by David Gilman
‘We burned the ignorant peasants out, slaughtered everything that moved,’ one of the men grunted, eyes glazing as he looked into the flames.
‘Aye. Cats, dogs, women and children. We swept through them like wildfire—’
‘And their militia,’ interrupted another.
‘And them,’ agreed the man. ‘Impaled them on sharpened poles…’
One of the men stabbed his knife point into a piece of dried fish. ‘And they squirmed!’ he laughed. Others joined in. Will Longdon grimaced. It was enough to be thought of as a smile of approval of the men’s cruel actions.
‘The Germans ran like chickens from a coop with a fox after them,’ said another, taking a bottle from his lips. ‘We stripped their churches like their women!’ More laughter. More slaps on the back. Men belched and farted.
‘Gruffydd ap Madoc took no prisoners unless they were worth ransom. We have moutons, livres, francs, florins. Money is money.’
‘Aye, and enough plate from noblemen and churches to furnish our own castle!’
‘If you have money,’ said the man next to him, leaning blurry-eyed into him, ‘we would take it. You have money, bowman? Eh? Your captain stripped a merchant’s wealth lately?’
‘No, we suffer with a pauper’s stipend from the King,’ Will Longdon answered, adding, ‘No looting, no rape.’ He spat in pretence. ‘We live a poor life compared to you lads.’
‘You!’ a man across the campfire said, pointing at him. ‘Even you are worth something. Dead, that is. Better dead for us. You would have been lying face down in the mud if we’d got to you before your captain burned out de Charité’s town. We were set to make money from killing you and those fighting against the Bretons. Count yourself lucky, archer.’
Will Longdon could barely make out the man’s face in the dim light but he could see from the hunched shoulders and extended arm pointing accusingly at him that it wouldn’t take much for the man’s belligerence to tip into violence.
He bit back the challenge that surged in his chest. One stride across the fire and his archer’s knife would be buried in the man’s throat. He’d kick embers and then cut and slash his way clear. Drunken men were slow off the mark and he saw in his mind’s eye the order of the killing. Instead he grunted as if burdened by drink. ‘First you’d have to find us. We know how to hide!’ He grinned. ‘Three hundred of you and a handful of us! What chance would we have? Eh? We know when to run. And I wager we can run faster than any of you. Chickens and foxes, eh?’ He squawked like a chicken.
The men laughed. Longdon staggered to his feet and slapped the man’s shoulder next to him. ‘I need to piss.’
The man snatched at his arm and he suddenly seemed less drunk than a moment earlier. ‘Archer! You’re on the wrong side. You understand what I’m saying?’ His grip was fierce but it made little impression on Will Longdon, whose arms were cords of muscle and sinew.
The men fell silent and turned their faces towards him. ‘You think you fooled us, archer?’ said the man who had threatened him.
Longdon’s muscles tensed. His arm was still held. His knife hand.
‘You bring a haunch of meat. Why would you do that?’
Will Longdon stared them down. And bluffed. ‘You know why.’
The men glanced at each other.
‘Bring your men over and join us,’ one of them said.
‘How much?’ said Longdon. ‘You want us, you have to pay.’
They grinned and Longdon’s arm was released.
‘That’s what we thought. All right, we’ll talk again.’
Will Longdon gave a convincing stagger as he stepped away and the men jeered good-naturedly. Despite the darkness he quickly found his bearings and remembered where he had entered the men’s camp. A few hundred paces would bring him back to his own men. As he stepped past one of the last campfires he saw a half-dozen shadows flit between the scattered firelight as they made their way towards Blackstone’s encampment. But the man leading the others changed direction and stopped next to one of ap Madoc’s men who was feeding his fire; the flames surged, showing Longdon the man’s face clearly.
William Cade.
CHAPTER THIRTEEN
Will Longdon reported his information to Blackstone and Killbere before the day’s ride began and Gruffydd ap Madoc joined them at the front of the column.
‘They bribe men to join them?’ said Killbere. ‘What’s unusual about that? There are thousands of footloose men in France looking to make a living. Plunder and the promise of it is what we all seek. Every man needs to eat.’
