by C. B. Hanley
The chess game was over. Edwin had lost, but it had been a closefought battle. He flattered himself that he had perhaps the sharper instincts, but Sir Hugh had been playing the game since long before Edwin was born and could call on his reserves of experience.
The knight surveyed the final position of the pieces in the disappearing light. ‘Not bad. But you were too cautious with your pawns.’
Edwin scowled at the board. ‘How so?’
‘In trying to keep them all you lost your knight and your bishop, which disadvantaged you. Keep your discipline: if you’re faced with the choice of losing a pawn or a higher piece, always sacrifice the pawn.’
‘I’ll try, Sir Hugh.’ Edwin replaced the pieces in their bag and packed them and the board back in the box where he’d found them, replaying the game and its moves in his mind.
‘Good lad. Off you go and get some sleep now, for we’ll be off again in the morning and we should reach the rest of the host by nightfall tomorrow.’
Edwin left the knight to settle himself on the floor of his tent and went back to the circle around the fire. Alf was still up, working at his oven, but most of the others were already asleep or at least wrapped up and dozing off. Edwin found himself a space where he could see the comforting glow of the fire, and lay down. Sleep did not come immediately, but he’d known that would happen. At least he wasn’t walking, so he could tell himself to enjoy the rest. And it wasn’t raining: it had been dry all the way from Conisbrough. Camp life would no doubt be considerably less pleasant in the pouring rain.
As he watched Alf limping around, putting loaves in his oven and sealing up the door, he recalled what the cook had said about men getting sick easily on campaign. They did, he’d heard that from other sources, but the incident with the earl just seemed too precise, too targeted, to be an accident. Someone had gone near the food while it was being prepared and had put something noxious in it. And who would best know what was poisonous and what wasn’t? A cook.
But Alf couldn’t have been anywhere near the earl’s meal: he’d been here, cooking for the rest of them. And there was something … Edwin was getting dozy but he forced himself to think. Oh yes, his leg. Edwin silently cursed himself for not having looked at the ground near to Humphrey’s cooking area. The earth was summer-hard but it was well trodden around that part of the camp, and with various liquids being carried and spilled, some imprints would have been visible. And Alf, of course, would leave distinctive imprints. But the whole thing was impossible: if he had been lurking around the earl’s section of the camp, someone would have remembered seeing a stranger with only one leg and would have mentioned it. But anyway, he must ask Humphrey about it when he got the chance. Poor Humphrey. He’d looked bereft when Sir Hugh had publicly rebuffed him in the immediate aftermath of Alan’s death. But there wasn’t really anything Edwin could do about that, so he should push it away from his other list of worries.
He wondered what Alys was doing right now. Sleeping, of course: it was late. But in the morning she would get up and be about some work around the cottage. She would hum to herself and smile. She would think of him. And she would be there when he got back, so that was a thought worth holding on to through all of this.
Edwin’s eyes were starting to close when he glimpsed more movement near the oven. Little Dickon was still up, sleepily fetching more brushwood from the pile so his crippled father didn’t have to do it. It was a late night for a child, but he’d get to sleep in the cart in the morning, Edwin supposed.
Now the boy was looking round at the sleeping figures. Edwin didn’t move: he was in a comfortable state of drowsiness and didn’t want to be identified as awake and asked to do anything. Dickon seemed satisfied that he and Alf were the only ones stirring; he leaned over his father, who was sitting with his back against a cart-wheel and half-dozing in front of the oven, and whispered something in his ear. Alf nodded, looked around, and pointed off somewhere. He asked a question that Edwin didn’t catch, and Dickon shook his head. A whispered ‘Stay there, I’ll be all right on my own and I won’t be long’ floated over to Edwin on the night air, and the boy was gone.
Where was he off to, at this time of night? Maybe the latrine pits, Edwin thought, and he paid it no more heed as he fell asleep.
