by Dan Davis
And smuggling an entire company over in amongst it all.
I claimed to all who questioned me that we were on royal business and presented papers forged by Stephen and Eva as proof. The letters and their forged seals worked and we were soon through the gates heading south into France.
As the French forces were concentrated in the great estates around Paris and the armies were in Flanders to the east, we instead went west into Normandy.
My goal initially was to head for Brittany where I and many of my men knew the land, the towns and the people. Also, English allies held almost the entire coastal area and so there were many places we could be welcomed. And it was a place that we could always fall back to, should we need to do so.
Indeed, one of the King’s Lieutenants in Brittany was Sir Thomas Dagworth, a man who we had fought with and who I hoped could be relied upon to provide me shelter and support. Of course, should he decide otherwise then I would most likely be driven from the duchy altogether. I hoped that would not be the case. In my favour was the fact that Dagworth had only about five hundred men in total and so my force of veterans would surely be most welcome, even if I insisted that I would remain independent of his command.
And I would most certainly insist so.
We made excellent time travelling across country and almost all local forces who came out to us simply stood and watched us go by. We set no fires and raided no homes. Well, few enough. I assured my men that there would be plenty of time for that. We made it in under three weeks and were in a very presentable condition when we came to Dagworth’s castle.
Dagworth was originally from a village called Bradwell in the northern part of the county of Essex in England, which was not far from my manors in Suffolk and where many of the men in my company were from. I hoped the fact that they hailed from the same region of England would encourage him to welcome us as comrades.
Thankfully, he was surprised but pleased that we had joined him. He had fewer than three hundred men at arms and two hundred archers which was hardly enough to control the surrounding area, let alone impose his will on the entire Duchy of Brittany, which was larger than the entire country of Wales and had a population of hundreds of thousands.
Dagworth welcomed me to his table, along with Walt, and fed us very well indeed. The rest of my men crowded amongst the garrison down in the hall and grew increasingly raucous as the beer flowed.
“You are doing well, I see,” I said after the fourth course of meats and sitting back to drink my wine.
Some of his men grinned and said that was very true but Dagworth grimaced.
“I do as well as I can. The damned routiers take and take from the country so that many of the common folk suffer even more from the soldiers than they did from the pestilence.”
“Surely not. How bad has it become?”
Dagworth pressed his lips together, glancing at his men. Some shrugged, others grinned, and Dagworth nodded.
“Most of the inland castles were taken by the various captains that we have out of necessity employed. Many of them, unfortunately, are led by and made up of German, Dutch and Flemish mercenaries. I do not mind admitting to you, Richard, that I have very little control over them. Even more so than when you were here last, they increasingly act like little kings, lording it over the common folk of the towns they occupy and the lands about them. They are all ransoming the districts that they control. In return for payments to the mercenary captains, the inhabitants are not too badly assaulted by the companies occupying their area and, if they are lucky, they are defended from the other captains in neighbouring districts and from the wandering bands that go from place to place.”
“It at least sounds to be more formalised than when I was last here. Before Crecy.”
Dagworth sighed. “Indeed. They are dug in like ticks. Each garrison captain has marked out his own ransomed district and informs those in surrounding districts. Where they fall into disagreement about the borders, it is the inhabitants that suffer but it has settled somewhat into stability.”
Walt grunted. “Sounds like a good deal to me, sir. Our king ain’t paying for the garrisons but we have loyal men keeping the castles for us all the same.”
Dagworth nodded. “Except they are no longer kept for us so much as kept out of the hands of the French. And should King Philip or one of the Dukes decide to roust them out one by one, what could they do to resist? And as I do not pay them, I have no control over them. And the common folk suffer. Dear God, how they suffer. I wonder if there will be any remaining to rule over once the war is won.”
Once the war is won.
The words, so often spoken, hung heavy over us all like a curse. When the captains and lords spoke them, it was with hope and expectation that Edward would someday be the King of France and her dominions and his loyal men would all be great lords, living in peace and abundance. When the common soldiers spoke the same words, it was said flippantly as if they knew that the good times of plunder and murder would never end.
Once the war is won, when Hell freezes over.
“With your permission, Sir Thomas, I should like to take a tour of these towns. Inspect their defences. Speak to the commanders of the companies.”
Dagworth sat back, chewing on the roast leg of a heron. “If it were anyone else, Richard, I would laugh in his face. As it is you, I believe you might just be able to do it. But tell me, sir, why would you do this for me? Anyone of these rogues could turn on you.”
“I seek a man. A particular knight who I saw at Crecy. A knight with a plain black banner, fighting for the French. No one knows who he is, where he is from or where he has gone, but I mean to find him and put an end to him.”
“All this?” Dagworth said, gesturing out of the window at my company. “All this effort. This expense. For one man?”
“A knight, his squires and any who associate with him, yes indeed, sir. It is a matter of honour.”
He nodded, slowly. “I will write you a letter, though I doubt it will open as many doors as you might hope.”
I shrugged. “Any door I need open I shall break into pieces.”
