by David Gilman
A church bell broke the silence, clanging its warning. Raised voices of alarm reached those on the high walls. Sentries summoned the guard commander, who ran onto the ramparts. No attack was imminent, but he called the garrison to arms. The castle’s commander chose messengers to take separate routes on the near side of the river and warn Lord Charles de Blois. They ordered six riders to go in opposite directions and skirt the river until they were clear of the town. Only one needed to survive. The cries of alarm increased as townspeople gathered what goods they could carry and jostled through the streets to sanctuary in the castle.
The citizen militia grabbed what weapons they had to hand and ran for Auray’s boundary, gripped with panic as sergeants from the castle stationed in the town to command them barked their orders. Men made the sign of the cross as they gazed at wraiths revealed in the rising mist: armoured knights and men-at-arms whose horses appeared to loom out of the fog. They waited beyond crossbow range, bridles jangling, horses whinnying, scraping the ground, their blood already up, sensing the urgency of their riders for battle.
Every man between sixteen and sixty had to serve in the town’s defences. The experienced soldiers who led them ran to designated defensive lines, pushing aside frightened women and children as they forced their way through the choked streets. They ringed the quayside, staring down into the swirling mist and the running tide. Acrid smoke burned the back of their throats as a heavily laden boat loomed into view through the mist. Smoke belched from its burning cargo – bales of hay – as it bumped and scraped along the quayside wall, causing instant confusion. Men on the castle walls bellowed down to the armed men on the quay to guard against enemy soldiers who might be following the blazing hulk, whose tarred timbers soon succumbed to the ferocious heat adding fuel to the inferno.
Blackstone had convinced John de Montfort and the other renowned lords and men-at-arms to curb their impatience. He had waited until the weather settled and the westerly wind from the Gulf of Morbihan had shifted direction and the rising tide took the swirling river higher. The stolen boat’s cargo was soaked with lamp oil and pushed into the tide. By the time it was engulfed, blinding terrified citizens with its smoke and flames, Blackstone and four others were already ashore. They were dressed no differently than the citizens of Auray and easily infiltrated the crowds passing through the castle gates, the sentries ushering in the town’s citizens unaware that the men beneath their hooded capes were not townsmen. They had appropriated some abandoned goods: Blackstone was bent double, balancing caged chickens on his back to obscure his height; John Jacob bore a squealing pig across his shoulders.
By the time a hundred citizens of Auray had entered the castle, Blackstone and his men were already pushing open a door leading from the outer ward through the curtain wall. Once inside, the shadows from the castle’s keep and the rising sun threw its cloak across them. The morning chill reeked of damp and fear. Garrison troops manning the walls had little interest in the refugees seeking shelter: they feared an attack from the town when it fell, which it inevitably would, and then the enemy would storm the bridge and lay tar-soaked bundles of faggots against the castle gates.
Blackstone signalled John Jacob and Will Longdon to check a closed door that looked as though it led down to the dungeons. It was locked. William Ashford was dressed in such ragged clothing that Blackstone lost sight of him in the crush of people. A strong hand grabbed his arm. Blackstone reached for his hidden knife, the only weapon any of the men carried. He stayed his hand when he saw it was Ashford, who nodded towards a cage door at the base of one of the round towers. Blackstone gave a sharp whistle, raised an arm and then pushed his way through the crowd with Ashford at his shoulder. Longdon and John Jacob heard and saw the signal, so too Kynith the Welsh ventenar. Five men against a hundred or more – but they were not there to seize the castle. Blackstone’s determination in convincing de Montfort to lay siege served another purpose other than drawing in the enemy; he wanted to find and rescue Beyard.
Kynith pulled hard against the iron gate. It gave way. The stone steps twisted down in a tight, unlit spiral. ‘Guard the gate,’ Blackstone told Will Longdon and Kynith. Blackstone descended with John Jacob and William Ashford at his heels. The gloom closed in on them but they could smell the foulness of the place. The stench of excrement and the stringent smell of urine was as trapped in the underground chambers as the prisoners. A flame cast shadows as a jailer peered around a pillar.
‘Hey, who’re you?’ he muttered, still groggy from sleep. No noise penetrated from the turmoil above in the castle’s yard. The jailer, pallid from spending his days and nights below ground, coughed and spat, peering through the gloomy light.
