Master of War

by David Gilman

  De Fossat dropped his right shoulder and let his sword scythe down, feeling it bite through exposed head and neck.

  Meulon yelled at the men to get clear of the castle and follow Blackstone. Matthew Hampton ran from the back of the group and caught up with the bigger man whose stride was twice that of the stocky archer.

  ‘He’s down! D’you see that?’ he gasped. The going was already soft, but Meulon pushed forward onto one of the broad paths that offered a causeway through the soggy ground. They were still too far away to use their bows and Meulon seemed to be in a race with Gaillard as they ran through the middle of the men on each side who were being pressed from the flanks. Englishmen turned, thinking Meulon and the men were attacking French coming from their rear, but Hampton plucked a fallen pennon from the ground and punished his legs and lungs to catch up with the spearmen.

  ‘Saint George! Edward and England!’ he yelled as loud as his gasping lungs would allow.

  It was enough for the English troops to turn back and fight their way towards de Charny’s standard.

  Their advance was halted by a knot of Frenchmen who burst from a mêlée on their right, and Meulon pushed Hampton clear as one of them thrust his pike between them. Gaillard’s sword slashed the pikeman’s throat, and Talpin and Perinne quickly formed a shield wall with others either side of him and Meulon. The wedge they formed allowed them to edge forward step by step. Heaving and cursing with effort, some stumbled and fell on the uneven ground, but sheer brute strength drove them on until the French lay slashed and dying beneath their feet.

  ‘He’s there!’ Gaillard cried, as fighting men parted showing the knight on horseback bearing down on Blackstone.

  Blackstone had no shield, so he reached for a broken spear. Wolf Sword’s blood knot held, and the horse was seconds away from trampling him. He heard de Fossat grunt as his sword severed bone and flesh of the attacking men. Two went down and a third had no chance beneath the war horse’s iron-shod hooves. He was not there to kill the Englishman after all.

  ‘Move on! Man! Move on!’ de Fossat cried, yanking the horse around as Blackstone parried a sword blow from one of the men with the broken shaft and then cut him and the other man down. ‘Louis is there! There!’ he cried, pointing with his sword. ‘He comes for you!’

  Blackstone spat blood, his dry mouth barely able to hawk the clot from it. He’d taken a blow to the face at some stage, but had no memory of it. He moved forward towards the company of men that bore down on him and the half-dozen horsemen in their midst who rode next to Louis de Vitry and his banner.

  ‘Sir Thomas!’ a voice bellowed behind him. He turned. Matthew Hampton and Meulon with Gaillard, Talpin and Perinne led the others like a horde of barbarians, their eyes staring wide through mud and blood-spattered faces, their beards matted with snot and spittle.

  ‘De Vitry!’ he yelled at them and turned to begin his lone attack. Sidestepping the bodies he ran for the drier ground to his left, as the causeway paths across the soggy ground would let him get closer more quickly and force de Vitry’s men to alter their own direction. Half of them would still be running straight and, as they turned to curve back, the middle body of men would be closer to Blackstone. And that was where Louis de Vitry rode.

  William de Fossat pushed his horse next to the running man. ‘Take hold!’ he yelled, casting aside his shield, changing his sword arm, allowing Blackstone to grab hold of the stirrup strap with his left hand and to keep his own sword arm free. The horse could only sustain an erratic trot as it found its footing, but Blackstone’s feet barely touched the ground. Man and horse were propelled into the seething mass as arrow shafts fell among them. Matthew Hampton had steadied the archers as Meulon and the others threw a protective shield wall around them. Now they moved forward again when they saw Frenchmen pull de Fossat down, the speared horse whinnying, eyes rolling back in agony as it crashed to the ground. Blackstone danced away from the thrashing hooves, saw de Fossat honour his word as he fought a common enemy at Blackstone’s side. De Vitry yelled something, but Blackstone could not hear amid the mayhem. The banners had turned, they were sweeping behind the two knights. A baying howl rose up from Meulon and Blackstone’s men. They were being cut down as they forged towards their master’s side. Waterford died from a spear thrust, Talpin had two Frenchmen beat him to death with mace and axe. Blackstone watched as his wall builder fell under the men’s savagery. Then, by some miracle, Meulon’s lead took the men forward.

