Master of War

Part 2


Wolf Sword





12




Death hovered in the shadows, like a raven waiting to pluck the soul of the wounded Blackstone.

In that timeless place of misery he fought the rearing demons that swirled from the battlefield in his mind. His haunting screams reverberated through the corridors of Noyelles until, finally, he fell silent and they thought him dead.

Christiana could feel no pulse in his body. She called for a servant to rouse the sleeping physician, shouting to hurry the fool along until her threats carried him away into the darkness with a flickering torch to guide back the only man who could save the wounded archer. Her cries of alarm echoed down the passageways and roused servants from where they lay next to the kitchen hearth, or in doorways close to their mistress. Torches flared, doors slammed open as feet scuffed their way across stone floors. Blanche de Harcourt gathered her gown about her and urged the servant who walked a step ahead with the spluttering flame to move more quickly.

Master Jordan of Canterbury, roused by his attendants, berated them loudly for interrupting his sleep. He recanted, keeping his curses to himself, when told of the urgency and the young archer’s lack of breath in his body. Why his great King had suffered him to attend to this broken boy was beyond his comprehension. In the name of God, he was Edward of England’s personal physician who attended him in the splendour of Windsor Castle, where gold-spun tapestries hung next to the paintings of great Italian artists. The privies had running water, there was warmth and comfort, and even on a war expedition the King of England dined as a monarch should. Not so here. Not so the simple platters of meat and rough-grain bread – not a decent piece of well-milled white loaf to be had. But now he, Jordan of Canterbury, who, lest anyone forget, also attended the King’s mother, Isabella, at Hertford Castle – so great was his standing within the royal family – was now obliged to stay in a Norman castle. These bare timber and stone walls held the cold like a corpse fished from the river in winter. These surroundings mocked the concept of noble luxury. He shivered in his misery and yearned for King Edward’s hearth. When he arrived, breathless from the steps that led up to Blackstone’s room, he was forced to wait a moment before lowering his face to that of his patient. His own heart needed to ease its pounding before he could determine if Blackstone’s had been taken by the Almighty. He felt the archer’s cold skin for any sign of fever or warmth that might indicate life. There was none.

‘A bowl and water! Here!’ he commanded one of his attendants.

The room’s confinement seemed doubly crowded as the shadows of those present jostled one another. He turned to Christiana, who stood in the doorway, gaunt with despair, as Blanche de Harcourt comforted her with an arm around her shoulder. The countess’s feelings about the common archer were well known.

‘My lady, it might be that God has released both the de Harcourt family and me from our onerous duty,’ he said.

His smile of feigned sympathy and shared aggrievement was met with her snapping response. ‘My lord and husband lies in his bed, still sleeping from the draught that eases the pain of his own wounds. I serve him and his commands as you serve your King, Master Jordan. Is his command onerous?’

The physician bowed his head, chastised, and hoped that his remark would not filter back to the King through his attendants’ gossip.

He was saved from further embarrassment by the servant returning with a half-filled bowl of water. Master Jordan took it and then balanced it carefully on Blackstone’s chest. They waited in the flickering light, peering at the smooth surface for any sign of vibration from the heart. There was nothing. The physician turned away to go back to his warm bed, his duty done.

Thomas Blackstone was dead.

Deep within himself the wounded archer felt a soft embrace and comfort, a gentle warmth he had never before experienced. It was a place of safety so temptingly close. All he had to do was yield to its seductive embrace. He slid further into its comfort and the soft glow of oblivion. But the animal instinct within him clawed at his mind. To turn away from that place meant a return to the bear pit of pain. The warmth was death, the pain meant life. Like a fragment of broken spearhead, his mind thrust back into the entanglement of despair.

‘My lord!’ the attendant called.

There was the faintest of ripples across the water’s surface.


Noyelles was safe for the time being. The English had moved north to besiege Calais, and ironically, Blackstone’s presence had guaranteed the de Harcourts’ safety. For three days Christiana and Master Jordan had attended to Blackstone. With the help of servants they had cut away his blood-soaked clothes and bathed his naked body until the wounds could be laid bare. Fever had gripped him and as the furnace threatened to consume him they tied his wrists and ankles to the bed’s frame so that in his delirium he would not aggravate his wounds. Christiana had followed the physician’s instructions, swabbing the gaping wounds with a mixture of egg yolks, rose oil and turpentine, laying a thick poultice of the mixture down the leg whose muscle lay slashed. Now the leg wound was cleansed but still malleable for closing.

The physician prepared to stitch and bind the gaping wounds. ‘I cannot save his face. It will be disfigured when the muscles tighten against the stitching. ’Tis a pity, I can see he had strong features.’ He eased away the poultice from the leg wound and from a bowl of wine withdrew a yard of gut, stripped from a pig’s intestine. His assistant threaded it into a curved needle.

Christiana regarded it uncertainly; curved like a fisherman’s awl, it looped the stitches, piercing Blackstone’s leg wound. Blanche de Harcourt eased her away. ‘Let Master Jordan do his work, child.’

‘The leg muscle needs to be held tight,’ Christiana said, ‘but if they use that on his face he’ll look grotesque.’

