by Robert Adams
"Then," he smiled cryptically, "you are actually older than am I, chronologically. I was not born until 1968."
——«»——«»——«»——
The May morn dawned bright and clear over Salisbury Plain, whereon stood the army of King Arthur, almost thirty thousand strong, in battle array. The battle line faced southeasterly, center and wings strong and deep even in extension, rear and flanks well-guarded by squadrons of horsemen. Well-protected batteries lay emplaced in positions from which they could inflict a deadly crossfire upon the ranks of an advancing enemy, while twos and threes of light cannon were interspersed among and between the tercios of pikemen and musketeers, all along the front.
The army of the Crusaders had come up the Avon from Bournemouth by barges and were forming a mile distant across the undulating plain. Fifteen thousand Spaniards, beneath the banner of Principe Alberto, bastard half-brother of King Fernando VII. Eighteen thousand Italian troops—though half the horse and nine-tenths of the foot were Slavic and Swiss mercenaries, rather than sons of Italy—under the Papal banner, but really commanded by Wenceslaus, Count Horeszko, a famous but aging condottiere. The Portuguese contingent was small—less than five thousand, all told—and were under the banner of Duque Henrique de Oporto. There were also a sprinkling of crusading nobles and knights from widely scattered areas . . . though less than half of what there had been before some of the paroled Crusaders who had survived the Scottish disaster had passed through Bournemouth ere they took ship for their various homelands to scrape up their ransoms.
With the permission of the Imperial Electors, Reichsregent Herzog Wolfgang had been allowed to remain with the English army, so long as he took no personal part in the fighting. This proviso chafed at the vital, active nobleman, but he had sworn a solemn vow to see his sister, nieces, and infant nephew avenged within the walls of London and forced himself to abide by the onerous condition in order to see the end of the war.
Foster, guided by local loyalists, had led a sweeping reconnaissance raid into the very outskirts of Bournemouth, bringing back a score of prisoners, one a Portuguese noble, Melchoro Salazar, Baròn de Sao Gilberto. The plump, pink-cheeked, jolly little man had made it abundantly clear from the very outset of his capture that no one event could have more pleased him, and immediately upon ascertaining that his captor was indeed a nobleman also, he was quick to give his parole. And he swung his ornate broadsword to some definite effect during a brush with a large band of brigands—not surprising in itself, as such scum were a sore affliction to both armies, but an indication that, for all his effete appearance, the Baròn was certainly no mere carpet-knight.
University-educated and extensively traveled, Melchoro possessed fluency in English, German, Italian, Greek, Arabic, French, and basic Slavic, not to mention Latin, Spanish, and his mother tongue. He had a fine tenor singing voice and a seemingly inexhaustible store of humorous and bawdy songs in several languages; his expert transliterations of lewd ditties had his erstwhile captors wheezing and gasping in their saddles many times during the long ride back to the royal camp.
His contempt for the Crusade in general and the leaders of this southerly contingent in particular was abysmal, nor did he seem to hold the Church and her clergy in especially high regard.
"My good Marquès Sebastiàn, I have almost forty years and I have good use of them made—five universities in as many countries, as well as my other travels. My father had the goodness to live long and to be generous of stipends to his wandering heir, when he could not sell his sword for his keep."
"You have been a mercenary, then, Baron Melchoro?" asked Foster.
The Portuguese smiled. "Not really, no. But in some parts of this huge world men must swing sword in order to survive, so why not get paid for it, I always held. I have fought yellow Kalmyks in the plains of Russland, brown idolaters on the borders of Persia, black, pagan man-eaters in Africa, and red Indios in New Spain. I have slain or maimed many men, but only because they would have done the like to me, not through any love of bringing about suffering and death, nor yet to advance the spread of a Church I have come to feel is as thoroughly rotten as a week-old summer corpse."
"Then why are you here, in England, as a Crusader?" demanded Foster.
"Duty to my overlord." Melchoro shrugged languidly. "Duque Henrique would only excuse Conde Joao on the condition that he provide two hundred men-at-arms and at least four noble vassals. He, being a sporting man, called us all to his seat, told us of the Duque's commands, and then we diced." He shook his head ruefully. "Gambling, alas, is not my forte."
