THE EARL (A HAMMER FOR PRINCES)

by Cecelia Holland

  “You lie,” Thierry said, darkening.

  “No,” Simon said. “He isn’t lying, it’s the truth. If you had kept us in our column—if you’d only stopped when—"

  “It was so dark, no one could see. How could I have—how can you blame me?”

  Simon raised his head; his eyes were popping with rage. “It was not dark when I begged you to stop and let Miles catch up with us, my lord. Remember?”

  “You never begged me for anything. Except, perhaps, counsel.”

  Fulk was rubbing his stomach; he watched their intent faces. Thierry by looks and the weight he gave words had said something to Simon no one else could hear. Simon’s face slackened a little.

  “I thought better of you all,” Fulk said. "I thought you better knights than that.”

  Simon’s hand rose. “It was not our fault, my lord—”

  “Simon,” Thierry said sharply, and Simon looked unwillingly at him and dropped his eyes. Fulk shrugged.

  “Roger, take half the men and form a column. Follow this stream that way—” he gestured, “—and soon enough you’ll find Sulwick. Attack when my horn sounds. The rest of you, make a double column, and keep it tight together.”

  “Now?” Thierry said, startled. “We marched all yesterday and fought all the night, and now—”

  “They won’t expect us now,” Fulk said. He looked up at the ridge they had ridden down from, and saw the first of the archers moving down it. “You had your opportunity to show what an excellent warrior you are, uncle. I consider it dangerous to allow you to continue. Roger, take Godric’s men with you. No need to move fast. Morgan, can you find something to cushion this arm?”

  Thierry looked around him, at the other knights. “I refuse this. You drive us like serfs. You are destroying us.”

  “Refuse,” Fulk said. “Go. Don’t stop when you reach the coast of England, either, but find yourself a ship and sail away.”

  Morgan was rolling up a wad of cloth to put under Fulk’s broken arm. The knights were drawing up their columns. Thierry, with his young knights, stayed watching Fulk a moment more. Thierry swore; he turned his horse’s head and rode off a little way. The young knights remained, their yes on Fulk.

  “My lord,” Simon began. “It wasn’t our fault, I swear it.”

  “Go join your column.”

  The young knights rode away. Morgan came up and fixed the pad under his arm. Fulk expected him to say something about Fulk’s riding away from his shield in the fighting, but Morgan did not. In the eastern sky, the stars were fading, and the moon dipped down toward an edge of new light.

  "Keep them quiet,” Fulk said to Thierry. The dawn sky was the white of an eggshell, and on the hill above them, Sulwick Castle stood—one round tower, surrounded by an earthworks. All the knights with Fulk carried unlit torches. On the top of the tower, from the slits of windows, the Sulwick men had undoubtedly seen Roger and his column, riding along the far bank of the stream. Occasionally, through the trees that masked this side of the hill, Fulk could see them himself. The sky brightened steadily. The birds were beginning to sing; they ceased abuptly and fluttered away when the knights rode under their trees, but everywhere else the wild clamoring of the birds grew stronger while the sun grew stronger. Fulk held up his hand and reined in his horse.

  “Everybody dismount. Do you have the torches? Morgan, come here.”

  Morgan kicked his horse up beside Fulk’s. Fulk gave him his horn.

  “Stay here and wait until the sun comes up. When it’s all risen, sound this.”

  “Why should we leave the horses?” Thierry said. “They can climb that slope.”

  “I’m tired of riding,” Fulk said. He swung out of his saddle and took his shield from Morgan. “Come along, uncle, are you old?”

  Thierry grunted and walked away. Fulk put his left arm through the straps on his shield and started up the slope. He hurt all over with an almost pleasant ache and his stomach was churning with hunger. It was impossible that it had been only one day since he had left Bruyère-le-Forêt.

  He stamped up the hillside, leaning against the weight of the shield, amazed and pleased at his own strength. Everything had gone so well that it frightened him. Thierry had made a complete fool of himself and to save their own reputations all the knights he had commanded were blaming him.

  Simon d’Ivry walking beside him looked grim enough to eat his armor. Like most of the men, he had caught up with Fulk; their longer legs made it hard for them to walk at his pace.