***
“He complains about the routiers,” Walt said as we rode west, further into Brittany, “and yet he’s robbing his own lands three ways from Sunday and all, ain’t he?”
I had to agree with Walt that the people of Dagworth’s lands seemed broken and destitute. Bridges were not being maintained and roads were washed out all over. The thatch on houses was rotten and sagging, as if they lacked the will or the wealth to repair their own homes. Fields were fallow and meadows grew wild with no livestock to eat it.
“The English,” Thomas pronounced grandly, “are excellent at making themselves rich from others’ misfortune.”
Rob laughed at him. “It’s us that’s making the misfortune, too, Tom.”
That brought a cheer from the others and Thomas and Hugh scowled at them. Neither was a Breton and yet they must have sympathised with the people of the duchy even more than I did.
Our destination was the fortress of Becherel in the northwest of the duchy, a castle under the command of Hugh Calveley and his band of routiers.
His men refused me entry.
“I come under the authority of Sir Thomas Dagworth,” I called up to the wall. At my side was Walt, Thomas, Hugh and Rob. The rest of the company held far back but within sight so that the men in the castle would know I was not attempting a ruse but also that I was not to be trifled with.
A few moments later came the shouted reply, along with a round of mocking laughter. “You can shove Dagworth’s authority up your arse.”
“When I get inside your walls,” I said, “I am going to strike that man so hard he shall wake up in the infirmary pissing blood. Tell your master that Richard of Hawkedon is here.”
The laughter faded into nothing and half an hour later the great doors were opened and Sir Hugh Calveley waved me in himself.
“Richard!” he cried. “What a delightful
surprise.”
“Sir Hugh,” I replied. “Bring me that man.”
His face coloured. “What man would that be?”
“You know what man.”
“It was a jest, Richard. They did not know who you were. Thought you were one of Knolles’ men come to bother us again.”
“Bring me the man.”
“Richard, I cannot—”
“A commoner cannot treat a knight with such disrespect and avoid punishment, can he, Hugh?”
“Why go to such trouble over a bloody archer?”
“Trouble? There will only be trouble if you deny me.”
He nodded to one of his men who went away into the base of the tower and a few moments later a big man with a ratty face came stumbling out. He had the massive shoulders of an archer and was a veteran of perhaps forty-five.
“What do you say to Sir Richard, Esmond?”
Esmond looked down. “Beg your pardon, my lord.”
I walked slowly toward him and he began edging away until the man-at-arms behind shoved him on the back. “Are you ready to receive a blow that will rupture your bowels?” I placed my hand on his shoulder and lowered my head. “Are you, man?”
He shook and nodded.
With a stomp of my foot, I thrust my fist toward his belly, shouting in his face. I stopped the blow before it connected but he fell back, crying out and tripping over his feet. He fell into a heap.
The courtyard erupted into laughter and Esmond was helped up, dusted off and led away while the others mocked him.
“Come on,” Sir Hugh said, “let’s get you fed and find out what the bloody Hell you are doing in my lands.”
His table was not so well stocked as Dagworth’s but he had an astonishing amount of fish, from the river and from the sea, as well as wading birds and fowl.
“All the fisherman in Dinard died,” Sir Hugh said. “But more fisherman came.” He pointed his dagger at me and waved the point around. “The lords all around complain that their peasants have died from the pestilence or say that we murdered them or starved them. But, mark me, Richard, mark me. There are always more peasants.” He opened his arms. “And they come. They come from wherever the bloody Hell they come from. Like flies on a cow turd.”
“Are you calling your lands a cow turd, Hugh?” I asked.
He scowled. “Why have you come, Richard? What do you mean to do with those men you have out there? You will never take this castle, you know that, surely? We outnumber you ten to one.”
“More like three to one, Hugh, and those odds would not be enough to save you if that was my intention.”
He scoffed but did not argue. “Why, then?”
“I seek a man. A knight who fought by Philip at Crecy. A knight with an all black banner.”
Hugh shook his head. “And this knight is here?”
“He may be. What do you know of him?”
“Nothing. No knight I know of has a black banner. Who would have a black blazon, sir?”
“The heralds did not know him. None knows him. And yet he exists. He was there. Someone in France must know him.”
“Then why not seek him in France?”
“Someone is helping him. Keeping him hidden. Or else he is a known knight who fought incognito to protect his identity. Who would do such a thing? What if it was a man who should have been fighting for England. Perhaps he was a Fleming? Or a Breton? Perhaps, God forbid, an Englishman.”
Sir Hugh scowled. “I was not at Crecy.”
I leaned forward. “Precisely, Hugh. Precisely.”
His jaw dropped. Then he laughed, wiping a hand across his brow. “Come now, sir. Come. You cannot suspect I would fight against the King? Why would I do such a thing?”
I pursed my lips. “Who knows how the mind of a traitor works? But no, of course it could not be you, Calveley. You are as loyal as a…” I trailed off, leaving the unspoken word dog to fill the gap. “As loyal as any dutiful knight in the kingdom. All I ask is that you keep an eye out for word of the black banner. I will pay handsomely for any true word that leads me to him.”