She stepped back into the room. ‘Sir, if you seal his wounds will you allow me to attend to his face? I mean no disrespect to you, Master Jordan, but a smaller hand that can hem a silk gown with barely a noticeable stitch might cause less disfigurement.’

For a moment the King’s physician looked uncertainly at her. No woman he had known had ever attended battlefield wounds. It was unseemly.

‘This is not work for you. It is best suited to a barber-surgeon on a battlefield. I am here at my lord’s request.’

Christiana bristled, but was conscious of the authority the King of England’s physician held. She lowered her eyes momentarily in a small gesture to acknowledge the fact, and then faced him, determined that her reasoning should be considered.

‘My sensibilities will not be harmed, sir, I have already helped bathe him and wash the congealed blood from those wounds. His body is not a mystery to me. I have attended him these past three days with barely a moment’s sleep. I have never left his side. I owe this boy my life as does your Prince. It’s a paltry request to try to save him from having the twisted, half-blind face of an ogre. Should King Edward and his son see the boy again, let his features not repel them. I have fine silk thread that will bind the skin tightly.’

Master Jordan looked at her and then to Blanche de Harcourt. ‘This girl is in your care, my lady. Is she normally so forward?’

‘I fear she is, but it can do no harm, surely?’


‘Surely,’ the physician was obliged to agree with a nod of his head. ‘Very well, I will instruct you, and if you save his face from looking like a split, overripe plum, I shall, of course, take the credit.’

‘And if I fail, sir, I will declare that I did it without your knowledge,’ Christiana answered.

‘Then we are in agreement. And if he lives I should hope this boy comes to realize how blessed he is – having a King and a beautiful young woman care so much for his well-being.’

As the hours wore on she watched the physician knit the wounds together as a suckling pig’s belly would be threaded with cord for roasting. It was crude, but efficient work. When the King’s doctor had finished she was left alone with Master Jordan’s apothecary, and helped him administer a trickle of hemlock and mandrake between Blackstone’s lips to ease the pain.

Christiana then carefully pulled together the slash on his face. The gall rose into her throat but she spat onto the reed floor and steadied her hands and then, slowly and with great deliberation, pressed the needle into his skin.


After attending to Blackstone’s wounds Master Jordan returned to the English army besieging Calais. Sir Godfrey arranged an armed escort to take his nephew, Jean de Harcourt, along with his family and a few men of his retinue who had survived the slaughter, further south to Castle de Harcourt, where the family withdrew behind the safety of its walls. French honour and hospitality dictated that Count Jean de Harcourt, the surviving son and now head of the family, have his household treat Thomas Blackstone with respect. He was no longer a yeoman archer from a shire in England; he had been knighted by a King’s son. The honour conferred by royal hand for courage on the field of battle held greater status than any other merit. Sir Godfrey, Jean’s uncle, may have fought against his own family when he sided with the English, but Jean’s loyalty to his own father at the battle of Crécy was simply that: honour for his father’s sake.

‘Why is the boy not quartered closer to us?’ de Harcourt asked nearly a month later. His own wounds were healing and he now walked unaided.

His wife looked up from her needlepoint; the dogs dozing by the fire ran to their master as he entered the great hall. He ignored them and repeated the question, his irritation noticeable, before she could answer.

‘He’s a common man, Jean. We cannot have him in our company,’ she said quickly, not wishing to risk his displeasure.

‘I am master of this house, and head of this family, Blanche. I have been charged with this boy’s welfare by Godfrey, and he in turn by the English King. Where is he?’

‘He’s in the north tower, my lord.’

De Harcourt turned his back and did not close the big doors behind him. The draught could blow through the room for all he cared. Autumn was already upon them.


Jean de Harcourt limped along the corridor that led to the unheated room where Blackstone had been quartered. The room was empty, the bed had not been slept in. He peered out of the narrow window. In the courtyard Christiana walked slowly alongside a horse, holding it by its halter. On the other side Blackstone gripped the horse’s mane with one hand, to support himself as he limped painfully, forcing his injured leg to bear more weight each day. In less than a month Blackstone had fought the pain of his injuries and punished himself back almost to strength.

De Harcourt noticed the sword that had accompanied the wounded archer leaning against the wall and picked it up, feeling its fine balance against his palm, its delicate weight tipping slightly. It was the work of a master swordmaker and in the right hands would kill and maim with an efficiency that any man-at-arms would admire. He wielded it quickly left and right, the cutting edge rippling the air. It was one of the finest swords he had seen, and despite the fact that it was a weapon that only a wealthy and accomplished knight could afford Sir Godfrey had told him that Blackstone had taken it from such a knight and then slaughtered him with it – a brutal, unforgiving act, when a ransom could have been claimed despite no quarter being offered by either side at Crécy. A chance of wealth denied no matter the circumstances. And yet he knew that before the great battle, when Sir Godfrey had visited the castle at Noyelles, Blackstone had saved the life of a young page, and tried to help the boy’s wounded master. A bewildering contradiction: compassion and brutality were seldom brothers-in-arms. And now this barbarian archer was in the care of his family. He replaced the sword and looked down to where Christiana turned the horse. Now he could see Blackstone more clearly; there was grim determination set upon the boy’s battered features, the wound’s livid welt discolouring half his face into a blackened and yellowing mass. Blackstone’s hair was matted with sweat from the effort of hauling himself along. He wore only a long undershirt, the bandaging on his wounded leg not yet allowing breeches or hose. He heard Christiana’s voice echo across the courtyard.

