Master of War (26 page)

Christiana regarded it uncertainly; curved like a fisherman’s awl, it looped the stitches, piercing Blackstone’s leg wound. Blanche de Harcourt eased her away. ‘Let Master Jordan do his work, child.’

‘The leg muscle needs to be held tight,’ Christiana said, ‘but if they use that on his face he’ll look grotesque.’

She stepped back into the room. ‘Sir, if you seal his wounds will you allow me to attend to his face? I mean no disrespect to you, Master Jordan, but a smaller hand that can hem a silk gown with barely a noticeable stitch might cause less disfigurement.’

For a moment the King’s physician looked uncertainly at her. No woman he had known had ever attended battlefield wounds. It was unseemly.

‘This is not work for you. It is best suited to a barber-surgeon on a battlefield. I am here at my lord’s request.’

Christiana bristled, but was conscious of the authority the King of England’s physician held. She lowered her eyes momentarily in a small gesture to acknowledge the fact, and then faced him, determined that her reasoning should be considered.

‘My sensibilities will not be harmed, sir, I have already helped bathe him and wash the congealed blood from those wounds. His body is not a mystery to me. I have attended him these past three days with barely a moment’s sleep. I have never left his side. I owe this boy my life as does your Prince. It’s a paltry request to try to save him from having the twisted, half-blind face of an ogre. Should King Edward and his son see the boy again, let his features not repel them. I have fine silk thread that will bind the skin tightly.’

Master Jordan looked at her and then to Blanche de Harcourt. ‘This girl is in your care, my lady. Is she normally so forward?’

‘I fear she is, but it can do no harm, surely?’

‘Surely,’ the physician was obliged to agree with a nod of his head. ‘Very well, I will instruct you, and if you save his face from looking like a split, overripe plum, I shall, of course, take the credit.’

‘And if I fail, sir, I will declare that I did it without your know­ledge,’ Christiana answered.

‘Then we are in agreement. And if he lives I should hope this boy comes to realize how blessed he is – having a King and a beautiful young woman care so much for his well-being.’

As the hours wore on she watched the physician knit the wounds together as a suckling pig’s belly would be threaded with cord for roasting. It was crude, but efficient work. When the King’s doctor had finished she was left alone with Master Jordan’s apothecary, and helped him administer a trickle of hemlock and mandrake between Blackstone’s lips to ease the pain.

Christiana then carefully pulled together the slash on his face. The gall rose into her throat but she spat onto the reed floor and steadied her hands and then, slowly and with great deliberation, pressed the needle into his skin.

After attending to Blackstone’s wounds Master Jordan returned to the English army besieging Calais. Sir Godfrey arranged an armed escort to take his nephew, Jean de Harcourt, along with his family and a few men of his retinue who had survived the slaughter, further south to Castle de Harcourt, where the family with­drew behind the safety of its walls. French honour and hospital­ity dictated that Count Jean de Harcourt, the surviving son and now head of the family, have his household treat Thomas Blackstone with respect. He was no longer a yeoman archer from a shire in England; he had been knighted by a King’s son. The honour conferred by royal hand for courage on the field of battle held greater status than any other merit. Sir Godfrey, Jean’s uncle, may have fought against his own family when he sided with the English, but Jean’s loyalty to his own father at the battle of Crécy was simply that: honour for his father’s sake.

‘Why is the boy not quartered closer to us?’ de Harcourt asked nearly a month later. His own wounds were healing and he now walked unaided.

His wife looked up from her needlepoint; the dogs dozing by the fire ran to their master as he entered the great hall. He ignored them and repeated the question, his irritation noticeable, before she could answer.

‘He’s a common man, Jean. We cannot have him in our com­pany,’ she said quickly, not wishing to risk his displeasure.

‘I am master of this house, and head of this family, Blanche. I have been charged with this boy’s welfare by Godfrey, and he in turn by the English King. Where is he?’

‘He’s in the north tower, my lord.’

De Harcourt turned his back and did not close the big doors behind him. The draught could blow through the room for all he cared. Autumn was already upon them.

Jean de Harcourt limped along the corridor that led to the unheated room where Blackstone had been quartered. The room was empty, the bed had not been slept in. He peered out of the narrow window. In the courtyard Christiana walked slowly alongside a horse, holding it by its halter. On the other side Blackstone gripped the horse’s mane with one hand, to support himself as he limped painfully, forcing his injured leg to bear more weight each day. In less than a month Blackstone had fought the pain of his injuries and punished himself back almost to strength.

