Master of War

Master of War By David Gilman


About this Book




ENGLAND, 1346

Amid the carnage of the 100 Years’ War – the bloodiest conflict in medieval history – a young English archer confronts his destiny.

For Thomas Blackstone the choice is easy – dance on the end of a rope for a murder he did not commit, or take up his war bow and join the king’s invasion.

As he fights his way across northern France, Blackstone learns the brutal lessons of war – from the terror and confusion of his first taste of combat, to the savage realities of siege warfare.

Vastly outnumbered, Edward III’s army will finally confront the armoured might of the French nobility on the field of Crécy. It is a battle that will change the history of warfare, a battle that will change the course of Blackstone’s life, a battle that will forge a legend.



For Suzy,

as always




Part 1


The Blooding





1




Fate, with its travelling companions Bad Luck and Misery, arrived at Thomas Blackstone’s door on the chilly, mist-laden morning of St William’s Day, 1346.

Simon Chandler, reeve of Lord Marldon’s manor and self-appointed messenger, bore his master’s freeman no ill will. A warning to the young stonemason of the writ issued for his brother’s arrest would stand him in good stead with his lordship and make the reeve appear less grasping than he was. A chance for the boy to run rather than hang. And hang he surely would for the rape and murder of Sarah, the daughter of Malcolm Flaxley from the neighbouring village.

‘Thomas?’ Chandler called, tying his horse to the hitching post. ‘Where’s that dumb bastard brother of yours? Thomas!’

The house was one room deep, twenty-odd feet long, its cob walls made of clay and straw mixed with animal dung, the steep pitched roof thatched with local reed, now aged and smothered in moss. Smoke seeped through an opening in the roof. Chandler stooped low beneath the eave to bang on the iron-hinged door. A figure emerged from the mist at the side of the cottage.

‘You’re about early, Master Chandler,’ said the young man cradling an armful of chopped wood. He looked warily at Lord Marldon’s overseer. There was no good reason for the man to be there. It could only mean trouble.

Thomas Blackstone stood a shade over six feet and, apprenticed in the stone quarry since the age of seven, had the build of a grown man who used his body tirelessly doing hard labour. His dark hair framed an open face with no meanness of spirit reflecting from his brown eyes. Lean like the rest of him, it was weathered to a colour that almost matched his leather jerkin. It gave him the look of a man older than his sixteen years.

‘I’m here to warn you. There’s a warrant of arrest for your brother. The sheriff’s men are on their way. You don’t have much time.’

Blackstone peered into the rising mist; another hour and the morning sun would burn it away. He listened for the sound of hoof beats. The horsemen would come down the rutted track; its flint would ring from the impact of steel-shod hooves. It was quiet except for a morning cockerel. The cottage lay beyond the edge of the village; if he had the desire to run he could have his brother into the forest and over the hills without being seen.

‘What charge?’

‘Rape and murder of Sarah Flaxley.’

Blackstone felt his stomach lurch. His face betrayed nothing.

‘He’s done nothing wrong. There’s no need for us to run. Thank you for your warning,’ said Blackstone, laying down the cut firewood next to the front door.

‘Christ, Thomas, I know his lordship would not want any harm to befall your brother. You’re his keeper, and his lordship has always looked kindly on you both since your father’s death, but you will be held equally responsible. You will hang with him.’

‘Is your cousin still seeking to farm here? It would be convenient if Richard and I took to the hills as fugitives. Our ten acres would suit him.’

Chandler was stung by the truth of the accusation. ‘You’re a fool! Lord Marldon can’t protect you from this.’

‘My lord has always said a man has nothing to fear if he is innocent.’

Chandler pulled the reins free from the post and climbed into the saddle.

‘You remember Henry Drayman?’

A man disliked across half a dozen villages in the county. A brute of a man in his twenties who would gamble for any easy victory, be it cock-fight or throw of dice. Blackstone’s brother had repeatedly beaten him in archery competitions, but Drayman’s humiliation had been complete this past Easter when Richard had beaten the older man in the wrestling contest. Bested by a boy nearly ten years his junior, he had sworn revenge, and now, somehow, he was inflicting it.

‘Your freak of nature brother will be on the end of a rope by tomorrow. He’ll bray in terror. The dumb bastard.’

Blackstone took a step forward and effortlessly grabbed the horse’s reins. He twisted them, trapping Chandler’s hands in a leather burn. The man winced.

‘I respect your office, Master Chandler. You serve his lordship with diligence, but I would beg you to assure him that neither I nor my brother have brought any shame to his great name.’

He released his grip. Chandler turned the horse away.

