by David Gilman
Servants moved aside as Blackstone strode along the dimly lit passage. Voices could be heard from the great hall behind the wood-panelled wall. There was no way for him to see into the room unless he entered through the main double doors, one of which was open for serving food and which afforded him a glimpse of the hunched shoulders of men eating from heaped platters. Further along, the passage steps led down from the flagstone floor for two rises, but then, before they descended further, another staircase turned and spiralled up. The twenty-eight twisting steps took him across a darkened passageway and then out to an empty minstrels’ gallery. Below him thirty or so ermine-robed barons and city officials were gathered. Two long trestle tables, their white cloths covered with platters of food, were set along two sides of the room connected at one end by a dais for the main table. The sallow-faced eighteen-year-old Dauphin, with weasel eyes and a narrow, pinched nose above thin lips, was flanked by Jean de Harcourt and another man who, by the quality of his clothing and jewellery, Blackstone took to be Charles of Navarre. There was no sign of Blanche. Only Sir Godfrey was absent from the same men who had argued their case at Castle de Harcourt and were now seated at the Dauphin’s table. The future power of Normandy and France ate and drank as if the kingdom was already theirs.
Which of these men had betrayed his friend, Jean de Harcourt? And if this was a trap, were the Savage Priest and his killers lying in wait?
22
At first light that same morning, Guillaume killed Marcel, the Harcourts’ trusted servant.
Fear had driven the old man away from the comfort and food the kitchen offered but Guillaume caught up with him two miles from the village. As the servant heard the hoof beats behind him he twisted in the saddle. His pursuer saw the etched panic on his face. The man’s nag had an ungainly gait, and as Marcel had turned, the horse stumbled from the shifting of his weight. The old man tumbled from the saddle and fell heavily, the wind knocked out of him. By the time he regained his breath Guillaume stood over him. Marcel scrambled to his knees, arms raised in supplication to the man he had known since he was a boy given sanctuary by Countess Blanche, who hid him in the passageway with his wounded master. Now the young squire waited, sword in hand, his dispassionate gaze signalling impending violence.
‘No servant runs from a warm hearth and food. You were given sanctuary. Speak to me, Marcel. How much do you really know of what has happened at Harcourt?’ Guillaume said quietly.
Words failed the old man. His lungs fought for air, his eyes clung to the face of Sir Thomas’s young warrior. The boy whose master he had once nursed with care and devotion. To beg was not beneath his dignity; he had none. To plead years of loyalty and faithful service might save him. He sobbed and told Guillaume everything.
Guillaume touched the servant’s head. ‘I’ll spare you,’ he said quietly.
The old man, who only days before had watched over Blackstone’s son playing at the river, bowed his head in gratitude.
Mercy was allowing the old man to believe he was being spared. Guillaume drove the sword down through Marcel’s spine.
He wiped the blade on the servant’s tunic and turned back to where Christiana and the children would still be sleeping, unaware of the betrayal or of the violence soon to befall them.
The King had planned his incursion well. Had he arrived in the streets of Rouen the packed thoroughfares would be alerted and de Harcourt and the others might have escaped. King John’s determination to root out the malcontents was the first step towards bringing Normandy to heel. Secrecy was a rare commodity in these times, which was why he had spent the previous night in a village near the city. The King and his men had entered Rouen’s great castle from a cellar door left open by one of the Norman knights who had betrayed the rebels’ cause.
Blackstone heard a muted cry of alarm from the passageways below. He took a stride to the edge of the gallery, ready to shout his warning, but it was too late – armoured men scuffed their way from the lower staircase into the great hall.
Blackstone stepped back a pace. The soldiers were accompanied by a marshal of France and the King himself, who wore armour and helmet as if ready for battle. More soldiers swarmed into the room and the doors slammed shut as servants were herded and beaten into other rooms.
