Master of War

by David Gilman

  But Thomas Blackstone ran.

  The fear of God gripped him; squeezed his gasping lungs in terror; punished him for his cowardice in casting aside his love for his brother. God was going to take the mute boy back to His sacred heart.

  Richard was about to die.

  And that was why Thomas Blackstone ran.

  11

  The running wolf sword blade glistened with blood, its hardened steel burnished golden orange by the rays of the setting sun. Over the centuries that blade mark had become synonymous with the finest swords forged in the Bavarian town of Passau. Two hundred years earlier the swordmakers’ ancestors had gone to the Holy Land during the Crusades to learn the secrets of the Saracen sword­­makers from Damascus. Thereafter German temperers and grinders, polishers and swordsmiths crafted the finest blades in Europe.

  The knight’s father had commissioned the sword three years earlier to commemorate his firstborn’s ennoblement and sent him to serve in the court of King John of Bohemia. Its razor-sharp edge could cut through chain mail. Now the twenty-three-year-old Franz von Lienhard pushed his destrier through the jumbled bodies of fallen horses and men. The horse’s massive strength had carried him across the ford’s current at Blanchetaque when he gave chase to a dirt-poor English archer but had been stopped by the curtain of arrows that fell before him. He had not been prepared to risk injury to such a magnificent horse, but now for the greatest prize of all he was prepared to risk everything. The Prince of Wales was less than twenty paces away and the weight of French knights against him and those nobles at his side was punishing the English defence. Men-at-arms swarmed at Lienhard, but his strength beat them off. Leaning down from the saddle with the razor-edged blade he clove his attackers’ arms and heads. A spearman thrust at his neck, but he hacked the shaft, kneed the horse into position, swung his arm in a mighty arc and felt the blade cut the man’s skull in two like a turnip in a jousting competition. Splattered brain added to the sprayed blood across his legs and the horse’s caparison. He saw a heaving mass of French knights bring their energy down on the beleaguered Prince, whose banner fell. Now he would kill the heir to the English throne.

  Franz von Lienhard raised his sword, dragged his spurs against the sweat-streaked horse’s flanks and charged.

  Blackstone saw his brother run into the press of fighting knights wielding the polehammer. Most were on foot, others jostled their horses closer. English men-at-arms were dying. He saw Sir Gilbert attack a horseman, jab and cut, then rake his sword across the gaps in the man’s armour. The Frenchman swung a ball and chain and Sir Gilbert went down. The dying Frenchman yanked the reins and the horse fell, rolling onto Sir Gilbert, crushing him.

  Men fell like harvested wheat as Richard scythed the pole­hammer’s shaft back and forth. His strength alone was enough to maim and kill, but the lethal weapon wielded with such violence had brought half a dozen men down with mortal wounds. He was ten paces in front of the Prince, who fell from a Frenchman’s blow to his helmet. FitzSimon threw the banner across his lord to hide and protect him, then attacked, both hands gripping his sword, rallying the nobles to him and screaming curses at the French.

  Blackstone leapt across a disembowelled horse. A knight swung at him, but he turned quickly, moving much faster than the heavily armoured man. Using his bow stave as a spear he jabbed the horn tip up beneath the man’s helm. The leather strap that held it was soggy from sweat and the helm gave an inch, enough for the bow’s horn to pierce the man’s throat. The man went down, drowning in his own blood and unable to cry out from the ripped wound.

  The Prince was on his knees, the blow he had taken on his helm causing blood to trickle down his temple. Richard had gone down, sucked into a maelstrom of whirring swords and mace-wielding knights.

  Blackstone screamed his brother’s name.

  He could see the boy’s head twisting as three or four men stabbed and slashed at his body. The boy stared at the sky and bellowed an incoherent cry, then he disappeared beneath the mass of men, like a drowning child taken by a river god, yielding to an overpowering force.

