Master of War (54 page)

‘He was at my side,’ said Blackstone. ‘We were outnumbered, but he stood his ground.’

‘There you are, then. I always told him to keep moving,’ Gaillard said and turned back to placing rocks into position on the unfinished section of the wall. Sentiment and prayer for the dead could wait until he was alone in his bunk and the night candle blown out.

The town’s carpenters hauled their timber from the carts and the six prisoners were shoved unceremoniously to the ground.

‘You four will hang for the torture you committed,’ Blackstone told the condemned men. ‘And you two, he pointed to the other prisoners, ‘will hang because I’ve no need for you or your kind.’

One of the men snarled like a dog on a chain. ‘Do it then, you scar-faced whoreson,’ raising his voice so all of Blackstone’s men could hear, ‘because when Saquet sees what you’ve done, he’ll gut you all, slow and even, a knife to your innards and your cocks sliced and stuffed down your throats. He’ll put you on a spit and make you eat each other. And then he’ll burn Chaulion to the ground. Do your worst. My body might swing in the wind like a tavern sign, but we sliced those feeble curs at Chaulion and took their women and we lived like men should live. Death is coming to every one of you. A bad death! Get on your knees and pray for your souls because—’

Meulon took a few strides and slit his throat. A final curse gurgled as blood spurted and splattered those chained to him as they attempted to pull away when his body kicked and spasmed.

‘He talked too much,’ he explained to a scowling Blackstone as he wiped his blade. ‘There are lads here who haven’t seen vicious fighting yet. Can’t have a turd like him putting thoughts in their head. They’ve not much room up there as it is.’ Meulon turned and ordered the men and monks who had stopped their labours, ‘Finish the work! Saquet is an evil bastard who slays women and children for his pleasure. You’ll be killing him and the scum with him when they get here. We’ve taken Chaulion and you’ve booty coming your way, thanks to Sir Thomas!’ Meulon raised a fist and the men cheered, though the monks looked more worried than ever. Throat-slitting was easy work for men like these.

Brother Simon tended the weakened men in his infirmary as Blackstone came to check on Guinot and the others. The men sat propped on straw mattresses as a couple of the monks went among them spooning the pottage’s liquid into them. ‘Will they be able to fight?’ asked Blackstone.

‘They have been starved, my son. And beaten. I have medicine in the broth. Give them time.’

Blackstone knew that even though a killer whose men out­numbered his own was soon to be on them, men could not be raised from their exhaustion because of it. ‘Tell me what you need and you shall have it,’ he said.

‘We have God’s blessing now that you have come,’ the old man answered simply.

Blackstone felt a heaviness building in him, something he had not experienced before. It was not fear, but it carried the same sense of trepidation that clenched his heart. And then he knew what it was. It was others’ expectations. ‘Brother Simon, I’m nobody’s saviour. Don’t have any thought that I am. I’m a soldier. I can be dead by this time tomorrow and then I’m only good for worm bait.’

The old monk looked at him a moment longer and then pointed a wavering finger at the silver effigy of Arianrhod. ‘I was a pagan once, my son, I prayed to all the Gods including our Lord. One of them must have heard me, though I’m unsure which one it was. I’ll find out soon enough, no doubt.’

‘I’m no pagan,’ Blackstone answered.

‘No matter. What’s important is who you believe it is that guides and protects you. Don’t be ashamed to go on your knees and beg for their help,’ he answered, and then went back to tending the sick.

Guinot swung his feet over the side of the cot, and tried to stand. ‘I’ve heard a scaffold being built before. You’re hanging them here, aren’t you? That’s a challenge to Saquet all right. He’s a reputation to uphold and stringing his men up at a crossroads is going to make him come after you personally, but before he does I want to see them choke,’ he said.

Blackstone eased him back onto the cot before his legs gave way. ‘You’ll see it. I give you my word. You and the others need to rest and let Brother Simon care for you. There comes a time when we have to surrender to those who can help us.’

Guinot nodded and eased back onto the mattress. ‘You think you can stop the routiers here? You and a handful of men straddling the crossroads? Sweet Mother of God, you were lucky at Chaulion. Those men you killed were just the scum that settles on top of a shit pit. Prepare yourself because when Saquet breaks down those doors every last man of us will be put to the sword. I heard what the old monk said. Listen to him – give the men Mass. Put God on their side.’

