Defiant Unto Death (33 page)

‘My word,' Blackstone said and slapped the horse's rump with his gauntlet.

The situation was hopeless. He hawked and spat and watched Blanche's horse kick up turf as it galloped away. A part of him craved the companionship of his long-dead brother and the men he served with at Crécy, in a time when shared fear made him braver, when life was simpler and others took the decisions that committed men to kill or be killed. But at that moment, watching the cold mist cling to the treetops he accepted that his was now a solitary life of leadership. The actions of others had placed the King of France firmly against him. His would be guilt by association.

‘I need another three horses,' he said to the man shovelling dung from the stalls.

‘I've only got swayback rounceys, my lord, nothing worthy. Meat is what I was keeping them for.'

Blackstone spilled coins into the man's grimy hands. ‘Buy yourself mutton instead.'

Four men stood caged in the jolting cart that laboured along the Abbeville road on the way to Paris. Stripped of warm clothing and clad only in their linen shirts, Jean de Harcourt, de Graville, Colin Doublet – Navarre's squire, who had threatened the King – and de Mainemares endured the misery of the King's pleasure. The cold air humiliated the men further, their shivering unmistakable as their guards taunted them, sneering that they trembled from fear. The gibbet, where common criminals were executed, lay a short distance from the city's walls. A peasant, his wrists chained like those prisoners in the cart, was forced to stumble alongside on the uneven road, his flesh chafed and bleeding from the tug on his manacles. Lord de Graville's face was ash-grey. He was a ringleader but he was not the traitor Blackstone had thought him to be.

Blackstone eased his horse slowly through the forest, shadowing the King's retinue. The thick leaf mould muffled the sound of his progress as the column moved along the route towards Abbeville, the road along which King John's father had retreated when English archers had slaughtered his army and made history for themselves. Perhaps it was the memory of this dishonour that made King John stop at the turn of the road on the heights above Rouen.

‘De Ruymont. Here!' Blackstone heard him command. Realization knifed into Blackstone's chest as the Norman lord spurred his horse forward to the front of the column. Disbelief held a heartbeat and then anger set it free. Guy de Ruymont, whom both de Harcourt and Thomas Blackstone called friend, was the traitor.

The marshal gestured the soldiers to release the peasant. ‘You were condemned to hang for murder, but you will be pardoned for the duty you will perform.'

The man bowed and his chains were released. One of the soldiers handed him a falchion, a curved short sword, little more than a lengthened billhook and favoured by common soldier and man-at-arms for close-quarter battle. It was a hacking blade.

The condemned men were dragged from the cart. Doublet fought despite his broken arm, but the guards heaved him screaming in agony onto the ground where he wept pitifully. Ignoring his injury, soldiers took hold of the chains attached to his wrists and pulled them wide.

‘Your bodies will be hung by these chains until they rot. Your heads will be impaled on pikes so that every person passing this place will know of your treachery,' the marshal told the condemned men. ‘Get to it, you scum!' he ordered the peasant.

The amateur executioner hacked at the writhing Doublet. After three or four vicious yet clumsy blows the head fell into the grass. The sickening act of butchery tore at the condemned men's courage.

De Mainemares was next. He could barely walk; incoherent prayer spluttered from his lips. The terror finally took his legs from under him, but the soldiers spread him across a fallen tree stump and the falchion fell as if wielded by a hedge-layer attacking a sapling.

Blackstone knew he could do nothing to save his friend, but he readied the horses as he saw Jean kneel in the mud and pray.

De Graville cried for mercy. ‘Sire! I beg you! It was Navarre who wanted you dead! We wanted only a fair hearing with my lord the Dauphin. No harm was planned. None.'

His cries were ignored as soldiers dragged him to the field. ‘A priest, sire! At least let us have the sacrament of penance,' pleaded the Norman, bereft of a confessor.

The blood-splattered executioner went to work on the man's neck. De Graville grunted as the bone took the blade's bite, but the muscles hardened from years of warfare yielded less easily. The peasant swore and sweated until the head fell.