"And so, you are a Crusader," stated Foster.
"Was a Crusader, and a grudging one, at that. But now, thanks to you, my good friend, I am a paroled captive of war, and my thanks to you will be a goodly sum of ransom." He smiled broadly, his bright eyes dancing.
Turning in his saddle, the Baròn addressed Nugai, who rode silently behind, never far from Foster's side, day or night, march or battle or camp. "Vahdah, pahzhahloostah."
Wordlessly, the Tartar unslung his water bottle and passed it forward.
When he had slaked his thirst and returned the canteen, the Baròn commented, "Khazans like yours make the very best of bodyguard-servants; your overlord must esteem you most highly to give you such a treasure. Many of them are better at treating wounds and sicknesses than the most noted of our leeches and they are equally adept at compounding poisons, so they make fine assassins, as well. Would that I could afford to import a skilled Khazan, but what with sons to arm and fit out, daughters to dower and lands to maintain . . ." He ended with a deep sigh.
"Well, look here, man," Foster began, "I don't want to beggar you. I can wait for the ransom or—"
Melchoro's merry laughter rang out. "Ho, ho, none of my gold will go for my ransom, good sir, not a bit of it. I be an old fox, and sly, ho, ho. The esteemed Conde Joao agreed ere I sailed—in writing, mind you, and legally witnessed—to pay my ransom if I was captured or to settle a largish sum on my family if I was slain."
"Nonetheless"—his tone took on a solemnity and he reached over to squeeze Foster's gauntleted hand resting on his pommel—"your charity is much appreciated, mein Herr Markgraf. Had I entertained any doubts of your nobility, they were dispelled; you are a gentleman born, and I shall ever be proud to call you friend."
Later, in camp, Wolfgang questioned the Baròn for several hours, but they conversed in German and Foster understood very little of it. Later still, however, with the King present, all spoke English.
Melchoro sat at his ease at the long table, obviously unabashed by the royal presence. When called upon, after Wolfgang's longish introduction, he sipped delicately from the wine cup, then arose and began. He gave first the numbers of the various contingents and their nationalities.
"As regards the great captains, Your Majesty, Principe Alberto is a stiff-necked, supercilious fool, more fanatically religious then even the Cardinal, and his concepts of troop marshaling and battle are impossibly archaic. Personally, he is brave to the point of stupidity, but no one has ever been able, apparently, to disabuse him of the notion that modes of warfare have not changed at all in the last five hundred years. In his closed mind, the crowning glory of any battle is the all-or-nothing charge of heavy cavalry in full armor. And on more than one occasion, he has led his hidalgos in riding down his own infantry to get more quickly at the enemy . . . which makes his pikemen and musketeers very nervous when they know he is behind them."
"My own Duque, Henrique, is here for the good of his soul, too. But what he knows of materia militaris would not fill a mouse's codpiece."
Arthur chuckled at the allusion. He was clearly as taken with their captive as had been both Foster and Wolfgang.
"The Duque is certainly a man of some renown," agreed the King, in a humorous tone. "Frankly, I was surprised to hear that he had been chosen to lead a Crusade. How much does he weigh, these days?"
Melchoro grinned. "As you reckon it, sire, something in e
xcess of twenty stone."
Wolfgang roared with laughter. His sides still shaking, he gasped, "Lieber Gott! Drei hundert pfunden? Und in armor? An elephant he must ride."
"No, mein Herr Reichsregent, he has a small coach, plated with proof, and drawn by six big geldings of the Boulonnais stock." He grinned. "It is a most singular spectacle, sire—the Duque's silken banner flying from a staff atop the coach, the horses all hung with chain-mail and the coachmen and postilions in full plate. Yes, to see the Duque go to war is a rare experience. The Cardinal has taken to sharing his coach, recently."
Arthur nodded. "What of this Cardinal Ahmed? Does he command? What sort of soldier is he? Moorish, is he not?"
"He be a Berber, Sire, but albeit little skilled in war. Such orders as he gives are the 'suggestions' of Conde Wenceslaus, the famous condottiere. Such a charade is necessary to mollify the few hundred Italian knights and their retainers who value themselves too highly to accept orders from a Slav, even a noble Slav."
