Defiant Unto Death

by David Gilman

  ‘Keep the men ready, Gilbert. Whoever they are they might lose interest once they know the village is destroyed.’

  The slow and steady hoof beats came on, the sound of armour and leather creaking in the quiet dawn. The ranks stopped at six hundred paces, where forty men dismounted and ran forward so that they were no more than three hundred yards from the village roofs. They were crossbowmen.

  ‘Who in God’s name are they?’ Elfred asked. The few hundred men who waited wore no livery, and were dressed haphazardly in mail, some with armour on their legs and arms.

  ‘They’re routiers,’ Blackstone said as the crossbowmen levelled their weapons.

  ‘The Priest?’ Elfred asked.

  ‘No. It’s not him,’ Blackstone answered. ‘I saw his pennons at Avignon.’

  ‘Thomas, it’s the other horde of skinners. Let’s get our arses out of here or they’ll swarm over us like lice in a tavern whore’s bed,’ Killbere said.

  ‘And leave what we came for? No, we’ll make pretence of joining them if we must. We need to get across the border if we’re to have any future.’ He turned to look at the men behind him. Dried blood caked their soot-creased faces and hands; they looked vicious enough to take on the heavenly host. ‘The devil himself would hire us now.’

  The crossbowmen waited as a dozen horsemen advanced from the ranks bearing pennons and banner. The slight figure of the rider who led the men wore fine armour and bascinet, its visor raised. The flag of red and gold horizontal bars fluttered in the wind.

  ‘Ready!’ one of the men-at-arms shouted to the crossbowmen, who brought their weapons to bear on Blackstone and his men. The short, fast-flying quarrels would punch through armour, muscle and bone.

  ‘What a poor way to die,’ Killbere said, drawing his sword.

  About the time that Blackstone found the raiders’ village, Will Longdon arrived back at the manor house where Guillaume and the men waited. He explained to the captains what had happened during and after the ambush and that by first light the party were to leave and meet up with Blackstone, ready to cross the border. The men took food and drink; then they found a place to sleep before leading the others back next morning.

  Once Henry and Agnes were covered with blankets, Guillaume and the bodyguard formed their own picket around the family. Will Longdon watched from a distance. He wanted the lady’s favour. He had known Thomas Blackstone since the knight was a boy archer, but whereas Blackstone had risen in rank, Longdon was still a ventenar in command of a small company of English archers. Although he had gained plunder over the years there had been no betterment in his status and he had remained in the service of the King of England and the Prince of Wales. No common archer would ever sit at a nobleman’s table, or be allowed any intimacy of friendship. But Thomas Blackstone, a common man who had fought alongside Longdon and the others, no different from them, had been blessed with the status of rank. To tell Lady Blackstone that he had fought alongside her husband, before she ever knew him, would give Will Longdon a moment of recognition.

  Guillaume rested thirty paces away, and as the nearest picket on duty turned his back, Longdon chose his moment. He quickly got to his feet and approached her through the shadows.

  ‘My lady,’ he said quietly.

  She looked up, momentarily alarmed, but Longdon’s shoulders hunched in brief subservience, and he showed his hands were free of any weapon. ‘I have something that belongs to Thomas – I beg your pardon, madam – I mean Sir Thomas, your husband.’

  Christiana had never lost her fear of the English archers’ reputation, and to have one approach so quickly and silently frightened her. She hid her uncertainty; the man had stopped a dozen paces away and gone down on one knee, and quickly took something from beneath his jerkin: a patch of cloth.

  ‘Come closer,’ she said. ‘Let me see your face.’

  Longdon moved into the light of a torch that burned on a stake next to her tent.

  ‘It’s me, my lady,’ he said. ‘Will Longdon.’

  He was familiar to her, and she felt reassured. ‘What is it? What is it you have that belongs to my husband?’

  He extended his hand and gave her the piece of cloth, with the embroidered swallow.

  ‘Sir Thomas dropped it when we were ambushed. I know it’s important to him; he’s had it since just about the time I’ve known him.’

