by Dan Davis
“Why?” I asked. “Why, why? Only to now murder me?”
“Oh,” she said, tilting her head. “I am so sorry for that. But Humphrey said that you had to be stopped before you undid everything we have worked so hard for. And you also had to be punished for murdering Geoffrey. He was the best of us, so Humphrey liked to say. If you ask me, Geoffrey was the most tiresome bore this past hundred years. Always wittering on about honour and jousting and such. But I did not want to kill you, Richard. I do have such affection for you.”
“What were you planning?” I asked. “For what purpose did William make you? Why did he bring you all together?”
“Oh, they do not tell me such things. I am afraid I would not know.”
“Do not play the silly maid with me, Cecilia. I know you well enough to know that you are not a simpleton.”
She smiled and sat back, still kneeling. “You are so kind.”
“You are trying to control the Crown of France, are you not? You were behind the plan to kill King John and take power through controlling the Dauphin? I have put a stop to all that.”
She sighed. “Yes, you are so very clever, Richard.”
“But your brother. That is, Sir Humphrey. What is he…” I trailed off. “Sir Humphrey is Prince Edward’s man. Or pretending to be.” I recalled how the Prince had changed over the years, turning from valiant golden prince into a darker, meaner spirit. Surely that was in part due to Ingham, whispering in his ear for a decade. “Is he going to kill King Edward?”
She laughed. “I may not have killed you. But I have delayed you. Humphrey has already sailed with the King and you will not have time to stop him. When the King falls, Prince Edward will rule. And through him, us. Other plans shall have to be made for France. King John remains a prisoner in England, does he not? Humphrey shall find a way, he always does. And soon, our lord will return at the head of a great army and the crowns of England and France will be his. And then we shall rule all Christendom for eternity.”
I scoffed. “Once you have served his purposes, William will discard you. He will rule alone and you shall have nothing.”
“No!” she said, rising up onto her knees again, her bare chest thrust out before her. She jabbed a finger at me and spoke with such passion that she quivered. “He swore his undying love for me. For me! I shall be at his side, ruling as his queen. As the Empress of Christendom.”
“You and William—” I began.
She leapt to her feet, snatched a dagger from Eustace’s corpse and stabbed up at my groin with a scream of fury.
It gored the inside of my thigh even as I twisted away, jumped back, and brought my sword down on her neck.
She fell, her head almost entirely severed.
I dropped to my knees beside her and held her as she died. The blue of her eyes dimmed and her eyelids fluttered closed. Her hand lifted toward my cheek only to fall before she reached me.
Chasing out the servants from her home, I put her chamber to fire so as to burn the bodies. No doubt the servants would be raising the hue and cry to have me captured and tried for murder. Two of the deaths were matters of self-defence but I was certainly guilty of the murder of the porter and so the name and persona of Richard of Hawkedon would have to be abandoned.
I rode south to find Rob and Walt.
We had to find passage to France, join our army on campaign, and save King Edward’s life before he was assassinated by the immortal Sir Humphrey Ingham.
***
By the time we caught up with the army, Edward’s campaign was in full effect. He wanted to take Paris for England or at the least cause so much destruction and terror that the French would finally seek terms.
Hundreds of ships crossed back and forth across the Channel, taking vast quantities of supplies to the army and I had to pay a great sum to get one to find room for us. In Calais I paid a fortune for a few good horses and we hurried on. All the while I prayed Edward yet lived. The spring had been remarkably warm and dry but it was after Easter by the time we rode south in the wake of the devastation.
Riding those long miles, I tried not to think of Cecilia but I kept going over it all. Recalling all the little things over the years that should have alerted me. Her childlessness in itself was not enough but her continued youthful beauty as the years went by certainly should have been. I was simply infatuated with her. With who she pretended to be, that was. Perhaps it was only ever blind lust. I wondered if anything she had said and done had ever been true.
She had said I thought of myself as wise. But that had never been so. It was clear that she did not know me as well as she thought. And that made me feel better. I may have had a false idea of her but clearly she had one of me also.
I told myself that I had thrown off the betrayal. And yet I found that it was on my mind for a considerable time after the anger turned to melancholy.
Our army was unopposed and the English had burned villages and towns all around Paris to the south. Places like Orly, Longjumeau, Montlhery. The great army marched up to the walls of Paris and cut it off from the south. Our garrisons across northern France cut it off from the north. Inside, food shortages and subsequent price rises caused the population to panic. Edward had forced displaced people from the surrounding villages, towns, and suburbs into Paris and all those within the walls knew that in their future lied starvation. Smoke from the burning homes and villages drifted across the city and flames could be seen coming ever closer as the English army marched back and forth outside the walls, turning the rich suburban homes into charred timbers and ash. All the while, English trumpets blew and the kettle drums sounded.
The Parisians were too afraid, or too wily, to leave the safety of the walls.
It did bring the French diplomats into urgent negotiations, but the obstinate fools delayed and delayed and our army suffered from the usual maladies. And so the King decided to reposition the army, moving west away from the city and then to the north.