Chapter Seven
It was late the following afternoon when they neared their destination, the town of Sandwich. Edwin thought that their host would be far too large to stay inside it, and he was right; as they crested a rise he could see a huge and well-ordered camp laid out, the town further off in the background. He supposed he should be awed at such a demonstration of power, but all he could think about was sitting down for a while. His feet hurt. They had trudged around the outside of the city of Canterbury that morning but, dulled as his senses were, he had barely looked up to see the walls or the top of the great cathedral within them. In the normal course of things Edwin did, he supposed, spend more of his time sitting down than most men, but he was still used to being on his feet for much of the day and he was surprised at how tiring, how energy-sapping, it was to walk at a constant but not particularly rapid pace.
Someone rode out to talk to those at the head of the column, and they were directed to a space at the far side of the camp, squeezed in at the edge of a field just inside a ditch and hedgerow. Edwin had to follow the rest of Sir Hugh’s men, but he was disconcerted to notice that the earl was being pointed in a different direction, further towards the centre. Indeed, if his eyes didn’t deceive him then that was the regent himself, accompanied by his nephew John Marshal, greeting the earl and Salisbury and Arundel. He would be in exalted company now, and Edwin would be nowhere near. How would he find them to keep an eye on what was going on? Would the risk to the earl lessen with so many people around, or would he be in even greater danger? Edwin could only hope for the former while fearing the latter.
He had no time to follow up, for he was soon embroiled in the setting up of their part of the camp. He joined the other men in erecting Sir Hugh’s tent, and then unobtrusively started unpacking and arranging things inside the way he thought Alan might have done. By the time that was finished he was dragged off for more shooting practice; there were many archers in the host so a proper target area had been set up just outside the camp.
Edwin was not keen on having to demonstrate his skills – or rather, his lack thereof – in front of strangers from the rest of the army, so he stood to one side pretending to supervise Peter, who had tagged along, while he watched. There were some very talented marksmen in the host, and soon an informal competition had sprung up. He was pleased to see Sir Hugh’s and Sir Roger’s men making a good showing, and he cheered under his breath when John’s arrow smacked into the centre of a target so distant Edwin could hardly see it, beating the only two men left in the round with him, one of the Earl of Salisbury’s men and an archer Edwin didn’t recognise from another retinue. It was all good-natured (Edwin involuntarily looked around to check that the squire Philip was not in attendance as he thought this to himself), as they would all be on the same side in any forthcoming combat. Once the shooting had stopped and the cry of ‘fast’ went up, Peter hared off to fetch John’s arrow for him, returning it with the look of adoration he had previously reserved only for Sir Roger. John ruffled his hair and sent him off to tell Alf they were on their way back and hungry.
As they made their way back through the thicket of tents and carts, Edwin craned his neck to see if he could spot the earl’s pavilion anywhere. But there were a number of similar large and colourful tents around, and he didn’t see anyone he knew; he could hardly start blundering into the private and restricted camps of earls and nobles he didn’t know, in a host full of armed and possibly suspicious men, so he followed the others back to their own area.
The meal was ready and waiting for them. Alf had once more managed to produce a surprisingly tasty dish with the limited ingredients and facilities available to him; a clue as to how he managed this was given when Edw
in saw him call to Dickon and then send him off with instructions to glean the hedgerow for fresh herbs. Dickon was playing with Peter – Edwin couldn’t help noticing that Peter now had a matching carved wooden knight, though John had said nothing – but he listened to some words in his ear and then trotted off obediently in the direction Alf indicated. Peter made to follow him but Alf waved him back. ‘Let him get on with it by himself. He knows what to look for, and I’ll wager you don’t.’ Peter sat down again and was soon engrossed in heroic imaginary action with his new possession.
Edwin wiped up the last of his pottage and then sat fidgeting. He was impatient to get on with two things: he wanted to go and find out where the earl was situated and what was going on there, and he wanted some peace to think in an orderly manner through everything that had happened and the possible implications. But there was little chance of either. The camp was huge and he didn’t know his way around it; it would be the height of folly to start wandering around now it was getting dark. And quiet was certainly not available: hundreds of men were seemingly trying to forget their nervousness at the thought of impending battle by being as raucous as possible, and shouts and laughter floated across the evening air.
