Master of War (31 page)

It seemed to Blackstone that the guests would be staying for some time. Christmas seemed an on-going feast, one to which he had not been invited. He took his meals in his room, brought by a servant, sometimes joined by Christiana, who gently continued to coax his table manners. It was a far cry from the Holy Day’s rest in his village, when the local priest would give them a serving of Christmas ale, and they would rest for a day, and be brought together in prayer in the church that was as cold as a grave. They were good memories of hard work and brotherly love, such as the Christmas when Richard Blackstone had bent that malformed face of his into an idiot’s grin and bellowed with joy as he skinned and gutted a snared rabbit for the Christmas pot.

Dear Lord and all Your angels, Blackstone’s thought went out in prayer, look after my brother as I could not.

‘Thomas?’ Christiana asked, breaking his reverie.

‘What?’

‘Where were you?’

‘Remembering another time.’

She moved closer to him, her fingers touched her lips and then laid them on his scar.

‘It’s healing well. When summer comes and you get some warmth on your face there’ll only be a white line.’

He held her to him and lowered his lips to hers. ‘How long must I wait?’

‘Until it’s time,’ she said, her voice almost a whisper, but she did not turn away.

He pressed her against him, her lips softened with balm, and he felt them part as the tip of her tongue gently teased his own. And then she eased back.

‘Too tight. You crush me,’ she said softly.

He hadn’t realized how hard he held her, and once again his clumsiness embarrassed him. ‘I’m sorry.’

‘You’ll learn. I’m not as frail as I sound, it’s just that you’re stronger than you realize. Now, we must go.’

‘I’ve no place to go.’

‘You’ve been invited to the great hall.’

He pulled away from her as if she had slapped him across his wounded face.

‘Don’t be alarmed. You know how to behave,’ she said.

‘With you and Countess Blanche perhaps, but not with all those noblemen and their wives. Why?’

‘You know why. You’re a curiosity. You’re a common man blessed by a King. They want to take the measure of you.’

‘They can go to hell.’

‘They’ll pay a priest to save them from that,’ she said, soothing his fear as best she could. ‘Listen, my love, these are some of the most powerful men in Normandy and you are under Count Jean’s protection.’

Blackstone turned away from her.

‘Thomas, don’t act like a child,’ she said carefully.

He spun around, anger ready to explode, but she stood her ground and smiled, waiting patiently for the man she loved to appear before her. Her demeanour stopped him.

‘I can’t go down there,’ he said, already defeated before he had stepped beyond his own room.

‘When you served Sir Gilbert and your centenar that you told me about…’

‘Elfred.’

‘Yes, Elfred. What did they teach you when you fought?’

‘How to kill my enemy.’

‘In anger?’

‘No, for each other and the love of my King.’ He paused and then understood. ‘In a disciplined and determined way.’

‘Then that is all you have to do tonight. If you lose your temper you confirm why they despise you.’

‘Do they?’

‘They despise the brutal archer you were, but they’re intrigued to see the man-at-arms you’re being trained to become. Find that place inside you that is disciplined and determined and you’ll have beaten them.’ She kissed him tenderly. ‘Again,’ she added.

Shadows danced across the great hall’s walls from two huge iron chandeliers, ten feet across, their metal rims hoisted by pulleys to the ceiling, each holding forty or more candles. Around the hall spiked iron stands impaled candles the thickness of a man’s arm and the fireplace crackled and roared from blazing oak and ash logs.

At the high table Jean de Harcourt and Blanche sat with the nobles and their wives. As Blackstone walked past the cloth-covered trestle table near the entrance, the half-dozen squires, most of them older than Blackstone, stared at the Englishman who had already gained knighthood and honour without their years of service and training. Blackstone barely saw them from the corner of his eye, his attention fixed on the far table and the nobles who displayed their wealth and power with fur-edged, richly embroidered clothing and jewellery. He stopped, knowing he was expected to kneel. These men were his superiors. Instead, he stood defiantly and looked at each face in turn, noting with some satisfaction the glare of annoy­ance from each of the Normans and the ripple of discomfort at his ill-mannered and contemptuous behaviour.
I am a humble English archer in this great Norman hall and I’ve faced you and your kind before
– and beaten you
. His thoughts resonated as though they had painstakingly been chiselled in stone. Only when his eyes moved back to Jean de Harcourt did he bow his head and then kneel before him.