‘They caught Drayman with her ribbons. Her body was found in her father’s cornfield. That’s where you used to take her, isn’t it? And your brother? Christ, the whole damned village fornicated with her, but Drayman turned approver before they hanged him yesterday.’

Blackstone knew there could be no escape from the sheriff’s court now. A man condemned to death could accuse his enemies by way of appeal – of implicating another in his crime by approval. Torture was illegal under King Edward III, but those with the power and authority of local law enforcement would never shy away from using it to secure a confession. After a week tied naked to a stake, soiled by his own waste, starved of food and denied water, the beating at the hands of the sheriff’s men had finally broken Drayman’s mind and loosened his tongue. His life was forfeit, but sufficient cunning still lingered behind the pain and suffering. He would leave this world taking another with him. An enemy. The one who had humiliated him; whose name was etched into his heart as if the stonemason himself had chiselled it there.

Chandler smiled. ‘The price of wool is going up. My cousin will have his sheep on your land in a week.’

He spurred the horse away.

Woodsmoke trapped by the mist snaked away, searching for its escape. There was none. Blackstone knew the dead man had wreaked his revenge. The sound of horse’s hooves clattered towards him.

It was too late to run.


Blackstone had time to warn his brother not to resist the armed men who came to arrest them. The boy made a guttural groaning sound, his way of confirming his understanding. His brother and guardian was the only source of comfort the deaf-mute boy had had in his life. He was little more than a beast of burden to anyone else and the butt of practical jokes and torment. Were it not for Thomas, Richard Blackstone could have used his strength to fight and kill his tormentors. The boy’s size and that great square skull with nothing more than a down-like covering confirmed to everyone in the surrounding villages that the boy was indeed a freak of nature. His crooked jaw gave his face a permanent idiot grin.

They had cut his mother open to lift the child from her and she was dead within hours from the loss of blood. A huge child at birth, he uttered no cry and showed no sign of reaction to the torchlight being crossed in front of his face. The village midwife who helped Annie Blackstone bring this hulking creature into the world said that the silent, mouthing infant should be left in the cold night air to die. Tortured by the loss of his wife, Henry Blackstone agreed. He already had a two-year-old infant to care for. This monstrous baby would be left to nature. It was a bitter wind that blew from the east that autumn of 1332. The barley crop had failed again, the drought suffocated the land and cold air settled at night into an unseasonable frost to cramp a man’s starving body. By midnight the moon’s glow illuminated the sparkling ground. The abandoned child’s father walked out to the corn stubble and found his son still alive. A ring around the moon shimmered, a sign of heavenly marriage between sky and earth, and Henry Blackstone lifted the child from the cold ground. His wife had taught the warrior that tenderness would not weaken him, and her love had weaned him from the brutality of war. He lifted the cold body and held it close to his naked chest, wrapping it in a blanket and settling more logs on the fire.


It was his child. It had a right to life.


The sheriff’s men took the brothers, tied and manacled in the back of a cart, through the hamlets and villages to the market town. The iron-rimmed wheels rumbled across the rutted marketplace towards the town’s prison cells, past Drayman’s body dangling from the gibbet. The crows had already taken his eyes and the pecked flesh was down to the bone in places. His tongue had been torn away by voracious beaks.

The soldiers threw the brothers into wooden cages in the coldest corner of the sheriff’s courtyard where the sun’s warmth could not penetrate. The boy muttered an almost animal-like whimper, a question to his brother.

Over the years Blackstone and his father had developed a means of communicating with the blighted sibling by using simple gestures to calm and explain events. Where he should go, what he should do, and why strangers stared and children tugged his shirt. The local villagers had ceased tormenting him when the novelty wore off and the boy’s strength and skill with a bow became apparent at the county fairs. They might call him the village idiot, but he was their village idiot and he brought victory. They lived in hovels, died young through disease, hard work and war – but Richard Blackstone, the freak child, gave them with his success the only status they would know.

There was no dulled intelligence inside the lumbering boy; his eyes and brain were as sharp as a bodkin arrowhead. The fact that he was trapped in silence was no indication that his mind was disabled as well as his speech and hearing. He kept a constant watch on his older brother and took guidance from his instructions, which was why he always walked a pace behind Blackstone’s left shoulder.

Now he endured the guard’s taunts as they jabbed their spears through the bars, forcing him into the corner of the cage, but he could not escape the man who urinated over him as he cowered back from the spear points. He could see Thomas’s face contorting in anger as he gripped the bars, his teeth bared.