‘That’s enough for today, Thomas. You must rest now and let me attend to your leg.’

Blackstone shook his head. ‘Once more. There and back. Across the yard,’ he told her. Despite her protestations Blackstone urged the horse to walk on, and despite his pain stayed silent, forcing the leg muscles to challenge the wound.

De Harcourt gazed at the boy, one of the thousands who had faced him at Crécy; the English archers who had rained death on him and the cream of French chivalry. Their savage killing of wounded knights thrown down in that hailstorm was renowned and the thought of their brutal tactics made his gorge rise. His own wounds were nothing compared to Blackstone’s, but they had confined him to his rooms for weeks, until he now felt strong enough to appear before his family and retainers again.

It was time to meet his enemy.


Blackstone sat on a small barrel in the stables as Christiana unwound the sticky bandage from his leg. From a linen bag she pulled out a roll of narrow cloth and a pot of salve. The long slice of wound that ran down his thigh was puckered and oozing pus from where the stitches held it. Using a small-bladed knife she began to pick at the wound, suddenly alarmed when she felt his leg wince.

‘I’m sorry,’ she whispered, reaching up for his hand.

He smiled. ‘It’s nothing – it’s tender where the flesh is still raw, that’s all. It’s healing and that’s good.’

A shadow filled the doorway and Christiana quickly got to her feet as de Harcourt stood in the entrance.

‘My lord,’ she said.

Blackstone did not move for a moment but then hauled himself to his feet, not once taking his eyes off the man who might well control his life or death.

‘Christiana, there are servants who can attend to that,’ de Harcourt said.

‘It’s delicate, my lord, I would prefer to do it myself. I have to pluck the maggots from the wound.’

De Harcourt knew of using maggots to eat away the poisoned flesh, but had never taken such action himself. ‘You do this each day?’

Christiana nodded. ‘The servants bring in rabbits and crows; they gut them and when they are infested we take the maggots and put them into Thomas’s wound. That and the salve that Master Jordan’s apothecary left with us.’

De Harcourt nodded, but all the while in his questioning of her he held Blackstone’s gaze. Blackstone saw a man of about thirty years, wiry with a taut, knotted body. He was shorter than Blackstone by five or six inches and wisps of grey were evident in his beard; his hair grew long into the nape of his neck. His hands showed criss-crossed white lines, old scars from fighting. Now he limped, leaning on a gnarled hand-cut stick, but despite that, Blackstone realized, he was undiminished in stature.


‘Do that later,’ he said to Christiana.

For a moment she hesitated, the two men opposite each other, de Harcourt the stronger of the two, with the lesser wounds and a knife at his belt. Christiana turned away with barely a glance at Blackstone. De Harcourt waited a moment and then eased himself onto an upright sack of grain.

‘I am Jean, fifth count of Harcourt and head of this family.’

Being in the presence of a noble family demanded common courtesy, and although Blackstone had been knighted by no less a personage than the Prince of Wales on the field of battle, with the blessing of Edward, King of England, Jean de Harcourt was his superior. Blackstone’s broken arm was still bound and splinted, and the wounded leg that Christiana had exposed, de Harcourt silently acknowledged to himself, would cause pain at every movement. Blackstone reached out with his good arm and steadied himself against the barrel. And then slowly forced his body to obey his will. He lowered his uninjured knee towards the ground.

De Harcourt watched the sacrifice to pain, and when Blackstone’s knee was almost halfway to the ground, he raised a hand, unable to allow needless suffering from a brave fighter.

‘Enough. There is no need,’ he said.

Blackstone ignored him, fought the agony of the wound and rested his knee into the dirt, and then raised his head to look directly at de Harcourt.

‘Lord,’ Blackstone said, and pulled himself up, the wound now leaking blood through the yellow pus.

De Harcourt nodded acknowledgement, realizing that Sir Godfrey’s description of the defiant archer had been accurate – Blackstone would not yield. He indicated that Blackstone should sit on the barrel.

He gazed down through the layers of society, to a level with which he had had little contact other than to have beaten, forgiven or killed. Little of the middle option. It was necessary to keep such low-life in its place. But there were men who fought and secured favour and fortune, and these men earned respect. And Blackstone was somewhere along that road to securing a place in the telling.

‘King Edward still lays siege to Calais. The war goes on,’ he said.

‘Without us, my lord,’ Blackstone answered.

‘Without us,’ de Harcourt agreed. ‘I’m told you can read.’

‘I can.’

‘How so?’

‘My mother was French. She taught my father, he taught me.’

‘Her name?’

‘Annie.’

‘That’s not French.’

‘It’s what my father called her. It was Anelet.’

‘Is she alive?’

‘No.’

‘And your father?’

‘Dead.’

‘An archer?’

‘The best. I carried his war bow.’

‘He died in battle?’

‘In a stone quarry, where I served my apprenticeship as a stonemason and freeman.’

‘And can you write?’