Jean de Harcourt got to his feet. The tremor had left him. ‘Guy de Ruymont! You were a trusted friend and God will not forgive you for what you have done to us all!'

They began to drag de Harcourt to the blood-soaked grass. De Ruymont looked away.

‘Look at him!' the King commanded. ‘You betrayed him as surely as you condemn his wife and his children.'

The King's words struck de Harcourt. He surged against his captors. ‘Sire!' de Harcourt cried. ‘My family are innocent of my crime.'

‘There will be no mercy for those you cherish. It will all end here, today,' the King replied, and pushed his baton beneath de Ruymont's chin. ‘Watch him die! Or I will forget our agreement and have you butchered with the others!'

Guy de Ruymont had no choice but to watch his friend being dragged away, arms stretched by the chains, and then pulled to his knees.

In the forest's shadows Blackstone struck his sword blade across the horses' rumps. The cut to each was superficial but they whinnied in panic and their terror alarmed the soldiers as they tore through the undergrowth.

‘Stand to!' the marshal cried. ‘The King!' A body of knights and squires quickly formed around King John. The moments of uncertainty gave Blackstone his chance as the bolting horses broke cover and careered towards the column, scaring their mounts.

Confusion gripped the men as a figure emerged at full gallop from the clinging mist. An open helmet exposed his scarred face, and a blood-red shield bore the device of a gauntlet gripping a sword. The King heard his marshal swear in recognition; then he shielded his lord's body from the attacker as Blackstone silently bore down on the startled men.

He had guessed the instinctive reaction of those closest to the King, and his charge angled across the field, bypassing the bodyguard. Changing direction, he pulled up the horse a hundred paces away and faced his friend as men rode from the ranks to attack him, infantry at their heels. The executioner and the men holding Jean de Harcourt froze in uncertainty. His friend had no chance of escaping death, but he would die knowing two things.

‘She's safe!' Blackstone said clearly, looking directly at the condemned man, and saw the understanding on Jean's face. ‘And your family are under my protection!'

Jean de Harcourt's eyes spilled tears. Blackstone's stature on the wild horse, controlling its power beneath him as men-at-arms galloped and foot soldiers ran to attack him, proclaimed his fearless contempt for them.

When the armed men were sixty paces away, Blackstone nodded a final farewell to his friend and kissed Wolf Sword's blade in salute.

‘God is with you, Thomas!' de Harcourt cried out. And then laughed as Blackstone called out to the King, boxed in by the marshal and his knights.

‘You're a craven bastard of a king! Dog shit sweetens the air better than your presence on this field of cruel injustice. Know this, John of Valois, I am Sir Thomas Blackstone, I slaughtered your army at Crécy, I seized your towns in Normandy and Gascony, and I will stand at King Edward's side and see you defeated. You are my enemy. I will come for you for the harm you have done this day.'

Then his knee pressed the stallion's flank, turning it directly into the advancing men, arcing Wolf Sword down in slashing blows that split helmets and skulls. Spears jabbed but his shield took the low-angled thrusts and the horse's iron-shod hooves trampled the attackers. He had drawn the men from the column, a feint to shatter the line. The horse turned again and within a dozen strides bore down on Guy de Ruymont. Blackstone's eyes held those of the terrified man.

‘Mercy, Thomas. My family …' he said helplessly.

Without remorse, and ignoring the momentary image of the man's children playing with his own, he sliced the blade across de Ruymont's throat, severing head from body. The torso plumed blood, its hands still gripping the horse's reins, staying upright long enough for the horse to gallop wildly into the flanks of the men protecting their King.

And long enough for Blackstone to raise the sword above his head in a final farewell towards Jean de Harcourt. The executioner's blade fell onto his friend's neck as the men-at-arms gave chase, but Blackstone was already beyond their reach, galloping across the open meadow known as the Field of Mercy.