  She fingered the cloth she had given Blackstone all those years ago. ‘Yes, it is important. Thank you.’

  Longdon wanted to impress her, hinting at a greater friendship between himself and Blackstone than really existed. ‘I was with him that day when he took that trophy, I was. I was right there. I didn’t know he’d cut that piece of cloth off the old man’s jupon and kept it as his trophy. So it must be important to him.’

  Uncertainty furrowed her brow. ‘I don’t understand,’ she said.

  ‘It were his first kill. The crossroads in Normandy. We was going to be ambushed. But Sir Gilbert laid us archers off to the side and we flanked the men waiting for us behind a hedgerow. Thomas took the old knight down. One nice clean shot. He vomited, because it was his first kill, but I’d wager no one would believe that now. Not the way he is. The things he’s done. I thought I should give it to you, my lady, because knowing me I’d lose it before I had a chance to give it back to him myself.’

  She had turned her gaze away and made no reply. Longdon had expected an acknowledgement – no reward was necessary, but some kind words of appreciation, telling him that her husband was lucky to have people like Will Longdon at his side. She stayed silent. Awkwardly, he turned to leave.

  ‘You were there?’ she asked.

  ‘Oh aye, m’lady. Right there. It was a grand shot. Well aimed and true, like I said. Through the man’s neck and a yard later out his groin. He was as dead as a stone right enough. There was no plunder to be had, a rusty old sword is all he got if I remember right. But you never forget the first man you kill.’

  She squeezed the cloth into her hands, and nodded. ‘Thank you for bringing this to me. And for telling me where it came from.’ She fumbled for a coin in the pouch at her belt.

  ‘No, no, my lady. There’s no need for that. Sir Thomas is my friend. Good night, my lady. We’ll have you safely with him by tomorrow night.’

  Longdon turned away into the darkness, gratified by her thanks.

  Christiana reached out a hand against the rough-hewn wall to steady the tremor that shook her, determined not to let the archer see her distress. Will Longdon could not have known that it was she who gave Blackstone the piece of cloth as a token of her affection at the castle at Noyelles, before the great battle of Crécy. What was certain was that Longdon had been with Blackstone since the English had invaded Normandy. And what could not be denied was that the old knight who died at the crossroads from Thomas Blackstone’s arrow had been her father.

  How long had Thomas known the truth?

  34

  Through the smoke and swirl of soot from the still-burning thatch, Killbere saw Blackstone raise his arm to keep everyone nervously in place.

  As Blackstone rode slowly forward, showing he held no weapon, the leader of the routiers signalled to the men-at-arms for restraint.

  ‘Thomas Blackstone, you’re alive,’ said the leader’s familiar voice as Blanche, Countess de Harcourt, spurred her horse forward to meet him.

  As the night wore on, and the several hundred men encamped, they shared not only food and wine with Blackstone’s men but a mistrust from the mostly French and German mercenaries. Some ease settled among the men as a mutual understanding grew that they all sought plunder, no matter what desires drove their commanders. A scuffle broke out between the French knight, Robert Corval, who had fought at Poitiers for King John, and one of those who had deserted and found their way south to attack his subjects. Blackstone settled the matter with the promise that if either man killed the other, he would kill the survivor. An uneasy truce prevailed.

  Blanche de Harcourt told Blacks
tone how, by the time she had returned from Rouen to Harcourt on that fateful day, the road to Blackstone’s home was alive with de Marcy’s killers. She turned back, returned to her family estates in Aumale and raised a force to destroy as many of those who supported King John as could be found. She had swept down central France collecting deserters from both armies, itinerant soldiers from Hainault, Bohemia and Hungary, willing to kill for payment. Her chevauchée had been as fierce as that perpetrated earlier by Prince Edward.

  ‘I burned every village and town I came across who swore loyalty to King John,’ the Countess told Blackstone. ‘I gave no mercy. We slaughtered livestock and destroyed crops, denying the King any revenue of taxes, any means to feed his army or call for the arrière-ban. Those who have nothing can give nothing, not even themselves.’

