Master of War

by David Gilman

  Blackstone stood on tiptoe to try to see the ceremony. The young man wore the same livery as the King, except for the addition of a horizontal line with three short vertical lines below it. King Edward laid his hands on the boy’s head. Chivalry was not dead – it couldn’t be; Blackstone just knew it. The King’s voice carried. He charged his son to behave with honour and stay loyal to his liege lord. Blackstone heard those words and knew Sir Gilbert must surely be an embittered knight not to believe in the glory that the King stood for.

  The Prince of Wales, taller than his father, moved to one side. Blackstone could barely believe that a boy so young could lead the vanguard of the English army even if his guardians were to be the marshals of the army. His sense of awe eased when he remembered his own age. Caring for Richard had made him older than his years.

  ‘Remember these nobles, Blackstone, and their coats of arms. You’ll be fighting alongside them sooner or later and you’d best know who you’re going to die for – other than me and your King.’

  As each young man knelt before his sovereign Sir Gilbert whis­pered some of their names: Mortimer, de la Bere, Salisbury, de la Warre. Then a lame middle-aged noble limped forward, his surcoat of red and gold horizontal bars catching the rays of the July sun through the church’s west window. He knelt and did homage to Edward.

  ‘That’s Godfrey de Harcourt,’ Sir Gilbert said quietly as the Norman baron swore his allegiance and recognized Edward as King of France.

  Then lions and lilies unfurled as the King’s standard was raised.

  ‘Now we’re at war,’ Sir Gilbert said and tugged the reluctant Blackstone to the door.

  Sir Gilbert was pursuing his duty to Lord Marldon. He hoped that giving Blackstone his protection and then chastising him harshly would teach the boy quickly and help him find the courage needed for what lay ahead.

  He took twenty hobelars – light cavalry who looked as if they could ride down wolves – attended by twenty archers, and rode south to scout the land. Sir Gilbert had chosen veterans and half a dozen of Lord Marldon’s men to ride on the sortie. Nicholas Bray rode at their head. Norman forces loyal to Philip were light on the Cotentin peninsula, but every step towards the River Seine and Paris, the French capital, would take its toll on Edward’s forces. There had already been brief skirmishes with other units and one of the marshals, the Earl of Warwick, had been ambushed, but had fought his way clear. The few hundred retreating French troops would harry and snap at the army’s flanks.

  And now Edward had made a proclamation that, out of respect for de Harcourt, and to show that these French were Edward’s vassals, no Norman manor houses or towns were to be looted or burned. That beggared belief as far as Nicholas Bray and the other veterans were concerned. How was the army to feed itself? How could lowly paid men be kept willing to fight if they could not plunder? Scouring the land was accepted practice. Sir Gilbert knew it was a promise that the King could not keep, and told them so. The army was a disciplined fighting force against any enemy, but villages needed to be looted and burned – that was a fair warning to his King’s enemies. This war was not about mercy.

  And Blackstone needed to be blooded. For days they rode south, criss-crossing the peninsula. Villages were deserted; some had already been burned by foragers and those that remained Sir Gilbert’s men put to the torch. The message was being sent to the French King that the English army was coming. As each day passed the frustration of not engaging with the enemy made Sir Gilbert more bad-tempered than usual. Like all the nobles and knights he craved the joy of battle and the glory and wealth it could bring. The dragging pace of the baggage train kept Edward’s main division well behind the vanguard. And thank God for it, Sir Gilbert let it be known. They needed to get their arses out of the confines of this suffocating landscape before the French King brought up his army and trapped them with their backs to the sea. If the Prince of Wales’s vanguard of four thousand troops could smash their way through to the cities of St Lô and Caen then they would be on their way to Paris. Sir Gilbert knew the land. He’d irrigated the French soil with his enemies’ blood before. That’s why he was leading a reconnaissance of pox-scarred, drunken, throat-slitting archers across a godforsaken landscape with nothing but the mocking crows to taunt him. And he told the archers so. Every day.