Edwin did have one further option, and a pleasant one it was too. He reached into the purse at his belt and drew out his letters; he put back the one from Sir Geoffrey and opened Alys’s. Even with the poor light from the camp fire he would be able to make out the words ‘most worshipful husband’ and ‘beloved wife’, and he could stare at them as long as he liked.
But even in this he was to be thwarted, for Sir Hugh was calling him over. Grumbling under his breath, Edwin folded the letter with care and replaced it, but he brightened when he saw that Sir Hugh was lighting a lantern next to his chess board.
There was nothing else for it. Edwin gave up trying to think of other things and concentrated ferociously on the game. The noise around him receded; the world narrowed to the squares in front of him. This time he used his pawns more strategically to protect his higher pieces, and he soon had an increasingly disgruntled Sir Hugh backed into a corner. Belatedly realising that he might not want to antagonise his only benefactor, Edwin casually but deliberately slipped up with his next move, offering Sir Hugh an escape route if he could spot it.
He did, and Edwin had just started considering how he could lose gracefully but convincingly when Sir Hugh banged his hand down hard on the board, scattering the pieces and making Edwin jump. He waved an angry finger. ‘Don’t patronise me like that, boy. A man knows when he’s got to fight for his life, and you’re demeaning us both by making foolish moves.’
‘Sir Hugh, I —’ But there was no point denying it. ‘I apologise. I won’t do it again.’
The knight grunted. ‘Good. Now, I can’t remember where all the pieces were, so I resign. Be good enough to put them away for me.’
Edwin could have told him exactly where each piece had been standing on the board, but he decided to hold his tongue as he picked up the scattered knights and bishops, counting them back into their bag.
By the time he’d finished, Sir Hugh had regained his temper. ‘Good man. And I suppose I have you to thank for making it a bit more organised in here.’
Edwin nodded and mumbled something non-committal about Alan, not wanting to upset the knight again.
He risked a direct question. ‘Will you get a new squire?’
‘I expect so. As you have seen, I can’t seem to manage without one. I’m a bit old to be training a boy at my time of life, but I’ll be able to find someone grown once this is over.’
‘But where from? I mean, anyone who is going to be a squire will already be one, won’t he? So you’ll have to get a little boy like Hugh.’
Sir Hugh looked at him as though he’d just said something idiotic, and Edwin felt himself growing hot without really knowing why.
Sir Hugh spoke slowly enough to make Edwin wince. ‘Think about it. We’re at war. We will fight, and men will die. By the time we’re done, there’s going to be more than one squire in this camp looking for a new master.’
Chastened, Edwin bowed and withdrew. Men will die. He looked around him. All the others, except Alf and Dickon, who were hard at work, were sprawled in various attitudes around the place and snoring at different pitches. Who among them would survive? And who would leave desperate, weeping widows behind them?
He sat, wrapping a blanket around his shoulders. The camp fire had died down to embers, but Edwin thought he might just still be able to make out a few words, given that he knew what they said already, so he took out Alys’s letter once more and smoothed it against his knee.
Edwin woke early the next morning; he still wasn’t used to sleeping outside so the dawn light affected him more than the others, he supposed. He made his way to the camp’s latrine pits to relieve himself; Lord, but they stank already – what would they be like in another few days, in the summer heat? He was half tempted to find somewhere else, but if everyone did that then disease would soon spread, so he tried not to breathe in too much of the miasma and hurried back as soon as he could while the next man in the queue took his place.
Alf and Dickon were fast asleep in the back of their covered wagon, but the rest of the men were stirring, breaking their fast on bread and pies, so Edwin joined them.
‘No marching to do today – you’ll be glad, won’t you?’ John looked up at the fresh morning sky. ‘Nice day, though. Shame to waste it.’
