Master of War (12 page)

Rape was a hanging offence – but not that night.

Firelight showed the three-storey house leaning at its threaten­ing angle. This was where crossbowmen had held the streets, and more than a dozen of their bodies littered the cobblestones, all killed by one archer. Blackstone retraced his steps and found Richard Whet twisted in a doorway. The wood was splintered, three crossbow bolts embedded in the hardwood planking. Whet must have come under attack and attempted to retreat and this was where he fought his last. No arrows remained in his bag and the spare arrow bag Blackstone had given him was also empty. Blackstone saw the bolt in Whet’s shoulder that would have disabled him, leaving him barely able to defend himself. What chance of survival did his brother have when so many other archers had been slain?

Blackstone made his way through the shadows, ducking into doorways and stepping over bodies as small marauding gangs of English soldiers ripped their way through the townhouses. Slowly but surely he began to identify the area where he had fought. The surge of emotion from the battle had blurred the streets and buildings, but now his mind focused and he recognized a corner house here, a craftsman’s sign there. As he moved towards one of the burning houses hasty footsteps rapidly approached down one of the side alleys. Men were shouting, but they were French voices. From the end of the darkened passage a priest ran as if the devil himself were after him, then tripped over a body that lay sprawled across the cobblestones. The cowled figure tumbled, arms outstretched, falling full-length, hard and painfully, to the ground. Half-stunned by the impact he tried to raise himself, but the three men pursuing him were already upon him. They were armed townsmen and had obviously been part of the city’s defence against the English attack, but now they were intent on killing the priest. One of them struck the black-cloaked figure with a pole, the other kicked the huddled body and the third readied himself with a billhook to hack the man to death.

Almost without thought Blackstone pulled an arrow from a body lying less than two paces away. The loosed arrow took the Frenchman down as he was about to decapitate the priest. The other men faltered from the shock of the arrow hissing from the darkness and striking their companion. Blackstone came at them knife in hand. In what seemed an effort to save himself one man shouted something and pointed at the priest. The words came thick and fast but Blackstone recognized only some of them; an accusation that the priest was stealing from the dead. But with less than fifteen paces before he reached them the Frenchmen turned and ran back down the alleyway.

The injured priest groaned, blood on his face, knuckles and hands skinned from the rough cobbles. Blackstone looked quickly around him; if men still fought and killed on the streets he didn’t want a sudden attack from the encroaching shadows. He dragged the injured man to the corner of a house.

‘All right, Father, you’re safe for now. King Edward has offered his protection to the clergy,’ he said in faltering French. He bent down and pulled the cowl back from the priest’s face, revealing a gaunt man in his twenties. For a moment Blackstone felt a shock of uncertainty, the man’s eyes were like dark pools in his skull. Strands of long hair, matted with blood and dank street water, clung to the sides of his face like a cat’s claw. The rescued man gave a snort of derision, then pushed himself back against the wall, clasping a clergyman’s crucifix around his neck.

‘You’re English, but you speak French,’ he said, wiping blood away from his mouth. He snorted blood and spat. ‘I never imagined I would owe my life to a bastard Englishman.’

Being a priest did not necessarily imbue a man with gentleness or gratitude. A benefice could be bought or given. This man’s words stank of ill-concealed hatred despite his life being spared. Blackstone pushed a foot into his chest and held him there.

‘What’s in the sack, priest?’ he said.

‘A feast,’ he answered. ‘
Benedic nos Domine et haec tua dona
.
’ His insolent smile suggesting a common archer would not under­stand, but Blackstone had heard the blessing before and cut the tied bag, spilling its contents into the half-light. Rings and trin­kets, stuck together with black, congealed blood, fell onto the cobblestones. Some of the rings were embedded in the skin of engorged fingers hacked from victims’ hands. In the moment of uncertainty at what Blackstone saw at his feet, the priest twisted and kicked, freeing himself. Blackstone swung with his knife and caught the man’s outstretched palm, severing his little finger, which hung from a shred of skin. Blackstone would have struck again, but the priest was agile and danced away like a soldier avoiding a sword strike. And then he ran without another word or curse. Blackstone gave chase, slamming into the side of a building, rolling free and propelling himself after the looter. As he jumped across fallen bodies, he snatched another arrow, never taking his eyes from the fleeing shadow as he ran through the twisting darkness. As the cloaked figure reached the heavy studded door of a church he turned and looked back towards his pursuer. Sanctuary was a step away. Blackstone’s arrow would have pinned him to that holy place, but it seemed as if the man had a sixth sense. He step­ped away as the shaft thudded into the door where he had stood a moment before. Then the door was slammed shut and a bolt thrown. Blackstone put his shoulder to it, but the wood was solid and unyielding. There would be other doors into other passageways. The man was gone. Mutilation of the dead was nothing unusual, but the guise of a priest was cunning. And yet, the man wore a clerical crucifix around his neck and had spoken in Latin, which was a schooled language reserved for the nobility or the clergy. Blackstone decided that it obviously made no difference who you were when there was killing to be done.

