Master of War (65 page)

A shockwave ran through the French troops. The English King had trapped them and his son had cut their feet from beneath them, and Blackstone’s strike into the very heart of their army had severed their strength. They suddenly faltered, and then the last of them turned and ran. Blackstone saw Louis de Vitry’s look of abandonment as he cried out for his men to stand. Fear and desperation closed their ears to his pleas. Among the thousands it must have seemed to Louis de Vitry that he was completely alone. He spurred his horse. Blackstone stood in its path, unable to move quickly enough. From several paces behind him Meulon hurled his spear straight into the beast’s chest and its legs crumpled. De Vitry clung to the pommel but was thrown. Sixty pounds of armour slowed him getting to his feet. His sword, like Blackstone’s, was tied to his wrist. Blackstone could almost smell the suffocation within the man’s helmet, its narrow slit limiting his vision. He stood back as de Vitry got to his knees and then his feet, staggered, then found his balance, shoving up the visor and sucking in air. There was no hesitation as he attacked with such ferocity that Blackstone fell back. He saw Gaillard take a pace forward to help, and shouted for him to stand his ground. De Vitry would be ransomed by the Prince, sold back to Philip, or sent to the French King in disgrace. A perfect victory for the English that would rub salt into King Philip’s wounds for years to come.

If Blackstone did not kill de Vitry first.

They clashed. Blackstone’s bare head put him at a disadvan­tage and de Vitry neatly turned on the balls of his feet, nimbly changing direction and catching Blackstone a tooth-rattling blow with his sword’s pommel. Blackstone spat blood, blocked, parried and felt his strength being drained with the blood running down his leg, the bolt still embedded in his side, impeding his sword strikes. Before he died, Blackstone wanted nothing more than to drink a bucket of water. To drown in it. To die not thirsty.

Louis de Vitry had the attuned senses of a man trained in hand-to-hand combat and this peasant archer, who had been honoured and treated as an equal by the great and noble de Harcourt family, was a stain on Norman honour. A wrong would now be righted. Blackstone was nothing more than a brute-strength fighter who now staggered, head sinking to his chest, hair smothering his face, mouth agape, desperate for water, shoulders yielding to the burden of his wound. He was going onto his knees. He was down! Count Louis de Vitry pressed both hands onto his sword’s grip and raised the blade.

It had become nothing more than an execution.

Blackstone lifted his head, and de Vitry saw his eyes stare coldly through the blood-soaked hair. He swung the blade down – too late. Blackstone turned Wolf Sword and, as he had when killing the wild boar, rammed upwards beneath de Vitry’s breastplate into his heart and lungs.

Louis de Vitry fell, sprawling, only this time Blackstone twisted clear and let the body thud face down into the sodden ground. What little breath remained bubbled blood into the trampled grass.

Barber-surgeons cut, sawed and stitched the wounded. It seemed to Blackstone that more blood flowed from their hands than had been let by the enemy. They took cutters and snapped the bolt below the fletchings. He wished the infirmarian from the monastery, Brother Simon, was with them. His care for the sick and wounded would keep a man in this world rather than punish him into the next. The barber-surgeon used an arrow spoon to draw out the bolt and prepared his cautery iron.

‘Let the blood run,’ Blackstone insisted. Another lesson from the old monk was to let blood flow and carry with it any impurity before sealing the wound. Finally they pushed the steel wire needle, its eyelet threaded with gut, into the wound. Gaillard brought the sack that hung from his horse’s pommel and handed him the small clay jar, sealed with beeswax, prepared by the old monk. The balm was the colour of lemons and very fragrant, which in itself gave a sense of healing. Blackstone used it on his wound and made sure that others smeared it across their injuries. He and his men were kept two weeks within the city walls, attended to and fed. Despite their injuries they buried their dead themselves, caring little for strangers who threw corpses into pits.

Matthew Hampton had rushed between Blackstone and the crossbowmen and now the veteran English archer lay cradled by the earth. Prayers were said and blessings given, and then Blackstone went among his men. They had come off lightly, but losing two archers was a grievous loss to Blackstone. He knew, though, that in time, others would come.