‘Leave him alone, you bastards!’ Blackstone yelled and earned a blow from the dull end of a spear shaft.

However, there was little sport to be had from tormenting the creature and the guards soon went back to their posts. The piss-stinking boy looked to his brother and understood the look of anguish on his face, and his helplessness. Richard’s crippled jaw opened into a wider smile. These events were nothing new. He dropped his hose and bared his arse in contempt for his gaolers.

Thomas Blackstone laughed.


‘You’ve got yourself in a shit pit and there’s not much I, or his lordship, can do to save your neck from the gibbet. The court sits today,’ said Lord Marldon’s man-at-arms Sir Gilbert Killbere. ‘You know as well as I do your brother spent more time quill-dipping Sarah Flaxley than most anyone else in the damned county.’ Sir Gilbert stood outside the cages. ‘I’m here to exert what influence there is, but his lordship won’t pay the sheriff’s bail – bribe more like – for your release and I dare say you haven’t got two pennies to rub together.’

Sir Gilbert tugged his belt and scabbard further round his hip, pulling his padded jacket tighter, which emphasized the breadth of his shoulders. He was almost as tall as Blackstone, but the soldier lacked the boy’s handsome features, not that he would have it any other way – Sir Gilbert’s pock-marked face added to his fearsome reputation. At thirty-six he was known for his skill with the sword and the lance and there would be no man willing to challenge him for speaking to the prisoners without the sheriff’s permission. Which he did not have.

Blackstone shook his head. ‘My brother is innocent. He didn’t kill Sarah Flaxley, you know that, Sir Gilbert.’

‘Henry Drayman told the court your brother was with him when he killed her. For God’s sake, boy! Don’t be so damned naive. He turned approver, that’s all there is to it. Justice is nothing to do with innocence; it’s to do with finding someone guilty for the crime. It doesn’t matter who it is. His lordship is aggrieved; the south wall needs finishing and here you are rotting in the sheriff’s gaol while you could be cutting stone. And there are other matters that don’t concern you – yet. You’ve been here a week and I’ve been dragged from my duties elsewhere. You’re a bloody inconvenience.’

‘I’m sorry, Sir Gilbert. I know you were rent collecting for his lordship.’

‘Sitting on my arse behind a table – and don’t think I’ll thank you for relieving me from that, or from listening to every excuse under the sun why scab-ridden peasants like you don’t pay what is owed.’

‘I’m a free man, Sir Gilbert. I’m sorry if that is an inconvenience.’ Blackstone chanced a smile. The knight had known his father and, with Lord Marldon, they had fought together in the Scottish wars.

‘Aye, you’ll have a different smile on your face when that rope tightens around your neck before the day is through. Christ, your brother must have shafted his arrow more times than I care to think. How often did the girl’s father pay leyrwite?’ he asked, referring to the fine – some called it a tax – levied by the local lord or abbot on poor women deemed guilty of fornication. ‘You train a dog by thrashing it. He didn’t wield the stick enough on the bitch. The whole damned county knew she was a whore – and you and your brother paid her.’

‘Can you help us, Sir Gilbert?’

Sir Gilbert shook his head. ‘I don’t know. Rape and murder. You being free men in Lord Marldon’s domain gives his enemies a chance to poke him in the eye. Sweet Jesus, it’s hardly the loss of revenue from the whore, is it?’

‘My brother beat Drayman at the Easter fair. That’s all this is about. He doesn’t deserve to die for that.’

‘You’re his keeper. You’ll be held as responsible. I might be able to save you, but not him. Christ, they’d have him in a bull pit and set the dogs on him if they could. Hanging is a merciful end.’

Half a dozen guards approached; they were taking no chances with the hulking boy.

‘They’re wanted, Sir Gilbert,’ one of the front men said.

Sir Gilbert half turned. ‘Wait, I’m not finished yet.’

The guard was about to say something but thought better of it when the knight glared at him. Sir Gilbert turned his attention back to Blackstone.

‘Can you read?’

‘Sir Gilbert?’

‘You’ve served a damned apprenticeship since you were seven; your father paid good money for it. They must have taught you to read.’

How many written words could Blackstone remember? He understood geometry more than any written explanation, but had had little use for reading. He needed only a good eye, a plumb line and a skilled pair of hands to chisel stone.

‘A little,’ he said.

‘Did the cleric at the school teach you nothing when you were a child?’

The village school had taught him to write his name and a few letters. Work was more important than learning.

Blackstone shook his head.

‘Sweet Jesus! What a waste of time.’ Sir Gilbert kicked the bars of the cage in frustration. ‘Had your mother lived she would have given you some learning. I can’t help you. I’ll speak for you and your grunting brother.’