That was where we found them.
By the town of Galardon, with the towers of Chartres Cathedral silhouetted against the swirling grey sky in the distance across a vast open plain. The weather had finally turned and dark clouds gathered overhead. Beneath, our enormous, filthy army spread in shadow across mile after mile of flat French countryside.
The land burned beyond and the men were miserable because everything had been picked clean a thousand times over and there was nothing left to steal.
“How we going to find him?” Walt asked as we stared at the trudging lines of horses and men and banners held aloft waving in the growing wind. “Find him, that is, without giving the game away.”
I knew he was thinking of our search for the black knight and how our actions there led to Thomas and Hugh being killed.
“And when we do find him,” Rob said, while I recalled it. “How do you mean to apprehend him without men stopping us?”
“We have no time for cleverness or subtleties,” I said, drawing my sword and raising my voice above the wind. “I will ride up to Ingham and murder him. Then we shall flee and stay away from the English until all living are now dead.”
Rob hung his head and said nothing.
Large blobs of rain began to fall, here and there, pinging loudly when they hit steel or drumming on the dry earth.
I raised my voice and called out. “Where is Sir Humphrey Ingham?”
A sergeant rode over to us, looking me up and down. I was dressed well enough but I had left my armour back in England. We all had.
“Can I help you, sir?”
“I seek a man. A knight named Sir Humphrey Ingham.”
He looked at my naked sword and the fury on my face. “If he has angered you, sir, you must take your disagreement to the King.”
I snarled. “I will cut off his damned traitorous head.”
In the distance, thunder rumbled.
“A traitor? Sir Humphrey? Surely not, sir?”
I scoffed. “He is Brutus. He is Ganelon. He is Judas. The
King himself is in danger. Where is Ingham?”
“But…” he stammered. “He is with the King, last I saw.”
“Where, man?”
He raised his hand and pointed south. A cluster of banners whipped and twisted in the far distance and one of them looked like the King’s own arms.
I spurred my horse and raced forward through the men with Walt and Rob riding as well as they could behind me. It would not do to get too far ahead of them, so I slowed.
The rain came down harder and harder until the heavens opened and the rain came down in sheets. Men all around us covered their heads with whatever they had and trudged on.
“There is the King!” I shouted to my men, pointing with my sword.
King Edward and his lords came on in a hurry, no doubt hoping to reach some sort of shelter miles beyond, or at least outrun the sudden storm.
The rain gusted into my face like a thousand tiny whips. The ground turned to mud and the rain ran across the surface like a river. My horse slowed to a walk, lifting his hooves up high and stepping through the morass.
“Get on, will you,” I shouted at him, raking my spurs on him.
Lighting flashed overhead and almost at once thunder sounded, powerfully enough to be felt through the earth. The men all around me hunched and fought their way onward through the storm. There was no shelter to be had anywhere for miles around and so all they could do was go on.
The rain, already as heavy as any I had ever seen anywhere in the world, suddenly got heavier. My horse would not move, so I dismounted and he jumped away through the muck. Peering behind me, I saw Walt helping Rob to his feet. One or both of them had been thrown from their mounts.
“Come on,” I said, fearing that I would lose the King’s men, who were so close.
I lifted my knees high and fought through the liquifying mud. Soldiers were shouting at each other in fear.
As the rain eased off slightly, I caught sight of the King and his men, dismounted and fighting to hold on to their panicking horses. I thought I could see Ingham there by the King’s side but it was so hard to see.
It suddenly turned cold. Bitterly cold, like the deepest winter had descended.
“What is this?” Walt shouted in my ear. His eyes were wild. Shivering violently, he and Rob clung to each other like drowning men.
I had no answer for what it was. Never in my long life had I known anything like it. Underfoot, the flowing water drained away but the mud began to freeze, even as we walked through it.
Men wailed all around, fighting their horses, fighting to hold on to supplies as the wind whipped up and blew away blankets, sheets, clothes.
The King’s men clustered around him, I hoped protecting his royal person from the elements. Ingham was there amongst them. I could see him.
“Stop!” I shouted. “Edward! Beware!”
I thought, perhaps, that Ingham turned and looked in my direction. But my voice was carried away by the hurricane and the temperature dropped further, turning the ground to ice. Men were blown off their feet and some rolled along the ground.
Rob got his leg stuck and together with Walt we pulled him out before the ground turned as hard as iron.
“Hurry, now,” I shouted in their ears and they nodded, drawing their swords.
As we pushed through the wind, the rain turned to hailstones. The smallest of which was the size of an acorn and most were the size of a fist.
Men fell in their scores as they were struck by the storm of hail. A cacophony rose above the roaring of the wind to become deafening as the deluge of stones struck helms and armour for miles around. Men cried out in pain and terror. Horses ran in wild panic or lay down on the ground in despair and agony.
Soldiers fell down dead or insensible from the impacts. The King’s men, many covering him with their bodies, dropped under the assault. Felled by enormous lumps of ice or collapsing from the relentless driving impact from thousands of smaller ones, knights and lords crawled through the crunching ice underfoot into hollows.
