Blood of the Innocents

by Michael Jecks

  Tuesday 20 September

  Berenger woke to the sound of clattering. When he opened his eyes fully and stared over the field of the dead, he saw a handcart. Dogbreath and Nick were there with the archer’s cart, collecting all the spare arrows, but also taking any remnants of iron or steel that other men had missed. Sprinkled over the field were other men, similarly engaged.

  He started a fire and mixed himself a small oatcake with a handful of his remaining bag of oats. It was light now, and he weighed the remains of it in his palm, thinking of all the men he had known. He remembered the men from the Crécy campaign: Jack, Geoff and the others, and now this. No more Grandarse, no more of Clip’s irrepressible ‘Ye’ll all get killed!’ and he felt a deep sadness to think that they were gone.

  ‘How bad was the carnage up here, Frip?’

  He looked up to see Ed. The Donkey had hollows at his cheeks, and the dark bruises under his eyes spoke of the lack of sleep he had enjoyed.

  ‘See for yourself. You were uninjured?’

  He touched the back of his head wryly. ‘A pommel caught my head and put me out of the fight. I was lucky not to have worse. Archibald pulled me to safety.’

  ‘I am sorry about Béatrice.’

  ‘It was horrible. I think I don’t want to serve gonnes again. Seeing what it did to her . . .’ He broke off, staring at the field of bodies. ‘I don’t think I could loose one again.’

  Berenger said nothing. After some moments, he held out the bag of oats to Ed. He took it, and slowly mixed a patty, adding water from his bottle. ‘What will you do?’

  ‘I don’t know. I really don’t know,’ Ed said. ‘I mean, I’ve always been in the army. And now we have their King, so there won’t be any more wars. What can I do? Without Béatrice, without the army . . .’

  He looked at Berenger, and in his face there was real fear.

  ‘Frip, what is there for me?’

  Others in the camp were being struck by the same thought.

  Over with his vintaine, Hawkwood eyed his men. They were not the most effective of fighters, but they had done more than many. He had a grudging sense of pride in them.

  ‘What will you bastards do now?’ he asked. Robin had been walking past and stopped to listen.

  ‘Us?’ an older warrior asked. He bared his two teeth in what Hawkwood hoped was intended to be a smile. ‘We’ll drink, eat, and shag as many women as our money will buy!’

  ‘Is that all? What about when your money is gone?’ Hawkwood said.

  ‘That’s far enough off,’ the man said, to general applause.

  ‘Just think, lads,’ Hawkwood said. ‘You’ve won a lot today, but now the whole of France is in a turmoil. The whole country, boys. All the way from Galicia to Brittany is without a king. It seems to me that for a while there will be money for a bold man and a brave bunch of men. The Prince doesn’t need us any more. He’s off back to Guyenne and thence to London to show off his captives, but we could do a lot worse than stay here. Fripper took a town or two and lived like a Lord. Why shouldn’t we do the same?’

  ‘You reckon we could do that?’ another man said. He looked thoughtful.

  ‘I reckon we could do better than him. There’s good lands down south, so I’ve heard. The Pope didn’t go live at Avignon because it was cold, wet and miserable. There are lands down there that a man could take and enjoy for years.’

  ‘With just eighteen men?’ Robin said.

  Hawkwood smiled wolfishly, and cast an eye at Robin. ‘No, master. But with the men of Fripper’s old company, we’d be nearer a hundred, and I’ll bet we could collect more as we went. So, what do you men say?’

  Berenger found Gaillarde and Denisot later in the morning.

  Gaillarde had made some effort to clean her hair and wash her clothing, and now it was still hanging from her in sodden bags, but Berenger could not miss the alteration in the faces of her and Denisot. They looked like newlyweds, or a youth and his first lover. He had no need to guess how they had occupied themselves that morning.

  ‘I hope I see you well, Denisot,’ he said.

  ‘We are very well, Vintener.’

  ‘Do you have any plans?’

  Gaillarde nodded. ‘We have to return to Domps. It was only a tiny town, but it was our home. Our friends would want us to return.’

  ‘There are likely to be all too few living there,’ Berenger said.

  ‘We know that. But if nothing else, we can bury our friends,’ Denisot said. ‘They deserve that.’

  ‘So you will go?’

  ‘Yes, if you give us your permission,’ Denisot said.

  ‘As to that, you owe me no allegiance,’ Berenger said. ‘You joined my vintaine for a period, but I never asked for your oath to me or to the Prince. As far as I am concerned, you are free to leave whenever you wish.’

  He took Denisot’s hand, and the two men embraced a last time before Denisot took his wife’s hand. The two had blankets rolled and tied, and Denisot had a costrel at his waist; his scrip looked as though it was full of bread or meat. Berenger watched as the two made their way down the path to the river, and then out of sight.

  ‘They’ve gone then?’

  It was Peter of Reading. He stood chewing a piece of dried meat, and he cut off a slice for Berenger and held it out to him on his knife’s blade.