Blackstone had prayed that Sir Gilbert’s presence was a sign of hope, but now he realized that he and his brother would most likely be choking to death, kicking to the amusement of the crowd, before the sun climbed higher than the prison’s turret. The knight nodded at the soldiers and stepped back as the brothers were roughly pulled from the cages, then prodded and kicked towards the sheriff’s tourn – the circuit court that dealt with serious cases, bringing the judges to the county, keen to clear any backlog of felons so that the gaols could be emptied. Leniency was seldom recorded in the court records.


As the brothers ducked beneath the arched doorway they saw two soldiers leading away a girl no older than ten. The one soldier laughed and turned to the other. ‘They dance longer at the end of rope when they’re this small.’

The child looked bewildered but allowed herself to be taken towards the town square and the decaying remains of the man still hanging from the gibbet. Blackstone felt a pang of remorse for her – more than for himself and his brother.

‘What did she do?’ he heard himself ask. Hanging was a common enough occurrence, though he and his brother saw little of it in the village, and the guard seemed surprised that he had even bothered to ask.

‘Stole a piece of lace from her mistress,’ he said, and shoved the brothers forward into the courtroom.


The usual mockery directed at Blackstone’s brother took up the first few minutes of the trial. That the grunting, incoherent creature in the shape of the accused was an affront to the good people of the county and that allowing such a dangerous beast loose on unsuspecting people constituted a public danger. Furthermore the responsibility for control of such a beast lay at the door of Thomas Blackstone. And as a man would be punished for the behaviour of his wife, she being his chattel, so too was this creature’s keeper responsible for the crime against Sarah Flaxley.

It was little more than a monologue of condemnation and insult and would serve only to be noted on the court record as the reason for the brothers’ execution.

The judge looked around the crowded room. It was to be a busy day with more than a dozen cases to hear – and after ridding this town of its felons he had to move on to the next county. ‘Does anyone speak for the accused?’

Sir Gilbert pushed forward. ‘I am Sir Gilbert Killbere, these are free men from the village of Sedley, which lies within the estates of my Lord Ralph Marldon. I have been instructed to inform this court that these are valued men to his lordship and he has no desire to see them punished from the approval of a turd such as Drayman.’

The judge could be bribed or threatened but it was not Lord Marldon’s place to do so, and everyone knew Sir Gilbert was a poor knight and held his position through his loyalty and fighting skills.

‘There is no evidence to suggest that this creature was not involved,’ the judge said, knowing the sheriff had tried bribery and been refused, so there was no chance that the larger amount that he would demand to dismiss the case would be forthcoming. Bribery and extortion were common practice for those exercising the Common Law. Whether it involved a judge, a bailiff or a gaoler, at every tier of justice money could save your life. How often had a sheriff had a condemned man approve the sheriff’s own enemies and then extort money from them for their lives? Sir Gilbert’s appearance was purely to make Lord Marldon’s standing appear more kindly to his tenants. He offered no means to buy the prisoners’ necks.

‘Is there any just cause why they should not hang?’ the judge asked Sir Gilbert.

‘You’ll know of the proclamation for every man with an acre or more and who earns more than five pounds a year to provide an archer for the King’s intended campaign,’ said Sir Gilbert. He looked at Blackstone, whose head tilted quickly, looking at the knight. It was the first he had heard of it. A town crier would not have visited hamlets and villages, and any written proclamation would have gone unread unless a village cleric translated, and Sedley’s cleric was on a pilgrimage to the Pope in Avignon, and had probably been waylaid at Calais by the nearest brothel. Was Sir Gilbert using the proclamation as a means of saving them?

‘These are free men. They are not bonded to his lordship, but my lord needs men-at-arms and archers to answer the King’s writ to raise an army. Thomas Blackstone is an apprenticed stonemason and earns five shillings a year. That, with his wool and crops, brings him to the required amount. His duty is clear. His life is needed by the King,’ Sir Gilbert said.

‘There are sufficient archers and hobelars in the region to satisfy the King’s demands. I see no reason to offer him a village idiot who, by his very presence, would be an affront to His Highness. If that is the only defence it is denied.’

Sir Gilbert was not about to be cut down by a warty, pot-bellied judge, living fat from bribes and authority. ‘The boy is no idiot. He’s worked in a quarry all his life, he has greater strength than many grown men, and his skills as an archer are well known in three counties. It would please the King to see his skill put to good use in killing the enemies of the realm.’