  The animal sound that forced its way from Blackstone’s chest was loud enough for the Prince and de Harcourt, who was now at his side, to turn, pausing a moment in their own defence. Swords and maces fell on the English line, broken lances probed and struck as Blackstone threw himself at the Frenchmen. A knight swung his sword and all Blackstone could do was try to parry with his bow stave. The blade severed it like a dry twig. And part of Blackstone broke with it. His father’s great war bow was destroyed. Before the man could sweep back with a second blow, Blackstone threw himself on him, his weight carrying him to the ground on top of other bodies. His fingers clawed for the man’s throat but could not get past the armour. He reached out blindly and his hand found a flanged mace, its killing head resembling an arrow’s fletching but cast in iron. He brought the six-pound war-hammer down harder than a blacksmith striking an anvil; again and again he beat at the man’s visor until it crumpled and he heard bone break and felt the man spasm beneath him.

  A knight slashed at him, Blackstone felt his jerkin cut, and warm blood seeping from his side. He backhanded his attacker with the mace. Another sword slash cut his leg. He flailed blindly, feeling the mace smash armour. The Prince was a few feet away, being helped to his feet, but he was of no concern as Blackstone hammered his way through the dozen or more men who stood between him and the fallen Richard. Dog-faced helmets glared grotesquely in the dying light as he swung the mace with such power as only a stonemason possessed. Men fell, but still he could not reach his brother. The Prince was fighting again, with knights and men-at-arms as bodyguards, but Blackstone was to his front and heard one last agonizing cry like a beast being slaughtered from within the mass of French knights. It was his brother’s death cry.

  Blackstone’s sob carried him onwards. Others were at his back fighting off men from the side when a horseman came forward, trampling whoever was on the ground. He was a Bohemian knight holding high a sword that caught the dying sun like a blade forged in hell. In a brief, clear moment, a hulking figure tried to stand. The boy was wounded in a dozen places or more, and by now blind from cuts to his eyes. The momentum of the knight’s killing arm swung his sword down with grace and skill. Blackstone screamed. Other men blocked his view, saving him from the sight of the blow that severed Richard’s head from his body.

  The destrier nearly knocked Blackstone down, but he snatched at its reins and heaved. The animal’s eyes rolled in terror but the knight had no angle to cut down at his attacker. Blackstone leapt at the man to drive the mace against his visor as the horse skidded on the bloodied grass. The knight was agile, as fast as Blackstone, who had trouble getting his leg to do as his brain commanded. It dragged. He looked down and saw blood pouring from a vicious cut down to the bone. His violence had pushed pain to the dark recess of his rage. The knight wasted no time in attack. From the high guard he slashed downwards, a blow to cut a man from shoulder to hip, but Blackstone’s injured leg saved him – it gave under the weight of his effort to avoid the blow and the blade whispered above his head. Blackstone lurched, grabbed the man’s gauntleted wrist, beat the mace against his helm, but fell when the knight hit him full in the face with his shield. As he went down, head ringing from the blow, he dropped the mace and snatched at the shield, pulling the knight down with him. The weight of the man’s armour and the slippery slope unbalanced him, but he did not release his sword. Blackstone felt his cheekbone break and blood fill his mouth as the man beat him with the sword’s pommel in a crushing backhand.

  Blackstone spat the blood from his mouth, clambered to his feet at the same time as the knight. He knew then that his adversary was as fit and strong as he was, despite wearing eighty pounds of armour, and as determined to kill. The sword arced; Blackstone blocked the lethal blow with a fallen spear’s staff. So close was the blade to his face that he saw an etched mark of a wolf below the curved crossguard. The stave splintered but had sof
tened the blow, turning the blade’s edge away as it struck his left arm. The force of it sent shock waves of pain through his shoulder. The muscle tore and the bone shattered. In that instant he knew that should he survive he would never draw a war bow again. He spat vomit from the agony, fell to his knees, right hand grasping for any weapon he could find, shaking away the swirling darkness that threatened to swallow him. As the blade swept down he instinctively drew back his head, but the tip of the blade cut through the metal bands that stiffened his leather cap. Had he not slumped when he did it would have cleft his head in two. The blade’s continued downward arc cut into his forehead and nose, sliced his cheek and then snapped his left collarbone.

  The fight was done. The knight’s skill would take him a few more paces and, with the Frenchmen who now clambered across the bodies to join him, he would kill the Prince of Wales.

