Defiant Unto Death (43 page)

The bargeman held the tiller and gazed above the baled cargo, watching the night tide, mindful of sandbanks and shifting water that told him where shale beds lurked below the surface. Midstream was deep and fast-flowing, requiring a lifetime's experience of navigation on the river, but still demanding vigilance as they moved into layers of surface-hugging mist. The bargeman, his attention fixed on his work, did not notice the soldier who made his way forward, knife in hand.

Christiana's breathing was slow and steady, her sleep deep enough to dream but shallow enough to rise to the surface if the barge groaned from the river god's threat. The soldier knelt next to her, swallowing the spittle that filled his mouth from the excitement of his lust. She lay on her back, her cloak open, exposing her dress that had snagged halfway up her leg. The girl child was next to her, close to her face, soothed, perhaps, by her mother's breath. Rudd turned to look behind him; the bargeman was hidden behind the bales, the other two men still slept and, as the mist thickened, their forms became even less visible. He waited a moment longer. No one stirred. Blackstone's brat was curled against the bulkhead cocooned in a blanket, his back to his mother.

Rudd edged closer so he could straddle her in a single movement, his breeches already undone. His hand clamped her mouth and as she bucked and gagged, startled into wakefulness, he had his weight across her, holding the knife point below her eye, moving it away to lead her gaze to Agnes, inches from her. Rudd held the blade beneath the child's chin, his meaning clear.

She nodded, and followed his sign to pull her dress higher, his hand moving from her mouth to her breast. His knees forced her legs apart, his eyes never wavering from hers until she turned her face away and looked at Agnes, terrified that the child would wake and scream. Even as he forced his way into her, she kept her eyes open, watching the knife blade waver near the child's throat. Christiana's pain intensified as his muffled grunts increased. The scream, when it came, was not from the vulnerable child but from Rudd himself.

Henry awoke as the boat groaned in its efforts to stay on course and saw Rudd raping his mother. He plunged Guillaume's dagger into the man's bare buttocks, then fell back from the sweeping arc of the man's blow. Rudd cursed, Christiana twisted, and the man fell away. But his reactions were immediate, the pain and the smothering blood across his hand spurring him to lunge at her with his knife. He was half up, his breeches catching his knees, slowing his momentum, but already swinging the blade down in his blind rage.

A fist snatched a handful of his hair, yanked back his head and exposed his neck to a blade that cut his throat to the spine. Rudd gurgled blood, lungs rasping, hands whirling in his final moments, trying to reach those that held him. His eyes rolled into his head and the sergeant cast him to one side.

‘My lady,' he said gently, bending quickly and tugging her dress down; the sight of Rudd's death had ousted all thought of modesty. She trembled, and then clutched her clothes, nodding, pulling a waking Agnes to her. By then the second soldier had joined the sergeant and heaved Rudd's body away from her.

‘Father,' Sergeant Jacob called, beckoning the sleep-groggy priest from the back of the boat. ‘Lady Christiana needs you.' Jacob turned to the soldier: ‘Finn, get a bucket and swill this blood and shit away.' Then he knelt to help Christiana. ‘Come away from here, my lady. We'll make a better place for you and the child.'

‘Thank you,' she said, accepting the help of his strength; then, looking into his face as the moonlight thankfully slid away behind clouds: ‘Nothing happened.'

‘I know,' he answered, sharing the lie.

She looked at Henry, who stood with his back against the boat's side. Before she could utter a word, Jacob turned her away. ‘He's all right. I'll look after him,' he told her, and let a stoic Father Niccolò guide her back towards the stern of the barge.

Jacob bent down and retrieved the dagger, fat and blood slimy on its blade. He dipped it in the bucket and then wiped it on his sleeve. Henry had not moved, frozen at the sight of Rudd's head being nearly severed.

‘Master Henry,' the sergeant said. The boy did not respond, so Jacob touched the lad's face, and guided it to look at him. ‘You saved your mother. Do you understand?' he said quietly, his voice barely above a whisper.

Henry began to tremble.