Tiredness gnawed at him; he cared little for the body looter, but as he turned back towards the streets a window shattered amidst a woman’s screams as men’s voices jeered and laughed. It would be another alleyway assault, except for one sound that carried louder than the others and started Blackstone running towards the commotion. The diminishing light from the burning buildings crept far enough towards the end of an alley, fading into darkness ten paces from a house where the glow from torchlight threw grotesque shadows into the street. Blackstone unsheathed his knife and edged into the doorway. In the flickering light three drunken men, half-naked ghosts of pale skin, dried bloodstains and soot grime on face and arms, held a naked woman across a table. One of the men fell spluttering against the wall as he poured red wine from a jug into his mouth and across his face; the second held the woman’s arms behind her head as the third slavered over her breasts, pouring wine across them, then slathering his face and tongue as his naked arse plunged back and forth. The man with the wine jug was Pedloe, the one holding the woman’s arms was Skinner and the rapist was Richard Blackstone, grunting and baying like a rutting animal. The sound Blackstone had heard.

Blackstone moved quickly out of the darkness and yanked his brother’s shoulder. Caught by surprise Richard swept around, his extended arm smashing into Blackstone, the force of the blow sending his knife skittering away. The sudden shock of the attack stunned Skinner and Pedloe, but Blackstone’s brother had already turned and leapt upon the intruder, his hands smother­ing Blackstone’s face in the gloom, grappling for his throat. Black­stone could barely see Richard’s glazed, drunken eyes, and crying out would have no effect. Blackstone bucked and kicked under his brother’s weight as the other men held the woman and peered drunkenly into the shadows trying to identify their assailant.

Blackstone pulled aside his brother’s grip and in that instant Richard focused and recognized who it was he was close to killing. Blackstone grabbed his shirtfront, yanked his head down and butted him across the nose. Recognition and sudden pain rocked Richard back. He sprawled, staring at the blood on his hand from his shattered nose. Blackstone was already on his feet as Skinner snarled, threw the woman aside and came at him, his knife held low in a knife-fighter’s stance then slashed upwards – a disembowelling stroke. With his stonemason’s strength Blackstone grabbed his wrist, defeating even the veteran archer’s power. He held him, held him still, forcing him down onto his knees and reached out with his free hand, grasping for a weapon, for anything to stop the writhing man. Skinner’s drunkenness gave him the added force to twist free and slash across Blackstone’s chest. His padded jacket was slit like a wineskin, only the leather undershirt stopping the blade from reaching his flesh.

Blackstone stumbled backwards, blindly reaching out again, keeping his eyes on the killer as Skinner attacked. His hand found an arrow bag and, as Skinner lunged forward for the kill, Black­stone extended his arm and a bodkin-pointed shaft pierced his attacker’s gullet. Skinner gasped and tried to speak, but choked on his blood. He went slowly to his knees, his hands grasping the shaft, his eyes wide with incomprehension, unable to do anything but die. Pedloe, sobered by the fight, reached for his own knife; in two strides he would be at Blackstone’s blind side. The shadow that fell across him twisted his head in one violent motion. Blackstone heard the grinding snap from his brother’s grip on the man’s neck. Pedloe was dead before his body touched the floor. The two archers lay in the pooling blood.