‘Stay where you are! Anyone who moves from the King’s presence will die!’ the marshal commanded the nobles. The King reached across the table and grabbed Charles of Navarre by his tunic and threw him against the wall. It looked as though the King was about to kill his son-in-law. Blackstone could see the terror in Charles’s eyes as he stumbled back. His squire pulled a knife and pressed it into the King’s chest. Even Jean de Harcourt looked shocked at the direct assault on the King. King John stood his ground and calmly commanded his men to disarm the traitorous squire. Within seconds soldiers had brutally struck him to the ground and his breaking arm could be heard even from where Blackstone stood, still concealed, his back pressed against the wall.
The Dauphin tried to stand up to his father. ‘My lord, I beg you, do not inflict violence on these men, they are my guests. They are under my protection. This is my honour you trample on.’
King John pointed at Charles of Navarre. ‘My treacherous cousin, the man who married into my family and who wishes to take my crown, conspired with these men’ – he gestured to the shocked faces of the men from the Castle de Harcourt – ‘to have me killed. Do you think they would let you rule? Are you such an ass that you could not see their scheme? You’re my son! Behave like a king even though you cannot think like one!’
Blackstone watched the Dauphin. The boy’s face drained of what little colour it had. He tried to speak but the words choked in his throat.
‘Charles of Navarre, you are to be imprisoned. These men are to die. Take them away,’ the King ordered.
The conspirators were roughly manhandled, but Jean de Harcourt did not go quietly.
‘We have a right to a trial,’ he demanded. ‘You kill us without one and every Norman will rise up against you. The English will be welcomed by your enemies because you show yourself to be impulsive and unjust. You are not fit to rule!’
A soldier clubbed him to his knees, and as they dragged him to his feet his face turned upwards and he saw Blackstone draw his sword. His friend was going to try and save him. The men’s eyes locked for a moment. De Harcourt shook his head. His lips silently formed the word Blanche. The room was cleared, some men being dragged away and others herded into side passages and rooms so the King could determine the degree of their involvement in the conspiracy. Men’s voices tumbled through the narrow passageways as others’ cried out in panic and pain. The marshal bellowed the King’s orders and Blackstone heard a surge of movement in the corridors below.
‘Close the city gates! A curfew is declared!’
Blackstone could not escape by the same route that he had entered, and the main entrance would be heavily guarded by the King’s soldiers. He moved cautiously down the staircase but as he reached the cross-passageway the darkness shifted. He felt the air move as the attacker’s exertion expelled breath. Blackstone stepped aside and raised an arm in defence as a knife cut across his cloak and scraped against his mail. The dagger clattered away as his weight parried the blow, throwing the assassin off balance. Blackstone grappled in the darkness. His attacker was smaller, lithe, twisting like a coiled snake, and as silent, but Blackstone threw him down and went in for the kill, his own knife drawn, ready to plunge into the unguarded throat beneath his grip. The strangled whisper for mercy came a breath before the subtle fragrance of crushed lavender touched his senses.
Blanche! Fear cut through him like steel. He had been a moment away from killing her. He dragged her clear of the passage and onto the gallery. Blanche de Harcourt wore a breastplate beneath her cloak, a velvet cap had fallen in the tussle and a trickle of blood ran down her forehead from where Blackstone had slammed her into the wall. Her bruised cheekbone and scraped skin were caked with grime. He held her
until her eyes opened. Her alarm quickly gave way to uncertainty.
‘Thomas?’ she whispered.
Strident voices carried from below as men were ordered to move here and there. He placed a finger on her lips, then made sure she was clear-headed enough to understand.
‘How did you get here?’ he asked.
‘The council called for their squires before the Dauphin went into the great hall for the banquet. I came in with them and hid myself. Why are you here?’
‘Marcel came to us.’
She hesitated. Fear still swept through the castle as men’s voices carried along the passageways. Armour and mail rattled against the narrow stone walls and torchlight flickered as shadowy figures moved to seize anyone suspected of conspiring against the King.
‘There’s a way out at the bottom of the staircase,’ Blackstone told her.
She pushed away from him. ‘No!’
Her determination to save her husband could betray them both. Blackstone spoke gently, trying to ease her anger. ‘Jean and the others are lost. The King will take them to Paris. There were more than a hundred men with him in the hall, there’ll be even more outside.’