  Blackstone had always known this woman was a powerful influence on his friend Jean de Harcourt, and he had never underestimated her passion, but hearing of this second band of routiers slaughtering their way down to the Alps served to remind him that ruthless and passionate women were often the backbone of many a Norman noble house.

  ‘This village was as far south as I’d planned to raid,’ she said. ‘Beyond here the Italians squabble and fight among themselves. I’ve no interest in them, Thomas. Now, all I want is to go back. The Dauphin will try to rule, but Charles of Navarre will soon stir trouble. I want my family safe.’

  ‘You’ll pay off these men?’ Blackstone asked her.

  ‘Yes. That’s our agreement. I’ve two hundred of my own, loyal to Jean’s memory, but the rest? Well, there’s value in them. My God, they’re vicious scum, many of them, but with the right leader they would be a force to reckon with,’ she answered, knowing his own journey lay across the border.

  Blackstone looked out across the hundreds of small fires, a reminder of his first sight of an army on the hills, waiting to cross to Normandy with King Edward. The sight of these rough-hewn men rekindled the memory of the apprehension he had felt as an untried archer when moving among them. Sir Gilbert Killbere had spoken up for him and his brother, and the man’s fighting skills and reputation had secured them a mentor that no man would challenge. Now these killers needed a leader who could stand up to them and weld them into a fighting force. His own fighters were disciplined enough to follow him and his captains, but if he could harness Blanche’s routiers’ greed and temper their viciousness, he would have the small army that Father Niccolò and the merchants and bankers of Florence wished to contract.

  ‘I’ll talk to my captains,’ he told her. ‘Can you hold them here long enough? I need to meet de Montferrat and bring Guillaume and Christiana with the rest of my men.’

  ‘We’ll ride with you. De Montferrat might prove an ally worth having for the future. There’s plunder to be divided and gold to be counted, and we can do that across the border. And once we cross, they can decide who they follow. And I’d welcome seeing Christiana and the children before I go back. I may never see them again once you go into Italy.’

  For the next few hours Christiana walked and gazed across the dark landscape. There were night creatures in the forests but their screeches and cries were natural to her ears, and preferable to the snores and curses of men who lay out on the stony ground. She had to make a decision before first light. She settled next to the children, covering them with her cloak for extra warmth. Henry lay with his arm across his younger sister, protective even in his sleep. Agnes slept like the innocent she was, still cradling her bedraggled doll.

  Thomas Blackstone had left them on many occasions when seizing towns or challenging men-at-arms for their fealty; she had always known that his strength and reputation would see him safely home and that with his presence no ill would befall them. But Blackstone’s loyalty extended beyond his family and she began to feel the bitterness that was, she knew, unjust. The fear for her children’s safety had been great, and what she had endured to secure it had been cruel but necessary. Now the barbaric reputation of the English at war, something that plagued the French noble houses, had once again struck. The image of her father dying at the hands of the man who became her husband, and of him knowing this, as he must have done once he had learnt of her family, wounded her love for him as surely as if a heated blade had been plunged into her heart. No wonder he had tried to stop her going to Paris. He’d known the truth all along. A part of her mind fought back, telling her that coincidence was God’s will, that it was war that had killed her father, and had nearly slain Thomas Blackstone, but these thoughts failed to hold back the flood of her anguish.

  She got no closer than ten paces towards the sleeping Guillaume when he rolled clear of his blanket, alerted by her almost silent footfall.

  ‘My lady,’ he said.

  She knelt next to him, keeping her voice low. ‘Guillaume, I want to leave. I want to take the children.’

  ‘But we are leaving, at first light. We’ll be through the mountains by nightfall. Sir Thomas will be waiting for us and have the Marquis de Montferrat’s protection. And then we will be in Italy.’

  ‘No, Guillaume, there will never be enough protection now. My lord and husband will draw vicious men to him wherever he goes. They’ll want the glory of killing him. I want to go home.’

  Guillaume’s uncertainty silenced him for a moment; everything behind them had been destroyed. There was no life: there was no house, no servants; all had been obliterated. ‘There is no home to return to,’ he said. ‘Sir Thomas is your home, my lady.’