‘A little.’

‘Not quite the barbarian, then.’

‘Enough to do my sworn lord’s bidding and kill my King’s enemies,’ Blackstone said, unable to keep a disrespectful tone from his answer.

De Harcourt ignored it. ‘Yes. I have experience of English warmongering. Who is your sworn lord?’

‘Sir Gilbert Killbere.’

‘Does he live?’

‘Dead beneath a war horse at Crécy.’

‘I don’t know of him.’

‘Had you faced him in war you would.’

‘You’re impertinent.’

‘So I have been told, my lord.’

De Harcourt could see that Blackstone showed no sign of fear, and his size and strength defied his age.

‘What am I to do with you, young Thomas Blackstone?’

‘I don’t know, my lord, but my wounds are healing and in another month I’ll be strong enough to go back to the army.’

‘You will only leave when I tell you to leave,’ de Harcourt said. ‘Has Christiana told you why you are here? Why the English King commanded the marshal of the army, my uncle, who fought for him against his own family, to have you brought here?’

‘I can only think my King wished to irritate Sir Godfrey,’ Blackstone said.

De Harcourt suddenly laughed. ‘Yes, that’s a distinct possibility.’ He flicked at a pile of horse dung with the stick. How friendly should he be with this hulking archer? His own uncertainty surprised him. The man who stood before him had a difference to him that he had not come across before in a peasant. Perhaps his upbringing had been influenced by the mother.

‘The truth of the matter is that the Harcourt family have long been divided in their loyalty. Some of my ancestors went to England with William of Normandy. They still hold estates there. Distant cousins, probably best kept that way. We Normans do not take kindly to authority we do not respect. Perhaps you and I share common ground in that matter. My father died at Crécy because of his loyalty to King Philip. I served out of loyalty to my father, but now that he is dead and I am head of the family, I will choose where my fealty lies. The English King will claim the throne of France and my family will be part of his success. That’s why you’re here, because Sir Godfrey was charged by our future King to save you. Otherwise he’d have left you on the side of the road to rot in a ditch and die of your wounds. No matter how well you fought in defence of your Prince.’ De Harcourt eased himself up. ‘And he’d have taken that fine sword for himself.’ He reached the stable door and turned back, adding, ‘Had he been able to prise it from your fist.’

He hobbled away, leaving Blackstone still uncertain of his immediate fate.

Christiana waited until she saw her guardian’s lord and husband limp back towards the great hall. She didn’t ask Blackstone what had been said, he would tell her in his own time, as he usually did, offering brief glimpses of the guilt that lay in his heart at his brother’s death and his sense of urgency to return to those men he had fought beside. Little by little she learnt more of Thomas Blackstone. She spent nights watching him as each nightmare unveiled a few more of his demons and each day cast them back into their cage. She dressed his wound and helped him back to the north tower, where a servant awaited them.

The man hunched and bowed his shoulders. ‘My lady, I have been instructed by my lord to take Sir Thomas to his new quarters.’

It was the first time Blackstone had heard himself referred to in honoured terms.

‘What’s your name?’ Blackstone asked.

‘Marcel, Sir Thomas.’

Blackstone looked at the now empty room. The sword was missing.

‘Who took my sword?’

‘Lord de Harcourt took it away,’ the servant answered.

It was pointless to question him further. Blackstone allowed the servant to help him along the passageways. As they passed each window overlooking the castle’s walled yards to the forests beyond, the moat’s glistening water became a mirror to his memory, reflecting back events that had brought him here, to the place where he had first saved Christiana. That fate should twist his life into a knot with this family was beyond his reasoning, but the girl was still at his side and his enemy had not yet cut his throat. He would take what comfort he could from that, and then build his strength to determine his own destiny. And hoped she would be a part of it.

The room, compared to the cell-like quarters in the north tower, was bright and spacious. A fire burned in the grate, logs and kindling were stacked in its hearth and there was a privy a few paces along the corridor. There was a bowl and a jug of water on a table with a linen cloth so he might wash. A bench stood beneath a window that looked south into the warmth of the autumn sun. Animal skins, stitched into a bed cover, lay across the mattress, which had been made up with blankets. The room had been prepared as if for an invited guest, with the addition of clean clothes, a long, loose shirt to accommodate Blackstone’s bound-up arm and injured leg. And the sword lay on the deep sill, sunlight glinting from its burnished steel. Christiana slid beneath his arm as he pulled her to him and kissed her hair.


He was safe.

For now.


Over the following weeks Jean de Harcourt extended his own training to regain his strength so that each day he could assess Blackstone’s progress. As he watched him break through the challenging pain it became a competition in de Harcourt’s mind to gain the upper hand over the young archer.

Each man sweated from his efforts, and de Harcourt knew that youth and a lifetime of hard labour gave the young knight the advantage. As every day passed he learnt a little more about his charge. Blackstone would soon be strong enough to learn to fight as a man of honour would conduct himself, sword in hand, not by slaying an opponent from a distance with a war bow. Each man extended himself because each was determined to outdo the other.