“Handsomely?” he said, looking me up and down. “Is that so?”
I sighed and took out a purse which I emptied into one hand. A cascade of sapphires, rubies and emeralds filled my palm. Hugh’s eyes grew.
“While you and the other captains have been gathering men and castles these last few years, I have been gathering gems, gold and silver.”
It was somewhat true but most of the gems I had taken from the grave of a Mongol lord a hundred years earlier on the other side of the world.
“I shall send word,” Hugh said, licking his lips and nodding. “All my men will ask wherever we go.”
I poured the gems carefully back into the purse. “I want only true word, now. There shall be no payment for false words and threads that lead to nothing.”
“If he is here, we shall have him for you.”
With one English captain in my pocket, I went looking for more.
***
We crossed back and forth across Brittany, sometimes raiding the lands of those routiers who denied us entry or tried to chase us off.
My men were good and I led them well.
Still, some men fell to wounds or sickness. Fair Simon took a scratch on the forearm in a scrap with some of Robert Knolles’ men at a place called Gravelle down near the Loire. When he fell, he tumbled head first into a patch of boggy ground which was never good but the lads cleaned him up, cleaned and dressed the wound and we went on our way. He tried to hide it for a day but his sweating gave him away and when they pulled his arm from beneath his coat the stench was overwhelming.
“Am I going to die, lord?” he asked me.
“Yes. Say your prayers, lad. We will all be here with you when you go.”
“Oh,” he said, looking down. “That’s good, then.”
We lost Ralf Thorns in an ambush near Vannes when I stupidly split my forces in an attempt to surround an enemy who was not there. We all make mistakes but it was old Ralf who paid the price.
Adam Lamarsh came down with the flux and he emptied himself inside out between dawn and dusk one day on the banks of the Vilaine.
One by one, we lost archers and men-at-arms. One of the servants fled, looking to make for the coast. I ordered them to bring him back so I could talk some sense into the man but they brought him back dead. They protested that it was an accident and I accepted them at their word but I knew they had punished his disloyalty with death.
As the leaves turned to gold and yellow and brown in that first year, we tallied up nine dead.
Thomas was worried. “We are not yet beyond Brittany and yet we have lost so many. We must take on more men.”
“Plenty of routiers about, sir,” Walt said. “God knows, they would follow you.”
“Men I do not know. Do not trust. I will take none on. We yet have enough to see off any trouble that comes our way.”
“What about, you know, sir,” Walt said, lowering his voice. “Giving some of the lads the old Gift, then?”
I scoffed. “Whenever the thought crosses my mind, I take one look at you and it puts the matter to rest.”
He pursed his lips and nodded slowly. “Fair enough, sir. Fair enough.”
In the second year, we lost thirteen more. Never a good number and it meant we were down from over fifty men to just thirty. With so few, there was less we could attempt and so less we could achieve.
“Would you not consider it now, sir?” Hugh asked me after we buried another archer beneath an old oak in northern Poitou. He lowered his voice as the other men trudged away from the grave. “Giving the common men the Gift?”
It was raining lightly. Our men were weary and wounded and needed somewhere to rest through the winter. We had to take a fortress and use that to wait out the bad weather but my men were hardly capable of defending themselves, let alone launching a ferocious attack on a walled town or tower.
“I thought you agreed with Thoma
s?”
Hugh nodded. “We should bring some men from the other companies into ours, yes. You say you would not trust them but we would watch each new man like a hawk. But also, sir, I think it would be a great boon to us if you would consider turning a few more men-at-arms, at least. There are so few left.”
“Most of our archers fight as well with a sword or mace as any man-at-arms,” I said. But my company suddenly appeared small and the men round-shouldered and tired. They could not keep up with the immortals. Still, they were savages at heart and once they were given the gift, I suspected I would have to fight to control them and some I would have to kill anyway.
“Find me a knight who has no family or future and I will consider him. Not these ruffians, Hugh.”
My resolve lasted as long as it took for most of my remaining men to be slaughtered.
19. Immortal Company
We assaulted a small fortified town under the command of a tough old French knight named Charles of Coussey who had three times as many men as I did and all of them veterans.
But I wanted Charles. I needed to take him. Rumours had circulated for months that he was murdering local girls but that was far from an uncommon occurrence for routiers. Only when word came from Sir Hugh Calveley that this Charles of Coussey was stealing young women from villages, marrying them and then murdering them before taking another, was I struck by the similarities to the vile Priskos.
“It could be him,” I said to Thomas. “The black banner knight himself.”
“Or one of his men,” Thomas replied.
“We must take him.”
It was late October in 1351 and I intended to take the town and fortress at Tiffauges, discover whether Sir Charles was the man we sought and then, either way, use the town for the winter.
I had but thirty men remaining and just twenty-four of them were fighters. Tiffauges was a small town but the fortress was far beyond our strength if we attempted any sort of frontal assault. The archers favoured drawing the enemy out and ambushing them but they had seventy men and would not send all out at once, leaving us with the rest within the walls being on high alert.