  Blackstone had no thought for Edward of Woodstock, Godfrey de Harcourt, Warwick, Northampton, flags and banners or glory. He was dying. Twilight gave way to night. Lienhard knew the archer was finished. He would waste no more time on him. Black­stone could barely see as the knight took a stride to pass him, but he jerked his good arm up in a final act of defiance.

  The knight screamed and fell. Blackstone’s fist gripped the broken end of a spear, and twelve inches of forged, razor-sharp metal plunged between the knight’s legs. Blood spurted as his hands went instinctively to his groin. Screaming into the claustrophobia of his bascinet he went to his knees. Somehow Blackstone got to his feet, grasping the man’s sword by its handle, digging its blade into the ground as a crutch. The knight held his groin with one hand, pushed his visor back with the other, gulping air to drown the pain. Blackstone held the sword like a dagger and plunged it down through the open visor, feeling the metal grate against bone, then wrenched it free. His stonemason’s strength held the sword in a vice-like grip. He had to find Richard. The sword would kill a hundred more Frenchmen if necessary. His brother was out there. In the darkness. Alone. But he could not take another step. The mist rose from the valley, wrapping the dead in its shroud.

  Thomas Blackstone sank down and finally yielded to its cool embrace.

  Fifteen charges were made against the English lines. They all failed but one, when the enemy reached the Prince of Wales. The French knights’ rage and pride, their jealousy of another claiming greater glory, had made them rake their spurs and charge into a disciplined English army that never yielded ground. The French fought for themselves, the English for their King.

  By the time Philip arrived at the battlefield with his final div­isions it was obvious that the greatest army in Christendom had been defeated. The carnage that lay before him was staggering. Five thousand Genoese, thousands of horses and more than fifteen hundred knights lay dead in front of the English lines. Thousands more infantry lay across the hillside. Bombards still boomed, their smoke mingling with the rising mist. Horses whinnied and men screamed in agony as trumpets and drums defied a dying man’s last hope for silence. It was a tapestry of hell. Honour-bound, the King ignored his nobles’ pleas and spurred his horse forward. His ally, the blind warrior-king John of Bohemia, determined to strike his enemy, rode on his flank, his reins looped through their own by Henri le Moine and Heinrich von Klingenberg, loyal knights who knew that they would die before they even reached the English front line.

  Philip’s entourage smothered their lord with shields, but Elfred and thousands of other English archers wanted to claim his death. In a day of legend his horse was killed beneath him. He remounted, his face slashed by a bodkin point, his life spared only by the quality of his plate armour, the poor light and the rising mist.

  French cavalry wheeled and charged again, but were beaten back. It was a futile assault. Edward’s trumpets rallied his knights and men-at-arms and the war horses were brought from the rear. When the English rode into the field thousands of French infantry fled for their lives. It would not serve France if their King died in a battle already lost, his advisors insisted. Reluctantly he turned away, leaving the hundreds of French knights who still fought on in small groups, men bound by family ties and the comradeship of past campaigns.

  The sun set as valley mist crept over that field of tears. English archers had mercilessly shot through the sacred war banner of France.

  The Oriflamme lay in tatters.

  King Edward, wearing full armour and helmet, rode along the lines of the Prince’s division. He praised them all and urged them to thank God for their deliverance. He asked that there should be no pride or boasting for their great victory and ordered the English to stay in position in case of a counter-attack. Elfred counted the cost his archers had paid. Only he, Will Longdon and Matthew Hampton had survived, along with twenty other men from those archers who had stood with the Welshmen. Sir Gilbert lay somewhere on the battlefield. Richard Blackstone was dead; of Thomas they knew nothing other than that his attack had been witnessed before he went down. They all agreed it was a vile price to pay. The men lit fires that burned across the hillside and tended to their exhaustion and wounds. The King instructed that the windmill be filled with brushwood and set alight as a beacon for all the English to see.

  Its great sails flared into a burning crucifix.

  Firelight and torches illuminated the Prince and the nobles. The King removed his bascinet and kissed Prince Edward, and moved into the torchlight that lit Blackstone’s body lying amidst the group of knights. A priest knelt at his side whispering the final sacrament.

  ‘When the priest was summoned we feared it was for our son,’ the King said, looking at the blood-soaked body bathed in firelight.