Little was said between nobleman and peasant until de Harcourt felt ready to extend his courtesy. Then, slowly but surely, he drew the yeoman archer into his world. As each day’s exercise session ended de Harcourt had wine, bread and cheese brought down to the courtyard. He and Blackstone sluiced the sweat from their bodies in a trough of cold water and then Christiana would be summoned to minister to Blackstone’s wounds. De Harcourt realized that Blackstone had been right; another month had gone by more rapidly than anticipated – and he could see that Blackstone would soon be able to leave of his own free will – if he permitted it.

That would not be allowed to happen. Not yet. Not until his uncle, Godfrey de Harcourt, sanctioned it. He needed to reach this rough-hewn boy, to find a means of gaining his trust, and hope that the lad had sense enough to know that the honour conferred on him was more than a reflection of the King’s will, it was God’s blessing. There was no common ground between them, other than the conflict they had both experienced. That might serve the purpose.

‘I was in the third division with my family and troops,’ de Harcourt said as he pulled off his shirt and turned his back for a servant to wipe dry. Another retainer went to help Blackstone tug free his soaked shirt, but was denied. Blackstone preferred to struggle with the arm that was still bent, held by strips of wood and cut leather that had been soaked and had dried into a tight binding, bracing the broken bones.

‘I saw no such division,’ Blackstone told him. ‘All I saw were thousands of armoured men coming at us as if they were riding out of hell. The ground shook beneath our feet and all we could think of was to slay you before you reached us, for then we would have been at your mercy, and there was none to be had that day.’

De Harcourt nodded as the servant poured two tumblers of wine, gave one to his master and was about to hand the second to Blackstone when de Harcourt personally handed his own to Blackstone. Blackstone acknowledged the small gesture of – what? Friendship? In these past weeks the men had spoken briefly, neither admitting their pain, neither accusing the other of slaughter on the battlefield. The servant stepped away.

The older man sipped his wine. ‘Your arrows put the fear of Christ into us. You felled us like trees. I took one of your shafts in my side, deflected by my armour; another in my leg that pinned me to the saddle. Our charge pounded the horses against each other and broke the shaft. My squire pulled me free from the horse when I fell. He died as he got me to safety. I can still hear the screams of the horses and the men. I prayed that God would send a fireball from the heavens and sweep you archers from the face of the earth. I hated your slaughter. I hated you all. You destroyed all that I knew.’ He spoke without anger or recrimination, but out of an experience that would be impossible to recount to anyone who had not endured that massacre. Of all in the confines of the castle only he and Blackstone shared the memory of the battle. ‘You will never pull a war bow again, not with that arm,’ said de Harcourt. ‘You have to learn to fight as a man-at-arms. And I have yet to see you touch that sword.’

The truth of what de Harcourt said about his injury caused more pain than the broken arm itself. Those final moments of the battle were as vivid as a sunset across the fog-laden fields of his homeland, conjuring ghosts and demons alike from the magical shroud. ‘That sword killed my brother,’ Blackstone said and swallowed a mouthful of wine. ‘I killed the man who did it. If I take hold of its grip I cannot stop the violence that tries to explode out of me.’

‘Then you have the advantage over many. All you have to do is learn the skill to use it properly. When you’re ready, I’ll teach you.’

‘Why?’ Blackstone asked.

‘Because it is my duty,’ de Harcourt answered. ‘Something you must learn to understand and honour.’

‘You question my courage, my lord?’ Blackstone asked, the flush of anger creeping up his neck.

‘No. But you are no longer what you were, Thomas. You are of no use to anyone unless you can be trained. Do you think the English army would take back an archer who cannot pull a bowcord, a man who has no fighting skills? You’d be lucky if they let you pack the supply mules. You’re not stupid, Thomas, you’re a fighter. Learn to fight.’

De Harcourt rinsed his mouth and spat out the wine. The servant gathered his shirt and draped a cloak about his master’s shoulders against the creeping damp and cold of the autumn dusk.

Blackstone watched them a moment longer and then took a knife to the leather bindings that held the splints. He rubbed the blood into the muscles, which had wasted these past months, and tested the length of his arm. He squeezed his fingers into a fist, and looked down the line of sight of his bow arm. Once the stiffness had eased he tried to turn his wrist as if holding a bow. The bones had knitted badly and the forearm resisted his efforts. There was a permanent bend in the arm. De Harcourt was right, he would never be an archer again, but perhaps God had given him a crooked limb so he could carry a shield.

The fingers of the night air tickled his skin as he walked, unaided, and with only a slight limp, back to his room and Christiana, waiting at the window.


Countess Blanche de Harcourt sat at the linen-draped table and washed her hands in the silver bowl offered by a servant while another cut and placed food on her platter. She towelled her hands dry, concentrating on the act, debating in her mind how to answer the question that her husband had asked only moments earlier.

‘Is she sleeping in his bed?’ de Harcourt asked again.

‘Jean, how am I to know?’ she answered.

‘She’s our ward and she’s in your charge. Is she?’

‘I think,’ she said carefully, ‘there is some affection between them.’

‘Beneath the covers?’

Blanche lowered the piece of meat from her eating knife onto her plate, and delicately wiped her mouth before sipping from the goblet of wine. ‘He doesn’t sleep in the bed. She tells me that he pulls a blanket and a covering onto the floor. He doesn’t desire comfort. Besides, I suspect his wounds prohibit him from…’ She let her thoughts remain unspoken, and put another piece of meat into her mouth. Chewing was a convenient escape from her husband’s cross-examination.