  Blackstone had stood his ground, picked up a fallen shield and moved closer to de Fossat. Neither looked at the other as the hordes seemed to increase rather than lessen despite their having taken a vicious toll on de Vitry’s men.

  ‘Down, Thomas! Down! Down!’ a voice suddenly cried behind Blackstone’s right shoulder as Matthew Hampton lunged forward. Blackstone turned, four of de Vitry’s men levelled crossbows. Too late, Blackstone brought up the shield as Matthew Hampton ran forward and took two of the bolts into his chest. A third ripped through Blackstone’s shield and pierced his side. It burned like acid into his skin and muscle. He sucked in air, tested his weight. Could he still stand? Move? Attack? Three steps and then five – the pain blistering his mind, the sword swinging, as the scalding wound drove him on, spurring his strength. De Fossat lay unmoving in the mud, blood spilling across his breastplate.

  Trumpets sounded somewhere close. The Prince’s men were closing the net. Louis de Vitry had promised to kill the man who had humiliated him. His lands had been returned, a bounty would be given. And he, among all Norman lords, would hold more power and control than any of them. But even as he spurred his horse forward towards the wounded Blackstone, he knew the battle was lost. Now there would be only ignominy. He had chosen the wrong side and sold himself to a French King who could never win. There could be only one satisfaction left to the embittered count: kill Thomas Blackstone.

  A shockwave ran through the French troops. The English King had trapped them and his son had cut their feet from beneath them, and Blackstone’s strike into the very heart of their army had severed their strength. They suddenly faltered, and then the last of them turned and ran. Blackstone saw Louis de Vitry’s look of abandonment as he cried out for his men to stand. Fear and desperation closed their ears to his pleas. Among the thousands it must have seemed to Louis de Vitry that he was completely alone. He spurred his horse. Blackstone stood in its path, unable to move quickly enough. From several paces behind him Meulon hurled his spear straight into the beast’s chest and its legs crumpled. De Vitry clung to the pommel but was thrown. Sixty pounds of armour slowed him getting to his feet. His sword, like Blackstone’s, was tied to his wrist. Blackstone could almost smell the suffocation within the man’s helmet, its narrow slit limiting his vision. He stood back as de Vitry got to his knees and then his feet, staggered, then found his balance, shoving up the visor and sucking in air. There was no hesitation as he attacked with such ferocity that Blackstone fell back. He saw Gaillard take a pace forward to help, and shouted for him to stand his ground. De Vitry would be ransomed by the Prince, sold back to Philip, or sent to the French King in disgrace. A perfect victory for the English that would rub salt into King Philip’s wounds for years to come.

  If Blackstone did not kill de Vitry first.

  They clashed. Blackstone’s bare head put him at a disadvan­tage and de Vitry neatly turned on the balls of his feet, nimbly changing direction and catching Blackstone a tooth-rattling blow with his sword’s pommel. Blackstone spat blood, blocked, parried and felt his strength being drained with the blood running down his leg, the bolt still embedded in his side, impeding his sword strikes. Before he died, Blackstone wanted nothing more than to drink a bucket of water. To drown in it. To die not thirsty.

  Louis de Vitry had the attuned senses of a man trained in hand-to-hand combat and this peasant archer, who had been honoured and treated as an equal by the great and noble de Harcourt family, was a stain on Norman honour. A wrong would now be righted. Blackstone wa
s nothing more than a brute-strength fighter who now staggered, head sinking to his chest, hair smothering his face, mouth agape, desperate for water, shoulders yielding to the burden of his wound. He was going onto his knees. He was down! Count Louis de Vitry pressed both hands onto his sword’s grip and raised the blade.

  It had become nothing more than an execution.

  Blackstone lifted his head, and de Vitry saw his eyes stare coldly through the blood-soaked hair. He swung the blade down – too late. Blackstone turned Wolf Sword and, as he had when killing the wild boar, rammed upwards beneath de Vitry’s breastplate into his heart and lungs.

  Louis de Vitry fell, sprawling, only this time Blackstone twisted clear and let the body thud face down into the sodden ground. What little breath remained bubbled blood into the trampled grass.

