Before leaving Salisbury William had made enquiries as to the state of affairs at Hamstead Marshal and learned that both Nicholas de Sarum and Angharad ap Gwyn were dead. Some sort of fit had carried off Nicholas, but poor Angharad had died of a fever, contracted no-one seemed to know how. It had taken her a week to die and she had been heard to mutter words in her native tongue that some said spoke of a man with three crowns born on his sword. Though affected by this news, piously crossing himself and remembering both in his formal prayers at Mass, the chief consequence of the deaths was that he made no attempt to visit either his mother or his elder brother, for whom he felt no attachment whatsoever.
He would have disappointed Nicholas, for he was not learned, could neither read nor write competently, but he would have delighted Angharad, for besides possessing a magnificent physique, being both immensely tough and hardy, he was by now a tall and handsome young man whose brown hair, though cropped, framed a strongly featured yet kindly face, whose brown eyes possesses a seductive power which worked on both men and women. Besides his prowess, for which he was increasingly well-known, he made up for his lack of intellectual accomplishments with a sharp wit derived from his association with King Stephen, and an easy manner among men of all ranks.
At this time he dropped the patronymic form of his name, assuming in his elder brother’s lifetime, his father’s title: henceforth he called himself simply William Marshal, though others still called him FitzMarshal.
Thus it was that on an afternoon in late March, 1168, William Marshal found himself in Poitou, a county of the duchy of Aquitaine and riding up alongside the great lady in whose service he, along with his uncle, now found himself.
‘Your servant, Your Grace,’ he said as she turned her coifed head towards him and he lowered his head in deep respect of her exalted rank.
‘Ah, FitzMarshal, you would do me honour for I would hear you sing.’
William looked at her in astonishment. She had never spoken to him before and the directness of her regard stripped him of his usually ready tongue. Her upright carriage on her magnificent white palfrey with its harness of red and gold leather was deeply impressive, as was her face with its handsome features, the straight nose, the flare of her nostrils above her well-formed mouth and the imperious regard of her grey eyes. Despite her seniority in years over her husband, William realised how she had commanded the young and wilful Henry’s heart, for all that the King was an inveterate womaniser.
The Queen’s love of song and poesy was well-known and while William had felt occasionally moved by an air or a ballade, he enjoyed no pretensions at either art.
‘Madam, I…I cannot sing… Not as you are wont to hear with any liking or fondness…’ he responded, confused and, at heart, troubled. He did not consider himself a courtier and was in the Queen’s household as a knight, not a troubadour.
‘But I have heard you, sir.’
‘Madam..?’
‘You were grooming your palfrey below my window in Argentan. If you can sing to your horse, you can sing to your Queen.’
Utterly discomfited, William cast a desperate look about him. Earl Patrick rode close-by, caught his eye and simultaneously both grinned and nodded his command to obey the Queen without delay.
‘Come sir, I have seen you in tourney and remarked upon your prowess. It is inconceivable such an accomplished gentleman cannot sing.’
In a kind of suspended agony William swallowed and stared ahead. The green and rolling Poitevin countryside was marred by the wreckage of the castle of Lusignan on its hill away to their right. Almost destroyed by King Henry a matter of months earlier it stuck up like a ragged and broken fang. In those few moments thoughts tumbled unbidden into his baffled mind. Sing? What could he sing? He could think in that awful moment of no song whatsoever. What had he sung to his horse that had so beguiled Queen Eleanor that she asked for him by name?
The Queen appeared both impatient and amused at his callow faltering. ‘A courtly modesty behoves one, FitzMarshal,’ Eleanor remarked sharply, ‘but…’ She left the implication hanging as she leaned forward to pat the neck of her mount.
William swallowed hard and stared at the road ahead where it dipped into woodland only to emerge on the far side, curving towards Lusignan itself, whither the cavalcade was bound. His distraction irritated the Queen to a growing and contemptuous anger. The man was a fool.
‘FitzMarshal,’ the Queen said, her tone peremptory, intimidating. ‘I would have you sing, sir!’