Leaning against the driving wind, I struggled on, step by step. I passed two knights huddled against the belly of a dead horse that lay on its side, one leg jerking in the air.
Other men struggled on, bent double, headed across the plain as if there could be salvation elsewhere if only they could reach it.
Two of Edward’s bodyguards held the King between them, making off through the ice and wind. The others had fallen behind or were knocked insensible all about us.
Behind Edward, Sir Humphrey Ingham stalked forward.
He was making better headway than the King and his men, gaining on them with every step.
In his right hand, he held a long, thin dagger.
I roared a warning but my voice was whipped away as soon as it was spoken.
Pushing forward, fighting the wind, I forced one leg forward and another, lifting my knees up and down with my watery eyes on the ground.
I was so close.
When I looked up, Ingham was an arm’s length behind the King. He reached out with his left hand to grasp Edward on the shoulder. His right was pulled back with the dagger in his hand.
“Ingham!” I shouted with everything I had.
He half turned in surprise and with that moment’s hesitation, I lunged forward and stuck my blade into his leg. It hit his armour but it was enough to trip him. I stumbled forward and dropped down on him.
Ingham grasped the blade of my sword and ripped it from my grasp, throwing it behind him.
I locked my knees either side of Ingham and lifted his visor with one hand while I drew my dagger.
He stabbed me in the body, just beneath the ribs. God, it hurt. The dagger was long, and sharp as Satan.
With my free arm, I trapped his arm and blade inside my body, and I stabbed him in the face with my own blade.
The King was shouting something. His bodyguards came forward.
I stabbed Ingham again, over and over.
My men pulled me away.
Edward was there, pushing his two bodyguards away from him. The hail was easing off, turning to sleet. And the wind was no longer strong enough to blow a man to the ground.
“Richard!” the King shouted.
“Ingham, sire,” I said, wincing. It hurt to speak. “He was going to kill you.”
Edward looked at the body and then back at me.
He nodded once.
“I saw the blade,” the King said, scowling and shaking his head in wonder. He broke off. “You are hurt.”
“All is well, Your Grace,” I said, clapping him on the shoulder. “All is well.” Raising my voice, I waved over his bodyguards. “Get him somewhere safe, will you.”
“Why?” the King said. “Why would Ingham do this?”
“He was paid by the Dauphin’s men,” I said, lying easily. I had rehearsed my accusations. “Paid to assassinate you. I discovered the plot and came to warn you.”
“God love you, Richard,” the King said as they tugged him back toward safety.
“Come on,” I said to Rob and Walt, as the storm passed. “It is over.”
24. The Death of the King
“The army was finished after that,” I said to Stephen, weeks later, in London. “And Edward’s resolve to continue the war must have crumbled.”
We sat in the hall together for what we knew would be the last time for a generation, at least.
“I cannot fathom it,” Stephen said, shaking his head. “How can a storm be so powerful?”
“God can do as He pleases,” I said. “And He decided to do what the French could not.”
All told, we lost a thousand men to the storm and six thousand horses. There was never a storm like it in all my days, before or since. It was undoubtedly a sign from God that He wished Edward to end his war and so that was what Edward did.
The Treaty of Bretigny brought the war to an end. He agreed to drop his claim to the throne of France. And in return, the French recognised all that Edward and the English Cro
wn had won in the war.
Edward III obtained, besides Guyenne and Gascony, Poitou, Saintonge and Aunis, Agenais, Périgord, Limousin, Quercy, Bigorre, the countship of Gaure, Angoumois, Rouergue, Montreuil-sur-Mer, Ponthieu, Calais, Sangatte, Ham and the countship of Guines.
What is more, these lands were to be held free and clear, without doing homage for them.
After twenty years of war against the mightiest kingdom in Christendom, King Edward III had established a truly mighty empire.
My own quest was also over.
It had taken far too long and I had almost destroyed us entirely. My decisions had led to the deaths of my brothers Thomas, John, and Hugh.
But we had uncovered the whole nest of snakes in the end. We had, perhaps, saved the lives of two kings and disrupted my brother’s plans for the domination of two nations.
Decades before, William had given the Gift to a number of French and English knights and left them with instructions on how to prepare for his return. I had been looking for them for so long and now, it was over. It was time to leave England and hide elsewhere for a few decades.
Eva would stay in London for a few years to manage the trade and the information network, posing as Stephen’s widow.
Stephen would move to Bristol and pretend to be Eva’s steward, taking care of things there. We would maintain correspondence and all would watch and listen for signs of William’s return.
I kissed Eva and embraced my brothers in the hall of the London house and went on my way.
England, on top of the world for a moment, did not fare well.
Prince Edward administered the lands of Gascony and all France, ruling like a king. But he became embroiled in the knotty and interminable web of shifting alliances between all the rulers in that part of the world, from Castile and Aragon to Poitiers and Bordeaux. He fought in dozens of battles where generally he won. And he wrestled in diplomacy with hundreds of lords where generally he failed.