De Harcourt noticed the sword that had accompanied the wounded archer leaning against the wall and picked it up, feeling its fine balance against his palm, its delicate weight tipping slightly. It was the work of a master swordmaker and in the right hands would kill and maim with an efficiency that any man-at-arms would admire. He wielded it quickly left and right, the cutting edge rippling the air. It was one of the finest swords he had seen, and despite the fact that it was a weapon that only a wealthy and accomplished knight could afford Sir Godfrey had told him that Blackstone had taken it from such a knight and then slaughtered him with it – a brutal, unforgiving act, when a ransom could have been claimed despite no quarter being offered by either side at Crécy. A chance of wealth denied no matter the circumstances. And yet he knew that before the great battle, when Sir Godfrey had visited the castle at Noyelles, Blackstone had saved the life of a young page, and tried to help the boy’s wounded master. A bewildering contradiction: compassion and brutality were seldom brothers-in-arms. And now this barbarian archer was in the care of his family. He replaced the sword and looked down to where Christiana turned the horse. Now he could see Blackstone more clearly; there was grim determination set upon the boy’s battered features, the wound’s livid welt discolouring half his face into a blackened and yellowing mass. Blackstone’s hair was matted with sweat from the effort of hauling himself along. He wore only a long undershirt, the bandaging on his wounded leg not yet allowing breeches or hose. He heard Christiana’s voice echo across the courtyard.

‘That’s enough for today, Thomas. You must rest now and let me attend to your leg.’

Blackstone shook his head. ‘Once more. There and back. Across the yard,’ he told her. Despite her protestations Blackstone urged the horse to walk on, and despite his pain stayed silent, forcing the leg muscles to challenge the wound.

De Harcourt gazed at the boy, one of the thousands who had faced him at Crécy; the English archers who had rained death on him and the cream of French chivalry. Their savage killing of wounded knights thrown down in that hailstorm was renowned and the thought of their brutal tactics made his gorge rise. His own wounds were nothing compared to Blackstone’s, but they had confined him to his rooms for weeks, until he now felt strong enough to appear before his family and retainers again.

It was time to meet his enemy.

Blackstone sat on a small barrel in the stables as Christiana unwound the sticky bandage from his leg. From a linen bag she pulled out a roll of narrow cloth and a pot of salve. The long slice of wound that ran down his thigh was puckered and oozing pus from where the stitches held it. Using a small-bladed knife she began to pick at the wound, suddenly alarmed when she felt his leg wince.

‘I’m sorry,’ she whispered, reaching up for his hand.

He smiled. ‘It’s nothing – it’s tender where the flesh is still raw, that’s all. It’s healing and that’s good.’

A shadow filled the doorway and Christiana quickly got to her feet as de Harcourt stood in the entrance.

‘My lord,’ she said.

Blackstone did not move for a moment but then hauled himself to his feet, not once taking his eyes off the man who might well control his life or death.

‘Christiana, there are servants who can attend to that,’ de Harcourt said.

‘It’s delicate, my lord, I would prefer to do it myself. I have to pluck the maggots from the wound.’

De Harcourt knew of using maggots to eat away the poisoned flesh, but had never taken such action himself. ‘You do this each day?’

Christiana nodded. ‘The servants bring in rabbits and crows; they gut them and when they are infested we take the maggots and put them into Thomas’s wound. That and the salve that Master Jordan’s apothecary left with us.’

De Harcourt nodded, but all the while in his questioning of her he held Blackstone’s gaze. Blackstone saw a man of about thirty years, wiry with a taut, knotted body. He was shorter than Blackstone by five or six inches and wisps of grey were evident in his beard; his hair grew long into the nape of his neck. His hands showed criss-crossed white lines, old scars from fighting. Now he limped, leaning on a gnarled hand-cut stick, but despite that, Blackstone realized, he was undiminished in stature.

‘Do that later,’ he said to Christiana.

For a moment she hesitated, the two men opposite each other, de Harcourt the stronger of the two, with the lesser wounds and a knife at his belt. Christiana turned away with barely a glance at Blackstone. De Harcourt waited a moment and then eased himself onto an upright sack of grain.

‘I am Jean, fifth count of Harcourt and head of this family.’

