devilstone chronicles 01 - devils band

by richard anderton

  “Good morning My Lord,” said Count Wolf, one of de la Pole’s most trusted captains, as the White Rose arrived at his place in the line.

  “Good morning Wolf, how are the men?” De la Pole replied cheerfully.

  “Their spirits are high and they’re eager to start slitting landsknecht throats,” said Wolf proudly. He was a veteran of the Italian Wars who’d been so long in Italy he’d forgotten he’d been born north of the Alps. Only his ruddy beard and guttural accent indicated his Swiss ancestry.

  “With luck we’ll be breakfasting inside the city before Albany has finished putting on his best silk breeches,” replied de la Pole glancing along the Black Band’s well-disciplined ranks. His men’s sombre armour and clothing contrasted sharply with the brightly coloured garb of the other French troops but this made his men appear even more terrifying. In the half-light of dawn, The Black Band looked like an army of spectral wraiths summoned from deepest pit of Hell and de la Pole wondered if the necromancer Thomas Devilstone could ever have conjured such a formidable host.

  A fanfare of trumpets gave the signal for the assault to begin and the French army began to shuffle forward. De la Pole glanced to his left and saw the royal standard and the banners belonging to the king’s personal guard of Scottish nobles fluttering in the breeze. He cursed at the sight, though he admired Francis’ courage in leading the assault in person, he was worried by the rashness of the king’s gesture. If Francis was killed or captured at Pavia there’d be no Yorkist invasion of England in this or any other year. Putting such thoughts out his mind, de la Pole fixed his eyes on the towers of the sleeping city. Pavia rose from the surrounding plain like a volcanic island in a placid sea and the French army rolled towards it like a fierce ocean storm.

  After the men had marched three hundred paces a second fanfare sounded, the lines stopped and the sky turned black as hundreds of bowmen loosed their missiles. Whilst the bowmen fixed fresh arrows and bolts to the strings of their bows and crossbows, the French halberdiers and swordsmen gave a great shout and charged forward. The bowmen quickly loosed a second volley over the heads of their comrades before slinging their bows over their backs, drawing their swords and running after them. De la Pole felt his own men were straining to follow but he held them in check as the king had ordered. The Black Band were Francis’ best men and not to be squandered in the first charge. A moment later the White Rose had good reason to thank the king for his foresight.

  The attacking Frenchmen were still a hundred paces from the city wall when the blockhouses on either side of breach began to spew flame and fire. The battlefield became engulfed in a fog of smoke as the defenders’ handguns and cannon let fly a murderous hail of iron balls and stone shot. Under such withering fire, the first wave of the French assault broke. In vain, the survivors tried to find shelter in any small depression in the ground but the blockhouses had been cunningly sited to create a deadly killing field.

  Suddenly the battle seemed to draw breath as the imperial gunners paused to reload. The French took the chance to launch another flight of bolts and arrows but they were answered by a second ear splitting roar of guns. Through the smoke, de la Pole’s caught sight of the royal banner being waved, this was the signal for the Black Band to join the fray. De la Pole spurred his horse and cantered to the front of his little army.

  “Men of the Black Band, we are to be unleashed at last, come let us follow the hounds of Mars and they’ll lead us to honour, riches and glory!” he cried. His men raised a great cheer, the fifes and drums struck up the beat and the Black Band set off over the boggy, uneven ground. Their armour clanked and their long pikes clattered together like the bare branches of trees in a winter gale but the lessons learned in months of training kept de la Pole’s six thousand men marching in perfect formation. A spent culverin ball splashed into the mud but not a man turned a hair, all their eyes were focused on the smoke that wreathed the breach in Pavia’s walls. Beyond that curtain of death was everything a man could wish for and all he had to do to seize it was stay alive.

  The White Rose also felt his spirit rejoice in the glory of war. At the head of his men he felt invincible and he began to imagine the lofty spires of Pavia’s churches belonged to St Paul’s Cathedral and Westminster Abbey. At last he understood why God had led him to this rain soaked corner of Italy. This baptism of blood and fire would forge his Black Band into a mighty army that would conquer England and restore the House of York to the throne of their ancestors.