Wolfgang's brow wrinkled and he shook his shaven head slowly. "Wenceslaus, Landgraf Horeszko, ach, more battles that man has fought und vun, then hairs I haf on my arse. That he commanded only the Papal condottas, I had hoped. But if he the vord behind the Cardinal iss, then to lose this battle ve very vell may."
"How many cannon have the Crusaders?" asked King Arthur. "And what weights do they throw?"
"The siege train, Your Majesty, is large and complete. However, most of them are far too large and clumsy for field-of-battle work. Of lighter pieces, well . . . let me see. Each of the three Papal legions has a battery of four guns, nine-pounders, I believe. The Duque has four six-pounders and four fifteen-pounders."
"Und the Spanishers?" probed Wolfgang.
"A good part of the siege train is Spanish, but they own no lighter pieces," replied the Baròn, adding, at the looks of utter consternation, "No, it is true. Principe Alberto often avers that while gunpowder is superior to siege engines for knocking down walls, battles are always won by sharp steel, bravery and faith. The Spanish ships offloaded no piece lighter than a full cannon."
——«»——«»——«»——
The army of the Church advanced across the sunlit plain in battle order, to halt a little over a half-mile from the English. There was a confused wavering and rippling all along the lines of the center, then through the hastily widened intervals trotted thousands of armor-clad gentry and mercenary lancers. At the trot, they spread to form a jagged line, three horsemen deep. Then, with a pealing of trumpets, the leading line broke from trot to gallop, their long lances leveled, shouting their battle cries, then target the glittering pikepoints of the English tercios.
They were still a good quarter mile from that target when the crossfire of the field guns almost obliterated them; neither chain nor plate proved any protection against grapeshot. But almost before they had gone down, the second line was at the gallop, secure in the knowledge that the cannon could never be swabbed, reloaded, and relaid in time to do them like damage. There would be a single volley from the contemptible musketeers, then their steel would be hacking at the pike-hedge.
There was a volley from the muskets. But then there was a second, and a third. And then the few survivors lost count of the rolling volleys. But old Count Wenceslaus, watching this idiotic waste of the valuable cavalry, did not lose count. In the silence—if the hideous din compounded of every sound suffering men and horses can make could be deemed silence—following the seventh volley, he solemnly crossed himself, something he had not done in many years.
The third and final line, led by Principe Alberto himself, was virtually annihilated, suffering the cannon fire at long range and the reloaded, multi-shot muskets closer in. Pete Fletcher's new shops at York had been laboring hard, day and night, and now almost every musketeer of the Royal Army bore one of the deadly weapons.
Through his long Venetian spyglass the aging condottiere had the immense satisfaction of watching helmet and head torn off the Principe by, presumably, a piece of grape. Even while his brain spun busily with alternatives that might give him some bare chance of a victory, despite the loss of almost all his cavalry, he grimly reflected that the army was already the better off for the loss of that arrogant, ranting pig of a Spaniard.
Cardinal Ahmed did not see the death of Alberto; he had kept his own glass trained upon the English lines, though little could be seen save black, flame-shot smoke eddying about and among the tercios on a gentle breeze. Ahmed was not and had never been a soldier, but his father and brothers had been, so he was as keenly aware as any of the calamity that had here befallen the Crusaders. Cavalry were the very eyes and ears of any army—he recalled his hawk-nosed, blue-eyed father saying that many times over—and there, thanks to a stubborn and headstrong Spaniard, lay the cavalry of the Church, become little save bloody flesh and scrap metal. While the recall sounded for the pitiful remnant of those thousands of armored horsemen, he ordered the steel carriage drawn to the small knoll whereon stood the grim-faced Wenceslaus, Count Horeszko, his bald, scar-furrowed head glinting in the sun.
Laying aside his dignity of rank in the press of the moment, the thin, wiry churchman dismounted from the coach and paced up to stand beside his employee. "Are then the English foot all musketeers, my son?"
"No, Your Eminence," answered the old soldier gravely. "It would appear that they possess a new musket that fires seven times without reloading. From what little I noticed before the smoke got too thick, I would say that the charges are contained in big iron cylinders affixed under the breeches of their weapons, but I could not tell you more without examining one."