Longdon winced. ‘It’s more than that, Sir Gilbert. It’s a feeling, is all. Something not right. They aim to do us harm, I reckon. They’re whoresons, every one of them. They slaughtered women and children and impaled the men who fought against them. They are as bad as the Hungarians in Italy who burned their prisoners alive.’
‘Yet they have not caused us harm,’ Killbere said. ‘And we have ap Madoc’s word that they won’t.’ He snorted and spat. ‘But Thomas knows my thoughts on that.’
Blackstone tightened the saddle cinch on the bastard horse. It snapped its head back, trying to bite him with its yellow teeth, but he had already looped the opposite rein over his arm to restrict its predictable response. ‘You’re certain you saw William Cade in their camp?’
‘It was him,’ said Longdon.
‘Aye, well, the likes of him would sell his arse to a mendicant monk if he thought it got him closer to the Pope and the gold in his coffers. We’ll watch him,’ said Killbere. ‘He might be deciding which side offers the most profit.’
‘They need archers and even though there are few of us we’d give them the advantage in a fight. They came to kill us, Thomas, but now they say they’ll stand with us,’ said Will Longdon.
‘And they will because they’ll be paid. But then they’ll go their own way because we will have Chandos’s men at our side and they won’t risk an equal fight. When Meulon returns tell him to keep an eye on William Cade.’
The bastard horse protested as Blackstone pulled himself into the saddle but once Blackstone’s weight settled it calmed, ducked its head, yanking the reins as if to let him know its strength, and then it snorted, head raised and ears pricked. Meulon and Renfred appeared a thousand paces away on the edge of a forest. They had reconnoitred ahead the previous day and slept in the barren wasteland overnight. Meulon stood in the stirrups and raised his spear; then he waited with Renfred beside the trees. A chill wind gusted, crackling the pennons. Windswept trees lurched, bent from the constant exposure to the eastern gales that coursed over the bleak landscape. Their bare branches, not yet softened in leaf, clawed out for the riders. As the wind shifted and caught the fluted branches an eerie moan rose up. Half-world creatures lived in such places. These forests harboured wolves and boar and hid friend and foe alike. Better for a man to ride out in the open. Better to die under a blade in battle than dragged from his horse by an unseen assailant whether of this world or the next. Superstition. It could cripple men’s minds or make them strong.
‘Thomas?’ said Killbere. ‘You think Meulon has found Sir John’s force? My bones ache with this constant riding.’
‘You’ll soon have your fight, Gilbert. That’ll warm you.’ He grinned. ‘Once we’re through that forest.’
Killbere and Will Longdon crossed themselves when they looked to where the German captain and Meulon waited, the big man signalling with his spear again, this time lowering and pointing towards the gloomy forest.
Killbere grunted as Gruffydd ap Madoc rode towards them to join the head of the column. ‘Madoc’s more superstitious than any of us put together. He might not follow us through there.’
‘Then he won’t get his money,’ said Blackstone and spurred on the bastard horse. He would be the first to enter the bleak and ancient woodland. Once he was far enough ahead of the cantering horses not to be seen he quickly brought Arianrhod to his lips and kissed the silver wheeled goddess.
‘Hold up!’ the Welshman called as Blackstone nudged the bastard horse onto a woodcutter’s track.
He turned and looked at ap Madoc, who had brought his horde of men to a halt. ‘We cut through the forest we save a day,’ said Blackstone. ‘There’s a track. And we’ll come up behind Sir John’s force.’
‘You don’t know that,’ said the long-haired Welshman. ‘You put three hundred men down a narrow track and they can be ambushed.’
‘By goblins and faeries?’ taunted Killbere. He glanced at the dense forest. ‘They’re the only ones who could hide out of sight. No army can lie in wait, Gruffydd. Do the spirits of the dead frighten you?’
‘The dead?’ ap Madoc snorted. ‘The dead?’
‘Aye, didn’t you know this is called La Forêt des Morts?’ He suppressed a smile as the man who had once fought so fearlessly at his side nervously licked his lips.
‘I’m not fearful, if that’s what you think,’ he blustered. ‘But some of my men come from such dark and forbidding places. They’ve seen ancient forests swallow a man whole.’