  The sharp cracks of the arquebuses and sonorous booms of the heavy cannon shook de la Pole from his reverie and as the noise of battle grew louder, figures began to emerge from the smoke filled breach. For a heartbeat de la Pole thought the imperial garrison had launched a counterattack and he was about to order his men to lower their pikes to defend against such a charge when he realised the men fleeing for their lives were not German landsknechts but French bowmen. In that instant de la Pole realised the assault had failed but he had no intention of turning back without firing a shot.

  “Onwards! Don’t let these cowardly farmhands shame us into retreat, we’re men of the Black Band, we’ll not give ground even if we face all the Legions of Hell!” he cried and ordered his pikemen to halt whilst his arquebusiers advanced and fire a volley.

  His handgunners roared their battle cry and ran forward whilst their comrades planted their pikes butt first in the ground. When they were fifty paces from the breach, the arquebusiers touched their matches to their weapons. Two hundred handguns roared their defiance and scores of defenders gathering for a counterattack were pitched backwards into the mud. Like rabbits seeking the shelter of a thicket, the arquebusiers quickly retreated behind the forest of pikes to reload and they were not a moment too soon. As the sound of the Black Band’s volley died away, a thousand Imperial landsknechts came pouring out of the breach. They ran down the rubble piled against the shattered wall brandishing huge double-handed swords and shouting all manner of threats and curses.

  “Kill the oath-breakers! They are the Black Band, they are traitors beyond the mercy of God and men!” cried one landsknecht captain.

  “No quarter for landsknecht scum! Show the Emperor’s cocksucking, catamites how real men fight!” came de la Pole’s reply.

  The landsknechts rushed at their enemy and began hacking at the hedge of pikes with their long swords, trying to carve a way through the line to the arquebusiers. To meet the danger, de la Pole’s own swordsmen rushed between the ranks of pikemen wielding their katzbalgers. These short German swords were no more than two feet long and had been designed for use in the press of the melee. So whilst the landsknechts’ two handed blades quickly became entangled in the pikes, the Black Band’s swordsmen used their ‘cat skinners’ to rip open their opponents’ bellies.

  The ground in front of the first rank of pikes became sodden with the blood and entrails of the fallen but the landsknechts fought back, lopping off pike-heads and pikemen’s limbs with their two handed swords as if human bone was mere firewood. Revelling in the slaughter, de la Pole was in the thick of the fighting, using his old fashioned longsword to crush skulls and slice flesh whilst the steel barding around his horse’s chest turned countless blows from imperial weapons.

  The butchery continued for some minutes but it was stalemate. The Black Band could not pass through the narrow breach without breaking formation and to do so would have been suicide. Equally, the defending landsknechts were not strong enough to dislodge the attackers. Eventually a French trumpet sounding the retreat ended the impasse. De la Pole had been in enough battles to know when a fight was lost and though the thought of retreat stuck in his throat, he gave the order for the Black Band to withdraw. However his men did not turn and show their backs to the enemy, instead they dressed their ranks and began to slowly march backwards. It was a remarkable manoeuvre and it allowed the Black Band to salvage some pride from the debacle.

  The wind slowly cleared the smoke from the battlefield to reveal the city’s
defenders standing on the ramparts and the roofs of their blockhouse, cheering and waving their blood stained blades. De la Pole saw one man holding a tattered battle flag and recognised it at once as the ensign of Francis’ Scottish Guard. The French king’s bodyguard must have been decimated to allow their banner to be lost to the enemy and for a moment the White Rose wondered if Francis was dead but a thunder of hooves to his left announced that the king was alive and still in command of his army. De la Pole watched Francis gallop away with the morning sun glinting off his armour and his royal blue surcoat, adorned with golden fleur-de-lis, streaming behind him.

  By now the attackers were out of range of the defenders’ guns, there was no loss of honour in resuming a more normal mode of march so de la Pole gave the order and his men swiftly turned about. The assault had lasted less than thirty minutes and had cost the lives of more than eight hundred men, including fifty members of the Black Band, but the comforting news for de la Pole was that the Duke of Albany had fared little better in his assault on the eastern breach. Meanwhile, in the French baggage park at Mirabello, the news of the White Rose’s failure to capture the city was greeted with a mixture of dismay and relief.