‘His wounds wouldn’t stop him. I’ve seen that much for myself.’ He pushed the plate to one side and reached for his wine. ‘Speak to her. I’ll not have a bastard child from an English barbarian conceived in this house. Do I make myself clear? They’ll do it soon enough, no doubt; she’s a headstrong woman who should have been married off by now. If her father survives the war he can take back his responsibility. Until then it’s our burden.’


‘She’s no burden. She has shown spirit and courage,’ Blanche answered in Christiana’s defence.

‘And drawn to an Englishman like an arrow to his bow. He must be educated, Blanche. I can teach him to fight, but you and Christiana have to teach him some manners. He should be able to sit at a table in a civilized fashion.’

‘He’s a common man. I never wanted him here in the first place,’ she told him, abandoning her food, her appetite spoiled.

‘No matter. We have him. Speak to Christiana and decide how you’re going to do it. He’s your responsibility.’ De Harcourt pushed away from the table, tossed the meat from his plate to the dogs, and left his wife to deal with her growing anger and frustration in her own way. How she did so was up to her. He had no understanding of the process.


The rotting skulls were still impaled on the poles beyond the gates of Castle de Harcourt, slack-jawed, gaping at the scatter of clouds flitting across the face of the moon. Their flesh had rotted and the bones were picked clean, but still they served as a warning to any deserter or marauding band who thought of attacking the stronghold. Each day, as the dawn crept through the woodland, Blackstone could see them from his window, with their lifeless gaze, guardians of the forest road that could lead to his freedom. The days had worn on and his sense of confinement grew ever stronger. Christiana had gently refused his clumsy advances. She had not done so in anger, but no matter how gentle her rejection had been it added to a confusing sense of loss and loneliness. The silence and darkness of these nights that followed began to suffocate Blackstone’s thoughts. The French countryside showed no lights from nearby villages, and once the Angelus Bell rang the Harcourt household retreated to their private chapel to recite prayers in honour of the Lord’s Incarnation; and then until the curfew bell rang, they would retire to the great hall and private rooms. Blackstone was in conflict with his feelings for the God that had saved him and destroyed his brother. The silver token around his neck gave more comfort, and Arianrhod’s cool touch to his lips was all the blessing he could offer by way of gratitude.

In the hours between the ringing of the bells Blackstone walked the walls, ignoring the sentries and their muttered greetings to the enemy who now lived in their midst. The freedom of the night wind chilled him but he welcomed its reminder of another life spent in the wild forests and open pastures with his brother before the act of murder that had sent them to war.

As each day passed his body grew stronger, but his mind began its own torment. Those skulls were his gaolers. He missed the friendship of the archers with their coarse jokes and laughter, men who had gathered him and his brother into their fold. There was a desperation in him to hear an English voice call out in greeting or insult, to challenge him to a drunken brawl having spent his last coin on an alehouse whore and drink. He yearned to hear the rambling dialect of a fletcher or bowyer, a blacksmith’s cursing, or the scolding commands of his sworn lord, Sir Gilbert Killbere. They were as lost to him as surely as the morning mist was ripped from the treetops. There was only one way he could defeat these poisonous torments – sweat them out.

Blackstone bent from the waist and picked up a broken piece of rock that lay tumbled from the damaged wall. He eased the weight upwards, testing his injured leg, demanding his crooked arm play its part. He felt the pinch in his leg, but it was little more than the wound objecting to his effort. The leg would hold and if he was careful he would not tear the lesion apart. The blackened stitches kept the slash closed like the sewn lips of a heretic. His left arm was weak compared to its power before the German’s sword had smashed down across the bones. But the crooked arm was only slightly out of true and would let him use a knife or hold a shield in close-quarter fighting. That is, if he stayed entrapped in the walls of Castle de Harcourt and learnt the skills. Jean de Harcourt had spoken the truth; Blackstone would be of no use to the English army unless he could fight. He had to ignore the temptation that tugged at him like a bird returning to its roost, and make his way back to discover who had survived the great battle.

And Christiana? For the past weeks he had felt her hands on his body as she tended to his wounds, like a servant to a master, except she had servants of her own, and could easily have given her nursing duties to one of them. But she had not. She had tended to him out of something that was more than duty or kindness, and the fragrance of her closeness tormented him in a manner he could not describe. His own base instincts had been tempered by his father’s prohibition on ever bringing shame on his allegiance to Lord Marldon, who had granted him his freedom and friendship. But that family pledge had been broken and the bitter taste of the shame still lingered. His memory goaded him more insistently than the pain in his wounded leg. It was impossible to smother the truth of what his brother Richard had done. If only the memory could be buried as would shovelling dirt into a deep grave bury his mutilated body – now little more than a carcass lying undiscovered among the thousands on the battlefield at Crécy. Blackstone made a silent vow: he would not let these dark harbingers of recrimination torture him further. The truth was simple: Thomas Blackstone had survived, his wounds were healing, his strength returning. His capacity to inflict violence on an enemy was diminished, but not for much longer. A man who was once an adversary, and who, secretly, might still be, had extended his hand as mentor to serve the command of the English King. As the clouded waters of his mind began to clear he realized a plan was emerging that showed him the way to his future. Everything that had happened up to this time would become a source of strength, a stone-built fortress that would never be breached again by contrition or regret. He would learn how to fight as a man-at-arms and earn the honour bestowed on him.