‘Madam…’ he began again, desperately temporising and acutely embarrassed. Then suddenly everything changed. There was something about the wood ahead that reminded William of poor lame Gerard and he felt a visceral twisting in his guts. Although the country had been subdued by King Henry, it remained a recent and imperfect victory and they were in Lusignan country, a fiefdom notorious for the disloyalty, disobedience and independence of its barons who were now dispossessed and desperate men. William was privately critical of his uncle in that Earl Patrick had not sent out an advanced guard and, beyond a brace of out-riders, had let Her Grace head the column. Now his worst fears were confirmed for he already saw what he had feared in that prescient moment: the first movement of men and horses. ‘Madam! my Lord!’ he exclaimed sharply, pointing, ‘we are ambushed!’
He already had their attention but now he diverted it to their front where, from the woods, a column of mounted and armed men emerged at the gallop.
The Queen was first to recognise the device flying from their pennons, reining-in her horse. ‘Lusignans!’ she cried, ‘Treachery!’
‘Christ’s blood!’ blasphemed Earl Patrick looking back along the column from whence he hoped for help from the knights riding in casual conversation. He addressed the Queen. ‘Madam to the castle! William, call up the escort! Squire, hither, my hauberk!’
William wheeled aside as the Queen dug her heel into her palfrey and, with her ladies and close householders spurred away towards the ruined keep. With a great shout and a wave of his arm, William summoned up the knights and handful of men-at-arms they had taken out on a day’s pleasuring. Then William hauled his horse’s head back round to confront the rapidly approaching enemy. Though wearing sword and dagger, none of the party was armed properly for combat and as Earl Patrick called for his leather hauberk, William took the initiative.
‘Cover the Queen my Lord! I’ll hold off these bastards!’ he cried to his uncle and the minute he had been joined by five or six of the knights in whose company he had, but ten minutes earlier, been chatting, he led them off directly towards the Lusignans.
Behind him the Earl, still bereft of his hauberk, gathered up a few more and made after the Queen and her mounted courtiers, leaving the remainder of the escort to split themselves between his own close escort of Queen Eleanor or pound after William FitzMarshal.
Seeing the column divide with the conspicuous figure of their quarry on her white horse at the head of one party, the Lusignans swung to their left. The Queen was their objective, to be captured and ransomed. Veering off the rough road to the right to hit the Lusignans in their flank, William led his small detachment to the attack.
He felt a terrible elevation of spirit. The nervous reaction consequent upon discerning the ambush combined with the pure sensation of relief of not having to sing, galvanised him. This somehow lent wings to his horse and an impetuosity to his charge. Alone, ahead of his fellows, he careered downhill into the enemy. Within a few seconds of crashing into them he had bowled one unsuspecting destrier over and tumbled its rider onto the ground before rapidly unhorsing four or five others, his sword slashing left and right. A great cry went up as those behind him rode up to his support. Unbeknownst to him he had already cut off Guy de Lusignan and the fury of William’s attack entirely disrupted the clumsy ambush.
Thus it was now the turn of the Lusignans to divide their forces as one group wheeled about to contain William’s attack on their rear and defend their liege-lord from capture while
the rest, under Geoffrey de Lusignan, rode pell-mell after Earl Patrick and the Queen. The Earl, his hauberk still across his saddle-bow had yet to catch-up with the Queen who, a superb horse-woman, rode like the wind itself.
Seeing his charge well ahead of the pursuit Earl Patrick reined in, and was in the act of struggling into his hauberk with the assistance of his squire when the Lusignans over-took him. One knight, slashing at his attentive squire so that he fell, half severed, from his horse; another, ran his lance into the Earl’s back so that he died upon the instant, emitting a great roar.
‘By the bones of Saint Denis, the Queen escapes!’ someone shouted.
‘Look to my brother! And take those hawks!’ commanded Geoffrey as he spurred after the Queen, leaving his retinue in some confusion as to whom to follow. Most turned and joined the mêlée some hundred yards away where it whirled about Guy de Lusignan, William and their respective followings. Others rode off in search of easier prey to where, in a bewildered huddle, the Queen’s attendants who had been on foot, including her falconers, watched with horror as the afternoon of pleasure ended in disaster.
