I Serve (7 page)

But as the French companies and commanders left the battlefield in such haste, a strange sight met our eyes. Five enemy knights, undeterred by the general retreat, were riding toward our lines. Four of them had arranged themselves in a square, and their horses were attached with ropes to the bridle and trappings of the fifth horse which rode in the middle. Tethered as he was to the others, the rider of the middle horse did not need to hold the reins of his own horse to guide it. Both of his hands gripped a great broadsword, and though he bobbed a bit unsteadily, he managed to keep his saddle. Upon his helmet he wore a crown and a plume of three white feathers. These same feathers were painted on the shield that hung at his side, and beneath them was a motto, though I could not make out the words.

The prince and all of us about him looked on in amazement to see this strange company advance upon us. “What foolhardiness is this?” exclaimed Audley. “Do they not know that the battle is as good as over?”

“
If I mistake not the crest,” said Chandos, “it is John, the king of Bohemia. Our scouts spoke true when they said that many Germans had come to help Valois against us.”

The Bohemian king and his strange bodyguards continued to advance picking their path carefully through the bodies that littered the field. In one uneven place, the horses stumbled over a hollow in the ground. The king nearly lost his seat until the riders reached out and steadied him in his saddle.

“
Why does he ride thus?” I asked, looking perplexedly at the ropes that bound the central rider to his companions. Chandos shrugged and Audley turned away. The prince alone responded to my question.

“
He is old and he is blind. That is why they lead him thus. But his spirit is not as shrunken as his body. He has sworn to serve Philip in battle against us, and eyes or no, he will strike a few blows for honor’s sake. He is a brave man, this king. It is my wish and express order that he not be harmed.”

But even as he spoke, a flock of arrows arched heavenward and descended on the handful of Bohemians. Their wounded horses neighed and fell. The blind Bohemian king went down like a great cedar tree when an ax is put to its roots.

The prince uttered a little cry; I sprang forward instinctively. “He is still alive!” said I, but I had not reckoned with the Welshmen.

Wales, as you may know, fell into English hands in the reign of the first
Edward, the grandfather to our present sovereign. Edward made Wales English by an act of violence, and the Welshmen in our army are a particularly violent breed. They fight for England now, but the bitter edge of their spirit is as keen as the long knives they carry. In battle, they run amidst the enemy’s horses striking upward with quick thrusts. When the battle is strewn with fallen knights, they run among them and cut their throats. Many French nobles were finished this way at Crecy, and we lost more than a dozen ransoms from the rancorous rapacity of our Welsh brethren.

When the Bohemian king was felled by the archers, I immediately ran forward to succor him. The prince, who was mounted, arrived there ahead of me, but the Welshmen had been there even before him. The blind king lay motionless on the ground, his heart pierced by a Welsh knife through the armhole of his corslet. His hands still gripped the broadsword; the bridle of his horse was still tethered to the horses fallen around him.

“
Here lies a noble lord,” said the prince as I came up beside him.

We were not the only Englishmen on the battlefield. All around us, our archers and men-at-arms had begun to loot the bodies of the French dead. A swarthy young fellow darted in among the Bohemian king’s retinue and began to strip off valuables like a tanner skinning a dead animal.

“
Have a care, you!” cried I as the looter began to root around the fallen king’s corpse. I sprang forward and cuffed the man. He would have traded blows with me, but he saw the company I kept and resigned himself to cursing before he slunk away. My blow had knocked his plunder from his hands; on the ground I saw the plumed ostrich feathers that had erstwhile crowned the Bohemian’s head. I picked them up.

“
Highness,” said I, and I fell on one knee before the prince. “The spoils of the fallen belong to the victor.”

The prince dismounted and took the feathers in his gloved hand. He looked them over with reverence. “I take them not as spoils but as inheritance, for I will honor these feathers as surely as if mine own father had bequeathed them to me. What says the motto on his shield?”

“
Ich dien
,” said I, sounding out the German with some difficulty.

“
Ich dien
,” repeated the prince. “
I serve
. Old and eyeless he was, yet he served his master well and performed his duty. My sight remains, and I can only hope to serve as bravely as he.
Ich dien
. It shall be my motto henceforth.”

He looked at me, still kneeling. “And you,” said he, “You serve Sir John Chandos, do you not?”

“
Aye, highness,” said I. “I am his squire.”

“
What is your name?”

“
John Potenhale.”

“
Then,” said he, drawing his sword, “
rise
Sir
John Potenhale, knight of England and—with your master’s permission—knight of my own household.”

“
He has that permission,” said a clear voice. Glancing behind me, I saw that Chandos had come up behind us on the battlefield. Chandos gave me a friendly nod and I saw that he did not in the least begrudge the good fortune that had befallen me. I smiled gratefully at my old master in wordless thanksgiving for all his years of patronage. Then I turned my eyes to my new master, eager to do him some service.

“
Well then, Sir Potenhale,” said the prince with a smile, “you are mine to command. And the first act of service I demand from you is to order prayers to be offered by all of our men in the field. Instruct them to give thanks to the Holy Trinity, for the victory we won today was not through our own strength. And when you have done this, find my father the king. Tell him the enemy is fled, the battle is won, and I await his further instructions.”

*****

Both the precociousness of my knighting and my entrance into the prince’s household were wholly unexpected events for one of my station. I was not born a nobleman. My father was a man-at-arms with no great estate; my mother had been waiting woman to a lady, but she was a steward’s daughter and unendowed to boot.

But though my ancestors were not knights, our family had martial blood in its veins. My grandfather had lost his life fighting against the Scots; my father had lost his leg fighting against the French. My father’s name was William Potenhale. The limb under discussion was severed at Sluys, the first great battle our king waged against Philip. My father was boarding the French flagship when it happened. The enemy was intent on boarding as well, and the iron grappling hook they tossed aboard the English vessel pinned his leg to the rail. The leg was mangled beyond repair, and it was a marvel that he lived when the surgeon removed it. He returned home crippled in body and cramped in soul. The battlefield was in his blood, but no noble would take a maimed man into their garrison or regiment.