Blackstone wielded the stonemason’s hammer and began to build the wall.


The late autumn months saw the English King’s army still besieging Calais in Edward’s dogged determination to secure the port that gave him the gateway to France. Neap tides swept in across the marshland around the walled city and the English were constantly forced to move their tents and wagons back and forth, and little progress was made despite the King’s efforts. The siege was to be a long, miserable affair.

Crops failed that year due to the unseasonably wet weather and the harsh winter added to French misery as the English army foraged far and wide to feed itself. News was slow to reach the castle deep in the Norman countryside, but retreating knights, abandoning the French King, would pass by and share what news they had as they returned to their estates to try to protect their families from elements of the English army who controlled almost all of south-western France. Only the road from Bordeaux northwards to Paris remained in French hands. If Edward could close the northern and southern jaws and take Paris, the crown would be his. But not this year. There were still French lords who sided with Edward and took his payment for their loyalty even as the bodies of nobles and princes who fell at Crécy were disinterred from the burial ground at the Cistercian abbey of Valloires, where Edward had first buried them after the great battle. King Philip held state funerals for them and honoured their families – but theirs were estates without their lords, and disorder and discontent swept through many of the French nobility with the bitterness of the north wind.



Jean de Harcourt slashed the sword in an upward sweeping arc. Pain seared through Blackstone’s body as he stumbled backwards.

‘You’re an archer, you’re trained to stand bracing your left leg and if you do that I’ll take it off with one sword stroke. Protect your legs with a low parry. A ten-year-old boy training to be a squire could kill you. You don’t have to be a damned wall of resistance; use your feet! Pass and evade! Block high, strike down, step back. How many times do you need telling? Again!’ de Harcourt shouted.

Blackstone shook his head in an attempt to clear the agony from the flat-bladed blow that Jean de Harcourt had just delivered against his wounded leg. He regained his stance, holding his bent left arm forward, extending the small buckler, his only means of defence. His tutor was using wooden training swords, the kind that pageboys and squires would be given to learn their skills. But in two swift strikes de Harcourt had nearly crippled Blackstone. He felt blood oozing behind his bandaged leg and knew it would already be seeping through the breeches he had managed to fit into that morning. Neither man wore protection from the sleet that stiffened his limbs other than a linen shirt and sleeveless leather jerkin. The cold gripped his leg, slowing his agility, making him vulnerable to de Harcourt’s expert strikes. The Frenchman had not even broken into a sweat after demonstrating all the attacking and defensive guards to Blackstone for the tenth time that morning. Now the lesson was being applied in its most basic and brutal manner short of causing serious injury. The day already seemed long and arduous, and Blackstone wondered if his injured leg would hold out.

It was Blackstone’s anger that kept him on his feet. He raised the sword and struck out at de Harcourt who barely moved. He was on the balls of his feet, then slightly sidestepped and struck Blackstone across his ear with the flat of the sword. The stinging blow made him swing back wildly in a crosscutting arc and this time the swiftness of his movement and the weight of his body behind the sword caught de Harcourt across his arm and he could see he had scored a painful point in retaliation against his tutor.

The two men stood a few feet apart, each waiting to see who would make the next move. De Harcourt lowered his guard.

‘You made three mistakes. First was to lead with your left leg without covering yourself properly with your sword. Second to lunge and throw yourself off-balance. Your reactions were good and a crosscutting strike was lucky. But I will keep on hurting you until you learn.’

‘You said three mistakes,’ Blackstone said, eyes blinking against the cold rain.

No sooner had he spoken than de Harcourt was suddenly upon him, his left arm fully extended, the buckler’s face turned outwards ready to receive any striking blow Blackstone might have delivered, which he did not. There was no time. The sword blade whirred left and right, top to bottom like a spinning sycamore seed. The force of the attack pushed Blackstone off-balance and he fell heavily into the dirt. De Harcourt stood over him as Blackstone lay looking up at the point of the sword and realized that had this been real combat it would not be a wooden training sword at his throat, but sharpened steel that would plunge through his gullet.

‘Three. I’ve told you before, Thomas: never stand and wait for your opponent to make the decisive move. Always attack.’

Blackstone realized that de Harcourt had lunged at him with a ruthless efficiency that came from years of training. His heart sank: what chance did he have even to get close to those skills?

‘That’s enough for today,’ de Harcourt said. ‘See to that leg.’

He turned away without offering to help Blackstone to his feet. He would struggle, and de Harcourt knew he would have it no other way. This Englishman owned a stubborn pride the likes of which had defeated the greatest army in Christendom.