The judge pointed a stubby finger at Sir Gilbert. Men-at-arms had caused him many a grievance over his years as a judge. Fighting men familiar with rape and looting on campaign often burgled and murdered at home. He would hang as many as came his way. This one was dangerous. He knew about Sir Gilbert’s violent reputation and fighting skills, and wished there was a felony in place for which he too could be charged. ‘The five pounds law is from the land holding alone. The fool earns nothing – he is a kept beast used for quarry work, as you have admitted. His fornication with the girl is well known. His life is forfeit.’

Sir Gilbert looked at the deaf mute whose lopsided jaw dropped his face into the caricature of a fool. The knight turned to the older brother and shook his head. He could see Blackstone was ready to launch himself across the court. Sir Gilbert quietly gripped his arm and, despite the boy’s strength, held him fast. The last thing Sir Gilbert needed was Thomas Blackstone being hacked to death in court for attacking a shit-pit judge.

‘Think!’ he whispered urgently. ‘Think of what your father taught you! He was a soldier, for Christ’s sake! Lord Marldon taught your father, your father must have taught you! Think of the Benefit!’

Panic at his lack of learning gripped Blackstone’s throat. Sir Gilbert had given him a chance of life.

‘I pass sentence on both these men,’ the judge ordered.

Blackstone pulled his arm free from Sir Gilbert. ‘I claim Benefit of Clergy!’ he shouted. Sir Gilbert smiled. Blackstone’s life was now in his own hands.

A monk or priest accused of a felony could save his life by claiming the Benefit, and a literate man could invoke the same right. The risk was huge. If the accused was unable to read from the open Bible placed in front of him his execution would be uncontested. If acquitted he would be placed in the care of the clergy and tried in the Ecclesiastical courts. It was rumoured that, more often than not, a court asked the accused to read Psalm 51, the Psalm of Contrition. It was Blackstone’s only chance. His father had beaten him with a willow switch until he memorized the verse word for word. But that had been more than three years ago. Now his memory stumbled.

‘Thomas Blackstone can read. It is his right to claim,’ said Sir Gilbert.

The request could not be denied.

‘Bring the Bible. Where’s the cleric? Where is he?’ the judge demanded.

A young, tonsured monk, his black habit released from the pillars’ shadows, stepped forward with a large open Bible, its corners protected by brass fittings. He presented it to the judge who looked at the chosen passage and nodded. The monk stepped forward, held the Bible open in front of Blackstone and waited.

Blackstone’s eyes fell across the letter-covered vellum, the ornate twist of the first letter caged in a decorative painted tomb. There was nothing recognizable. He could read French. Not Latin. The number next to the Psalm was covered by the monk’s grubby thumb.


Blackstone begged his mind to remember. His master stonemason had taught him to see the structure of a building in his mind’s eye – to interpret the numbers on his drawings into reality. See it in your mind and it will appear, the grizzled master with a crushed hand had taught him.

Blackstone pictured the words his father had thrashed into him. His mind cleared of panic – the monk’s thumb moved, revealing the Psalm’s number: 51.

‘Have mercy on me, O God, according to your unfailing love; according to your great compassion blot out my transgressions. Wash away all my iniquity and cleanse me from my sin. For I know my transgressions, and my sin is always before me…’

Line by line he went on, reciting the contrition with the pace of a man reading from the Good Book. It took a few minutes for his pretence to work. He was convincing enough for the clerk of the court to turn to the judge before committing the death sentence to the trial’s records. Blackstone dared not look at the judge, or the monk who gazed into his face. Had he realized Blackstone had only recited the words from memory? After a pause, and what Blackstone took to be a faint smile, the monk averted his eyes from his and moved back into the shadows.

‘The older brother is declared not guilty and committed to the care of the monks at St Edmund’s. The fool will hang,’ said the judge.

While Blackstone committed Psalm 51 to the court, Sir Gilbert had moved closer to the judge, his actions barely noticed as the words bounced across the granite walls. Sir Gilbert had only to lean forward. His whisper was a cold, unemotional threat.

‘Hang this boy and I will slice your cock from your crotch and fry it. You’ll eat it before you die. Give him to the monks at the priory of St Edmund’s.’

He stepped back and waited.

The blood drained from the judge’s face. Murder was common coin for some men and Sir Gilbert was not a man to make an idle threat. A poor knight without lands depended on violence to achieve any wealth or influence. The judge had no doubts about the threat. He wiped his face with an expensive linen handkerchief.

‘However… the community will be better served if we commit him also to the care of the monks of St Edmund’s, who will render some use of the mute and put him to work in God’s name. Case dismissed.’