  “If we’d been lucky those imperial landsknechts would have done our work for us and we could all have gone home,” said Bos ruefully.

  “That wouldn’t have helped, to reap any reward from the death of the last Yorkist de la Pole must be killed by one of us.” said Thomas.

  “That’s as maybe but for once I agree with the Frisian. I’m growing tired of playing nursemaid to whores. Face it Thomas, your plan to trap de la Pole has failed and we need to think of something else,” said Prometheus.

  “Our harlots are also growing restless. I don’t know what the trouble is but there’s bad blood between Ulla and Magda. They used to be thick as thieves but now they barley exchange a polite word.” added Quintana.

  “Who can fathom the mind of a woman? Sometimes I thank God that I never married,” said Nagel shaking his head.

  “A surly strumpet is bad for business and if we don’t snap them out of it, I’ll wager it’ll be bad for us all,” said Quintana and his warning proved to be prophetic. The next day the cauldron of discontent between the Ulla and Magda boiled over into open war.

  It was Thomas who witnessed the fiasco. He was returning to their tent after fetching the day’s provisions when he saw a Swiss reisläufer, his breeches in his hands, running for his life. A moment later, Ulla tumbled out from under the canvas and hurled an earthenware flagon at the fleeing, half naked soldier. The bottle flew past Thomas’ head, missing his face by an inch.

  “Get out of here chum, Hell hath no fury like a harlot who wants to be a wife!” the reisläufer warned as he ran past. Angered that one of his refined women had been defiled by a common pikeman Thomas reached for his sword to cut the man down but before he could skewer the knave, the man had gone.

  “You cheap bastard, you promised to wed me, yet I find you whoring with that diseased trollop!” Ulla shrieked. She was about to continue the chase when Magda sprang from the tent and wrestled her rival to the ground.

  “Arsed faced bitch!” spat Ulla as she struggled to free herself from Magda’s grasp.

  “Watch your tongue dick sucking slut!” retorted Magda and she slapped Ulla hard across her face.

  “At least I don’t have to get a man blind drunk before he’ll lie with me!” Ulla howled and she kicked her opponent in the belly. The warring whores began to roll around in the mud, bellowing curses and trying rake their nails down each other’s faces. Their shrieks soon brought a large crowd of spectators and the men added their cheers to the pandemonium. Ulla finally managed to wriggle free of her rival’s clutches and a moment later the two women were back on their feet, circling each other like angry tigresses.

  “How dare you steal my man, as soon as he’d been paid for flattening this miserable Italian shit pile, we were going to open a tavern together!” Ulla hissed.

  “You stupid cow is that what he told you? Don’t you know they all say that just to get up your chatte for nothing! Anyway he promised me I could be his kampfrau days ago!” Magda spat back.

  “Only because you got him pissed! Look at you, you old mare, what man would prefer you to me? How many bastard brats have sucked on your saggy teats?” Ulla retorted.

  “At least I have got something a man likes to get hold of, unlike you, you flat chested witch!” Magda growled and she charged at the younger girl but Ulla neatly sidestepped the attack and as the other woman careered passed, she seized a fistful of Magda’s chemise. The cloth tore to reveal Magda’s magnificent breasts and the crowd roared with delight.

  “Give us a squeeze!” cried one admiring onlooker.

  “I’ll squeeze your foul head back between your mother’s shit-stained legs!” bellowed the bare breasted trollop and again the two girls began to grapple. Ulla managed to hook her leg around Magda’s ankle and whip her rival’s feet from under her. As she lay sprawled in the mud, Ulla sat astride Magda’s naked chest, slapping and pummelling her defeated foe like a baker kneading bread.

  Thomas realised he had to intervene or Magda wouldn’t be able to work for days, perhaps weeks. He was about to step in and break up the fight when he noticed a face in the crowd. He couldn’t be sure but he thought it was Georg Langenmantel, de la Pole’s chief captain, whom he’d last seen at the Castle of Haute Pierre. His heart missed a beat. Even disguised as a Greek there was a chance he’d be recognised and, at the very least, the White Rose would be put on his guard. Thomas cursed his luck but just as was about to retreat into the crowd the camp provosts arrived.