  Blackstone had no idea where he was. The names of places meant nothing to him, nor to most of the others. What he did know was that the expectation of the unknown scared him. They had skirted the marshlands, moving down the narrow tracks between high hedgerows. This bocage was the most dangerous terrain and the men were forced to ride close together. A couple of miles to their front the ground rose to the west and then spread out into more open meadows. The burning villages were far behind them and the roving Welsh spearmen and English infantry had not yet reached this far south.

  It was Richard who raised the alarm. His guttural cry alerted Sir Gilbert, who turned in the saddle prepared to issue a rebuke, but then he saw the boy explaining to Blackstone what he had seen. He halted the horsemen.

  ‘He saw a man half a mile away push into the hedgerow,’ Black­stone explained.

  ‘A peasant?’ Sir Gilbert asked.

  Blackstone shook his head. ‘He wore mail.’

  Sir Gilbert looked at Blackstone’s brother. ‘Tell him if he is wrong I’ll have him whipped. I need to move faster.’

  ‘With respect, Sir Gilbert, being dead is as slow as you can go,’ Blackstone said. ‘If he says he saw a man wearing mail, then that’s what he saw.’

  Within minutes Sir Gilbert had ordered a plan of attack. Black­stone and the archers dismounted, climbed a high bank and pushed through the hedgerow. The track ahead looped to the left and the hedgerow followed the curved route. An ambush by French troops would be on that bend and the archers would be shielded as they approached their firing position, half-concealed by tall meadow grass and a drainage ditch.

  ‘My life is in your hands,’ Sir Gilbert said to Bray and the archers before they scurried away, their bows already strung.

  Elfred led the way, crouching as he ran, seeking out the best position: a place that allowed them to kill the enemy without fear of their arrows striking Sir Gilbert and the horsemen. They heard the men continuing their way down the track as they prepared to draw the ambush.

  On Bray’s silent command the dozen archers spread out a yard apart, nocked an arrow each and waited. Stillness gives a hunter the edge over his prey, but the shadows in the hedgerow, now two hundred yards away, shuffled nervously, readying themselves to strike and so revealing their position. The memory of the men working across the valley on Lord Marldon’s estate flashed into Blackstone’s mind. That idle game was now a deadly reality.

  Blackstone saw a gauntleted arm raised from the greenery, a command to attack about to be given. He raised his bow and, as one, the others followed his lead. Goose-feather fletchings hissed through the air and the yard-long arrows struck home moments before the ambush. Despite the distance the sound of steel-tipped arrows ripping into flesh could be heard by the archers.

  The wounded enemy’s screams were drowned by the attacking cries of Sir Gilbert’s men. Metal clashed, more screams, horses whinnied, half a dozen figures burst from the hedgerow to retreat across the meadows, running for shelter in the woodland five hundred yards away – a distance no retreating man could make when an English archer followed his run. Hemp cords released another flurry of arrows and the helpless men fell, most with two shafts tearing through bone, cartilage and vital organs. Those who did not die instantly would bleed to death within minutes, the shock from the impact of the arrows crippling and fatal. The battle was still being fought on the track. Blackstone broke cover, running instinctively, breathless with excitement mingled with fear, but with a focused certainty that he needed a better firing position. If Sir Gilbert had advanced along the track then he and his men would be in danger from his own archers. Something blurred past his face and one of the Englishmen cried out as a cro
ssbow bolt slammed into his chest. An archer’s padded jacket offered insufficient protection against a direct strike.

  ‘Kneel!’ yelled Bray. From a dense patch of brambles half a dozen more bolts snapped over their heads; the range was down to a hundred yards. The crossbowmen had placed themselves between brambles and hedgerow, out of sight from an attacking force from the rear. Without conscious thought Blackstone and the others adjusted their bows’ angle and loosed a concentrated hail of arrows into the confines of the bramble patch. The enemy’s cries of pain ended quickly – the hammer-like force of a shaft striking a body stunned most into breathless pain. Except for the agonized moans of the wounded, the fight was over – the killing had taken less than ten minutes.

  Blackstone and the others advanced carefully.

  ‘Bray! Elfred! Blackstone!’ Sir Gilbert’s voice carried from the other side of the hedges.

  ‘Aye!’ Elfred and Bray answered.