  ‘Take me back to the river near Avignon. I’ll find a bargeman to take me north, and from there we can ride back to Normandy. That’s where I belong. That’s where my children belong. The house of Harcourt will give me the protection my children need.’

  ‘I don’t understand. The Harcourts are dead, the house taken by King John’s men. Sir Godfrey was slain, and the Dauphin will remember their betrayal. You can’t go back.’

  ‘Jean and Godfrey betrayed the King and paid for the treason. But their brother Louis stayed loyal to the family name. He will offer me protection. And the Dauphin will extend his forgiveness to me because my father died fighting the English. If you won’t help me, I’ll go alone with the children.’

  His honour meant everything. It was how a man was measured. It should not have been his concern if a knight’s lady decided to disobey her husband. Obedience was a demand made and seldom questioned. But now the woman he had known since childhood, who had, like him, been given refuge by the Harcourt family, needed his protection.

  ‘Sir Thomas charged me with your protection at all times. I can’t let you go alone.’

  She saw the conflict written on his face, but forced away her compassion for his feelings. She would use any means and anyone necessary to escape the torment that her life had become. She carried a bastard child and the man she loved could barely hide his resentment. Her son had watched his mother’s violation and withdrawn from her; and as hard as she tried she could not halt the searing wound from the truth of her father’s death.

  ‘We should leave with the others and then go our own way, my lady. I’ll take a dozen men with us for escort. We can’t travel in darkness and we’ll need a pack horse with provisions,’ Guillaume said.

  ‘Thank you. We will always be in your debt.’

  She left him and went back to the children. Guillaume’s conflict was eased by his promise to protect his master’s family with his life, but his loyalty still lay with his sworn lord, Sir Thomas Blackstone.

  Will Longdon, half drunk, was sprawled on a makeshift bed of straw beneath a blanket. He lay like a child, one arm outstretched as if for comfort across his war bow. He gagged when Guillaume’s hand covered his mouth and smothered his snoring. Longdon’s strength twisted him around, dragging him from the dark recess of his slumber. As strong as the archer was the young squire easily held him, until his eyes focused and he acknowledged the gesture of silence.

  ‘Master Guillaume, I nearly pissed my breeches,’ he said quiet
ly. His immediate fear was that Christiana had laid a complaint against him for having approached her.

  Guillaume was kneeling next to him, but looked furtively over his shoulder into the night. ‘I only found you because you snort like a pig and smell like one.’

  ‘There’s been little time for bathing, Master Guillaume; some of us have been in some hard fighting.’

  Guillaume was being slighted, but veteran fighters like Will Longdon were permitted some leeway, providing their superiors allowed it. He thrust a flask of water into Longdon’s chest. ‘Swill your mouth and freshen your mind. I need you awake to carry a message.’

  Longdon did as ordered, rinsed his stale mouth and spat to one side. Then he splashed water onto his face. Guillaume waited, and watched to see that the man was at last alert.

  ‘Can you find your way back to Sir Thomas?’

  ‘Aye, course I can. It’s why he sent me, to bring you and the others.’

  ‘By night,’ Guillaume said.

  The burning torch Guillaume held Longdon’s creased face in flickering light, his disbelief unmistakable. ‘A fox wouldn’t find him. The trails twist like a gutted dog’s bowels. No, not by night.’

  Guillaume needed time and the darkness denied it him. ‘All right. Leave at first light. Lady Christiana will attend mass; you must reach Sir Thomas long before the men reach the rendezvous. Ride ahead – is there one of your men who can lead the others?’

  ‘Aye, I can choose one. Master Guillaume, what’s happening? Is there trouble?’

  The young squire hesitated. How much of his lord’s affairs should he tell the common archer? ‘Tell Sir Thomas I ride north and west with Lady Christiana and the children and a small escort. We seek to cross the Rhone and return to Normandy.’

  It made no sense to Longdon. ‘Normandy? Is there a reason? My Lord Blackstone’ll press me for an explanation.’

  ‘Deliver the information and tell him I’ll ride as slowly as I can.’