‘We are here for the prisoners taken at Cocherel,’ said Blackstone without breaking stride.
The jailer grimaced as the tall figure loomed towards him. No one had told him the prisoners were to be released and these shadow men wore no insignia. As his dull mind grappled with uncertainty over who they were, their leader grabbed the burning torch from his hand, forcing him to stumble back. ‘The prisoners,’ Blackstone said again.
The jailer’s quivering hand pointed to the pitch-dark passageway. John Jacob leaned past Blackstone and lifted the ring of iron keys from his belt. Blackstone held the flame aloft and as he and John Jacob took a pace back William Ashford struck the jailer once behind the neck. The man dropped without a sound. There was no need to kill him: he would be condemned once the garrison captain discovered the loss of his prisoners.
Blackstone bent low beneath the stone ceiling. There were only a few cells, most of which were empty. John Jacob lifted an unlit torch from its wall bracket and lit it from Blackstone’s. The furthest and darkest corner of the dungeon showed several men lying in soiled straw. The reek was overpowering. John Jacob spat the awful taste from his throat and turned the heavy lock. Blackstone stooped inside and turned one of the men over: he was unconscious.
‘Beyard? It’s me. We’ve come to rescue you.’ No response.
Blackstone laid the man onto his back and saw blood encrusted on his face and beard from a scalp wound. His lips were parched. ‘William, find water. Back there. The jailer.’
John Jacob gave Ashford his torch, who returned along the dark passage as Blackstone cradled Beyard. He pulled an eyelid back and the light caused Beyard to flinch and then begin to struggle. His efforts were feeble yet his instinct to fight was still there. Blackstone easily restrained him.
At last Beyard’s eyes focused. ‘Sir Thomas,’ he said, voice rasping.
‘Aye, me and John Jacob with a couple of the lads. We must get you out.’
Beyard nodded and tried to stand but his legs gave way. Ashford returned with a wineskin and handed it to Blackstone, who raised it to Beyard’s lips. ‘Slowly, my friend.’
The Gascon captain gulped eagerly until Blackstone pulled it away from his lips. ‘How far can you walk?’
‘I’m weak, Sir Thomas. No food or drink for... I don’t know...’ His voice trailing off, he forced his back against the wall but once again his knees buckled.
‘I’ll carry you,’ said Blackstone. ‘We must move.’
Beyard pointed to his nearest companions. ‘That one’s only a boy; the older man is one of de Grailly’s captains.’
John Jacob bent and held the flame over the figures lying in the straw. ‘The boy’s alive but the other’s dead.’
Beyard looked about to faint. ‘I kept the boy alive best I could... Said I’d... see him through... The other… three… help them… They fought well.’
Ashford and John Jacob roused the men, all weakened by their privation. The wine and the chance to escape gave them strength. One was able to help support his fellow captive, while Ashford wrapped the third, weaker man’s arm around his shoulder and heaved him to his feet.
Beyard’s head sank onto his chest. Blackstone lifted him up and pressed him against the wall, bent and let him drop over his shoulder. He glanced at the limp child and felt a momentary stab of
pain. The boy stared at Blackstone with a look of fear and helplessness. He had seen his own son, Henry, show the same expression when his mother and sister were slain years before.
‘John, take the lad.’
Blackstone’s squire lifted the frail boy over his shoulder.
‘All right, let’s get ourselves out of here.’
Ashford and John Jacob lit the way to where Will Longdon and Kynith waited, squatting a few steps down from the entrance. Ashford threw the torch back into the darkness.
Longdon and Kynith scrambled to their feet. ‘We kept out of sight. The yard’s so crowded you couldn’t fit a goose fletching between those huddling there,’ said Will Longdon. ‘There’s enough panic among them to keep their minds off us.’
‘We push our way through,’ said Blackstone. ‘No one will give us a second thought. They’ll think we’re carrying injured friends. Will, you and Kynith help these men.’ He turned to Ashford. ‘Lead the way. There’s a postern gate in the outer ward.’ He nodded for his archers to open the gate.