Jean de Harcourt made him stay on his knee longer than was usual. The wound would soon complain but Thomas Blackstone needed to be taught a lesson.

‘Join us,’ de Harcourt said at last.

It still took effort for him to rise but he disguised his discomfort as best he could. There would be little satisfaction given to the Frenchmen. The usher guided Blackstone to the furthest seat at the end of the table and placed Christiana at his side. The gathered nobles and their wives could not take their eyes from him; he was physically bigger than any grown man at the table, which made the petite girl at his side look more frail than she was.

‘I have never had a man of such low status sit at my table,’ said one of the nobles with apparent disgust. He was a barrel-chested man, with a full beard and jet black hair, thick as a horse’s mane, brushed back onto his shoulders. Blackstone could see the dark eyes glaring, but also noticed the man’s strength. Without doubt he was a fighter.

‘Then we are both at a disadvantage, my Lord de Fossat,’ said Blackstone, pleased to see the man react to the fact that he knew his name, ‘because I have never dined in such distinguished company.’

His response caused a ripple of amusement.

‘And with the greatest respect, this is my lord, the Count de Harcourt’s table.’ There was a murmur of intrigue at the English­man’s impertinence, which Blackstone quickly turned to his advan­tage, adding, ‘Unless, of course, he’s sold it to you.’

Jean de Harcourt laughed, and the others followed, even de Fossat smiled.

‘I told you he had a mind of his own,’ de Harcourt said, and then urged his guests to eat, but as they did so their eyes kept glancing to the far end of the table.

A servant placed a large loaf of bread in front of Blackstone. He instinctively reached out to tear a chunk from it, but as his hands went forward he felt, rather than heard, Christiana’s intake of breath. Blackstone corrected himself and carefully sliced a piece of bread.

Christiana’s knee pressed against his beneath the tablecloth.

He had learnt some manners.

All he had to do now, Blackstone thought, was to learn to stay alive among these powerful men.

Blackstone managed to get through the meal without causing offence from any lack of table manners, though it was not without help. When he was about to stab a piece of meat Christiana quite casually mentioned that she always thought he preferred a less tender cut. Blackstone gratefully followed her prompt and passed the finer cuts of meat to others. Her influence was so natural it went unnoticed, except by Blanche de Harcourt whose smile of encouragement settled Christiana’s own nervousness. No one spoke to Blackstone, no one included him in their conversation, and he was glad of it. Being ignored allowed him to keep his eyes down and his ears open. Snippets of conversation filtered through the chatter; gossip about the King and his anger that his son John, Duke of Normandy, had not marched quickly enough from the south to fight in the great battle of Crécy; that the King’s wife was too young; that widows from the war left with great estates now looked for younger men to wed so their inheritance might be defended and then passed on when their children came of age. The war had torn France apart. Perhaps those who chattered didn’t care what he heard. To them Blackstone was still little more than a servant whose blindness and deafness were guaranteed if he wished to continue to be fed with a roof over his head. But when Blackstone did raise his eyes he caught some of those around the table glancing in his direction; nervous looks, penetrating stares that darted away quickly when he looked back. The dinner seemed to go on forever as course after course arrived. Blackstone had never washed his hands so often and the rich food churned his stomach. A hunk of bread and cheese and a bubbling pot of pottage was all he wanted – that and a mighty thrust of Wolf Sword to burst this bubble of chivalric behaviour that seemed more important than anything else.

Blackstone’s own charade was nearly exposed when the musi­cians were commanded to play dance music and the nobles took their wives to where the reeds had been swept aside, exposing the tiled floor. Guy de Ruymont’s wife, long-faced, her wimple bound so tightly on her forehead that Blackstone wondered if the blood had been cut off from her pale face, leaned across to him and said, ‘Will you be asking any of the ladies other than Christiana to dance, Master Thomas? I suspect we all are rather frightened of you, but something as gentle as a dance might soothe those fears.’