After a moment’s silence Blackstone dragged his gaze away from the dead men. ‘Get dressed,’ he said quietly. His brother stared back. Blackstone gestured and the boy understood. Blackstone knelt next to the woman, who cowered away from him, muttering for mercy. He found her clothes and gently draped them across her nakedness. She flinched as the cloth touched her skin, but then clung to it. Blackstone attempted to wipe the sweat and dirt from her face but she recoiled. He showed her the palm of his hand, to calm her.

‘I’m sorry,’ he said. She stayed frozen in fear. Blackstone reached for his brother’s belt on the floor and opened the pouch. ‘I have money,’ he said, ‘I have money,’ he repeated, letting his voice soothe her. His fingers searched for the silver penny, as his voice and eyes kept trying to calm the terrified woman. He held the coin between finger and thumb and offered it to her. She shook her head. Perhaps she thought that despite the rape he was trying to pay for more sex. He placed it next to her on a stool and stepped back. There was nothing more he could do.

He turned to his brother, who was now dressed, and threw him his belt. As he buckled it around his jacket and gathered his weapons Blackstone saw a looped cord with a small drawstring leather pouch on the floor. He must have snatched it from beneath his brother’s shirt in the struggle. He picked it up. He had seen it before. His fingers trembled. He knew this purse. He knew what he would find inside. If there was a God he had to perform a miracle now. He had to make Blackstone be wrong. He had to make the two beads and the three periwinkle shells in the purse disappear. The drawstring purse would never have been parted with freely. It held small treasures given to a village girl by her runaway brother. Gifts that smelled of the sea and beads from a lady’s broken bracelet. The promise of another life across a different horizon from her own. A more distant horizon than the corn and rye fields where she lay with men and dreamed of buying her freedom from servitude as a bondswoman.

Blackstone had touched that purse when he lay across her milk-white breasts and caressed their aroused nipples. Sarah Flaxley had been a young man’s joy, a girl of easy virtue who cared only that she was loved with a passion that helped ease her loveless life. Drayman had been hanged for the girl’s murder. His approval against Richard Blackstone had been thought an act of revenge. He had pleaded innocence of the girl’s murder, but had attempted to indict the killer.

Shadows flickered as the tallow lamp burned low. Blackstone looked to his unmoving brother who gazed at the purse with a silent, sickening guilt. He touched his heart, pointed lamely at the purse and touched his lips. He loved her, he said.

Blackstone let the pouch fall to the floor and the shells cracked under his feet as he walked into the night. God had not heard his prayer.

Thousands of other souls needed Him that night.

The mist was rising slowly from the river when Blackstone found Sir Gilbert sitting beneath the low branches of a tree on the river­bank. The morning light reflected dully on his chain mail draped across a fallen tree trunk, next to his washed undershirt drying on a branch. His sword lay on the ground within arm’s reach. Using a piece of linen he swabbed his arms and shoulder, marked by welts and bruises from battle. A slash across the back of his left shoulder and ribs was held by a dozen crude stitches, smeared with a greasy-looking salve. Blackstone held back; he had approached quietly and stood for a moment staring at the man’s wounds. Sir Gilbert wrung the linen and spoke without turning.

‘You stink like a hog’s groin, Blackstone. Either move down­wind or wash yourself.’

Blackstone stepped forward but kept his distance. He squatted at the water’s edge, staying silent, embarrassed by his clumsiness at being seen.

‘I’m not a goddamn magician. I saw you climb the town walls. If I was a French bowman I could have had a crossbow bolt between your eyes. What do you want? I’m tired.’

‘You’re wounded,’ said Blackstone lamely.

‘It barely cut the skin. There’s a monastery on the other side of the forest. I had the monks use their dark arts. They have herbs and potions. I don’t want any of our bloodletters near me.’

‘Elfred told me you were here,’ Blackstone said, and scooped water onto his face. He looked across at the ships being loaded with the wealth from Caen. ‘We lost a lot of men.’

‘You’re still alive, that’s all you have to be concerned about. Your brother?’

Blackstone nodded.

‘He fought well. I saw him. Did you find plunder? There was plenty of gold coin in those houses.’

Blackstone shook his head.

‘How do you expect to raise your status if you don’t loot? Take what you can and increase your wealth. One day, if you survive the fighting, and when you’re older and rheumatism seizes your bow arm, you buy your own men. Then you contract them to the King. His servants have stripped the merchants’ houses. What do you think is being loaded onto those ships? How do you think the King makes money?’