Meanwhile William continued to lay about him with a prodigious fury. He had briefly broken out of the mêlée and seen his uncle fall, heard the terrible death cry and a deeper fury had been aroused within him. He redoubled his effort, determined to die with honour, taking as many of the treacherous Lusignans with him. One man with the Lusignan device at his side caught his raging eye and William began to cut his way towards him, emanating a tremendous energy. Infuriated by the closing of ranks about the chief of these brigands, William’s sword bit bone after bone, but the reinforcement of the men sent by Geoffrey de Lusignan ended William’s bold intervention.
His horse, no destrier, crumpled underneath him and he flung himself clear, striking the man at arms who had hamstrung the animal and throwing him bleeding onto the trampled grass. William now found himself surrounded and fighting for his life. On foot, unarmoured and unhelmed he backed against a large gorse-bush and stood his ground. The faithful Rolf was at his side, blood pouring from a wound in his arm and another in his head, gasping with every heft of his sword until he sank exhausted to his knees and then forward onto his face. William himself was weakening now; a slash above his own eye all but blinding him as the blood ran down his face.
‘Take him alive!’ a voice roared.
William staggered, drawing breath in great rasping gasps, half leaning on his sword, an animal at bay staring through one eye at the half circle of armed men about him, most now on foot, but one or two beyond on horseback, their weapons glinting dully in the fading light of late afternoon. The hiatus was menacing, inexplicable. He awaited the death blow.
Then William felt the lance-point, thrust through the gorse-bush from behind. He realised for what his ring of opponents had been waiting and of which he had been quite unaware. The lance entered his thigh and ran him through. For a long moment he stared down at the point as his blood ran cold. Then came the agony of retraction. He tottered forward before sprawling on the greensward. An instant later a dull blow to the head knocked him unconscious.
*
When he regained his wits he found dusk had fallen. The low valley was filled with mist and the smoke of bivouac fires. His head and his bruised body ached abominably, both from the blows he had sustained and the exertions he had demanded of it. Fortunately his two wounds had clotted, though they throbbed, the one in his leg with a dreadful ominousness. He had a raging thirst and was chilled to the marrow lying on the damp sod. He raised his head. There was no sign of the Queen, nor much sense of triumph in the camp, but his stirring attracted the notice of an armed knight set to watch over him.
‘So, we meet again.’
It took the battered William a few moments to identify the face bent over him in the twilight. ‘FitzHugh, by the Devil…’ he murmured.
‘By the Grace of God, FitzMarshal, the Grace of God. And by that Grace you owe me your life, for there are those who would have you dead.’ FitzHugh chuckled. ‘You are accounted as nothing,’ FitzHugh chuckled with a rueful amusement. ‘Except, of course, to me. It was I who knocked you to the ground.’ He paused and clicked his tongue. ‘Tch, tch, but I do not do your obligations justice, Will; that is what King Stephen called you is it not? Will? You owe me more than your life, Will, you owe me my honour and whilst others do not know your value, I shall have it from you in ransom.’ FitzHugh raised his head and his voice. ‘Here!’ he ordered, and two of his own men-at-arms approached. ‘Bind him and guard him close!’
‘Aye, my Lord.’
The two began to truss William as FitzHugh walked away but William called after him. ‘FitzHugh! What of the Earl Patrick?’
FitzHugh stopped and turned. He appeared to be considering what, if anything, he should tell his prisoner. ‘He was your kinsman, was he not?’
‘Then he is dead?’
‘Aye, as you would be but for my compassion,’ FitzHugh reminded him sarcastically.
‘And the Queen?’
‘Do not trouble yourself about Eleanor of Aquitaine; she will not be troubling herself about you.’