  ‘Yes, here, Sir Gilbert,’ Blackstone heard himself say. He was gazing down at an old man, the French knight whose gauntlet-covered fist had been raised, ready to trigger the ambush. Black­stone’s arrow had taken him through the collarbone into his chest and out of his groin, piercing his chain mail as if it were nothing more than a nightshirt. He lay on his back, his body contorted in a frozen spasm of shock, then death. The blood from his gaping mouth was already buzzing with flies. His jupon of pale apple green with a vivid blue swallow was darkened by the seeping stain. Blackstone couldn’t take his eyes from the man’s deathly gaze.

  Two of Sir Gilbert’s soldiers hacked at the hedgerow and then Sir Gilbert himself pushed through the gap. He was grinning. Blood splattered his surcoat and legs.

  ‘We killed a dozen or more,’ he said happily. ‘Is he one of yours?’ he asked, following Blackstone’s gaze. Blackstone nodded.

  ‘Well, there’s a feather in your cap, lad. Your first kill a knight. A piss-poor one with no arms worth taking, perhaps, but praise God there’ll be plenty more. France has the greatest host of knights in the world. They’re magnificent fighters, I’ll say that for them. Though not so magnificent with a yard of English ash gutting them, eh?’ He laughed and touched Blackstone’s shoulder. ‘Well done, lad.’

  Dying men had soiled themselves and the smell of ordure, together with that of copiously spilled blood, mingled into a throat-gagging stench.

  Blackstone turned away and vomited.

  The men around him laughed.

  ‘First time is the worst time, lad. Get used to it. This is as much glory as you’ll see in a battle,’ Sir Gilbert said. He raised a flask to his lips and swilled the wine before spitting it out. He unbuckled the dead knight’s scabbard and looked at the chipped blade.

  ‘An old sword, older than him, but it has a good balance to it.’ Sir Gilbert sheathed it and tossed it to Blackstone.

  ‘Spoils of war. It’s better than that bastard toothpick of yours. Attach it to your saddle, but get rid of the scabbard if you fight with it. Damned scabbard is no good to a man on the ground with a sword in his hand, it’ll trip you and then you’re done for.’

  The wounded men in the hedgerow were quickly despatched by the hobelars. ‘There’s fifteen or more here, I’ll wager,’ Sir Gilbert said. ‘Did we lose anyone?’

  ‘Attewood,’ Bray answered, as he unstrung his bow. ‘Back there in the field.’

  ‘Well, that’s a poor bargain. An English archer for these scum,’ said Sir Gilbert.

  ‘Do we bury him, Sir Gilbert?’ Elfred asked.

  ‘No time. Foxes and carrion crows will pick his bones. Was he Christian?’

  ‘He never said,’ Bray answered.

  ‘Then we’ll let God decide. Get his weapons.’

  Elfred nodded and turned back towards the fallen archer.

  One of the wounded attackers, his lower back pierced by an arrow, was trying to drag himself away through the meadow grass. He muttered words that sounded pitiful to Blackstone – words he did not understand. Sir Gilbert picked up a cumbersome crossbow and tossed it to one side.

  ‘Genoese crossbowmen. They’re the best in the world, but not good enough today. Philip’s bought himself some mercenaries. If there’s half a dozen all the way back here then you can be sure there’s another few thousand between us and Paris. Put the man out of his misery, Blackstone, and gather up any arrows you men can use again. Let’s be on our way,’ Sir Gilbert commanded, and then pushed his way back onto the track. The soldiers followed him.

  Bray slit the throat of another wounded man, then turned and looked at Blackstone. ‘Come on, lad, we can’t let the poor bastard die like that. Use your knife. Quick now. No different than slitting a pig. And he won’t squeal as much.’

  Blackstone felt another horror squeeze his chest. He took a few uncertain steps towards the crawling man, felt the knife in his hand, though he had no memory of drawing it. He hesitated. It sounded as though the man’s pitiful whispers were pleading to God, or to his mother. All Blackstone had to do was reach down, grab a handful of hair, pull back his head and slide the blade across his throat.

  His hand was shaking. The arm that had tirelessly wielded a stonemason’s hammer for hour after hour, that could pull back a mighty war bow, could not bring itself to sever the man’s throat. It trembled like a virgin’s body before being loved for the first time. Someone nudged him aside, stepped forward, bent down and with a quick, decisive stroke, killed the wounded man.

