Master of War (38 page)

Blackstone eased the horse towards the edge of the village. ‘You should find out about these people. They need to know you and who you serve. Your lord might need them one day. Your King might need them.’ And, Blackstone thought to himself, so too might he if he came this way again.

‘Aye, m’lord, we saw how useful the likes of these were when they were called up on the
arrière ban
. Fodder for your arrows and trampled by our knights. Used like battering rams to break your shield wall.’ He spat again. ‘As much use as a nun wearing a chastity belt in a whorehouse.’

Blackstone pulled the horse up next to a farm building that was more substantial than the others.

‘You smell that?’

‘A shit pit.’

‘No, there’s food,’ Blackstone said dismounting.

‘Don’t go there,’ one of the other men warned him. ‘These bastards don’t like any stranger no matter where they’re from.’

‘It’ll cause no harm,’ Blackstone replied as the men turned in their saddles and confronted him.

‘Even the King’s men aren’t safe since we lost Crécy. They think we ran from the English,’ another told him.

‘I saw no cowardice at Crécy. I saw none braver than those who came against us,’ Blackstone answered.

‘Master Thomas, try telling that to the likes of this lot.’

The soldiers were obviously in agreement about leaving this place. ‘Peasants carry disease and even the air they breathe can kill a man,’ another chimed in.

Meulon pulled up next to Blackstone. ‘It’s not wise and we can’t secure a picket on a village this size. Time we were getting back. We’re past halfway, I reckon,’ he said.

But Blackstone had already swung down from the saddle.

‘Master Thomas! If there’s trouble?’

‘Piss on them!’ Blackstone laughed, speaking English, feeling the momentary joy of an insult in his own language and then relented into French. ‘Wait for me,’ he commanded, and before anyone could stop him he was already making his way through the animal pens, the oxen’s body heat steaming the cold air. Despite the stench of the animals and slurry pits he could still smell cooking. As he squelched across the yard he saw smoke rising from a ventilation hole in the barn’s upper floor. Pulling the cloak that Christiana had given him tighter around his shoulders, he took the wooden steps one at a time using the strength of his right leg to push himself upwards. By the time he reached the top of the stairs he felt the trickle of sweat run down his spine from the effort. He pushed open the slatted wooden door and peered into the loft’s gloom. It took only a moment for the movement of those inside to alert him that half a dozen men and women sat hunched around the fire and the blackened pot that hung above its flames. It was a sight he’d seen many times in his own village in England. A shared meal above a cattle byre in the middle of winter. A place where villeins, bondmen and free, could talk about their abbot’s greed, the constable’s brutality and the manor’s unwelcome tithes. Their narrow lives knew nothing beyond their village or shire, and what conversation there was usually turned upon a broken plough or lame oxen unable to mark a furrow or what depth they should plant this year’s winter barley after its past failure. Harsh weather was either God’s desire to make them pray harder or the devil’s curse for someone’s misdeed, drunkenness or fornication. It was a small place of sanctuary away from the eyes and ears of the reeve or manor’s steward.

Blackstone’s arrival startled the serfs, the men and women who collected the dung, cut the wood and swept yards. Even a household’s servants were of higher standing than these people, who would have walked miles to a manor house each day for their menial labour and the hope of not being raided by brigands or stripped of what little they had by excessive tithes and taxes.

The huddled mass scrambled to their feet and lowered their eyes, as women bent a knee and men bowed, tongues licking the dribbling food from their lips. Blackstone suddenly felt the discomfort of being an intruder. But now he was inside the room and didn’t know what to do. Some of them cast furtive looks at his scarred face; his disfigurement might be seen as a mark of Cain. A priest’s admonition, aided by tales of retribution, to give more to the Mother Church was a villein’s constant shadow. Blackstone realized that if he turned away without uttering a word it would create fear in these people’s hearts that they might have been overheard murmuring disloyal comments about their masters.

‘I smelt the food,’ he said awkwardly, ‘it’s been a long time since I’ve eaten pottage.’

Meat was a rich man’s diet, it was barley that gave strength to fight or do a hard day’s work and he had craved it since recuperating in the closed world of the castle’s rooms and corridors. He stepped closer to the pot. ‘What is it? Peas and barley?’

One of the women stepped forward, her eyes still averted. ‘It is, my lord.’