Being in the presence of a noble family demanded common courtesy, and although Blackstone had been knighted by no less a personage than the Prince of Wales on the field of battle, with the blessing of Edward, King of England, Jean de Harcourt was his superior. Blackstone’s broken arm was still bound and splinted, and the wounded leg that Christiana had exposed, de Harcourt silently acknowledged to himself, would cause pain at every movement. Blackstone reached out with his good arm and steadied himself against the barrel. And then slowly forced his body to obey his will. He lowered his uninjured knee towards the ground.

De Harcourt watched the sacrifice to pain, and when Black­stone’s knee was almost halfway to the ground, he raised a hand, unable to allow needless suffering from a brave fighter.

‘Enough. There is no need,’ he said.

Blackstone ignored him, fought the agony of the wound and rested his knee into the dirt, and then raised his head to look directly at de Harcourt.

‘Lord,’ Blackstone said, and pulled himself up, the wound now leaking blood through the yellow pus.

De Harcourt nodded acknowledgement, realizing that Sir Godfrey’s description of the defiant archer had been accurate – Black­stone would not yield. He indicated that Blackstone should sit on the barrel.

He gazed down through the layers of society, to a level with which he had had little contact other than to have beaten, forgiven or killed. Little of the middle option. It was necessary to keep such low-life in its place. But there were men who fought and secured favour and fortune, and these men earned respect. And Blackstone was somewhere along that road to securing a place in the telling.

‘King Edward still lays siege to Calais. The war goes on,’ he said.

‘Without us, my lord,’ Blackstone answered.

‘Without us,’ de Harcourt agreed. ‘I’m told you can read.’

‘I can.’

‘How so?’

‘My mother was French. She taught my father, he taught me.’

‘Her name?’

‘Annie.’

‘That’s not French.’

‘It’s what my father called her. It was Anelet.’

‘Is she alive?’

‘No.’

‘And your father?’

‘Dead.’

‘An archer?’

‘The best. I carried his war bow.’

‘He died in battle?’

‘In a stone quarry, where I served my apprenticeship as a stone­mason and freeman.’

‘And can you write?’

‘A little.’

‘Not quite the barbarian, then.’

‘Enough to do my sworn lord’s bidding and kill my King’s enemies,’ Blackstone said, unable to keep a disrespectful tone from his answer.

De Harcourt ignored it. ‘Yes. I have experience of English warmongering. Who is your sworn lord?’

‘Sir Gilbert Killbere.’

‘Does he live?’

‘Dead beneath a war horse at Crécy.’

‘I don’t know of him.’

‘Had you faced him in war you would.’

‘You’re impertinent.’

‘So I have been told, my lord.’

De Harcourt could see that Blackstone showed no sign of fear, and his size and strength defied his age.

‘What am I to do with you, young Thomas Blackstone?’

‘I don’t know, my lord, but my wounds are healing and in another month I’ll be strong enough to go back to the army.’

‘You will only leave when I tell you to leave,’ de Harcourt said. ‘Has Christiana told you why you are here? Why the English King commanded the marshal of the army, my uncle, who fought for him against his own family, to have you brought here?’

‘I can only think my King wished to irritate Sir Godfrey,’ Black­stone said.

De Harcourt suddenly laughed. ‘Yes, that’s a distinct possibility.’ He flicked at a pile of horse dung with the stick. How friendly should he be with this hulking archer? His own uncertainty sur­prised him. The man who stood before him had a difference to him that he had not come across before in a peasant. Perhaps his upbringing had been influenced by the mother.

‘The truth of the matter is that the Harcourt family have long been divided in their loyalty. Some of my ancestors went to England with William of Normandy. They still hold estates there. Distant cousins, probably best kept that way. We Normans do not take kindly to authority we do not respect. Perhaps you and I share common ground in that matter. My father died at Crécy because of his loyalty to King Philip. I served out of loyalty to my father, but now that he is dead and I am head of the family, I will choose where my fealty lies. The English King will claim the throne of France and my family will be part of his success. That’s why you’re here, because Sir Godfrey was charged by our future King to save you. Otherwise he’d have left you on the side of the road to rot in a ditch and die of your wounds. No matter how well you fought in defence of your Prince.’ De Harcourt eased himself up. ‘And he’d have taken that fine sword for himself.’ He reached the stable door and turned back, adding, ‘Had he been able to prise it from your fist.’