Sir Gilbert guided the Blackstone brothers out of the court’s stone-chilled air. Richard lifted his face to the sun and uttered a braying groan of pleasure.

‘He’s a goddamn donkey in human form. Your father should have let him die,’ Sir Gilbert said as he climbed into the saddle.

‘You had that choice too, Sir Gilbert,’ said Blackstone.

‘Aye, and much good it would have done me. I had nags brought in anticipation of you using your brain.’

The monk led two swaybacked palfreys into view. He smiled at Blackstone and handed him the reins to one of them.

‘Well recited, Master Blackstone,’ he said and smiled.

Sir Gilbert turned his palfrey. ‘One with a prodigious memory, the other with a prodigious member. Both mean trouble, but my Lord Marldon wanted them alive. I’ve done my duty. Thank you, Brother Michael. Will you turn them over to my keeping?’

‘I will, Sir Gilbert.’

‘Then the money shall be at St Edmund’s as promised.’

He spurred his horse. Blackstone and Richard followed.

Sir Gilbert was riding for Lord Marldon’s manor.


The track meandered through the trees: steadfast oaks and great chestnuts. The riders followed the curving river two hundred feet below, turning gently through the bends of the wooded valley. On the far side the grassland on the southern slopes was being harvested by half a dozen men; the occasional shouts of playful insult between them carried up to the riders. Blackstone could not help gauging their distance and the angle of trajectory needed to fly an arrow. It was instinct, something he was blessed with from the early days when his father had given him his first bow. As he grew in strength and ability so the bow became bigger and more difficult to master. His father had taught him the skill of drawing the bowstring by laying his body into the stave; more than an arm’s strength was needed to pull the hundred and sixty pounds draw weight and to do it repeatedly. By the time the royal proclamation was issued prohibiting, under pain of imprisonment, all games that drew men away from the butts, Blackstone had already inherited his father’s cherished war bow. The ideal height for an archer’s lethal weapon, the deadliest killing machine of its age, was four inches taller than the archer, and his father’s bow stood six feet and four inches. Blackstone was the firstborn; it was his right to inherit. And, as his father knew, he was a better archer than his brother. His father had spoken gently and at length to explain that his younger son’s skills were better than any in the county, except those of Thomas. Yet he asked that every time the brothers competed, Thomas would allow Richard the final arrow of victory. It was the only way the deaf-mute child might find acceptance in the community. Father and elder son shared their secret pact with no one.

Since his father’s death, whenever he notched the hemp string over the bow’s horned nocks, and wrapped his hand around the stave’s four-inch belly, he sensed his father’s energy in the bow. It was made of yew; bonded springy sapwood on its outside, the dark, compressible heartwood facing the archer. His mind’s eye sometimes imagined the battles his father had fought. A shiver would grip his groin, uncertainty that he would ever have his father’s courage if it were demanded. That time now seemed imminent.

Swathes of meadow flowers quilted the distant fields, leading the eye of the observer to the final turn of the river where the turrets of Lord Marldon’s manor house appeared above the treetops.

They were in no hurry now and the landscape almost demanded that they slow the horses’ pace to a walk. Sir Gilbert hadn’t spoken since they left the town and Blackstone saw no reason to make idle conversation. The natural beauty of his surroundings touched something deep inside of him – a gentleness that almost suggested a mother’s love. Despite the hardship of their lives his father had always said they were God’s children and that nature was their comforter.

Sir Gilbert looked at him, as if reading his thoughts. ‘Your mother ruined a good fighting man,’ he said. ‘She sucked the will to fight from him like marrow from a bone. He gave up war and worked every God’s minute to be with her and then raise you and the donkey after she died.’ He saw the flash of anger in Blackstone’s eyes, but noted the boy’s self-control. Once these brothers were sent away from the sanctuary of their own hamlet and surrounding villages, strangers would taunt and Blackstone would have to defend his brother, but he would need a cool head to do it, because the men who would do the taunting knew about killing on a grand scale.

Blackstone let the insult go. ‘Why did my father do that?’

Sir Gilbert snorted and spat out a globule of phlegm. ‘Because he loved her more than any man should love a woman.’

The road opened before them, the manor’s gates came into view. Sir Gilbert spurred his horse.

Blackstone hoped their bad luck was behind them.

Misery was yet to unsheath her infected claws.


Once through the huge, arched entrance gates they dismounted and handed their horses’ reins to an ostler. The courtyard seemed alive with servants coming and going as Sir Gilbert went ahead and spoke to Chandler, who gestured them towards the great hall. Blackstone had helped repair its walls and Lord Marldon’s bridges, but had never been inside the manor house.