Blackstone wanted more than God on his side, he wished he had another fifty men. A hundred would be better. As he walked past the cots he saw that Matthew Hampton’s fever had broken. His eyes searched the torn face that gazed down at him. His breath rasped with effort through cracked lips. ‘Thomas?’

Blackstone nodded.

‘Look at you. We thought you dead. Bless you, boy. Where am I?’

‘The monastery.’

The archer nodded. ‘You got us out of Chaulion, then. We were dead men. They tricked us, Thomas, and killed us. Badly. My lads died badly.’

Blackstone rested a hand on Hampton’s and squeezed gently. ‘We’ll avenge them together. I’ve got your bow.’

‘No, they took it…’

‘I took it back. It’s yours. No one else carried a bow with such a dark band of wood that twists across the grain. I saw it right away.’ Blackstone brought the war bow up from where he had held it out of Hampton’s sight.

The archer’s hands caressed the length of yew and his fingertips stroked the nocked horn tips. He nodded with an almost inaudible sigh, and then eased it back to Blackstone. ‘You take it, Thomas, and kill as many as you can. There was none better’n you. Not even Richard, God rest his soul. Take it, lad.’

Blackstone extended his crooked arm. ‘I’ll never draw a bow again, Matthew. A sword stroke snapped me like a twig.’

Hampton’s eyes followed the line of his arm. ‘A sword stroke cannot break a mighty oak, Thomas. Give me and the others another day of the good friar’s broth and we’ll stand by you.’

Blackstone grasped the man’s extended hand. He could see that no matter how willing Hampton and the other men might be they would need more than a day to recover. There would be no archers ready if Saquet’s attack came the next morning as expected. Before that happened he would have a Mass said for his men.

They dragged Abbot Pierre from his room and kicked him out in front of those condemned to hang. As he fell his cassock was rucked up, exposing his bare backside. Blackstone’s men and the lay brothers laughed at his humiliation. Blackstone saw that the other monks who had benefited from the fat abbot’s rule looked concerned. They knew that if their penance of building the wall did not please the Englishman then they too could face ignominious banishment from their own monastery. And who would they turn to? Brother monks of the same order would have heard of the way they lived. They would most likely be shunned if forced out from the safety of these walls, and penance at another monastery could be harder than staying where they were. They all knew that the time of Abbot Pierre was over and that their future lay in the Englishman’s hands.

Blackstone’s men hauled the abbot to his feet as the Englishman stood before him. ‘Those who want it can have the sacrament before they hang. And you can lead your brothers in prayer for your own safe deliverance before I send you on your way.’

Abbot Pierre’s eyes darted back and forth among the gathered soldiers and monks. ‘You cannot send me away, this is my monastery. I have the favour of the King and he has the favour of the Pope. You can’t send me from this place; it’s miles to the nearest village.’

‘If you reach it alive you can beg for food and shelter like a true mendicant. Though I suspect that every door will be closed to you for allowing Saquet and his men to strip them bare. Your blessing to him became their curse.’

‘You cannot! The weather is closing in.’ The abbot’s jowls quivered.

‘You led Saquet and his routiers into Chaulion. I should put you on the scaffold with the rest of these men, but I doubt we have a gallows strong enough to bear such a barrel of lard,’ said Blackstone.

Abbot Pierre fell to his knees, hands clasped, and begged for his life. ‘Sir Thomas, I have no chance of reaching even the nearest village before nightfall. The cold will kill me, the coming snow will bury me and I will lie in unconsecrated ground. Recant, I implore you.’

‘What about these men who are about to die? Have you no wish to beg on their behalf?’

The abbot struggled to his feet, sweeping his arm in a gesture to encompass the condemned men. ‘Blasphemers and murderers. Their end was determined when their whore mothers dropped them from their fouled wombs. I was at their mercy. I had no choice in what I did!’

‘Then forgive them their sins when they receive their last sacra­ment before I send you on your way. Hurry, the day is already shortening. Darkness will soon be your only companion. Get to it.’