  30

  Barber-surgeons cut, sawed and stitched the wounded. It seemed to Blackstone that more blood flowed from their hands than had been let by the enemy. They took cutters and snapped the bolt below the fletchings. He wished the infirmarian from the monastery, Brother Simon, was with them. His care for the sick and wounded would keep a man in this world rather than punish him into the next. The barber-surgeon used an arrow spoon to draw out the bolt and prepared his cautery iron.

  ‘Let the blood run,’ Blackstone insisted. Another lesson from the old monk was to let blood flow and carry with it any impurity before sealing the wound. Finally they pushed the steel wire needle, its eyelet threaded with gut, into the wound. Gaillard brought the sack that hung from his horse’s pommel and handed him the small clay jar, sealed with beeswax, prepared by the old monk. The balm was the colour of lemons and very fragrant, which in itself gave a sense of healing. Blackstone used it on his wound and made sure that others smeared it across their injuries. He and his men were kept two weeks within the city walls, attended to and fed. Despite their injuries they buried their dead themselves, caring little for strangers who threw corpses into pits.

  Matthew Hampton had rushed between Blackstone and the crossbowmen and now the veteran English archer lay cradled by the earth. Prayers were said and blessings given, and then Blackstone went among his men. They had come off lightly, but losing two archers was a grievous loss to Blackstone. He knew, though, that in time, others would come.

  ‘Talpin was a good soldier,’ Meulon told him, nursing a cut to his arm. ‘Still, better him than me, is how you have to look at it. I think you pissed off your English Prince, though, Master Thomas. He was counting on keeping the French leaders alive.’

  ‘He wasn’t on my mind at the time,’ Blackstone answered.

  Blackstone had lost fifteen of his seventy-five men, and a dozen others were wounded, including himself. It was a time for prayer and giving thanks, and he kneeled with his company at the men’s graveside. There was a sombre place in his heart for those who had died at his side on the battlefields of France, and he knew the memory of them would ride with him forever.

  Blackstone and his men were quartered in the town, but kept close to the stables and the garrison’s quarters. The seneschal of Calais had ordered de Beauchamp to keep fighting men well away from the merchants and inns. A battle won beyond the walls could soon be lost within them. Gold- and silversmiths offered more temptations than tavern whores.

  By the third week after the battle he could ride without seeping blood. It was time to go home. He shared a cooked meal with the men, who were given fresh bread for their efforts. If nothing else, the King and the Prince fed their men well.

  Gaillard sucked the broth’s juice from the bread. The lump on his head had risen to a mighty bruise that made wearing a helmet painful. A couple of weeks of letting the lice escape would do no harm, was the common consensus. ‘I hear that Italian, whatsisname… the one who did the deal, he got paid. One of the garrison guards said he overheard that he’d taken a holiday to Rome, said it was a Jubilee year. If there were a few spare coins to be had I’d travel through Avignon and see the Pope myself.’

  ‘Gaillard, the Pope would choke on his fine cuts if you showed up. He would have to take a year off his duties to confess you,’ said Perinne, lifting the men’s mood.

  There had been some booty, but not enough to make the fight worthwhile, though it made little difference to most of them, because they would soon be back home where raiding gave them modest but acceptable pay under Blackstone’s command.

  Blackstone stood and wiped his hands on his leather jerkin. He could smell his own stench and longed for a bath, promising himself to bathe when they came across the first freshwater stream.

  ‘We leave tomorrow after matins,’ he said and then made his way to where William de Fossat lay, resting in surroundings more fitting for a Norman baron who had decided to throw in his lot with the English. He had taken the fourth crossbow quarrel in those deadly moments when Hampton died and Blackstone was wounded. It had punched through his armour and embedded itself in his shoulder. He looked gaunt behind the dark beard because the surgeons had bled him even more than the wound itself.

  ‘Butchers. That’s what you English are. I ask for a French sur­geon and I get an Englishman who stutters my language, and farts while he stitches me,’ said de Fossat.

  ‘I’m told that was because you held a knife to his throat in case he took your arm.’

  William de Fossat grunted indifferently.