With the sword his only skill, my one-legged father was forced to lean on his wife’s relations. My mother’s people were from Herefordshire; we moved there and tenanted a small croft that my mother’s father had stewardship over. I was ten years old at the time, old enough to work the fields like any serf or hired plow hand. I swung a scythe at harvest time and sweated among the hay ricks. Sometimes, my grandfather brought me with him when he administered the lands of the estate. Sometimes, he took me to the manor house when he surveyed the rent rolls. The landowner himself was rarely present. My grandfather told me that the master was too great a man to stay long on his estates. The king demanded his attendance and so he traveled around the England with the transient royal household, only stopping in Hertfordshire when the court came close.

My father, too crippled to follow the plow himself, raged against this activity on my part. “You’ll make the boy unfit for anything but field labor,” he complained to my grandfather. Even though the hammer of war had broken his own body, he had no desire for me to be anything else but a soldier. With me, the line of Potenhale warriors must continue or become extinct. “He must learn to swing a sword, not a scythe. His arm must heft a shield, not a bag of meal.”

At evening time, when the day’s labor had concluded, my father would hobble out of doors with me. There he would bid me strike with a wooden blade at a fence post, as the squires do on the wooden pels of the practice yard. “Strike harder!” said he. “From beneath! Now turn about!” My mother would watch from the door of the house, small wrinkles forming in her brow. Women never feel the stirrings of the march in their breast or the call of the trumpet in their soul. She had seen what a life of arms had brought to my father, and though she never spoke it, she hoped I might someday become a steward in my grandfather’s footsteps.

One summer’s day, when I had reached my twelfth year, my grandfather brought news that the owner of the estate had returned for a few short days. My father looked at him sharply, and in cryptic language said, “Now God be praised! The boy is of age now, Thomas,”—for Thomas was the name of my grandfather—“and what better time to put him forward than the one at hand?”

My grandfather frowned a little and rubbed his wizened forehead. “I have said that I will ask, but the request is a great one and unlikely to be granted. You are not of noble blood. Your father was no knight. What call should my master have to take in your son?”

“
Well were you named Thomas,” replied my father fiercely, “for you do nothing but doubt when the way is laid out plain in front of you. Aye, I am no nobleman, but your master was no nobleman himself. He was knighted for his worth and not his name, and so too will be my son.” He turned to me. “Boy, ready yourself! Your grandfather is taking you to the manor house, and if God be willing, you shall not come back here again.”

The landowner was in his prayers when we arrived. I remember the stoop of his broad shoulders before the image of the Blessed Virgin on the altar. The dust of travel still coated him but it could not dim the bright blue of his surcoat or the silver face that shone upon it. “Ah, Thomas!” the master said when he had arisen. “It does me good to see your face. The tenants are as quiet and the house as orderly as I could ask. You have done your work well in my absence.”

“
Sir John,” said my grandfather humbly. “I am glad that my work finds favor in your eyes, for I come before you to beg a boon.”

“
Speak it,” replied the master.

In short, halting words, my grandfather humbly beseeched that I might enter the house as a page, be trained in service later as a squire, and someday—if the Holy Trinity willed it—become a knight. Then, before Sir John could muster any objections to receiving me, my nervous grandfather nearly buried his request with a pile of them. “The boy has his wits about him, but he’s none too clever. He works hard, but he’s awkward and clumsy to boot. His father was a fighting man before he lost his leg, but there’s not a drop of noble blood in his veins or the boy’s.”

“
Thomas, Thomas,” interrupted his master with a broad smile, “It is well that you are no merchant, for a seller should not decry his own wares. I am the buyer here. Let me be the judge of the lad.

“
Come here, boy,” he said, addressing me. Forward I came, head lowered and jaw clenched like a servant expecting to be beaten. “What is your name?” he demanded.

“
John Potenhale,” I answered gruffly. I peered up through my eyebrows to see a kindly face, ringed with grey around the temples. His black beard had a touch of silver and so did his voice.

“
John Potenhale, do you want to enter my service?” asked the lord of the estate.

“
Aye,” said I, but it came out harsh and forced for my mouth was as dry as sand from Araby.

“
Can you fight?” he asked.

“
A little,” said I remembering the wooden fence posts and my father’s instruction.

“
Can you read?”

“
A little,” said I for my mother had taught me my letters.

“
Can you pray?”

I looked up in surprise and stared him full in the eye. “Aye, I can pray right well.”

“
That is good,” said Sir John, “for however well you wield the sword or however well you trim your pen, it is the favor of heaven that will prevail. Perhaps you have the makings of a knight in you.” He turned to my grandfather. “Very well, Thomas. I will take him as a page. If he proves apt, he may go further.”

“
Gramercy for your kindness,” said my grandfather in utter astonishment at the success of his mission.

Sir John bade me remove to the manor immediately and gave me into the charge of his lady wife. I had left little behind at my parents’ croft save a tunic, a dagger, and a pair of shoes. My grandfather brought my small bundle to the house and bid me adieu. When I would have thanked him for the place he had got me, he shook his head. “Nay, no thanks to me. It is your father who deserves the thanks, for I would not have importuned Sir John if your father had not importuned me so frequently. ‘Ask, ask!’ he says, and ‘No, no,’ say I, till at last my resistance wears through like a padlock beset by a file. If I had my will, you would be steward after me, for I have no sons of my own to take my place. But your father’s will is stronger than my own; and he has the right of it to send you where he pleases, for the duty of a son is to serve the will of his father.”