It seemed that FitzHugh’s remark about Eleanor’s indifference was as accurate as his unguarded confirmation of the Queen’s escape. For several months William was trailed about in the wake of the rebels, thrown across the back of a pack-ass when the outlawed force was on the march, his wounds untreated, suppurating and growing septic. Only his own physique and FitzHugh’s malice kept him alive. In this desperate time William fought for his life. While the cut upon his forehead slowly mended, that in his thigh threatened his very life and caused him to fall into an intermittent fever. In his lucid moments William tore his long shirt-tails into rags and managed to plug his leg wound using half the bread he was given by way of victuals as a poultice to draw the poison from his wound.
As for FitzHugh, he believed he did God’s work in prolonging his prisoner’s agonies, knowing him to bear Satan’s mark and zealous in his self-appointed mission. However, FitzHugh’s place among the desperate and dispossessed Lusignans was by no means secure, his own following being small. However, it had proved useful to men who yielded to no yoke, nor ever kept faith with any feudal overlord. That they had attacked the Queen placed the Lusignans in a worse position than that of mere rebels, but Eleanor’s escape put them utterly beyond King Henry’s clemency, for their bungled ambush had yielded nothing with which to bargain.
On realising that the Queen had eluded them, Geoffrey de Lusignan had ordered the seizure of her hawks and falcons but the falconers had let the birds fly free before they could be taken so that, while they had paid for this effrontery with their lives, they had deprived the Lusignans of the only coin with which they might have engineered some compromise. As for Earl Patrick, the Lusignans had left the body of Earl Patrick on the field of battle where it was later found, taken to the Abbey of Sainte Hilaire and laid to rest. Here Queen Eleanor provided the means for annual masses to be said for Earl Patrick’s soul.
William’s life was saved largely by the compassion of a chatelaine within whose bailiwick the Lusignans briefly took shelter. This lady had him sent a loaf of bread from which the inside had been removed. Into this she had inserted some linen bandages and an unguent concocted from herbs.
It was here too that the Lusignans learned that King Henry had set aside his pursuit of them in favour of a campaign in Brittany where Eudes de Porhoët had heard of the King’s seduction of his daughter Alice, sent into Henry’s household as a hostage against her family’s loyalty, after which the King’s shaky alliance with King Louis fell apart and he was kept campaigning near Argentan.
Granted this stay of execution, it was only now that it occurred to the Lusignan brothers that FitzHugh’s prisoner might have some value. Disappointed of any avenue of seeking a ransom for William it had long been FitzHugh’s aim to hope for a slow and agonising death of gangrene. To his chagrin William had survived his lance-thrust and
he slowly slipped from FitzHugh’s control, gaining a degree of freedom and protection from the Lusignans who admired his prowess. One evening, seeing a group of the Lusignans playing a game of stone-throwing, William begged a turn.
Permission was sought from Guy de Lusignan who came in person to watch the contest, followed by FitzHugh.
‘Well, FitzHugh, will our prisoner throw further than our own men?’ he asked.
‘My prisoner,’ growled FitzHugh pointedly.
‘Oh, I think not, sir,’ responded De Lusignan coolly, raising his voice and calling out to his retainers to allow William a turn. Reading the hatred in FitzHugh’s eyes, and fiercely eager to test himself, William rose and hobbled forward to take the proffered stone. Feeling its weight and seeking the line scored in the mud from which he must hurl the missile, he sucked in his breath as his captors drew about him. It was already dark and the light of several fires flickered upon their faces while shadows from their tense bodies seemed to dance about William as he aspirated, gathering his strength. No-one in that bivouac among the woodland of Poitou was in any doubt of William’s former powers, for all had seen them, while his recovery seemed to them near miraculous. Moreover, few much liked the English knight FitzHugh in their midst. Most understood he had been banished from England favoured by no-one, and that he nursed an unseemly animus against his prisoner, though such things were not unusual. Nor was it unusual that he had attached himself to the Brothers Lusignan in their rebellion against the arbitrary rule of King Henry of England and Anjou. But this strong young man in their midst was a curiosity, and curiosity enough to while away an evening of stone-throwing.
William Marshal Guardian of England- The Complete Series Page 11