One of the routiers stepped forward and gobbed a mouthful of phlegm at the abbot, splattering his shoulder and face. The abbot recoiled in horror.

‘I’ll not have a creature like this pray over me. I’ll meet the devil on my own terms,’ the routier said, and tried to land a kick on the fat abbot, who stumbled back, turning this way and that, searching the faces around him for any sign of compassion. There was none. Some of the monks turned their faces deliberately away from him.

Blackstone said, ‘I wouldn’t be able to face my King if I put you to the sword, or hanged you from a tree. I have given you your life. Do with it what you will.’

The abbot trembled as tears welled and spilled. Like a blind man he stumbled, not knowing which way to go. He was beyond the wall and his beseeching gesture as he reached out to those on the other side did nothing but graze the skin from his arms on the coping stones bristling like teeth along its top.

Everyone watched as Abbott Pierre moved further away, his sandalled feet finding a path to tread once he was across the bridge. He fell once or twice and then, almost on all fours, clambered like a child up the rising ground towards the forest. No one watching doubted that his fat carcass would soon become a feast for the creatures of the woodland. It had been a harsh winter and the wolves would find him.

Blackstone asked the routiers if any of them wanted the sacra­ment. They all accepted except the man who had spat his contempt at the abbot.

‘Brother Marcus,’ he said, gesturing the prior forward, ‘you held Mass for my men last night, and now you’re in charge of this monastery. Step forward and ease these men’s souls into the next world.’

Guinot and the others were carried from their beds to watch the execution. When Matthew Hampton saw the gallows he knew that the boy who had become a ventenar and now a man-at-arms would never lose the inherent skills of an archer. The six men captured at Chaulion were hanged at hundred-yard intervals from the edge of the wall. The dead men marked out the distance for his archers, be they French crossbowmen or the English with their long, curved war bows. Ailing or not, he and the others would loose as many shafts as they could at the men who would soon fall upon them.

Some Norman lords had turned against King Edward; others were as yet undecided where their loyalties lay. The violent William de Fossat, seeing an opportunity to regain his pride and reputation, had offered his services – and thirty men – to the French King. He had vowed to the King that he would track down the marauders led by the Englishman. But then he stumbled upon the mercenary Saquet.

Saquet and his men had camped in the forests in rough shelters made from hacked branches and dead ferns, then finally picked their way through the forest’s tracks until they came to where the road should be beneath the snow. They had not enjoyed a hot meal for days and their slow progress home was becoming a further irritation. The French King’s warrant to kill the daring Englishman gave William de Fossat no status among the brigands he had joined and he and his men dutifully followed the mercenaries at the rear, acknowledging that the Breton was master of the routiers under his command.

As luck would have it the defenders at the monastery were granted another three days before the mercenaries broke the sky­line. Heavy snow fell during that first night and into the next day, and it took another two to die away into flurries. A blanket of snow a foot deep covered the approach roads to the monastery and smothered the obstacles that Blackstone’s men had laid before their wall. No broad front of horsemen would be able to approach, only two or three men abreast, tentatively easing nervous horses forward through snow that hid uneven ground. Blackstone had marked out the road in the direction from which he wanted the mercenaries to come. The executed men’s bodies hung in the cold air, barely moving from the breeze, caked with snow, clumps of which fell from them like rotting flesh. The man whose throat was cut took his place among the dead, a rope under his shoulders, the gaping wound blackened, his clothes stripped, leaving his naked body a meal for scavenging ravens and crows. His would be the first body that Saquet would see as he turned the bend in the road to bring him in sight of the monastery and the crossroads to his town. It would bring him down the track exactly as Blackstone had planned.

Blackstone’s footprints led to the small bridge where he stood watching the river wash the snow from its boulders. The weather was fickle and warming; the snow might soon melt. He would rather Saquet arrived when it was still on the ground. He wanted the fight over and its outcome settled. His men were inside the mon­astery on his orders because he knew that when his enemy came they would be cold and stiff from a long ride and the discomfort of sleeping cramped in the open. He wanted his men warm, well fed and strong, ready to kill.

‘You think he’ll come today?’ Gaillard asked Meulon, who stood with him at the front wall, watching Blackstone pace across the bridge.