  ‘It’s good.’

  Peter gave a grin. ‘And I didn’t steal it! I paid a brother at the abbey in Montaillou for it. I think they have a good recipe for their dried and cured meats.’

  ‘Monks have the best recipes for anything like that,’ Berenger said.

  He felt weary, but now he was realising that he felt more an emptiness inside. His life for the last month or more had been driven to seeking out and killing Will and the murderer of Alazaïs and her children, and now that Will was dead, the focus of his life was taken from him.

  ‘It’s odd, isn’t it? To think that we’ve caught the King of France! The King himself!’

  Berenger nodded. ‘Aye. It means our presence is no longer needed here.’

  ‘There are a number of men here who’ll leave here with full purses and reach their homes with little left,’ Peter said. ‘An English soldier with money is easy prey.’

  ‘It was ever the way,’ Berenger agreed.

  ‘Would you come back to our company?’

  ‘What?’ Berenger burst out, startled. ‘Me? After some of the men tried to kill me?’

  ‘Your speedy defence and killing of them would be enough to prevent a repetition of that,’ Peter said. ‘Besides, you’d have me and the other vinteners working for you. Even Hawkwood. He’s keen to come with us. I thought we could become a great army, a Grand Company. We could have our own gynours, farriers, armourers, cooks and all else needful.’

  Berenger laughed. ‘You think so? No. I am done with war. I will retreat a last time, this time into obscurity. I will join a monastery, if there is one which will have me.’

  ‘The offer remains open.’

  ‘I thank you for that. Tell me, what happened to Arnaud?’

  Peter’s face hardened like boiled leather. ‘He was executed.

  His body still dangles. I won’t cut him down. He went to his death gloating over all the women he killed, saying God will be glad to take him.’

  ‘His god is the Devil.’

  December 1356

  It was a good day when he reached the town, but cold. The track had a bluish tinge with white crystals of hoar frost, and his face was pinched from the chill when he turned and saw the massive building at the other side of the river. Smoke rose from two hundred fires, and he stood resting on his staff for a moment, drinking in the view.

  Berenger’s was not normally a face that a man could easily forget. The livid scar that slashed across, and twisted his mouth into a sardonic grin as though he was laughing at the world, was white in the wintry air. He carried his small pack on one side, and on the other he carried his battered sword.

  The bridge wa
s stone, and he stood staring at it for a moment, before stepping onto it and crossing a river yet again. The sound of the river was musical in his ears, but it could not detract from his quick discomfort, thinking of other rivers, other bridges. He had crossed enough rivers in his life. No more, he thought. No more.

  Built of granite, the gatehouse was large, grey and imposing. A wicker gate was shut, but there was a grille of iron set at a man’s face-height. He tapped on the gate with his staff.

  ‘Yes?’

  ‘I am cold and weary, Porter. May I come and warm myself at your fire for an hour or two?’

  ‘Friend, you look frozen! Please enter.’

  ‘I thank you.’

  He walked in with the feeling that his journeys were at last coming to an end. This would, he hoped, soon be his home. And at last he hoped to find peace, here at Tavistock Abbey, where Sir John de Sully had paid for him to live the remainder of his life.

  Berenger had served. That last battle at Poitiers was noted as a great victory. The King of France, John, was the King of England’s guest, and appeared to have taken to his new life in captivity, until his ransom could be organised, with a good spirit. Sir John said that so long as the man had access to horses, hounds and hawks, he was very content. And meanwhile his son in France continued to make the right noises about supporting his father, while apparently machinating to try to gain ever more authority and power.

  That last fight, so Berenger had heard, had been quite winnable by the French. Yet the Duke of Orléans had taken his second battle away from the fight without permission. He later would say that he thought it was already lost, and some said that a messenger came to order him to leave the field. Berenger remembered how Thomas had spoken of the battle beforehand, as though the Duke’s action was inevitable, and that the Dauphin wanted to leave his father there. It was surely incredible to think that.

  It didn’t matter. The battle was done. The fight was over.

  Berenger Fripper’s wars were over.

  This is a sad note to write, because it is the last in my Vintener trilogy.

  I had the idea for this book while reading George MacDonald Fraser’s excellent Quartered Safe Out Here, in which he tells the story of the Burma campaign at the end of the Second World War under Bill Slim. It was clearly a formative time for the author, but the aspect that glowed from every page was the memory of his comrades. The book was a memorial to his platoon, and I wanted to write a trilogy about English soldiers in medieval times.

  The stories always had a simple outline: first, the Battle of Crécy; second, the siege of Calais; third, Poitiers. But the battle of Poitiers was a difficult one. It was a whole ten years after the period of the first book, it meant the men would have survived (or not) the Plague, and a number of battles. That aspect always appealed to me, because I thought it would give me scope to look at the lives of the men and how they had changed since the capture of Calais.