The brothers gazed up at the oak timbers that curved high to the apex of the ceiling. Banners and tapestries hung from the walls and freshly gathered reeds covered the cut stone floor. Two wolfhounds and half a dozen assorted other dogs raised themselves from the front of the massive fireplace where logs burned despite the heat of the day outside. They growled and barked, Sir Gilbert ignored them and they sniffed and settled. Lord Marldon sat close to the fire, his cloak gathered around him, his face gaunt from twenty years of living in pain seldom dulled by the rich red wine from his holdings in Gascony.

Blackstone bowed his head in respect; his brother, a pace behind him, did the same. His lordship gazed at them for a few moments and Blackstone could not help but look at the half-leg that rested on a cushioned support. All that anyone knew was that Lord Marldon had fought in the Scottish wars and a battleaxe had severed his leg at the knee joint. That he had survived was a miracle. The injury had never stopped him riding across his estates, with the half-leg secured to the stirrup straps to keep his balance. Once or twice over the years Blackstone had seen Lord Marldon ride past the Blackstone land and speak quietly to his father.

‘You saved them from the hangman, then, Sir Gilbert.’

‘He did it himself at the end of the day, my lord.’

Despite being a free man, Blackstone knew Lord Marldon still carried the authority and influence to affect his life. It would do no harm to pay more respect than was obligatory. ‘My lord, it is you who saved our lives today. Sir Gilbert told me that you had told my father the value of learning the Psalm of Contrition.’

Lord Marldon laughed. ‘Your father was right to devote himself to your well-being. You’ve intelligence and wit and there’s something of your mother’s beauty. A boy as good-looking as you are should never pay a woman for her pleasures. Your father would have beaten you. Perhaps I should for the trouble you’ve caused me.’

‘I apologize, my lord. It was not my intention to be arrested,’ Blackstone said, and then, risking a rebuke, added, ‘and I have never paid, my lord.’

Lord Marldon laughed again. ‘I miss your father. Perhaps I should have made myself better acquainted with his son.’ The smile gave way to a look of what Blackstone thought to be sadness as he turned his gaze onto his brother. ‘At least one who could humour me and answer when spoken to.’

Sir Gilbert had moved away from the fire and stood stroking one of the hounds that sat at his side. Blackstone glanced quickly at him, uncertain how to respond to the remark, but Sir Gilbert showed no expression to indicate that the boy should answer. Blackstone felt he was being tested.

‘My lord, my brother is strong, and works long hours, so there is benefit for his lordship in his being without speech. For he labours without complaint.’

‘A good answer – but the constant searching of his eyes disturbs me.’

Blackstone touched his brother’s shoulder. The boy turned and looked at him and Blackstone raised a finger and touched below his own eye and spread his hand in a calming sign. The boy nodded and remained still.

‘You’re going to war, Blackstone. King Edward raises an army. Commissioners of array are moving through the land, contracts are being made between knights and men-at-arms and free men must go and serve their King. Sir Gilbert will muster the men from my estates and you will wear my livery.’

The straightforwardness of his lordship’s comments took Blackstone by surprise. His whole world was about to change. ‘Who will we fight?’ was his stumbling response.

‘If you paid more attention to the proclamations posted by the sheriff in town you’d know well enough. The King and Parliament have asserted that the French seek to deny him his right of lands in France. War has not yet been declared, but it’ll be the French. It always is.’

Blackstone was aware of the rumours over the past months, and of the King’s men purchasing grain and livestock, but the thought that he’d be taken and sent to fight had never occurred to him. His daily life was already one of survival.

‘You should know, Blackstone, about your father. I gave his family my protection. That was the debt I owed him, and that was all he asked. When that axe took my leg he tied the tourniquet that saved my life. He carried me miles to safety. I was barely conscious. It was he who poured burning pitch on the stump to seal the wound. And I loved him for it. I doubt there was a more loyal sworn man in the realm.’

Blackstone found his voice. ‘He never told me.’

‘You did not know because he was sworn to silence. To have it known that I favoured your family would have caused greater resentment than that already shown against your brother.’

Blackstone’s heart beat harder – it felt like panic – like the time a quarryman ran to tell him of the rockfall. Wild thoughts and terrifying images of his father lying crushed under rock crowded his mind. ‘He always honoured you, my lord. He always offered prayers for your safety and long life,’ Blackstone replied, feeling the burden of loyalty increasing its weight.