  They reached the edge of the trees, and without a command they all stopped. Between them and Sulwick lay a steep, rocky knob that the earthworks crowned. Fulk sank down on one knees and stared at it, scratched idly at his beard. Sulwick was a new castle, hastily built, and no larger than a windmill, but whoever had built it had picked a good site.

  “Simon,” Fulk said. “Is the sun risen yet?”

  “No.”

  “There’s the gate. Do you see it? When the horn blows, Simon, run straight for it.”

  Simon turned to look at him, scowling. The lump on his jaw made him look more belligerent than usual. “Why should I be first, especially?”

  Fulk said, “Mushrooms.”

  Simon’s eyes widened. In the trees below them, the first ringing peal of the horn blasted. Without hesitation, Simon bounded up and bolted for the gate through the earthworks. Fulk sprinted after him.

  From the foot of the hill, across the stream and well to Fulk’s left, came the yells of Roger’s army; the horn blared out twice more and died away. Simon was racing diagonally up the rocky slope, dropping occasionally to all fours. After the first few strides, Fulk could not keep up with him; most of the other knights passed him, running almost without effort while he strained and stumbled over the rocks.

  From the tower windows, a volley of arrows flew, aimed at Roger’s men. Screaming, they charged up the softer slope directly below the gate. Fulk’s shield dragged at him. He saw Thierry rush past him, a handful of torches in one hand. Roger’s men were scrambling up the last steep stretch to the gate. Arrows showered down on them. A man slid sideways out of his saddle, and the horses behind him vaulted the rolling body. Their harsh war cries rose: “Bruyère, Bruyère.”

  “Arrows,” a man in front of Fulk cried out, and Fulk jerked his shield up. Light and careless as rain, arrows plinked down on his shield; he could feel the blows all along his arm.

  Simon had reached the gate. Before Fulk had taken two more strides, he and another knight were climbing it like spiders, their shields hanging from their shoulders. Fulk raced into the shelter of the earthworks and leaned against it, panting. The dirt wall rose ten feet over his head, packed hard and slick as mud. One-handed, he could never scale it.

  The archers were racing up the slope, bent over among the brush and rocks, their bows on their backs. At the edge of the cover, they knelt and strung their bows. Roger’s men, in the shelter of the gate, were shouting and banging at the wood with their swords. Simon and the other knight had reached the top of the gate; an arrow struck the other knight through the chest, and he fell back into the pack of horsemen below, but Simon dropped out of sight over the gate.

  “Bend down,” Fulk cried. He hammered with his fist on the shoulders of the man nearest him. “Make a ladder—you, too. Jordan, Jordan, get on top of them.” He swatted Jordan de Grace on the back trying to push him faster onto the backs of the other men, bent with their hands on their knees.

  “I am, I am,” Jordan shouted. He scrambled up onto the two backs, got to his feet, and bent over. Fulk climbed awkwardly up onto his back.

  “Not close enough. Jordan, stand up. I can hold on—stand up.”

  “If you were a bigger man I would give you my defiance for this.” Jordan straightened up slowly, bracing himself with his hands on the wall, and Fulk put his feet on the other man’s shoulders, threw his shield across the earthworks, and dragged himself up onto the flat top of the wall.

  “Follow me,” he
shouted down to Jordan, and rolled off the wall into the compound within it; while he rolled he saw the sky stitched with arrows from the tower and from the archers in the brush outside the wall. Arrows pounded into the packed earth around him. One struck between his knees and snapped off against his thigh. He snatched up his shield and crouched behind it and ran through a hail of arrows toward Simon.

  With his shield raised like a wall against the arrows, Simon was lifting off the bar that bolted the gate. He could barely lift it for the weight of it. Fulk reached him just after he had heaved the bar down and thrown the gate open to the horsemen.

  Shouting, Roger’s knights poured through, and in their dust, the other, horseless men. They charged the tower door. Several of them were waving lit torches. The torrent of arrows turned straight down to meet them. Fulk’s archers were sweeping the top of the tower with arrows; bodies hung over the edge, and Fulk saw that the Sulwick men had left it for the shelter of the tower.

