Master of War (66 page)

The honour had surprised and embarrassed Blackstone and he stuttered his gratitude.

‘You are too generous, lord.’

‘Yes. We know. But honouring you reflects well on us. We bathe in the warmth of your name and success – and we would wish it were more fragrant,’ he said and smiled.

Impatiently he looked to the groom, who fumbled with some­thing on the blind side of the horse. The knight quickly took over and unlaced a shield. The Prince stepped forward and took it from him. He turned the shield and the same blazon of sword and gauntlet faced Blackstone.

‘We chose the motto ourself,’ he said. ‘You were close to death that night, and yet you would not yield to it. The King, our father, uttered the words that you were defiant unto death
.
’

Blackstone looked at the words written beneath the gauntlet:
Défiant à la Mort
.

He took the shield from Prince Edward’s hands.

‘Thomas, go home and stay alive; we will have need of you again. Now show your men their coat of arms.’

Blackstone hooked his bent arm into the shield and raised it to his men.

They saw it and roared their pleasure.

‘Thomas,’ the Prince beckoned, and spoke a few final words despite the deafening cheers that the crowd now saw fit to share.

Blackstone rejoined his men as the Prince’s entourage left the city gates. Within the hour, wearing their new coat of arms, they clattered across the drawbridge. The solemn look on Blackstone’s scarred face prompted Meulon to question him.

‘We’ve been honoured, Sir Thomas. Have no regrets about the men we lost – they look down on us and share our pride. They’re beyond harm and our time has yet to come. Is that such a bad thing?’

Blackstone remained silent as they drew away from the citadel.

‘Did your Prince chastise you for killing de Vitry? Is that what happened?’

‘Killing de Vitry was little more than an inconvenience to him. And we’ll mourn the men in our own way. No, what the Prince told me was that King Philip and his son John, Duke of Normandy, have quarrelled. Some of the Norman lords will side with him and no matter who becomes the strongest they’ll want revenge against those of us who stay and fight here.’

Behind them wind-filled sails pushed the Prince’s ship towards England as Blackstone spurred the horse forward and galloped for home.

THE END

When King Edward III invaded France – a country twice as large, far wealthier and more densely populated than his own – it was the leading military power in the West. Edward’s army, men from poor families as well as members of the nobility, had opportunities to secure wealth and status through plunder and ransom – if they survived the savagery of battle. But what happened to those men once these great battles had been fought and they were discharged from service? Their skills were in high demand by those who had no armies of their own – most notably the Italian city-states. Before they reached the Italian paymasters they had to have proved themselves in warfare, and it was the lead-up to the day when these hardened men were contracted that I wanted to explore, and discover how a humble boy from an English village could become a Master of War. I discovered that many independent captains who fought as mercenaries would have themselves knighted by their fellow routiers.
But there were some men from a lowly station in life who were honoured because of their bravery and who seemed to have a natural talent for war. And I set Thomas Blackstone off on his journey so that he could earn such honour.

English and Welsh bowmen dominated King Edward’s major battles in the fourteenth century. Young men practised at their village butts, a unique army, trained for service in war, that could not be matched by any other European monarch. One such young man was Thomas Blackstone, who would overcome his fear of killing and the terror of a heavy cavalry charge in battle, and whose courage would create an opportunity for recognition that went beyond the usual reward of war booty.

To begin my acquaintance with that violent period I reached for my well-worn copy of Barbara W. Tuchman’s
A Distant Mirror
.
The brutality of the age and, in particular, the appalling savagery of its mercenaries made it difficult to find any redeeming features for Blackstone. At that time there was a great desire to behave in a chivalrous manner, especially for those of noble rank, but a knight’s word of honour to a peasant counted for nothing. Chivalric endeavour was an insistent ghost from the days of old, most notably the Arthurian legends and
The Song of Roland
, the mid-twelfth-century heroic poem that celebrated the deeds of Charlemagne. The sheer demands of fighting and the necessities of war usually swept away any semblance of compassion. Despite going to war to gain riches and honour and carrying the ideal of chivalrous behaviour, prisoners were massacred, churches pillaged and women raped.

But many of the knightly classes and nobility were literate and accomplished in poetry and courtship, so perhaps there
was
a chink in their armour. There were instances where courtly and gentle manners won the day – especially with women. A routier, Andrew Belmont, fell in love while serving in Italy and stopped the destruction of the town where his beloved lived.

Modern society can barely comprehend the privations and culture of a contemporary army at war, so a true grasp of the experience of those who fought in a medieval conflict can lie only in our imagination. It was a cruel and savage time. Children were working at hard physical labour by the age of seven. The offspring of craftsmen might be apprenticed if there was money to pay the master whose skills were to be acquired. A boy of noble birth would be sent to another family and trained as a page from the time he was nine years old and then, from his early teens, would serve as a knight’s esquire, already trained in swordsmanship. Men-at-arms, strapped into sixty to eighty pounds of armour, could fight for hours on end in hand-to-hand combat, which might seem superhuman to us today, but the medieval capacity for absorbing and shrugging off pain appears to have been extraordinary. One knight who had his helm and nose pierced by a crossbow bolt, which stayed embedded in his face, fought on, suffering some ‘discomfort’ each time a blow was delivered against him that struck the offending quarrel. The medieval man’s strength and endurance is unlikely to be replicated today. There are accounts of knights, clad in full armour, who could somersault, and run and leap into the saddle of a war horse.