‘What do you mean? More shooting practice?’
John laughed. ‘Ah, maybe later. Reckon we can find some different entertainment first though, eh lads?’
The others guffawed at Edwin’s lack of comprehension.
Nigel leaned in. ‘There’s a town there. A whole town full of women, who might be interested in a little business transaction with some lonely soldiers.’
Edwin belatedly grasped the gist of the conversation. ‘But I’m a married man!’
The hilarity caused by this statement was not the reaction he had expected.
‘What I mean is, I haven’t been married very long, and —’
He was drowned out by calls along the lines of needing plenty of practice then, and he could barely make himself heard. ‘But what about Sir Hugh? He won’t want us all to go off to the town, surely?’
John’s face became more serious. ‘He’s not here. Got called to see your lord earl and they’ll be busy at a council meeting all morning.’
Edwin felt a pang. He should be there. He should be listening to the plans, using the council time to observe the participants and to work out who was allied to the earl – and who wasn’t. Was there any possible way he could smuggle himself in?
John misread his expression. ‘You’re right, though – work to do first. Lads, tidy up here while I go and check the bows and strings. Don’t want to get shown up by Salisbury’s lot if we’re needed later.’ He walked off in the direction of the camp’s main wagon and baggage area, throwing a comment back over his shoulder as he went. ‘Besides, let’s give the ladies another hour to get themselves ready, eh?’
Edwin busied himself collecting and stacking dishes so they would be ready for Alf and Dickon when they woke up. He checked briefly in Sir Hugh’s empty tent but all looked in order. Sir Roger’s tent was also deserted, so presumably he had also been summoned by the earl and had taken Peter with him. If Edwin couldn’t get near the council – and it was bound to be guarded precisely to stop unwanted visitors – then maybe he could ask Sir Roger about it later.
The other men were piling up blankets and bags, chatting among themselves.
Nigel turned to Edwin. ‘Don’t you worry about getting in trouble with Sir Hugh. He won’t mind us amusing ourselves as long as we cause no trouble.’
One of the others stopped what he was doing. ‘Aye, well, just remember what he does do if you cause trouble.’
Edwin threw him an enquiring look.
‘In France, three years ago, he hanged a man for
stealing from a church when we’d all been told to keep our hands to ourselves.’
This was a side to Sir Hugh that Edwin hadn’t encountered, and he was taken aback. ‘One of his own men?’
Nigel interrupted, a shadow across his face. ‘Yes. But we were supposed to be fighting for the Church, see? Or something like that. Some deal the old king made with the pope. So pinching bread and the odd sheep was one thing, but stealing a plate from a church, – that was another. He had to make an example. Discipline, he said.’
‘And you won’t be doing anything like that today?’ Edwin still had no intention of joining them, but he was starting to get worried.
‘No, we’ll be fine. Find a tavern, find some girls, back by noon and nobody will know we’ve been gone. Now shut up about it.’
As they completed their tasks and started to make noise about moving off as soon as John returned, Edwin slipped away. He didn’t know quite where he was going, but he worked on the basis that the council was likely to be in the biggest tent, and the biggest tent was likely to be near the centre of the camp.
His theory was confirmed when he ran into a ring of armed men who stopped him going any further. He tried to argue, but it was useless: his looks, his clothes and his voice all stood against him. Claiming directly that he was in the earl’s household would run the risk of someone from the retinue being summoned and telling them about his expulsion. Claiming to be Sir Hugh’s advisor would probably land him in more trouble, and it would at the very least be a breach of the knight’s hospitality.
Edwin was turning away in disappointment when he saw a face he recognised among those inside the guarded area. He pointed and addressed one of the sergeants. ‘That’s John Marshal, the lord regent’s nephew. He’ll vouch for me.’
The man laughed. ‘Vouch for you? You think I’m going to ask one of them great lords to come here and talk to someone like you? Get away now.’