  Simon was standing behind the shelter of the gate. He looked at Fulk through the corner of his eye. “I thought I put a gate between me and you, lord.”

  “Oh, well. I thought I’d see how you did. Are you pleased to be a hero?”

  “Better than a dead coward.”

  Fulk hawked froth from his throat and spat it out. “I wouldn’t have killed you. I wanted you to run fast. Let’s go help with the burning.”

  “Wait. I didn’t want—I didn’t think you would eat the mushrooms. I was angry. You struck me.”

  “You gave me cause. Don’t do that again. Come on.”

  Fulk trotted across the packed dirt of the courtyard to the tower. His men were hacking cheerfully at the wooden walls, making small piles of chips to start fires in. The thunder of the arrows on their raised shields was deafening. This side of the wooden tower was covered with arrows from the archers beyond the wall. Occasionally an arrow slipped through the roof of shields and struck an arm, a foot, a head, and a man screamed. Insider the tower, the horses of Sulwick’s knights plunged around and neighed. From the upper stories came cries of “God is just” and “God helps the righteous,” and the men outside shouted back, “Bruyère.”

  The fires were catching. In waves, the knights drew back, their shields over their heads, while the flames lapped higher against the walls of the tower. Fulk shrank back from the heat. On the top of the tower, two men appeared, with buckets. One of them took an arrow through the throat before he reached the side and the other died while pouring water down on the flames. It did no good; Fulk saw where the water had splashed the wood and watched the wet spot shrink and shrink and vanish from the heat before he could draw a breath.

  A cry of hate and despair came from the windows above them. The arrows rattled down on them. Bright gold in the early morning sun, the fire blazed up the tower walls toward the first row of windows. The horses inside were screaming, and hoofs beat frantically against the wooden walls.

  “We should save the horses,” Simon muttered; his face glistened with sweat.

  “Wait.” Fulk drew back toward the earthworks.

  Their own loose horses were galloping in a herd around the courtyard. A few of them had been struck by random arrows. Roger and another man were hacking with great overhead blows of their swords at the door to the tower, and suddenly it split open. The arrows from the tower slackened. Roger and half a dozen men disappeared into the burning tower and drove horses out the narrow door—burns showed on the flanks and sides of some of them.

  “Why couldn’t we force the door and capture the tower that way?” Simon asked.

  “Too dangerous.”

  The shower of arrows from the tower stopped entirely. From a high window a man shouted, “Give quarter. Give quarter!”

  “Quarter,” Fulk shouted. “Let them out.” He lowered his shield and looked around for Roger.

  “Put the fires out,” the man in the tower cried.

  “No!”

  The flames had climbed as high as the bottom row of windows. All the horses were out; Roger was shouting to the men around him to get rope, so that they could rescue the people in the tower. Fulk looked around. Everything that had to be done was done, except saving their enemies. All the knights wanted to help, to get a share in a ransom. Fulk went over to the shade of the earthworks, lay down, and went to sleep.

  EIGHT

  "Have you seen the camp?" Roger said. It runs out of sight up and down the river, and they have news that King Stephen himself is coming—we’ll have some fighting here. It might all end here.”

  “You’re talkative today. The marten cloak, Morgan. What’s that?”

  Roger went to the tent door and looked out. “I don’t know. Everybody is cheering—somebody’s come into the camp.”

  Fulk shook his sleeves out. They had reached Wallingford that afternoon and found Prince Henry and most of his army already there, laying siege to Crowmarsh, the castle King Stephen had raised to help him in his own long siege of Wallingford. Fulk had left a dozen of his knights at Sulwick, along with some archers, to keep watch over the road and to build him another castle on the site of the one they had burned. He had put Simon in command. Two more bands of his knights were supposed to meet him here, but they had not yet come from the north. De Brise had gone back with his men, having served their two months.

  “The sun is going down,” Roger said, coming back into the middle of the tent. Fulk’s baggage lay around in heaps along the edge of the circular room, waiting to be unpacked. Outside, the wild rush of cheering died.

  “Call my horse up.”

  Morgan in a fine coat of red and white and Roger in a furred cloak stood beside the door, a little self-consciously, to escort him out. Fulk pulled on his left glove with his teeth. Morgan had trimmed his hair, and the snippings had gone down his back and itched him. He went out into the rosy light of the sunset.