Her deference caught him unaware, adding to his discomfort of now being treated as a higher rank. It suddenly occurred to him how differently he was dressed from these villagers, who were caked in dried mud and dung, their faces lined with dirt.

‘Can I taste the food?’

The question created an immediate reaction. Their fear was written on their faces.

The woman stuttered, ‘My lord, there is nothing we should not have. There’s humble pie from a pig’s innards and only the vegetables we are permitted.’

‘Don’t be afraid, I’m not here to entrap you. If you’ve snared your lordship’s conies or lured the fish from his river, it’s of no concern to me,’ he said. He slowly reached forward and took the wooden spoon from the woman’s hand. He almost felt her shudder.

‘My lord, it’s not right. It’s been at my own lips,’ she said, resisting the tug of his fingers.

He saw the flutter of confusion on their faces as he took it from her and dipped the spoon into the simmering pot, gathering the boiled grain. ‘Woman, I’m no lord of the manor, I’m a common man made good by a Prince’s hand.’

As he put the spoon to his lips and blew the heat from it, one of the men dared to speak.

‘Then you are no longer a common man, my lord,’ he said.

Blackstone’s hand faltered. Was that the truth? His brush with death had snatched him from his modest past and brought him to another world. The broth settled on his tongue. He tapped the spoon clean on the edge of the pot and handed it back to the woman. The stench of animals and man mingling with acrid smoke that stung his eyes and clung to his clothes was his past.

‘The heart of a man stays what it is,’ he said.

Two of the men shuffled nervously towards him, blocking the door.

‘Your accent, it’s not from around here, my lord. Are you from Paris? One of the King’s men?’

The atmosphere had suddenly changed, a threat had emerged without Blackstone realizing it.

‘No. I am a guest with Count Jean de Harcourt,’ Blackstone said quickly, seeing that de Harcourt’s name checked any further advance.

‘A man at arms, my lord? At Crécy? Would that be where you took that wound?’ another asked.

Before any of them dared question him again, one of his escorts was at the door.

‘You’d better get out here and see this. There might be trouble,’ he said, gripping a short-handled battleaxe. The men stepped back and let Blackstone pass. As he got outside he saw that his guards had gathered close together, forming protection around a man lying sprawled in the mud, while a gathering crowd was murmuring discontent.

‘Who the hell is that?’ Blackstone demanded, leading the way down the steps as his escort covered his back.

‘A squire or some such thing. We can’t see his livery because of the mud and bloodstains but he’s no peasant, that’s for sure,’ his escort said. Blackstone had no time to register his surprise. ‘When you get to the bottom of the steps cut through the animal pens and look to the right,’ his escort told him.

Blackstone forced his way through the few startled cattle and got back into the village thoroughfare, its deep rutted tracks still crisp with morning ice. Now that he looked more carefully towards the end of the village and the light had shifted he could see that a man had been hanged and his mud-caked body was the colour of red earth, only it wasn’t dirt that matted his hair and tunic but a caved-in skull and half-ripped face that had bled down onto his body.

He looked towards the man who lay motionless in the mud. ‘Is he alive?’

‘Just about, he’s had a beating and a half,’ his escort answered.

‘Get him onto a horse,’ Blackstone said, grabbing hold of his saddle horn and hoisting himself up, his leg still unable to bear the full weight of being bent into a stirrup.

‘Take him?’ the man challenged.

‘Do it. Now.’ Blackstone’s command was forceful enough for the soldier to obey without further challenge. Those villagers who were gathering around the horsemen grew more restive, their curses more vocal and threatening. As Blackstone and two others used their horses to keep them back, the unconscious man was draped across a horse’s withers and once the men were mounted, Blackstone urged them away at a canter until they had crested a meadow’s knoll a mile away and could see that they were not being pursued.

They lay the man down and dribbled water onto his cracked lips.

As Blackstone tried to wipe some of the dirt from his face, his hand brushed aside the man’s hair.

‘Look at this,’ Blackstone said. A fleur-de-lys was branded on the beaten man’s forehead, still raw from the hot iron.

Meulon bent down.

‘Is he French? Blackstone asked.

‘I don’t know. Maybe he’s Gascon,’ Meulon answered. The Gascons from the south-west were loyal to the English King. ‘If these villagers catch anyone they think is a thief or spying for the routiers they brand them.’