The threat of discovery forced her voice into a whisper. ‘You would abandon him?’
‘I came here to save you, Blanche. I saw Jean when they arrested him. He looked right at me and he said one word, and that was your name.’
‘Then I’ll go myself. I’ll find men who will help me rescue him.’
‘I’ll follow them to Paris, but you have to return to Harcourt. The King will sweep up everyone connected with this mess. He’ll take your children and seize the castle. You have to go back now. Guillaume will take you south. There’s no time to lose.’
He watched as the reality of the situation seeped into her thoughts. Blanche de Harcourt was about to lose everything except her own inherited title.
‘The King won’t dare condemn Jean and the others without a trial. It would turn so many against him. His own councils would oppose it. There’s still time,’ she said hopefully.
‘I’ll do what I can,’ he said, knowing there would be no trial, only summary execution.
Despite the desperate situation, Blanche de Harcourt did not show her fear. ‘How do we get out?’ she said.
With Blanche’s hand on his shoulder Blackstone stepped down into the darkness, waited as the cross-passage fell silent, and within fifteen careful paces saw light showing around a planked door. He yanked the cast-iron handle and they stepped into the lush wetness of meadow. They were outside the city walls and, within the hour, back to the blacksmith where he and Blanche had left their horses.
‘Ride hard and take anything of value. You’ll need money. Tell Guillaume not to wait. There’s no time. He knows where to take you,’ Blackstone told her.
‘But you’re not telling me where, Thomas,’ she said.
Blackstone said nothing. She understood. She climbed into the saddle.
‘In case I’m captured I won’t be able to betray them. Your family needs my ignorance. I would do the same.’
‘Only until you get to Christiana. You know that Guillaume values your life more than his own. Take the forest track. It’s less travelled,’ he said.
She tightened the reins, holding back the horse. ‘I will raise a thousand men of my own and make this King wish he had never laid a hand on my lord and husband. If they kill Jean promise me you will avenge him,’ she said desperately. ‘Swear to me!’ she insisted. ‘Your word!’
‘My word,’ Blackstone said and slapped the horse’s rump with his gauntlet.
The situation was hopeless. He hawked and spat and watched Blanche’s horse kick up turf as it galloped away. A part of him craved the companionship of his long-dead brother and the men he served with at Crécy, in a time when shared fear made him braver, when life was simpler and others took the decisions that committed men to kill or be killed. But at that moment, watching the cold mist cling to the treetops he accepted that his was now a solitary life of leadership. The actions of others had placed the King of France firmly against him. His would be guilt by association.
‘I need another three horses,’ he said to the man shovelling dung from the stalls.
‘I’ve only got swayback rounceys, my lord, nothing worthy. Meat is what I was keeping them for.’
Blackstone spilled coins into the man’s grimy hands. ‘Buy yourself mutton instead.’
Four men stood caged in the jolting cart that laboured along the Abbeville road on the way to Paris. Stripped of warm clothing and clad only in their linen shirts, Jean de Harcourt, de Graville, Colin Doublet – Navarre’s squire, who had threatened the King – and de Mainemares endured the misery of the King’s pleasure. The cold air humiliated the men further, their shivering unmistakable as their guards taunted them, sneering that they trembled from fear. The gibbet, where common criminals were executed, lay a short distance from the city’s walls. A peasant, his wrists chained like those prisoners in the cart, was forced to stumble alongside on the uneven road, his flesh chafed and bleeding from the tug on his manacles. Lord de Graville’s face was ash-grey. He was a ringleader but he was not the traitor Blackstone had thought him to be.
Blackstone eased his horse slowly through the forest, shadowing the King’s retinue. The thick leaf mould muffled the sound of his progress as the column moved along the route towards Abbeville, the road along which King John’s father had retreated when English archers had slaughtered his army and made history for themselves. Perhaps it was the memory of this dishonour that made King John stop at the turn of the road on the heights above Rouen.