‘Talpin was a good soldier,’ Meulon told him, nursing a cut to his arm. ‘Still, better him than me, is how you have to look at it. I think you pissed off your English Prince, though, Master Thomas. He was counting on keeping the French leaders alive.’

‘He wasn’t on my mind at the time,’ Blackstone answered.

Blackstone had lost fifteen of his seventy-five men, and a dozen others were wounded, including himself. It was a time for prayer and giving thanks, and he kneeled with his company at the men’s graveside. There was a sombre place in his heart for those who had died at his side on the battlefields of France, and he knew the memory of them would ride with him forever.

Blackstone and his men were quartered in the town, but kept close to the stables and the garrison’s quarters. The seneschal of Calais had ordered de Beauchamp to keep fighting men well away from the merchants and inns. A battle won beyond the walls could soon be lost within them. Gold- and silversmiths offered more temptations than tavern whores.

By the third week after the battle he could ride without seeping blood. It was time to go home. He shared a cooked meal with the men, who were given fresh bread for their efforts. If nothing else, the King and the Prince fed their men well.

Gaillard sucked the broth’s juice from the bread. The lump on his head had risen to a mighty bruise that made wearing a helmet painful. A couple of weeks of letting the lice escape would do no harm, was the common consensus. ‘I hear that Italian, whatsisname… the one who did the deal, he got paid. One of the garrison guards said he overheard that he’d taken a holiday to Rome, said it was a Jubilee year. If there were a few spare coins to be had I’d travel through Avignon and see the Pope myself.’

‘Gaillard, the Pope would choke on his fine cuts if you showed up. He would have to take a year off his duties to confess you,’ said Perinne, lifting the men’s mood.

There had been some booty, but not enough to make the fight worthwhile, though it made little difference to most of them, because they would soon be back home where raiding gave them modest but acceptable pay under Blackstone’s command.

Blackstone stood and wiped his hands on his leather jerkin. He could smell his own stench and longed for a bath, promising himself to bathe when they came across the first freshwater stream.

‘We leave tomorrow after matins,’ he said and then made his way to where William de Fossat lay, resting in surroundings more fitting for a Norman baron who had decided to throw in his lot with the English. He had taken the fourth crossbow quarrel in those deadly moments when Hampton died and Blackstone was wounded. It had punched through his armour and embedded itself in his shoulder. He looked gaunt behind the dark beard because the surgeons had bled him even more than the wound itself.

‘Butchers. That’s what you English are. I ask for a French sur­geon and I get an Englishman who stutters my language, and farts while he stitches me,’ said de Fossat.

‘I’m told that was because you held a knife to his throat in case he took your arm.’

William de Fossat grunted indifferently.

‘What will you do now? Edward can’t grant you protection here. Will you go to England?’ Blackstone asked.

‘No. Did you not hear? I found myself a rich widow with estates that need looking after. And I think she’s some connection to a long-forgotten bastard of the royal family. He will leave us alone – and besides, I hear he’s ailing. He’ll be dead before I give myself to the worms. That’s if your English butchers haven’t done for me.’

‘I came to thank you,’ Blackstone said.

‘Don’t be a fool, Blackstone. I didn’t do what I did for you. Louis de Vitry betrayed us. Had I confronted him he would have surrendered to me. He needed to be dead.’ He smiled. ‘You were – convenient. You’re the one who mocked our code of chivalry, Thomas, but it’s a code nonetheless. Surrender only to a man of equal rank.’

‘Which I am not.’

‘Which you most definitely are not. And he wanted badly to kill you. You humiliated a Norman lord. Sweet Jesus! Did you think he would ever forget?’

‘No,’ said Blackstone. ‘But I doubted you. For a moment only. But I doubted.’

‘That I was coming to kill you,’ he said

‘Aye. You had the perfect opportunity out there. And now I am in your debt.’

‘I gave my word that I would stand at your shoulder against a common enemy,’ de Fossat said quietly, adding weight to his sincerity.

‘A pledge can be broken,’ Blackstone replied.

‘It depends who you give it to,’ said the Norman lord.

John de Beauchamp strode at the head of a company of pikemen, who outnumbered Blackstone’s men two to one. They stopped where Blackstone and his men were garrisoned.

‘Is this trouble?’ Meulon asked as he saw the men outside form up as escort.