Blackstone rode hard towards home until darkness smothered the forest track. There would be no pursuit or likelihood of ambush until morning. And then he and Christiana and the children would run for safety further south. Had Guillaume already taken them to Chaulion? When daybreak came King John's men would be at Harcourt and hours thereafter at Blackstone's hamlet. He loosened the reins and let his horse's instinct find its own way through the night towards home. But at the first lifting of darkness the breeze warned him of disaster – the acrid smell of burnt timber and smouldering thatch. And when he came across Marcel's slaughtered body on the track his worst fears were realized. He waited in the trees above the old fortified house, the surrounding barns and peasants' homes – burnt-out; ghosts of smoke drifted from the blackened timbers. He stayed motionless, searching the devastation for any sign of life or of those who had taken it. As the smoke parted he could make out the bodies of villagers dangling at the end of ropes. His horse threw up its head, nostrils flaring as the stench of death reached them. He spurred it down the hillside and with sword in hand eased his way through the tortured village. Nothing had survived. Dogs lay hacked and speared alongside men, women and children. Farm animals had been taken, except for the cows that lay beside the gore of their own spilled entrails. The blackened doors to the manor house lay open and as his horse's hooves echoed across the threshold into the courtyard he saw his servants' bodies, their blood already congealed. The raiders must have struck before nightfall the previous day, when he was at Rouen.

‘Christiana!' he called, waiting, hoping that she had hidden before the attack had reached the home. His horse stood steady amid the carnage. Trained for battle, it awaited its master's command. Blackstone dismounted. The enemy was long gone, or they would have attacked in the confines of the courtyard. He ran up the steps, calling out her name and those of his children and of Guillaume, their protector.

Tables and benches were overturned; his three hunting dogs lay dead on the reed floor of the great room. The blackened remains of burnt tapestries clung to the stone walls, but his gaze was taken to the fireplace and the huge chestnut beam that lay across the broad grate. The naked body of Old Hugh, dried blood on his face and a gash in his chest where his heart had once beaten, stood in grotesque welcome to his master's homecoming. Each hand was nailed into the beam. The attackers had crucified and then tortured him. Crudely written words on a piece of cloth hung from the servant's already cold body. Blackstone pulled the stained linen free. The words chilled him.
I believe in a cruel God. I am his wickedness expressed in anger.
The cloth was from one of Christiana's dresses.

An avenging horde had fallen upon them. King John was devout; these were the sentiments of a man possessed by evil intent. It was true that the French King lived in fear of conspiracy; he had already shown that he would strike at the heart of those against him, but he would not twist his devotion to God in such crude terms. He was king by divine will; he would not perceive himself as the hand of wickedness. No, Blackstone realized, this attack was committed against him by the Savage Priest, sent by the beleaguered King to rid himself of those who plotted, or those who knew the intentions of the conspirators. A purge of violence would sweep across Normandy, just as Prince Edward's
chevauchée
scoured the south.

A reckoning was at hand.

Blackstone felt a stab of fear. Where were his family and Guillaume?

Blackstone stepped over the bodies of his servants. The attackers had taken all the food from the kitchen and slaughtered his people where they stood, or cowered. Beatrix lay, eyes glazed in death, a meat cleaver loose in her fingers and a dead mercenary with a slashed neck a couple of paces away. Amidst the carnage he found a half-eaten ham and an unbroken bottle of wine; after feeding his horse, he ate and drank his fill. His pursuit might take days and he did not know when he would eat again.

The heavy clouds moving in from the west told him there would be more rain later that day. The stiffening breeze played across the treetops, leaving the stillness of the ruins below to taunt him. Where once had been the sound of children's laughter, a woman's shout to her husband, a man's voice raised in answer, was now silence. The bodies lay where they had been killed. The wild boars would soon emerge from the forests and gorge on the corpses. This was no time for sentiment or sorrow at the destruction of his home and the slaughter of the people he had vowed to protect. The bodies of his wife and children were not among the slain.

There was hope.

There were three tracks that led in and out of the hamlet, wide enough for a wagon, but there was no sign of any fresh wheel marks. That meant Guillaume might have left in good time on horseback. If he had followed Blackstone's orders and waited the day and night as instructed, the raiders would have them. Now that the King had decided to kill or capture those he thought were against him, Sir Thomas Blackstone's family would make a prize catch. And he who held his family held Blackstone.