  ‘What will you do now? Edward can’t grant you protection here. Will you go to England?’ Blackstone asked.

  ‘No. Did you not hear? I found myself a rich widow with estates that need looking after. And I think she’s some connection to a long-forgotten bastard of the royal family. He will leave us alone – and besides, I hear he’s ailing. He’ll be dead before I give myself to the worms. That’s if your English butchers haven’t done for me.’

  ‘I came to thank you,’ Blackstone said.

  ‘Don’t be a fool, Blackstone. I didn’t do what I did for you. Louis de Vitry betrayed us. Had I confronted him he would have surrendered to me. He needed to be dead.’ He smiled. ‘You were – convenient. You’re the one who mocked our code of chivalry, Thomas, but it’s a code nonetheless. Surrender only to a man of equal rank.’

  ‘Which I am not.’

  ‘Which you most definitely are not. And he wanted badly to kill you. You humiliated a Norman lord. Sweet Jesus! Did you think he would ever forget?’

  ‘No,’ said Blackstone. ‘But I doubted you. For a moment only. But I doubted.’

  ‘That I was coming to kill you,’ he said

  ‘Aye. You had the perfect opportunity out there. And now I am in your debt.’

  ‘I gave my word that I would stand at your shoulder against a common enemy,’ de Fossat said quietly, adding weight to his sincerity.

  ‘A pledge can be broken,’ Blackstone replied.

  ‘It depends who you give it to,’ said the Norman lord.

  John de Beauchamp strode at the head of a company of pikemen, who outnumbered Blackstone’s men two to one. They stopped where Blackstone and his men were garrisoned.

  ‘Is this trouble?’ Meulon asked as he saw the men outside form up as escort.

  Before Blackstone could answer, the Captain of Calais made himself known. ‘Sir Thomas Blackstone, you and your men are summoned to the market square. I am sent to escort you there now.’

  ‘By whose orders?’ Blackstone asked, knowing his men were wary of the English.

  ‘Your Prince,’ de Beauchamp answered.

  Meulon muttered beneath his breath. ‘Disobeying a sovereign Prince is a hanging offence. Maybe they’ve already got the scaffolds built in the square.’

  ‘Because I killed de Vitry?’ Blackstone asked him.

  ‘How would I know? He’s your Prince.’

  The soldiers marched as Blackstone’s men shambled between them. There had been no command to disarm but to be taken like this into the confines of the town created suspicion. They turned into the market square and saw it was boxed by troops, keeping the townspeople a
t bay as they gawked at the assembly of noblemen and their rich tapestry of banners. The Prince of Wales, resplendent in armour and unsullied surcoat, was in conversation with his entourage. It seemed that he and his household were preparing to leave for England. John de Beauchamp halted the men.

  ‘Sir Thomas, you will accompany me,’ he commanded, and went forward to where the Prince spoke with his seneschal and other officers of state who controlled Calais.

  Blackstone stayed a respectful two paces behind de Beauchamp, who waited until an officer approached him. The Prince of Wales looked up and nodded and the officer indicated that they should move forward. Once close enough, both Blackstone and de Beau­champ went down on one knee and then stood before him.

  The Captain of Calais stepped away, leaving Blackstone to face the stern-faced Prince alone.

  ‘We leave on the tide, Thomas. Back to England. Our King has already sailed,’ he said.

  Blackstone could not determine why he had been summoned. Thoughts dashed through his mind. Was punishment due? Surely the Prince did not want him to return to England, abandoning his territory, his wife and child?

  ‘You hold towns in your King’s name, Thomas. Come the day we will no doubt have need of them.’

  ‘They’re yours to command, my Prince,’ Blackstone answered.

  A frown of irritation crossed Prince Edward’s face. ‘Do you always have to kill so readily, Thomas? Count Louis de Vitry was a Norman we could have used in our favour.’

  Blackstone remained silent. To answer might stir a hornet’s nest of recrimination.

  The heir to the throne of England let the moment pass. ‘What’s done is done,’ he went on. ‘Your action drove a wedge through the enemy centre. It was… helpful… to us. Has the yeoman archer become a military tactician as well as a knight?’