Sergeant Jacob gripped the boy's shoulder, sliding the dagger back into its scabbard in the boy's belt. ‘Be brave, lad,' he urged, but Henry's face turned to the dark sky, his mouth wide open, his lungs desperate to scream, but no sound came; he was rigid.

The sergeant slapped him hard, the calloused hand raising a welt across the boy's face. Henry's head snapped back, his eyes glared, but his hand reaching for the dagger was quickly stopped by Jacob.

‘All right, lad, all right. You're all right now, aren't you, boy?'

Henry's body relaxed. He nodded. ‘Yes, sir.'

‘Now, the job's not yet finished, is it?' And he turned to look at Rudd's half-naked body, crumpled against the bulkhead. ‘Can you help us finish it, Master Henry?' he asked, knowing the boy needed to see through the gruesome task if he were ever to face death again.

Henry nodded again and followed the lead of Jacob and the other soldier, Finn, grabbing hold of the body to heave it overboard. Rudd's gaping throat yawned, his eyes a curse in death, but Henry stared right back into the lifeless eyes and knew that he was glad, deep into his heart, that this man was dead. He also knew that the love he had for his mother had been stolen by the darkness.

Rudd's body barely made a splash as the current dragged it below the fast-moving barge. Water sluiced across the deck as the soldier swilled it down. Sergeant Jacob offered Henry a bottle of gut-ripping cider. The boy pulled on the neck, winced and coughed, but then took another mouthful, the rich bite of its aroma cleansing the stench of Rudd's loosened bowels from his nostrils.

‘Now, best you go back to your mother and sister,' Jacob said.

Henry shook his head. ‘No. I'll stay with you.'

Prince Edward kept his army in the trees. They were without water, and had little food. No fires were permitted to offer any comfort from the dank forest, and the men stayed dressed for battle. The army had barely a few hours' rest before Blackstone and Guillaume led them from the trees before sunrise. He guided them down the valley beneath the walls of the abbey and onto the hillside at the northern end of a wood known as the Bois de Nouaillé.

‘The men are tired and hungry, my lord,' said Guillaume as Blackstone watched the soldiers prepare themselves to defend the rising ground.

‘Then they will be more bad-tempered than usual,' Blackstone said. ‘Pity the well-fed French, Guillaume, their breakfast will soon be vomited on this field.'

Guillaume handed Blackstone what little water was left. ‘You have hardly taken anything yourself, my lord.'

Blackstone could not deny the young squire his concern. He swallowed the water, and watched the exhausted army. ‘Fate chases me. I'll settle matters in this battle.'

‘My lord?' Guillaume asked, not understanding what Blackstone meant.

Blackstone wiped the sweat and grime from his face. ‘Ten years ago I fought across Normandy with the King. There was bitter fighting when we took Caen and one night I searched for my brother in the streets. The fallen were everywhere and I came across a priest in the shadows who was desecrating the dead. I almost killed him but he escaped. My knife took his finger. And when Sir Gilbert came upon me in the forest I questioned a routier who told me this Savage Priest has a finger missing.'

He dismounted and handed the reins to his squire. ‘This man flayed William de Fossat alive, destroyed my home and tortured and killed my people. He threatens my wife and children. When you attend mass pray that fate has not deceived me. I'll kill him on sight.'

Blackstone strode towards Killbere, who had returned with a scouting party. His broad grin told Blackstone he must have had sight of the French army in all its glory.

Killbere reported directly to the Prince and the commanders. ‘The French are about a mile away, my lord.'

The Prince looked across the undulating land and his weary men still trudging across the hillside. ‘If the French are that close, we'll be hard pressed to form up for battle. Let's pray the cardinals come back again. We need time. Where?'

‘They're hidden behind that ridge. They're ready.'

‘As many as we believed?' the Prince asked.

‘Like fleas on a dog's back, my lord. Banners as thick as an invasion fleet's sails,' Killbere said. ‘Ten or twelve thousand fighting men, right enough, my lord. They haven't gone home yet.'

The men laughed. French courage was never in doubt, but French noblemen had always made their own decisions when to leave the battlefield.

‘No, not this time,' the Prince said with good humour. ‘If Blackstone's information is correct then King John holds them to their word to fight.'