  Richard wiped the knife blade, put an arm on Blackstone’s shoulder and turned his brother towards the road.

  They travelled another ten miles without incident. Nightingale chattered like a monkey on a pole, convinced he had killed more in the ambush than even the veterans. He had loosed a dozen arrows and wanted to know from the others if they had seen his targets fall. The veterans ignored him, the local lads argued back, until Bray yelled they’d best be quiet before Sir Gilbert made them ride through the night until they found themselves another scourge of Frenchmen to slaughter. Killing was thirsty work and they needed water and a soft hay barn for themselves. An hour before the light faded in the west, they came to a deserted village. The villagers would have seen smoke drift across the horizon from the torching of other towns and been told by French soldiers to move south towards St Lô and Caen. They carried away as much as they were able, but there were still a few free-running chickens for the taking.

  Sir Gilbert and the men penned their horses, posted a sentry and went looking for a place to sleep. There was nothing of value in any of the hovels. The archers, preferring their own company, settled in a barn on the edge of the village where the freshly cut hay’s scent reminded Blackstone of home. John Weston foraged and uncovered an apple rack covered in straw. He found what the villagers had left behind, stone jars of cider.

  ‘All right, lads, this is the fruit of the land. We’ve to keep up our strength for Sir Gilbert, I reckon,’ he said as he handed out the jars to the approving men. ‘We keep this to ourselves. No need to let the cracked-arsed cavalry know about it.’

  By the time darkness nudged away the day, Bray’s archers had eaten and settled into the barn’s comfort. Nightingale’s stories made the archers laugh and his own escapades with village girls caused doubts about such virility. Nightingale put it down to his mother’s milk and his father’s skill at poaching venison.

  Richard watched carefully as Elfred showed him how to repair and clean the arrows used in the ambush. The older man grunted to emphasize each stage of the task, as if Richard would understand more easily. If nothing else, Blackstone thought, his brother was being accepted by the archers.

  Sir Gilbert took the best village house for himself, as was his right, but he went among the men before taking his own share of the cooked chickens and eggs.

  Blackstone sat away from the others as he ate, his brother cleaning the bodkin arrowheads in between tearing mouthfuls of chicken, oblivious of the grease running down his chin.

  Sir Gilbert squatted, fingering the edge o
f the old knight’s sword.

  ‘You need a keener blade than this. Get one of the hobelars to whet it.’

  ‘I can do that myself, Sir Gilbert.’

  ‘So you can. And so you should. There’ll come a time when arrows won’t be enough and you have to close with the enemy. Elfred and Nicholas told me you did well today. Nicholas said you were the one who moved forward.’

  Blackstone shrugged, not wanting special attention above the other archers. ‘I could hear you fighting. I knew you’d taken the fight to them.’

  Sir Gilbert nodded and stabbed the sword into the ground. ‘We could have been in your line of fire if you hadn’t moved. It was good thinking.’

  Blackstone felt relieved no mention was made of the wounded man, that he was not questioned further. But he also knew that Sir Gilbert’s tone had altered. That the killing had raised his status in the knight’s eyes.

  ‘Do we know who the men were we killed today?’ Blackstone asked.

  ‘I wasn’t on friendly terms with them,’ Sir Gilbert said, and smiled. He put a stone jug to his lips, the strong Normandy brew cutting across the back of his throat. ‘Spies tell us there’s five hundred or so under the command of Sir Robert Bertrand, he’s the Signeur de Bricquebec. That was one of his raiding parties. He’s an old enemy of de Harcourt’s. His force is too small to face Edward’s thousands, but he’ll try to slow our pace by harassment and ambush and by burning bridges across the main rivers until Philip’s army gets to us.’

  ‘When will the battle be?’ Blackstone asked.

  ‘When our King finds a good place for killing them,’ he said.

  He handed back the jug and sought out Nicholas Bray. ‘You’ll post a sentry, Nicholas. We’ll leave before dawn, so save that devil’s brew for another night.’

  ‘I were going to use it for stripping the rust off this old sword of mine, Sir Gilbert.’