‘Then they shouldn’t live in Wales!’ said Killbere. ‘Dark, miserable, pissed wet through, godforsaken place. It’s enough to make a man yearn for war to get away from it. Did you never wonder why so many Welshmen serve in Edward’s army?’
‘I know this forest,’ said Blackstone, cutting off a belligerent war of words before they could gain purchase. ‘My men and I used to raid here when I lived in Normandy.’ It was true, he had, but like many others he also knew that a place earned its name for good reason and the Forest of the Dead was no exception. When plague had swept across France years before the forest dwellers had died their agonizing deaths and their bones were found everywhere by hunters and raiders. The woodsmen and their families had tried to run from the pestilence but it had overtaken them before they reached the clearing that Blackstone remembered being further on. ‘I’ve been through it before, Gruffydd. It keeps out the routiers. Only those who know the truth of the place will venture in. No ambush, only the wailing of the dead.’ But even as he said the words a chill ran down his spine. ‘We hold our nerve,’ he said and heeled the bastard horse onto the forest track.
The last time he had travelled through the dense forest, he’d seen bones of the dead scattered either side of the track. The way was overgrown now but the semblance of a path was still visible because wild animals had adopted it as a hunting trail. What had not been there the last time were the human bones dangling from branches above the track. Leg bones, arms and hands, a rib cage and skulls swinging in the wind that whistled through the forest, their grinning teeth seemingly moaning in a creaking howl. Bleached and beaten by the weather, rattling like hollow dice in a tavern game played with the devil, these were warning signs not to enter the Forest of the Dead, placed by those who had taken the woodland as their own. It was too late to turn back. Blackstone led the men at a steady pace through the trees relying on his memory as to where the woodcutters’ village had been so that he might find their hovels and then the track that led out of the forest. By midday the trees opened into a broad overgrown clearing and his mind’s eye showed him where the huts had once stood. Since then the forest’s tendrils had sneaked across the open space and suffocated what remained of the hamlet. The villagers’ bones had long been taken by animals but he still felt the presence of the dead as the wind blew through the gnarled and twisted trees. His imagination suddenly taunted him. Had he been lured into a place of death so that he too would die there? He spat and expelled the fear with it. They needed to ride south-east and although the sun had disappeared behind the thickening clouds he looked to where the moss grew on the trees’ bark. Moss needed moisture to thrive and would never face the sun.
‘Stay here,’ he told Killbere, who was waiting at the head of the column, and eased the bastard horse forward. His eyes sought out the dark cloak of moss on the tree trunks, then he turned his back and faced south, urging his horse across the opening, angling its direction towards the lower quadrant. It was as close as he could get to facing south-east. As he turned in the saddle to call the men a movement caught his eye. It was fleeting but the drab brown shape blurred against the far treeline. Alarm suddenly squeezed his chest. It was no animal that had moved but the figure of a man who had darted back into the trees. And it was faceless.
He kicked his heels and the bastard horse needed no further prompting. It lunged into the overgrown clearing, its weight and strength tearing aside any clinging plant. As Blackstone surged forward Killbere led the men after him and, seeing Blackstone with Wolf Sword in his fist, armed himself. Whatever Blackstone had seen had caused him to gallop forward and this might be an ambush. Blackstone had a forty-yard lead when he suddenly veered out of sight into the trees. Killbere swore under his breath. What in God’s name were they riding into? There was no room for a column of three hundred men to swarm across the clearing. Only the first forty or so of Blackstone’s men managed to forge their way forward, as Gruffydd ap Madoc’s horsemen blocked each other’s progress. The Welshman rode at Killbere’s side, no sign of fear, eyes focused on the dense forest.
‘Go left!’ Killbere commanded so that the men could strike in two columns. Ap Madoc made no complaint and swung his horse as Blackstone’s men split and followed both of them. Their horses struggled through the undergrowth, hooves rising and falling, chests forcing aside bracken. Despite the chill their flanks were soon lathered white with sweat from their exertions. As they reached within thirty yards of the far side of the clearing Blackstone reappeared and raised his sword arm to halt their surge.
