone pointed to a house that stood beyond the open ground. One side of its walled garden abutted a lane. ‘We’ll get ourselves and the horses in there,’ he said and raised an arm to John Jacob, who in turn alerted the captains.
Killbere and Blackstone began to lead their horses away from the vast square that pressed against the front line of merchants’ houses. There were already more than two hundred horses hobbled there; stable-hands and pages ran back and forth securing their masters’ mounts. Some had feedbags; many did not.
‘The stench of horse shit will soon bring delegates from the better-off citizens to the King’s officers,’ said Killbere.
‘Much good it will do them,’ said Blackstone, tugging at the bastard horse’s leading rein. ‘What battle are you planning to fight that you need to be scrubbed and dressed in clean braies and undershirt?’
‘It’s obvious why we’ve come south twenty-odd leagues. The King threw down the gauntlet at the walls of Paris and then made it look as though we were withdrawing. The French will think we are weakened. The Dauphin will give chase, especially after that damned murderous storm. He’ll be dribbling spittle down his chin at the thought of butchering us. Now we’re here we’ll form up and meet them on that damned great plain we’ve trudged across. They’ll come for us, you see if they don’t. We can rest for a day or two, and then be ready for them. There’s space to swing a sword out there.’
Blackstone put his shoulder against the garden wall’s double gates and heaved them open. A chicken shed and an open barn stood at the end of the long garden. As they trampled the garden’s potager a woman screamed at them from an upper window and a portly man suddenly appeared from the downstairs kitchen area. The irate Frenchman cursed the Englishmen, his face flushed, his fist wielding a carving knife. He did not stray beyond the threshold once Killbere turned his eyes on him. He faltered even more when he saw that another half-dozen vandals were also leading in their horses. His wife berated him but he threatened her with the knife, spluttering with anger, and she pulled her head back inside. With a final, useless curse, the householder slammed closed the door.