  ‘Were it not for this boy it might well have been. He fought for me when I fell. FitzSimon covered me in my greatest danger that was averted by this boy. No scribe will ever be able to write of his courage that we witnessed,’ said the Prince.

  The King looked to the marshals of the army, Warwick and de Harcourt. They nodded. None of those gathered knew that Blackstone had fought only for his brother.

  ‘He’ll not last the hour, sire,’ Northampton added. ‘My God, I’ll admit we were hard-pressed. He cleaved a path and bought us time.’

  ‘He reminded me of myself when I was young,’ the old knight Reginald Cobham said quietly, the evidence of his own fighting slathered across his surcoat and armour.

  The King put a hand on his friend’s shoulder. ‘If he fought half as hard as you, Cobham, we were blessed indeed.’

  Blackstone heard nothing but the vague whisper of prayer in his ear. Pain creased every nerve. Thick blood from his smashed face clogged his throat and nose. His breath rattled as he tried to see Christiana. She was there, her dark cloak close to his face. Her face was obscured in shadow. And she held a crucifix in front of his mouth, telling him to kiss the cross of Christ.

  ‘Sire,’ Northampton said as he saw the priest ease back in surprise as Blackstone raised himself towards the crucifix held by the cleric.

  ‘He’ll die on his own terms,’ Warwick said, admiring the strength the boy still possessed.

  Blackstone heard the words confess, sins and forgiveness. His right eye focused on a distant light, a fiery burning crucifix. God was showing his anger; damning him for failing Richard.

  ‘Forgive me,’ he muttered.

  The priest traced the sign of the cross with his finger on Black­stone’s forehead then tried to release the hand that still gripped the dead knight’s sword. But Blackstone’s fist would not unclench, keeping it pressed to his chest.

  ‘Bless this boy, sire. Look at him, he will not relinquish the sword,’ Cobham said gently, knowing a warrior when he saw one.

  The King watched. ‘We will give our thanks and take com­munion and pray for this man’s soul. Is his name known?’ he said quietly.

  ‘His name is Thomas Blackstone,’ de Harcourt said. ‘He’s an archer, sire. One of Sir Gilbert Killbere’s men.’

  ‘We were with him at Blanchetaque where he also showed honour and courage
protecting a member of Godfrey’s household,’ the Prince said.

  Sir Godfrey nodded in acknowledgement.

  Blackstone heard his name. He stared at the blurred colours of the surcoats shimmering in the half-light. Were they warrior angels? He needed them to take him to Richard. Blackstone called on every fibre in his body to get up and meet the angels.

  ‘Sweet Jesus,’ Northampton said quietly without blasphemy as they watched Blackstone’s shattered body force itself up from the ground. De Harcourt stepped forward to help him. The King barely raised his hand to stop him.

  ‘No,’ the King whispered. ‘Let him be. It is his desire. He is defiant unto death.’

  Blackstone got to his knees, the sword point in the dirt to help steady him. He could get no further. The blurred angels waited. One, with a burning torch held behind him, reflecting holy light glinting from armour, stood closer. God had sent this archangel for him. Stinging tears blurred his vision.

  ‘Lord…’ Blackstone whispered, ‘take me to him…’

  The King and the nobles looked uncertain for a moment. Then the King turned to his son. ‘He calls for you. Honour, him, Edward. It is your right. And his.’

  The now battle-hardened sixteen-year-old Prince of Wales understood his royal duty. He stepped to Blackstone, still kneeling with the sword placed squarely to his chest, helping to keep a balance that threatened to desert him at any moment and let him fall into darkness. The Prince laid his hands on Blackstone’s head.

  ‘You have behaved with honour and courage, and we are grateful. You are a loyal servant to your liege lord. Accept this charge placed upon your life and may God bless you, Sir Thomas Blackstone.’

  The Prince stepped back and the King gestured for men from his retinue to ease Blackstone’s body to the ground. As they laid him gently back into the Crécy mud, the King turned to de Harcourt.

  ‘This young knight will not die if it is in our power. Our sur­geon and physician will attend him. Godfrey, we charge you to accept responsibility for his safekeeping until such time as all efforts prove fruitless.’