‘Hold back the men!’ he called. Momentarily confused, Killbere and ap Madoc yanked their reins and slowed their horses. ‘Gilbert and Gruffydd with me.’ He turned his back and heard Killbere order Perinne and Meulon to hold the men. Horses snorted and fought their bits, dismayed that their sudden race for the forest had been curtailed by their riders.
The two veteran fighters rode to where the clearing merged into the forest once more, searching out Blackstone. They saw him on a cleared track and then he disappeared from view again. Killbere glanced at the Welshman. Both men were mystified but they stayed alert, glancing around at the dense foliage.
Ap Madoc grunted. ‘The old gods have kept me safe for many years, Gilbert, but I’ll wager that your Thomas Blackstone might one day taunt them enough to abandon me. He rides into the unknown in a place of death and then calmly calls us forward.’
‘If Thomas is unharmed and he’s called us then there’s no danger,’ said Killbere.
They followed Blackstone around a bend in the track and came into a settlement of fifteen or more huts crudely built of wattle, mud and thatch. The cut branches and hurdles that penned their pigs and chickens between each hut helped their semi-concealment. A horseman passing by would not see them unless they rode into the hamlet. Rabbits hung from poles and a deer carcass, recently gutted, was stretched onto a gutting frame. There was no smoke coming from the roof smoke holes but now that they were close and the wind was in their faces they sensed the dank smell of wet fire. These wood dwellers had doused their fires when the intruders rode into their forest. Blackstone sat astride the bastard horse and looked at the dozen faceless men dressed in ragged clothing. Their heads were covered in coifs but their faces were bandaged with a gauze-like material that obscured their features. What was left of their hands, also bandaged, gripped staves and axes.
‘Mother of Christ,’ Killbere whispered. ‘Lepers.’
CHAPTER FOURTEEN
Blackstone faced Killbere and ap Madoc. ‘They tell me they’ve been living here for three years. There are fifty or more of them. Men and women. A few children. They scavenge, trap and hunt.’
The two men stayed back.
‘Come closer,’ said Blackstone. ‘You’ll not be infected.’ He looked at the bandaged men who stood defiantly in a half-circle in front of their huts. ‘They need no leper’s clapper out here. They’re free men. As free as the
y can be.’ Blackstone dismounted to show Killbere and ap Madoc not to be afraid. ‘When Christiana and I escaped from the Savage Priest in Paris we hid in the leper colony north of the city walls. They offered us food and kindness. We accepted both.’
The man who seemed to be their leader said something, his voice muffled behind the cloth across his face. Blackstone was near enough to hear him. ‘Then we will give you what we have in return,’ Blackstone answered. He looked back to where Killbere and Gruffydd still sat uneasily. A third figure had ridden forward from the clearing. William Cade looked at the diseased men and women.
‘Burn them out,’ he said. ‘Kill them and put their bodies in the fires. They infect the air we breathe. Best to be rid of them.’
Killbere turned on him. ‘Keep your whoreson mouth shut. You have no business here and you do not tell Sir Thomas Blackstone what to do. Get yourself back to the others.’
Cade was unperturbed by Killbere’s anger. He shrugged and then spat. ‘If you don’t have the stomach for it, Sir Gilbert, the Welshman will do it. He and his men have slain women and children in their droves.’
‘Be quiet,’ said ap Madoc. ‘What I have done is my business.’
‘You think Sir John will want any of us to ride with him once he learns we’ve breathed the same air as lepers?’ sneered Cade, drawing his sword. ‘Stand aside. I’ll do it myself.’
Gruffydd ap Madoc suddenly swung an arm as thick as a man’s thigh and caught Cade across the chest. The blow tumbled him from his horse but he rolled and quickly got to his feet. His fighting skills were in his blood as the leper’s affliction was in theirs. Blackstone took three of his long strides and gripped Cade’s sword arm as he prepared to lunge at the Welshman. Cade’s muscles were taut from years of fighting but Blackstone’s grip stopped his strike as surely as if his arm had been severed.
‘That’s the second time I’ve had cause to stop you. The next time I’ll kill you,’ said Blackstone quietly. He released his grip and shouldered the tough killer aside. ‘Ride back to the men and send Renfred to me with the sacks of flour on the pack horses.’