‘Then we'll make them wish they had not,' Killbere said, bringing a murmur of agreement from the others.

‘You'll not make any further progress, my lord,' Killbere continued. ‘Blackstone has chosen the best place to defend. You face north-west and have a commanding view of the plateau in front of you when they come over that hill. Their cavalry is in the front division. Five hundred or more.'

He paused letting what he had said sink in to the commanders.

‘It won't be the first time they've tried to put us under their hooves,' said the Earl of Salisbury.

‘They'll want our archers first,' said the Prince. ‘They're no fools; their scouts will have seen how few we have.'

Killbere scratched more lines in the dirt. ‘Well, my Prince, the three divisions who will follow have abandoned their horses. They fight on the ground. Like us.'

The commanders looked from one to the other. Was this gross folly on the French King's part or had he realized the terrain was best assaulted on foot?

‘Crush us with the cavalry and swarm through us,' said the Earl of Warwick. ‘He learns from us.'

The Prince of Wales shook his head. ‘But he makes a grave mistake. We are in defence and when he comes on foot he must labour uphill and through his dead. My lords, with God's help we shall win this day. Tell us more, Gilbert. We are heavily outnumbered but we are already cheered.'

Killbere pointed out the lie of the land. The folding hillside supported a vineyard yielding to the marshland below; thickets lined the southern slopes where the English defensive line would stand and a broad hawthorn hedge ran across the face of the gentle hill.

‘They cannot outflank us, not with the forest at our back and the valley and marshland below us on our left flank. There are two gaps in that hedgerow, barely enough for a half dozen horses to get through. If they broke through there, then the fox'll be among the chickens. They would get behind our lines. I'll hold it, sire. Give me men-at-arms and a company of archers, and we'll stop the bastards where they stand.'

‘William,' the Prince said.

‘My lord.' The Earl of Salisbury stepped forward.

‘You and Sir Gilbert hold the ground behind that hedgerow. Blackstone?'

Blackstone stepped closer to the inner sanctum of commanders.

‘You have served us well. Go to your archers and tell them they must hold their line. They must not falter, or the French will get behind us.'

‘They're not my archers. They fall under the command of my Lords Oxford and Warwick,' Blackstone answered, respectfully aware of the great Earls of England.

‘No matter. Say what must be said,' the Prince told him. ‘And say it in language they understand.'

Blackstone bowed his head slightly. ‘And then? Where would you wish me to fight?'

‘Choose your own place. Keep what men you have with you. Strengthen our weaknesses. If there's a breach, fill it.'

‘I will, my lord.'

Prince Edward stepped closer to the man who should have died from his wounds ten years earlier. ‘History makes us brothers, Thomas. Your common heart is more noble than most. Ride out as our champion and challenge the French to their faces. Let them know that a man of low birth can rise up by the grace of our King and be honoured for uncommon courage.'

Elfred and Will Longdon ran with their men into position along the slippery banks that rose up from the narrow river's marshlands. Other captains and sergeants did the same until the mud-covered archers settled onto their haunches gasping for breath, waiting for final orders from their commanders. Their mouths were already parched from the lack of water, for the marshland offered no comfort to slake their thirst. Blackstone and Guillaume rode down the hill to where the men waited.

‘Thomas, what can you tell us? Are the French close? Do we attack or hold?' Elfred asked.

Guillaume held the horses' bridles as Blackstone went among the men.

‘Hold,' Blackstone answered.

‘Sweet Jesus, we should be running for Bordeaux,' one of the archers said. ‘I'd leave my plunder and good riddance to it. Plate and jewels are no good to me if I'm dead.'

‘Enough of that!' Will Longdon shouted. ‘You were brave enough slitting throats in noblemen's houses; well, now you earn your pay.'

Elfred swept a curve with his bow across the front of the gathered men. ‘And you'll know it when them horses come galloping. You'll piss your breeches and smell the stench of the man next to you, but you'll stand your ground as archers have always done.'

‘You saw the lie of the land,' Blackstone said. ‘We hold the high ground. They'll come up from the far side of the plateau five hundred yards away. Then they'll charge downhill and up to us. The hawthorn hedgerow across our position is where they'll try and breach.'