  Fire beds, strings of tethered horses, agons, and an occasional tent covered the low, flat plain as far as the curve of the river north and the ford to the south. In spite of the men rushing back and forth, the clumps of men talking, the squires carrying firewood on their backs like moving thickets, and the wagons everywhere, the camp looked well ordered and neat. Here and there, above a tent planted, like Fulk’s, in the midst of the camp, a standard curled in the evening wind—Leicester’s, Derby’s, the White Horse of Chester, the Bear of Hereford, Wiltshire’s Black Lion. The river ran sedately between its low banks along the edge of the camp, past the tower and wall of Crowmarsh, past the fortress of Wallingford, hung with pennants welcoming the prince. Beyond the river lay the camp of the king’s men, although the king himself had not yet appeared. Grooms led up Fulk’s horse and Roger’s and Morgan’s palfrey, and they mounted.

  “Bruyère,” the knights camped around his tent shouted, and they waved their arms. The cheering spread unevenly out across the camp—half of those yelling probably didn’t know why they did it. Fulk raised his arm in answer and started off.

  Beside Fulk, Morgan carried his red banner. Roger called orders, and the six knights escorting Fulk moved into line before and behind him. For the first time since they had left Sulwick, the horses were polished and sleek and the gear of the knights shone. Roger had said they were bragging of their march to whoever would listen to them. Fulk eased his arm in its sling. They had taken off the heavy splints at Sulwick and in a few days he would be rid of even these light boards and the mass of bandages. If it healed straight he owed a statue of the Virgin to the chapel at Bruyère-le-Forêt.

  “Stafford,” a man shouted, when they passed. “Ho, Stafford!”

  Fulk turned, smiling, and waved—that was William Louvel. He strode toward him, cutting through his camp to keep level with the horses. “You missed the plundering at Bedford, Stafford—I hear you had some good works, though.”

  “Bloody work in the dark,” Fulk called back. “No silken coverlets such as you got. I’m glad to see you, I’ll talk to you later.”

  “See that you do.” Lou
vel waved and started back to his place, a great bear of a man with bear-paw hands.

  “See the prince’s tent,” Roger said. “Oh, they say he has a leman now.”

  “That’s the custom with young men. Except such as Morgan and my own.” Rannulf had not yet come to see him, and he was angry at it.

  The prince’s tent was twice as large as his own, the canvas streaming silk ribbons and rosettes and scarves. A staff with a swatch of broom tied to it was stuck in the ground by the door, and above it two banners billowed heavily in the light breeze. A line of knights rode up to the door, and one dismounted; the rest rode off and the man on foot went in.

  “While I am there, go find Rannulf for me,” Fulk said. Roger nodded.

  They stopped before the door, and Morgan jumped down and ran to hold the head of Fulk’s horse. Before Fulk could dismount, the tent flap opened and a tall, thin man with a sour mouth came out—one of the prince’s Angevins.

  “Good evening, Sir Richard,” Fulk said, and dismounted.

  “My lord.” The Angevin stood aside. Fulk went past him into the crowded, candle-lit tent.

  Flanked by their pages and squires, the great barons stood or sat, rubbing up against one another. The noise reminded Fulk of the buzzing of marsh insects. With Morgan at his elbow, he crowded into the mass of bodies, nodding, smiling, saying the proper words. It was stinking hot.

  “Fulk,” Derby called, bulling his way through the crowd, and heads turned. “By God, sir, I’m pleased to see you. Still in the surgeon’s debt, are you? Robin, lad, wine for my lord of Stafford. Good wine, from Bordeaux, Fulk. With our prince the master of Aquitaine, we can take advantage, can’t we?” He rammed an elbow into Fulk’s ribs and giggled. Softer, he said, “Thierry and the prince greeted each other like Mary and the Angel.”

  Fulk laughed. “My lord, I hear some good report of you at Bedford.”

  “Oh, well. I’m no soldier, Fulk. No soldier, even, in my youth. Here.” He took the cup from his page’s hands and gave it to Fulk. “The king is coming to Wallingford. I should like to see his face when he sees who rides against him now.”