William Ashford’s strength forged a path through the bustling, chaotic surge of refugees crowding in from the main gate. Ashford glanced back to ensure Blackstone and the others were at his heels. The five men twisted and turned through the fear-driven townsfolk. A single soldier guarded the postern gate. He was gazing through the viewing hatch, eyes searching for any assault attempt from outside, no thought of danger from within. When he turned and saw the men bearing down on him, his shock left him no time to challenge them. Ashford’s fist put the man down; he pulled the heavy gate open, checked outside, glanced up at the ramparts and signalled Blackstone and John Jacob through.
Ashford pulled the gate closed behind them and took the lead again as the men scrambled down a dirt path towards the track that encircled the walls between the castle and the river. They saw smoke billowing from the far end of the town and knew that Chandos had directed his archers to set the thatched roofs alight. The bridge was still clogged with townspeople trying to squeeze through the castle’s half-open gate. Two skiffs waited at the bend in the river, half obscured from the castle ramparts by trees and bushes.
Killbere raised himself from beneath the canvas covering on the first boat and whistled a signal. Half a dozen men-at-arms threw the cover aside. The second skiff was tied up on the riverbank forty yards beyond and as Blackstone and the others scrambled towards the first boat Jack Halfpenny and a dozen archers showed themselves, bows strung.
Blackstone and the rescued men were twenty yards from Killbere’s boat when a dozen garrison soldiers shepherding townspeople across the bridge suddenly turned against their own kind, demanding they turn back because the castle yard was too full. The throng of desperate people pressed hard, their raised voices becoming cries of pain and anger as the soldiers struck out at them. Blackstone handed Beyard’s unconscious body into the willing arms of Killbere’s men. Will Longdon and Kynith clambered aboard and helped John Jacob and Ashford ease the others down into the well of the boat. Blackstone was about to jump aboard when screams rose from the bridge. The soldiers were no longer using staves to keep the people back, they were thrusting swords into them. A woman shrieked, an animal cry, as the man with her was cut down and the child he was cradling tumbled from his arms into the weir below the bridge. The crowd faltered but the woman threw herself into the water. The swirling current caught her clothing, pulling her below the surface. Soldiers turning to watch her desperate attempt to save her child saw the armed men in the boats, one of whom plunged into the swirling current.
Blackstone surfaced. A father’s instinct had made him dive into the fast-flowing river. He heard and saw the men hailing their comrades on the walls. He reached midstream; the child bobbed ten feet away from him, its clothes puffed with air keeping it afloat for those first vital minutes. There was no sign of its mother. Blackstone grabbed the child. It was alive, eyes wide, mouth gasping from the cold water. He cradled it to his chest, kicking hard against the current. He heard Jack Halfpenny cry ‘Loose!’ and saw garrison soldiers fall as they ran along the towpath towards them. He kept his eyes on the soldiers and then his head and shoulders slammed into a boat. Killbere had cut loose the mooring lines when Blackstone plunged in and the oarsman had pulled hard into the centre of the stream as Halfpenny’s archers kept the enemy at bay. John Jacob and Killbere leaned down and heaved Blackstone half out the water as Will Longdon took the child from him.
Killbere shouted. ‘Let the current take us! Jack, release your line!’
The boats spun in the tidal flow. Crossbow bolts splashed into the water and thudded into the hull. Halfpenny’s men were too unbalanced to shoot back and bent instead to the oars to pull them further out of range. In Blackstone’s boat Kynith grabbed Will Longdon’s shoulder and pointed as the woman bobbed to the surface.
‘There!’
‘I can’t swim,’ said Longdon. ‘Leave her.’
Kynith pulled off his jupon. ‘I can reach her.’
Will Longdon went to grab him but the Welsh archer threw himself into the current.
‘Kynith is in the water,’ Longdon yelled.
Blackstone and Killbere turned and saw him striking out towards the woman, who was floating face up.
‘Turn and hold,’ Blackstone said.
Men on the one side of the boat lifted their oars as the others pulled hard, turning them broadside to the current. Kynith tugged the woman to him as she spat water. He tried to calm her, but she panicked. Wrapping a strong arm around her, he managed to constrain her long enough for them to reach the boat. Ashford and Killbere hauled her aboard as Blackstone and Longdon reached down to the grinning Welshman.