  I have to admit, when I began planning the book, it didn’t occur to me how tough the lives of certain men would be!

  In the summer of 2014 I was lucky enough to be able to visit the site of the battlefield of Poitiers and the surrounding lands. It was a wonderful experience, and standing and driving about that battlefield helped enormously to let me see and assess how the battle progressed.

  While there, I saw the great stone memorial installed by the French. It is dedicated to the dead of France, Guyenne and – to my surprise – England. It was deeply touching to stand there, where so many men had fought and died, and to see that they were all respected, no matter where they came from.

  It struck me very forcibly that the English would have been unlikely to have installed, say, a memorial at Hastings to the dead of the Norman invasion, which also made mention of the good men of Normandy who gave their lives.

  The battlefield was one highlight; another was our visit to the town of Poitiers.

  We were walking about the town with a rather unhappy small boy who was overheating, when we found ourselves outside a lovely medieval church. Thinking it would be less warm inside, we persuaded him to enter, and while he and my wife sat to cool down, I meandered about the place, admiring the carvings and the art. It really was very delightful. However, at one point I noticed a fellow who was equally fascinated by the artwork. He was staring at the ceiling when I realised it was my friend, neighbour and fellow medievalist Ian Mortimer, the author of the superb Time Traveller’s Guide books. He was visiting Poitiers on one stage of his family holiday, and his appearance that day was pure chance, as was my own!

  We had a wonderful time in France, but life for an author rarely runs smoothly, as the following story will illustrate.

  On our return, I stored all my photos, plans and outlines on my main computer. Because I used to work in the computer industry, I know the advantage of retaining backups. I have always invested in the most efficient backup systems. However, one evening in February I noticed that there was a glitch with some operations on my computer. Being sensible, all my work was daily backed up to a separate disk and all my photos backed up to a remote server too. However, some photos weren’t backed up yet, owing to a problem on the internet service. Still, no matter. Everything was safe on the backup drive. I told my computer to recover from that and thought nothing of it.

  Next morning I thought a lot more about it when I discovered the backup disk had a fault. In trying to recover my system, it had successfully wiped my entire disk. My photos from the day of meeting Ian and his family to the present were all lost. All my photos of the battlefield, the pictures of the memorial, the landscape, the French noticeboards explaining the battle and aftermath – all were lost. And still are.

  That computer was finally recovered, and I wrote the first draft of this story. And yet my life was not yet to be sweet and easy. After setting up the computer as necessary, I wrote solidly for weeks, only to see that the computer’s screen had developed a fault. Pink hieroglyphics scrolled slowly across it, which was interesting. It was caused by a hardware fault that was irreparable. I had to throw that computer away and replace it with a new one. This one.

  So, after losing some seven weeks to computer issues and the inevitable time needed to reset them to the standard I need, I was glad to be able to finish the final edit of this book, content in the knowledge that I left the computer industry for good reasons.

  Michael Jecks is the author of the bestselling Knights Templar series, comprising thirty-two novels starring Baldwin de Furnshill. Blood of the Innocents is the final chapter in the Hundred Years’ War trilogy that started with Fields of Glory, followed by Blood on the Sand. A regular speaker at library and literary events, he is a past Chairman of the Crime Writers’ Association and a Fellow of the Royal Literary Fund at Exeter University. Michael lives with his wife, children and dogs in northern Dartmoor.

  To find out more visit his website: www.michaeljecks.com, follow him on twitter @MichaelJecks, or find him on facebook: www.facebook.com/Michael.Jecks.author

  Also by Michael Jecks

  The Last Templar

  The Merchant’s Partner

  A Moorland Hanging

  The Crediton Killings

  The Abbot’s Gibbet

  The Leper’s Return

  Squire Throwleigh’s Heir

  Belladonna at Belstone

  The Traitor of St Giles

  The Boy-Bishop’s Glovemaker

  The Tournament of Blood

  The Sticklepath Strangler

  The Devil’s Acolyte

  The Mad Monk of Gidleigh

  The Templar’s Penance

  The Outlaws of Ennor

  The Tolls of Death

  The Chapel of Bones

  The Butcher of St Peter’s

  A Friar’s Bloodfeud

  The Death Ship of Dartmouth

  The Malice of Unnatural Death

  Dispensation of Death

  The Templar, the Queen and Her Lover

  The Prophecy of Death
<
br />   The King of Thieves

  No Law in the Land

  The Bishop Must Die

  The Oath

  King’s Gold

  City of Fiends

  Templar’s Acre

  Fields of Glory

  Blood on the Sand

  Act of Vengeance

  First published in Great Britain by Simon & Schuster UK Ltd, 2016

  A CBS COMPANY

  Copyright © Michael Jecks, 2016

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  Trade Paperback ISBN: 978-1-4711-4997-9

  eBook ISBN: 978-1-4711-4999-3

  This book is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places and incidents are either a product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual people living or dead, events or locales is entirely coincidental.

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