Blanche de Harcourt watched as her lord and husband stripped the wet clothes from his body. His scars were healing well and the weight he had lost during his convalescence was beginning to return. When she gazed on his nakedness it showed a tapestry of hurts from battles fought. By now she could touch almost every blemish and scar and know which conflict had given them. And if she felt that about her husband why should not Christiana feel the same about Thomas Blackstone? She had watched the girl and had the servants report to her if she had gone to Blackstone’s room at night. Servants slept in corridors in whatever nook or doorwell they could find and she ensured that one of her most trusted would strip the linen from Blackstone’s bed each week and check for signs of a virgin’s blood. Time and again the servant had reported that Blackstone still slept on the floor and the linen did not bear even the creases from his body. Blanche wondered if Christiana had realized that she was being watched whenever she was out of her company. Each stable-hand, servant and scullion was told to report what they saw of what went on between Christiana and Blackstone. But so far there had been no indication of intimacy.

Blanche waited as Jean eased himself into the steaming water of the wooden bathtub. Her lust for her husband was something she always handled with care, not wishing to offend him with her desire. She slipped the gown from her body as she walked in front of him, the light from the window behind her, softening her shape, making her even more desirable. She could tell from his expression that the sensuous image she had offered would not be rejected. She slipped into the warm water and straddled him. Lust needed to be controlled to allow the full pleasure of its fulfilment.

As she felt him enter her, his hands and mouth unable to resist her breasts, she knew that sooner rather than later Christiana would lie with Blackstone. Women had little control over their lives but a man’s bed could alter such poverty of influence. And she, Countess Blanche de Harcourt et Ponthieu, a woman of rank in her own right, had made sure that her ward was versed in these ways that could bring such influence into her own life.


The straw man was stitched into old sackcloth, and hung suspended like a common thief, his legs splayed, tied by rope to stakes in the ground. Blackstone scuffed the dirt beneath his feet to aid his footing, and focused on his helpless victim. The first flurries of snow had fallen but the full force of winter had yet to settle itself upon them. Day after day, time and again, de Harcourt had repeated the several positions a swordsman could take when preparing to engage his enemy. Blackstone’s bruises and welts were testament to these lessons that were being beaten into him. Now he stood alone in the training yard while those in the castle went about their business, their heightened activity heralding the anticipated arrival of visitors.

The scarecrow gazed blindly at the figure before him who moved his feet and arms in a tightly configured dance of death. Blackstone’s right leg held his balance, arms bent forward against any high strike down across his legs. His left arm covered his chest with the buckler while with the other he rested the weapon flat-bladed on his crooked arm, like a fiddler about to scrape a tune. It was a guard to protect legs and vital organs. The voice in his head commanded obedience – balance and movement, sidestep and strike – the balls of his feet turned him a stride as if stepping around an opponent, and then he slashed the sword down and the straw man flinched.

Once again he repeated the attack and then extended his arm, bringing the small buckler shield to his front, the sword now resting on his right shoulder, cutting edge to the sky, his thumb pressing against the crossguard above the grip to give added strength and impetus to a strike. His left leg shuffled forward, the angry welt still fringed by the black piercing of its stitches, still painful at the stretch, but stronger now in its support of his upper body, with its additional strength of archer’s muscles across back and shoulder. He had not told de Harcourt of his own regime of constant exercises using a length of iron, heavier and more cumbersome than any sword, which he lifted and swung, day in, day out.


Wolf Sword still kept its place by his bed – the blade sharp and bright, the corded grip darkened by old blood. It waited like a sentinel, needing a worthy hand to heft its deadly edge against an opponent. Blackstone knew he was not yet worthy.

Nock, mark, draw and loose! The rhythm that had given him his skill as an archer now gave way to another lethal combination of movement. His wounded leg protested as he pushed it forward in a sudden change of stance, bringing his sword arm to the front of his face, the honed edge uppermost. This head-guard strike enabled a powerful downward cut from right to left that severed the straw man’s leg at the thigh. The wooden sword’s edge must have found weak stitching.

The discipline of the fighting sequence flooded him with energy and bolstered his confidence, but in that moment, as he struck, a clamouring vision of the final moments at Crécy leapt at him from a subdued memory. That attacking blow had been the very one that the German knight had used against him, but somehow Blackstone’s instincts had turned him out of the blade’s killing range, exchanging a severed limb for the wound that he now carried.

The memory of the hulking knight who had slain his brother and then scythed his way towards the English Prince was shrouded in the evening’s gloom. It had all happened so quickly. His mind’s eye held the mute vision. Blackstone stood unmoving, sword arm lowered, body turned at the hips, the butchered torso leaking straw in the wind. He had been so close to being cleft by that knight that only now as he learnt the killing techniques did he sense the blessing that a few vital seconds had afforded him.

Out of the turmoil of the memory an insistent voice called his name.

He turned. Christiana stood ten feet behind him wrapped in a cloak, looking concerned, as if she had been too scared to approach any closer.

‘I’ve been calling you,’ she said against the buffeting wind. Then smiled, hoping it would penetrate the glazed look of incomprehension on his face. ‘Thomas?’

He nodded and stepped towards her, pulling her small body into his own, then brushed a snowflake from her nose.

‘I’m sorry,’ he told her. ‘I was being attacked by a scarecrow.’

She laughed as he tossed the wooden sword aside and led her away from the memory.

The straw man surrendered to the wind and scattered across the darkening sky.