‘De Ruymont. Here!’ Blackstone heard him command. Realization knifed into Blackstone’s chest as the Norman lord spurred his horse forward to the front of the column. Disbelief held a heartbeat and then anger set it free. Guy de Ruymont, whom both de Harcourt and Thomas Blackstone called friend, was the traitor.
The marshal gestured the soldiers to release the peasant. ‘You were condemned to hang for murder, but you will be pardoned for the duty you will perform.’
The man bowed and his chains were released. One of the soldiers handed him a falchion, a curved short sword, little more than a lengthened billhook and favoured by common soldier and man-at-arms for close-quarter battle. It was a hacking blade.
The condemned men were dragged from the cart. Doublet fought despite his broken arm, but the guards heaved him screaming in agony onto the ground where he wept pitifully. Ignoring his injury, soldiers took hold of the chains attached to his wrists and pulled them wide.
‘Your bodies will be hung by these chains until they rot. Your heads will be impaled on pikes so that every person passing this place will know of your treachery,’ the marshal told the condemned men. ‘Get to it, you scum!’ he ordered the peasant.
The amateur executioner hacked at the writhing Doublet. After three or four vicious yet clumsy blows the head fell into the grass. The sickening act of butchery tore at the condemned men’s courage.
De Mainemares was next. He could barely walk; incoherent prayer spluttered from his lips. The terror finally took his legs from under him, but the soldiers spread him across a fallen tree stump and the falchion fell as if wielded by a hedge-layer attacking a sapling.
Blackstone knew he could do nothing to save his friend, but he readied the horses as he saw Jean kneel in the mud and pray.
De Graville cried for mercy. ‘Sire! I beg you! It was Navarre who wanted you dead! We wanted only a fair hearing with my lord the Dauphin. No harm was planned. None.’
His cries were ignored as soldiers dragged him to the field. ‘A priest, sire! At least let us have the sacrament of penance,’ pleaded the Norman, bereft of a confessor.
The blood-splattered executioner went to work on the man’s neck. De Graville grunted as the bone took the blade’s bite, but the muscles hardened from years of warfare yielded less easily. The peasant swore and sweated until the head fell.
Jean de Harcou
rt got to his feet. The tremor had left him. ‘Guy de Ruymont! You were a trusted friend and God will not forgive you for what you have done to us all!’
They began to drag de Harcourt to the blood-soaked grass. De Ruymont looked away.
‘Look at him!’ the King commanded. ‘You betrayed him as surely as you condemn his wife and his children.’
The King’s words struck de Harcourt. He surged against his captors. ‘Sire!’ de Harcourt cried. ‘My family are innocent of my crime.’
‘There will be no mercy for those you cherish. It will all end here, today,’ the King replied, and pushed his baton beneath de Ruymont’s chin. ‘Watch him die! Or I will forget our agreement and have you butchered with the others!’
Guy de Ruymont had no choice but to watch his friend being dragged away, arms stretched by the chains, and then pulled to his knees.
In the forest’s shadows Blackstone struck his sword blade across the horses’ rumps. The cut to each was superficial but they whinnied in panic and their terror alarmed the soldiers as they tore through the undergrowth.
‘Stand to!’ the marshal cried. ‘The King!’ A body of knights and squires quickly formed around King John. The moments of uncertainty gave Blackstone his chance as the bolting horses broke cover and careered towards the column, scaring their mounts.
Confusion gripped the men as a figure emerged at full gallop from the clinging mist. An open helmet exposed his scarred face, and a blood-red shield bore the device of a gauntlet gripping a sword. The King heard his marshal swear in recognition; then he shielded his lord’s body from the attacker as Blackstone silently bore down on the startled men.
He had guessed the instinctive reaction of those closest to the King, and his charge angled across the field, bypassing the bodyguard. Changing direction, he pulled up the horse a hundred paces away and faced his friend as men rode from the ranks to attack him, infantry at their heels. The executioner and the men holding Jean de Harcourt froze in uncertainty. His friend had no chance of escaping death, but he would die knowing two things.