Lord Marldon nodded, his voice softened with genuine affection. ‘And I honoured him as I have no other. I made him a free man and whenever the King called his veterans to war I paid his quittance. By arranging a good price for your father’s wool I found a way for him to pay for your apprenticeship. When the rockfall took him in the quarry I continued my promise to him and shielded his sons from those who would have their land.’

Blackstone stood as dumbfounded as his silent brother.

‘But now you must take your own chances in the world, Thomas. Your King needs you. My life will be over soon and I have done my duty. Now you must do yours.’

Blackstone looked at Sir Gilbert again, and this time he nodded. The lord of the manor was dying. His protection would die with him.

‘We’ll serve you loyally, my lord, as my father would have done,’ Blackstone said.

Lord Marldon shook his head. ‘Only you, Thomas. Your brother is of no use in a war. We’ll send him to the monks, they can put him to work and protect him from ridicule.’

‘The Franciscans care for dumb animals,’ Sir Gilbert added.

The younger brother looked startled as Blackstone gripped his arm. ‘He can fight. He’s the best archer in three counties.’

‘And he’s fourteen years old, for Christ’s sake,’ said Sir Gilbert. ‘He’s deaf and dumb!’

Blackstone laid a hand on Richard’s chest, to allay the fear he saw in the boy’s face. ‘He can hear well enough, Sir Gilbert. My lord, he feels the vibrations of drumbeat and the force of trumpets. The air reverberates with shouts and loud voices. He’s worked alongside my father and me since he could walk. No one I know can match his strength. His eyes are as sharp as a bodkin. He looses more arrows a minute than any man I’ve seen draw a bowcord.’

‘Fifteen is the youngest we can send men to war,’ Sir Gilbert said roughly, exasperated by Blackstone’s insistence.

‘I am his guardian, my lord, just as you gave your protection to my father and his sons.’ He knew he was running out of argument. ‘Look at him. Does he look to be the age he is? By the time the harvest is in, he’ll be old enough. He’s big enough to be half his age again. Would any man doubt it?’

Lord Marldon and his man-at-arms fell silent for a moment.

‘There’s not a whisker on his face,’ Sir Gilbert said finally.


‘And he has goose down on his head,’ Blackstone answered. ‘Others will take him as he is. Better he endures the mockery of soldiers and has me at his side, than be whipped by monks for not hoeing their carrot patch to their liking.’

Lord Marldon coughed hard and long. Sir Gilbert quickly poured wine into a goblet and held his master’s shaking hand, easing it to his lips.

‘Sweet Jesus Christ! I wish your father and I could have ended our lives as men should. Not crushed like an ant and eaten alive from within,’ wheezed the old warrior. He steadied his breathing. ‘Wait outside. I’ll make my decision. God bless you, Thomas Blackstone. Always remember who your father was and honour his memory. Go.’

Blackstone bowed his head, his brother did the same.

When the doors closed behind them Lord Marldon wiped the wine-mingled blood from his lip.

‘Chandler wants their land and I doubt I’ll be able to stop him. Do I send the boy with his brother?’

Sir Gilbert poured wine for himself. ‘He’s like a bullock. I doubt the rockfall that killed his father would have done the same to him. And I think he’s got a temper if it’s aroused.’ He took a mouthful and wondered if his lord needed to hear his thoughts about Blackstone. There was little choice. Time dictated honesty. ‘The oaf’s an archer all right, but Blackstone’s a lying shit. I’ve watched from the woods and seen him practise. He’s the better man. He can loose enough arrows to kill a small army.’

Lord Marldon’s voice was barely a whisper. ‘He protects his brother at the cost of his own stature.’

‘If the dumb beast is with him then at least he’ll slaughter his fair share of poxy Frenchmen. I’d let him go. Why not?’ He hesitated. ‘But Blackstone? Loosing arrows at a straw target isn’t a way to take his measure. He’s not a shadow of his father. He has no instinct to kill. He shies away from violence. I doubt he’d manage to kill a suckling pig. There’s a weakness in him. Like his mother corrupted his father. I think he’ll be dead or a deserter after the first battle.’ He swallowed the wine.

Lord Marldon nodded. Henry Blackstone had not beaten the boy enough. Sentiment and love needed to be tempered with unflinching courage in the slaughter of war. How often had he spoken to his sworn man about the boy’s gentle nature? His lordship’s friend had argued that in addition to the skills of war a nobleman was encouraged to appreciate poetry and the finer things in life; why, then, should a common man not have the same attraction?

‘Do what you can. Even the tenderest heart can be turned to war,’ Lord Marldon told him. ‘And if they are to die, let it be with anger in their blood and love for their King in their hearts.’