Before Blackstone could answer, the Captain of Calais made himself known. ‘Sir Thomas Blackstone, you and your men are summoned to the market square. I am sent to escort you there now.’

‘By whose orders?’ Blackstone asked, knowing his men were wary of the English.

‘Your Prince,’ de Beauchamp answered.

Meulon muttered beneath his breath. ‘Disobeying a sovereign Prince is a hanging offence. Maybe they’ve already got the scaffolds built in the square.’

‘Because I killed de Vitry?’ Blackstone asked him.

‘How would I know? He’s
your
Prince.’

The soldiers marched as Blackstone’s men shambled between them. There had been no command to disarm but to be taken like this into the confines of the town created suspicion. They turned into the market square and saw it was boxed by troops, keeping the townspeople at bay as they gawked at the assembly of noblemen and their rich tapestry of banners. The Prince of Wales, resplendent in armour and unsullied surcoat, was in conversation with his entourage. It seemed that he and his household were preparing to leave for England. John de Beauchamp halted the men.

‘Sir Thomas, you will accompany me,’ he commanded, and went forward to where the Prince spoke with his seneschal and other officers of state who controlled Calais.

Blackstone stayed a respectful two paces behind de Beauchamp, who waited until an officer approached him. The Prince of Wales looked up and nodded and the officer indicated that they should move forward. Once close enough, both Blackstone and de Beau­champ went down on one knee and then stood before him.

The Captain of Calais stepped away, leaving Blackstone to face the stern-faced Prince alone.

‘We leave on the tide, Thomas. Back to England. Our King has already sailed,’ he said.

Blackstone could not determine why he had been summoned. Thoughts dashed through his mind. Was punishment due? Surely the Prince did not want him to return to England, abandoning his territory, his wife and child?

‘You hold towns in your King’s name, Thomas. Come the day we will no doubt have need of them.’

‘They’re yours to command, my Prince,’ Blackstone answered.

A frown of irritation crossed Prince Edward’s face. ‘Do you always have to kill so readily, Thomas? Count Louis de Vitry was a Norman we could have used in our favour.’

Blackstone remained silent. To answer might stir a hornet’s nest of recrimination.

The heir to the throne of England let the moment pass. ‘What’s done is done,’ he went on. ‘Your action drove a wedge through the enemy centre. It was… helpful… to us. Has the yeoman archer become a military tactician as well as a knight?’

‘I do as I see best, my Prince,’ Blackstone said, watching Edward’s movements as he made a barely noticeable gesture and a nod of his head to no one in particular, but it was enough for a knight in full armour and a groom on the periphery of the square to take hold of a pack horse’s bridle and begin its swayback gait towards them.

‘Then make sure that you continue to do so,’ the Prince said and carried on, indicating that he did not expect a response. ‘Did you know we have given the wool Staple to Calais, that our Flemish allies to the north are almost within hailing distance? Their looms hum with trade from the wool off our sheep’s backs. It makes no difference whether you do or not, Thomas, there was strategic and political importance in holding this town.’

Blackstone saw that the approaching knight and groom wore the royal livery, so whatever was packed onto that palfrey had something to do with the Prince’s household.

‘And hold it we did. And you would have stood alone in our name had we not known of the plot to throw open the gates. Your action deserves to be honoured. And Thomas, you are making a habit of this!’

The rebuke seemed genuine and Blackstone bowed his head.

‘We jest. For God’s sake, Thomas, we are not an ogre, we are your Prince and we value you. Did they cut away your English humour at Crécy as well as your face?’ he said, and with another flick of his wrist the knight responded by taking something from the side of the horse. He held up a plain woven surcoat, its sanguine dye as rich as blood. The outline of a shield was sewn onto the left breast and it bore the black stitched image of Wolf Sword, pommel and grip distinct above the curved-down crossguard. The narrowing blade was held in a gauntleted fist. Blackstone remembered meeting his Prince’s eyes across the sword when both men grasped its blade before the battle.

‘If you are to be known as other than that face of yours then you need a coat of arms. Our King thought this appropriate,’ he said and nodded to the groom to give it to Blackstone.

‘There are sufficient to clothe your ruffians, and more for those who will no doubt seek you out. And five hundred pounds a year will come from the treasury to sustain your efforts,’ he said.