Blackstone brushed some of the dirt away from the man’s tunic. The wounded man’s eyes fluttered and then stared like a fox dug from its earth.

‘English?’ he whispered desperately, barely audible.

‘Yes,’ Blackstone answered, already knowing that the livery was King Edward’s.

The relived man smiled. ‘Thank God… your face scared the shit out of me,’ he whispered before slipping back into unconsciousness.

Blackstone gave up his cloak to give the man warmth as the soldiers cut down saplings and stripped their bark to weave a litter for the fallen man, so they could drag him slowly home.

‘My Lord de Harcourt will have me flogged for bringing an enemy into his walls,’ Meulon moaned as they got closer to home.

‘No, he won’t,’ Blackstone said, ‘he’s given refuge to one already.’

They were less than a day’s ride from home when the horsemen appeared. One of the escorts saw a half-dozen men ride across an open meadow before disappearing behind hedgerows.

‘They’ll be further down the road on a blind bend,’ one of the soldiers said. ‘I saw at least six of them, and they’re not wearing livery. They’ll be brigands. Shit, this is going badly. They outnumber us and they’re vicious bastards.’

Meulon turned in the saddle and looked about for an escape route. ‘We cut the litter free and make a run for it up the hill and through the forest.’

‘We’re not leaving him,’ Blackstone said.

Meulon pushed his horse next to Blackstone. ‘Listen,
Master
Thomas, this is no time to be a hero,’ he said disrespectfully. ‘Those savage bastards outnumber us six to four.’

‘Six to five,’ Blackstone answered.

‘For Christ’s sake, this isn’t a practice session with a wooden sword, you’ve never fought like this. They want our weapons and horses.’

‘Then we’ll tell them they can’t have them,’ Blackstone answered.

‘Oh, aye, brigands like nothing better than a bit of chat. If we had bread and cheese we could share that with them as well,’ he snarled, then turned to the others. ‘Cut the litter free. We make for the forest.’

‘Wait!’ Blackstone shouted. ‘We’re not leaving this man. If you run I stay – and you can explain yourself to your lord as to how I died.’

He could see his argument had struck home. The men wheeled their horses in confusion and Blackstone pushed to the front. ‘I’ll take two of you forward. We leave the litter here in the trees,’ he said and pointed to two of the men. ‘Use the other side of this hedgerow for cover. Tether your horses and go on foot. Take your crossbows and swords only, leave your shields behind. If there’s six of them they’re jammed between the hedgerow banks and the slope of the forest. You flank them.’

The men looked undecided for a moment and then Meulon spat, ‘I’ll do it. We’ll stay close to the hedge. Come on,’ he said to one of the men, then passed his shield to Blackstone. ‘You’ll need this, and if you get yourself killed at least I can say we tried to save you. You’re a mad bastard, Master Thomas. I just hope you don’t get us all killed.’

They tethered their horses and readied their crossbows, then clambered up the bank and pushed through the hedgerow. Black­stone gave them time to make headway and then turned his horse. He said a silent prayer that the lesson he had learnt at that first crossroads in Normandy would work here. Sir Gilbert Killbere had put his life into the hands of his archers that day and the ambush gave them victory. Now Thomas Blackstone was asking two Frenchmen to make sure he survived.

‘I’ll do the talking,’ Blackstone said.

‘And if they don’t listen?’ one of the men asked.

‘We kill them,’ said Blackstone.

Blackstone took the lead, easing the horse forward as the two remaining soldiers flanked either side, half a length back. If he had read the situation correctly the brigands would have no room to manoeuvre, so if there was a fight Blackstone could surge forward in a spearhead. That idea fled as soon as they turned the bend. The brigands had already blocked the road, jamming themselves in with no other means of passage. Steam rose from their horses; they must have been following Blackstone’s group for a while and pushed their horses hard to catch up with them. Blackstone realized that they too had read the ground: there would be no surge forward from Blackstone and his men.

The unshaven men looked as though they had crawled from an alehouse’s mud floor. Their leather jerkins shone through years of grease and sweat; they wore caps and open-faced bascinets and looked like any bunch of deserters who lived rough and took what they could to survive. Their horses were of poor quality, and probably stolen from villages that had the least capable of beasts, but for these men swayback horses were as good as they could get until they stole better mounts. And any garrison’s horse, better fed and watered with a farrier and blacksmith to keep them well shod, was worth killing for.