The Cardinal shook his head. "Scant chance of that, my son. I suppose that our tercios would fare as poorly as the horse, were we to attack. What would you advise our movement be?"
"The tercios would be ground up. Just like the cavalry, Your Eminence, ground more finely, mayhap. We could try to maneuver, but with no horse to screen our movements . . ." He shrugged and grunted. "The only thing on which we could depend would be that those fast-firing muskets would be waiting to receive our attack, from whatever angle. Damn that Spanish whoreson! God's eyes, if only—"
The Cardinal laid a fine-boned, parchment-skinned hand upon the steel-plated shoulder. "Blaspheme not, my son. What has transpired is assuredly done. You then would advise . . ."
"That we break off the action and withdraw, Your Eminence. We have the siege train at Bournemouth, some fortifications already are dug and prepared, and we can throw up more. Muskets are heavy enough, and with those clumsy-looking devices added to them, I doubt me they'd be much good on the attack. Entrenched, lack of cavalry will be no detriment to us."
The Cardinal sighed and nodded. "So be it. I shall give the order."
So the ranks formed into column and retraced their way to the river, harassed and menaced every step of the way by English horse—dragoons, lancers and irregulars. Many a Crusader prayed for sight of the river and the waiting barges that would bear them back downstream to safety.
But such salvation was not to be. The van arrived to find the riverside camp sacked, the barges either awash with great holes knocked in their hulls or missing entirely from their moorings, presumably set adrift. Most of the bargemen were dead and the draft teams had all been herded off. There was nothing for it but to try to march down the river edge to Bournemouth.
Lacking either food or tents or even blankets, the Spaniards—most of them from dry, sunny, Mediterranean provinces—shivered through the long nights of damp cold, their searches for the blessings of sleep unaided by the piteous moans and cries of the wounded. And despite the attrition of death, there were proportionately more wounded at each succeeding night's encampment, due to the ceaseless and pitiless incursions and ambuscades of the flitting bands of horsemen.
Seemingly from out of empty air, three-quarter-armored dragoons would charge in on flank or rear, huge horse pistols booming, each launching a deadly ball or a dozen small-shot on a yard of flame. T
hen, before muskets could be presented or pikes lowered, the attackers would have faded back into the nothingness that had spawned them, only to strike again, as suddenly and devastatingly, at another segment of the trudging column.
Most of the field guns were lost on the first day's march, and none remained by nightfall of the second day. The few hundred horsemen manfully set themselves to pursuit of the attackers. In the beginning, so few of them ever returned that the Count forbade such heroics . . . but by that time he was numbering his remaining cavalry in mere scores.
The snail's pace of the starving army became slower each day, as the continued lack of sustenance and dearth of sleep took their inevitable toll of the men's strength and vitality. Now, infantry menaced them along with the ruthless cavalry, and even the humble comfort of an evening campfire was denied them, as the tiniest hint of a flame was certain to bring the crashing of a musket or the booming of a pistol or the deadly humming of a quarrel from the merciless foemen who ringed them about.
Every night, somewhere or other, sentries fell silently under knife or garrote, and with a pounding of steel-shod hooves, lines of yelling English horsemen were upon and among the recumbent, fatigue-drugged Crusaders, broadswords and pistols, lances and axes taking a bloody toll.
For four nights the carnage continued, but they were left in an uneasy peace for all of the fifth night, though the sounds of horses and the rattling clinking of equipment told that the English enemy still lurked out there in the darkness.
Near noon of the sixth day, the tattered, battered, weary, and demoralized Crusaders emerged from the marshy forest through which they had been marching since dawn to find the English army drawn up in battle array across a riverside lea.
Count Wenceslaus kneed his drooping destrier forward and took stock of the situation. The English flanks were secured by the river on the one side and by a continuation of the swampy forest on the other. Sunrays sparked on the points of a deep pike-hedge, while lazy spirals of smoke rose into the balmy air over the long lines of musketeers blowing upon their slowmatches. Batteries—some of them his own, be noted ruefully through this glass—reinforced the line at obviously well-calculated intervals. He could spy no cavalry, but he had no doubt that they would manifest themselves at a time and place inconvenient to him. There, he thought, stands a first-rate army and well-led.