Blackstone could barely hide his panic. Guy de Ruymont saw it and knew that his wife was playing devil’s advocate. Dancing, or the lack of it, was one element of Blackstone’s tutoring that would expose his common character.

‘My dear lady, you expect too much of Master Blackstone, you must remember he still bears his wounds.’

‘Of course, forgive me, how could I forget that you fought at Crécy?’ she said, but this time there was a chill in her voice and a frown on her thin-lipped face as she brushed past him.

‘I’m grateful, my lord,’ Blackstone said to de Ruymont as he passed by.

‘I’ve seen fear in men’s eyes before,’ de Ruymont said. ‘We are all soldiers in the field of battle, and dancing doesn’t come easily to many of us, as you might observe when I accompany my wife.’ He took a pace away but then, almost as an afterthought, and to explain his wife’s jibe, he said, ‘She lost her brother and four kinsmen at Crécy. Time has not yet healed
her
wounds.’

In that brief moment Blackstone felt an enormous gratitude to the French nobleman whose gentle manner and quick thinking had saved him from the embarrassment they had all been waiting for. He was also under no illusion that he was seen as the butcher who sat at their table, and who had slaughtered their loved ones. How far could their civility be stretched before someone drank from the poisoned chalice and betrayed his presence to the French court? Jean de Harcourt was seen as a loyal subject to King Philip but harbouring an Englishman, and an archer at that, could easily lead to a charge of treason. De Harcourt risked a great deal to fulfil his uncle’s wishes, and Sir Godfrey himself would be beheaded if he were ever captured by French forces. Why, Blackstone wondered, had Jean de Harcourt exposed himself to such a risk by inviting these influential men to his home for Christmas and allowing them to see him? Whatever the reason, it would unfold in its own time.

And once again Blackstone’s instincts told him not to wait too long to find out. Sooner or later he must seize his own destiny.

The minstrels’ music lilted across the hall as Blackstone fidgeted, squirming inside as he remembered Christiana trying to teach him the courtliness of the dance: men and women facing each other, three steps back, a bow, forward, take the lady’s hand, three more lightly taken steps, a pause, a faltering stutter of a walk in Blackstone’s case, clumsy and uncoordinated, leading the lady by the hand,
keep going, keep going, now pause again, turn in the opposite direction, walk, turn, face your partner! Thomas! You’re like a wandering cow!
Enough had been enough.

While Christiana danced Blackstone quietly eased away into the night air. One of de Harcourt’s dogs followed him, perhaps as tired of the music as was Blackstone. He looked across the glit­tering sky and the frost that settled across the landscape. Sentries stood at their posts and the world seemed to have eased into silence. Moonlight illuminated the silhouettes of the forests but their darkness soon absorbed what light there was. If he were to defend this castle, he decided, he would cut back the trees another hundred yards from the north gate and use the timber to build another palisade beyond the outer moat. Defence was everything when facing an enemy, and King Edward had proved that when he chose his ground to fight. All the lessons Blackstone had learnt this past year were clear in his mind and he knew instinctively that he would use them again when he eventually left this place. The dog sat at his side as Blackstone stroked its velvety ears, but he felt it tense, its muscles shivering in anticipation. Blackstone looked along the passageways; the shadows showed no sign of movement, yet he knew the darkness held someone.

‘Who’s there?’ he called.

The dog uttered a low rumbling growl as Blackstone braced himself for any sudden attack.

‘If you please, sir, hold the dog. I don’t wish you any harm,’ a young voice answered from somewhere ahead.

Blackstone comforted the dog, and took hold of its broad leather collar. ‘Then come forward and show yourself,’ he replied.

A small figure stepped from the darkness into a shaft of moon­light; it was a boy.

‘The dog could pull me down,’ the boy said.

‘I have him, you come forward and give him your scent.’

The boy came closer, his arm extended towards the dog’s nose. It was a pageboy who, despite his fear of the dog, had stepped forward confidently on Blackstone’s command. The dog whined, strained at the collar and then, tail wagging, licked the boy’s hand.

The pale light kept the boy’s features indistinct. ‘Who are you?’ Blackstone asked.

‘My name is Guillaume Bourdin,’ the boy answered, and gazed up at Blackstone’s scarred face, made to look even more vicious by the shadows.