  “Scatter, here come the rumormeisters!” said a voice as the two burly watchmen, each carrying the stout wooden truncheons nicknamed ‘argument settlers’, pushed their way through the throng.

  “Hey, you two, cut it out or we’ll send you both to the Provost Marshal and he’ll kick you out of camp,” bellowed one of the watchmen but the battling women seemed oblivious to the watchman’s threat and they continued to scratch and claw at each other’s faces.

  “You’ve been warned!” said the other watchman and the two constables began to beat the women with their clubs. The trollops howled and screamed with frustrated rage but only Ulla had the good sense to scurry away. The crowd, who had no love authority military or civilian, were happy to cover Ulla’s escape but even though she’d driven her rival from the field, Magda refused to surrender.

  “Beat a woman would you? You cowardly bastards! Wouldn’t your mothers be proud to see you thrash a poor defenceless girl?” cried the aggrieved Magda, picking up a handful of pebbles. She threw the stones at the nearest watchman and one struck him on the cheek.

  “You ungrateful cow, we stopped you from getting a real beating, that harlot was tearing you to shreds!” he cried.

  “Sod this for a laugh,” growled the other watchman and he swung his club at Magda’s midriff. She crumpled as the wind was knocked out of her and whilst she writhed in pain the watchmen seized her by her hair.

  “I’m with child! If it’s stillborn I’ll name you as murderer!” Magda wailed.

  “Quiet you lying bitch, even if you are about to whelp, which I doubt, we don’t need any more brats round here.” growled the watchman

  The two constables began to drag the shrieking Magda off to the Provost Marshal and, with no more entertainment, the crowd began to drift away. Thomas looked round for Langenmantel but de la Pole’s captain had disappeared and Ulla too had vanished. Thomas was relieved but he was also furious. Now the whole camp knew his girls had been consorting with common soldiers in the hope of luring one into marriage. Their reputation as high-class whores was ruined and they’d never see another noble customer, let alone the pretender to the throne of England.

  Cursing his luck, Thomas hurried off to find the others and tell them the bad news and, just as he feared, they too weren’t pleased.

  “So Magda’s been kicked out and Ulla’
s run off with a pikeman, perhaps she was impressed by the length of his weapon,” said Quintana but no one laughed.

  “We’re finished, thanks to those ungrateful sluts no one will come near us now,” said Prometheus but Thomas was more hopeful.

  “There’s still time to salvage something, if de la Pole won’t come to our whores why don’t we take our whores to him?” He suggested.

  “Have you lost your wits Englishman? We’ll be recognised at once. The whole point of our charade was to make de la Pole came to us so he’d not be on his guard,” protested Bos

  “The time for caution has passed and if we escort the girls disguised as Turkish eunuchs, with turbans on our heads and veils over our faces, no one will know who we are. Besides he won’t be expecting us as we were all eaten by a dragon in Metz, or had you forgotten?” Thomas said.

  “Perhaps the Englishman is right, all we have to do is say our girls are gifts from the French king and once we’re inside de la Pole’s tent we can run him through and be away before anyone knows he’s dead,” said Prometheus considering the merits of Thomas plan.

  “And if we succeed, how shall we prove to Henry Tudor that we’ve sent his sworn enemy to The Devil?” said Bos.

  “The White Rose wears a ring decorated with the badge of his house. That ring will be enough to convince Henry that the last Yorkist is in his grave. Now if we act before any rumours reach de la Pole we may succeed after all,” said Thomas and he went off to find their two remaining girls.

  Curiously Marie and Helene seemed not to care about the fate of the two other women. They greeted the news that one had been driven from the camp and the other had disappeared with nothing more than a shrug. On the other hand, they accepted their new commission eagerly. To entertain a king, even a king in exile, was the pinnacle of any courtesan’s career and they spent the rest of the day bathing and scenting themselves. Once the sun had set behind the French siege lines, and the slow steady boom of cannon had ceased for the night, Thomas and the others donned their disguises, escorted the giggling girls to a covered mule cart and set off for de la Pole’s camp.