‘Can’t have a child without a mother, Sir Thomas.’
‘You stupid whoreson. You never knew yours,’ said Longdon, reaching for the man’s belt to lift him clear.
‘Aye, well, you and me both, you English bastard. All the more reason to—’ His body bucked as a crossbow bolt tore into his shoulder. Longdon fell back as Blackstone held Kynith. Another quarrel struck the Welshman.
‘They’ve got our range!’ Longdon said.
John Jacob lunged for Blackstone and pulled him away from the wounded archer. Had he not the next two quarrels that slammed into the boat would have struck him.
‘Pull!’ Killbere shouted as Kynith was washed past the boat towards the shore. The current twisted the boat. Oarsmen struggled as another bolt found its mark. One man fell across his oar. Kynith was caught on a fallen tree branch, one arm hooked over it.
‘There!’ said Ashford, pointing at some soldiers running down the track next to the river. One of them, a bareheaded man-at-arms with a torn scalp, wore a surcoat bearing four upturned daggers against a blue background that looked at first to be French fleurs-de-lys.
‘Thomas! That’s Ranulph de Hayle,’ said Killbere.
Blackstone’s boat was swept beyond range of the French bowmen. ‘Hold the boat steady!’ he said.
Ashford pulled aside the wounded oarsman and took his place. He leaned into the oar and helped stop the rapid drift. The boat held long enough for Blackstone and the others to watch as Kynith was hauled from the shallows. The Welsh archer cried out: ‘Sir Thomas!’
Ranulph de Hayle bellowed. ‘Blackstone? Thomas Blackstone? You dare to take what is mine? Then I take my revenge.’ He dragged a knife across Kynith’s throat and kicked his body into the water.
Blackstone’s men cursed. Will Longdon spat over the side. ‘Put us ashore, Thomas. Let’s kill this pig.’
Blackstone set his gaze to the turncoat Englishman and then turned to his men. ‘This is not the time, Will. The riverbank ends. Ship the oars. The current will take us. We’ll retrieve Kynith’s body at the bend of the river.’
‘Merciful Christ, Thomas,’ said Killbere. ‘We cannot let this man live.’
‘I’ve given my word that I would deliver his head, Gilbert.’ He turned to the men looking at him as they pulled towards the bend in the river.
‘Carry what he did to our friend in your hearts and when we face him and his men offer them no mercy. No matter how they plead for their lives. We will kill this Englishman no matter who protects him. King, Prince or Sir John Chandos. Even God cannot shield him.’
CHAPTER FIFTEEN
They buried Meuric Kynith in the cemetery at the Convent of Saint-Esprit. The town of Auray surrendered when the mayor and council agreed to terms with the assurance from Sir John Chandos that his troops would destroy no more houses and inflict no rape or pillage on its populace. They returned the woman and her child to the town and when they heaped Breton soil over Kynith’s grave she pushed through the gathered men to lay a small posy of wildflowers on the dirt. Then, cradling her rescued child, she bent a knee to Blackstone and raised his hand to her lips before disappearing through the throng of mourners without a word.
‘The woman’s life cost us dear,’ said John Jacob.
Killbere tossed a handful of dirt onto the mound. ‘Better we still had an archer in our ranks than a widow woman who’ll end up starving without her man. That or turn to whoring. Kynith’s death was a waste.’
‘A man’s life is not wasted by an act of courage,’ said Blackstone. ‘No matter the cause.’ He turned away from the grave and the priest who had officiated at the burial, despite his fear of the men of violence. They had spared the convent and his church: praying for a dead archer, no matter if he was a hated enemy, had been a small price to pay.
Will Longdon went among Kynith’s Welsh archers and gave the most senior of them the archer’s pendant, Arianrhod, the Goddess of the Silver Wheel.
‘You’ll need to send two men to me so I can choose Kynith’s successor to act as your ventenar. Find men who match his strength and belligerence in battle.’
The men looked sceptical. ‘He was a hard bastard,’ said one of them. ‘I doubt there’s one among us as unbending. You and him, you were at each other’s throats in the beginning and Sir Thomas taught him a lesson or two. Kynith came round, Will Longdon, as well you know, to serve Sir Thomas and you loyally. He died a stupid death.’