Many of the events in
Master of War
took place. There are few names known of the common men who fought during that invasion, but two archers who are recorded, Henry Torpoleye and Richard Whet, fell during the street fighting at Caen. Few incidents of resistance from the local peasants against the heavily armed English and Welsh invaders are recorded, but one such event took place at the village of Cormalain when English troops sheltered in a barn. That night locals blocked its entrance and burned it down. The troops suffocated and died – an event I used and which resulted (in the story) in the execution of young John Nightingale.

King Edward’s son, Prince Edward of Woodstock, fought as a sixteen-year-old in the vanguard at the Battle of Crécy. He had experienced commanders at his side, but his youth, like many of the common men in the ranks, was no impediment to his aggressive defence of his position. He would later be known as the Black Prince, but that sobriquet did not appear until several centuries after the events in this book. The two most decisive battles fought against the French, which gave the English prestige, wealth and territory, were Crécy and Poitiers. The English and Welsh archers inflicted arguably an even greater defeat on French nobility at Crécy than at Agincourt nearly seventy years later. The killing field at Crécy meant that the flower of French knighthood faced a terrifying storm of arrows that fell at sixteen thousand a minute – nearly three hundred per second.

Medieval women of the nobility had clearly defined roles to play but there were some remarkable women who shouldered the whole burden of being the heads of their households when their husbands were killed in war. One such stalwart was Blanche de Ponthieu, a noblewoman in her own right, and married to Jean V, Count of Harcourt. The Harcourts of France played a dangerous game. The family was divided between those who supported the French King and those who did not. History records that after recovering from his wounds suffered at Crécy, Jean became embroiled in a plot to kill, or at least replace, the King.

The outcome of this conspiracy forms a turning point for Thomas Blackstone in the second book of this series –
The Savage Priest
.

As Castle d’Harcourt – to use the correct French spelling – itself plays quite a substantial role in
Master of War
I include a link to a few photos I took during my research trip:
http://ven.so/masterofwarphotos
.

Historical novelists, in particular, are dependent on many fine scholars whose diligent research and knowledge allow an author to place his characters in a more vivid setting than would otherwise be possible. I acquired (or, as a routier,
plundered) many historical articles for this novel, but continually returned to an informed and brilliant work that covers the Hundred Years War, Jonathan Sumption’s
Trial by Battle
and its companion volume,
Trial by Fire
. It’s a work of enormous appeal and information and is possibly the most comprehensible account of the war.
The Road to Crécy
, a more recent book by Marilyn Livingstone and Morgen Witzel, is an excellent read and an invaluable source of information. The two authors list more names of those who fought in the invasion and their book gives an insight into the day-to-day conditions experi­enced by Edward’s army, from food and logistics to weaponry. Its narrative history gives a very vivid and close-up account of what happened from pre-invasion to the Battle of Crécy
.
I first discovered the brilliance and courage of King Edward III in Ian Mortimer’s
The Perfect King
. This author offers a wonderful portrait of one of England’s greatest founders. There are contentious, though fascin­ating, issues discussed in his book that fell outside the scope of research required for
Master of War
.

For personal weapons of combat, and especially in determining the origin of Wolf Sword, I turned to Ewart Oakeshott and two of his books:
A Knight and his Weapons
and, more particularly,
The Sword in the Age of Chivalry
(revised edition). When it came to understanding that most lethal weapon on the field of battle – the war bow used by the English and Welsh archers – there were many articles available, but the book
Longbow
–
A Social and Military History
,
by the actor and author Robert Hardy, is probably the definitive work on the subject
.

Medieval surgical procedures were taken from various articles, most notably from the
Annals of The Royal College of Surgeons of England
. The Great Pestilence that became known as the Black Death is a fascinating study in itself and I can recommend that any interested readers or researchers pick up a copy of
The Black Death
by Philip Ziegler
.

Wherever I have deviated from any expert’s view it is either from choice, to allow me to tell the story the way I wish to tell it, or because, at times, the experts themselves offer different explanations of events that took place.

David Gilman

Devonshire

2013

I owe a special thanks to Nic Cheetham and his unstinting enthusiasm for
Master of War
. Creating two novels from the first draft, at his suggestion, was a huge undertaking, but everyone at Head of Zeus has been most generous in their praise and support for this book and the following series. I am extremely pleased to be part of their new venture. My friend, and ‘unofficial’ editor, James McFarlane, is a stalwart commentator whose considerate suggestions improve my efforts.

As always a huge thank-you to my tireless literary agent, Isobel Dixon, and everyone at Blake Friedmann Literary Agency.

David Gilman

Devonshire, England

www.davidgilman.com

Follow me:
@davidgilmanuk

ENGLAND, 1346

Amid the carnage of the 100 Years’ War – the bloodiest conflict in medieval history – a young English archer confronts his destiny.

For Thomas Blackstone the choice is easy – dance on the end of a rope for a murder he did not commit, or take up his war bow and join the king’s invasion.

As he fights his way across northern France, Blackstone learns the brutal lessons of war – from the terror and confusion of his first taste of combat, to the savage realities of siege warfare.

Vastly outnumbered, Edward III’s army will finally confront the armoured might of the French nobility on the field of Crécy. It is a battle that will change the history of warfare, a battle that will change the course of Blackstone’s life, a battle that will forge a legend.