Master of War

24




Before darkness fell Blackstone led twenty men into the forest. He had left ten of his men to guard the monastery and to ensure the monks were confined to the dormitory. Those he took with him carried two scaling ladders to take them over the walls under cover of black, troubled clouds driven by a harsh wind, tumbling across the sky. There was a dark gulley at the base of the wall, chilled from never seeing sunlight, and where mist would cling the better part of the day and night. It was a dank place with the smell of a tomb about it.

Blackstone had made a decision that Meulon thought stupid and had argued in strained whispers in case his voice carried down to the sentries. Blackstone was going to go over the wall alone to reconnoitre the town. And then, once he had a better understanding of its layout, he would return and take the men inside its walls. It was madness, Meulon had told him, and as Blackstone eased himself over the wall and onto the battlements, he was beginning to wonder if Meulon had not been correct. Perhaps he would have been wiser to bring the men over and seek out their enemy in the confines of the town’s streets. A lantern swung in the corner of the square. Its faint light barely showed the three shadows that stood static near the middle of the open space. Blackstone crouched, letting his eyes follow the lines of the wall and the shape of the sentry who stood in each watchtower. Meulon had at least been correct about them huddling in their cloaks with their backs to the wind. He quickly moved forward and went down the steps leading into the square. The town seemed to be a jumble of various buildings with narrow alleyways between them. Here and there some houses were double height, better built in stone and wood, while others were squat and thatched, with smoke-holes cut into their roofs.

He skirted the walls around the main square, using the shadows to keep his movements unseen. His heart beat rapidly with the thought that any minute he could bump into someone sleeping or disturb a sentry, and then the alarm would be raised and he would be hard-pressed to race back up the steps to where Meulon and the men huddled at the base of the outside wall waiting for his command to put up the ladder and attack. He was alone in a hostile environment and he cursed his foolhardiness. But luck had always been with him and as he thought of the silver talisman on the chain around his neck he skirted the far side of the square and got closer to what he now saw to be three upright stakes in the ground, and tied to each stake was the slumped body of a man.

He moved closer and tried to hear if they were still breathing, but the wind and the clanking of the lantern overwhelmed any sound that may have come from them. He placed a hand on each man’s face. Two were stone cold, but the third had warmth in his neck. Blackstone could feel the stickiness on his fingers and knew that it was blood. This must have been the man who had been tortured earlier and whose cries he had heard. There was barely any life in him and there was nothing Blackstone could do to help him. A gust of wind suddenly extinguished the lantern. The nearest sentry shouted, but his voice was carried away by the wind. Blackstone imagined the man cursing to himself as he turned from his post and clumped down the wooden steps that brought him into the square. Blackstone moved quickly back to the wall of the nearest building and watched as the sentry’s shape slipped in and out of the darkness of the walls until he kicked at a door in anger and then pushed it open, shouting for those inside to relight the lantern. Those rooms must be where the guard slept, thought Blackstone, and sure enough, moments later, as the sentry made his way back up the steps a dull glow flared from inside the room and a man, stretching and scratching from sleep, came out and relit the street lantern.

As the light swayed again in the wind the door closed behind the guard and the light inside was extinguished. If nothing else Blackstone had discovered where some of the routiers were. Dare he go on further into the alleyways and risk alerting a dog or a townsman who could raise the alarm? His moment of indecision allowed a hand to snake out and grasp his ankle.

Blackstone almost cried out, but managed to choke back his alarm. He fell back, rolling in the dirt, his hand reaching for his knife. Before he could get back on his feet he heard a desperate whisper: ‘Stranger, help us. For pity’s sake, help us.’

Blackstone looked quickly towards the sentry in case his tumble had been seen, but the man still had his back to the square – what threat could there be from within? Blackstone peered into the darkness and less than six feet away, where he had been standing moments ago, was a grid in the ground that covered a pit. The gaps were large enough for a man to push his head through, and Blackstone could see that someone was there and that it had been a hand that now gestured to him that had snatched at his ankle. Blackstone wasn’t sure what to do. How many men were caged below ground? If he didn’t go to him it would only take a yell of despair to alert the sentries. He had no choice. Bent double, he took the few strides to the man whose features he could barely make out in the darkness. The swaying lantern gave just enough light to see that he too had been beaten.


The man whispered again, ‘Stranger, there’s a water bucket to your left. Reach for it, I beg you. There are more than a dozen men in this hole with me. Give us water, in God’s name! help us!’

Blackstone glanced behind him and saw a wooden bucket with a ladle. What to do? If he gave these men water would they cry out or fight among themselves? The best he would be able to do would be to pass only the ladle down into the pit. ‘Who are you?’ he asked.

‘Guinot, my name is Guinot. I served here. They take one of us out every day and beat us to death. Help us,’ the man whispered, in a voice barely audible from the strain of his dry throat.

‘Very well. I’ll get you water, but how many men are there here? Routiers, I mean? How many did Saquet leave?’

‘Here… I… I don’t know… think he left with about… fifty men…’

It was still guesswork. Saquet could have a hundred and fifty men for all anyone knew. The town could be crawling with them back in those darkened houses.

‘You came here to kill him?’ Guinot asked, his hand reaching to grasp Blackstone’s cloak.

Blackstone eased its grip. ‘Will you and the others stay quiet if I give you water?’

‘They’re my men. We’re Gascons,’ he whispered with determined effort. Gascons from the south-west of France saw Edward as their natural lord, the descendant of their ancient ducal house.

Blackstone quickly turned and brought the water bucket to the edge of the caged pit and then handed the injured man the ladle. He could just about see Guinot’s parched lips open with desperation as the thirsty man took the ladle and then handed it down to the men below with a warning whisper to stay silent. Each man, one sip. The ladle soon came back. Blackstone gave more water until finally, after vital minutes had passed, Guinot drank.

‘I have men outside the walls. Can I take the town?’ Blackstone asked, worried now that either of the sentries would glance down into the square. Rain fell, light swirls of it that within moments suddenly turned to sleet. Blackstone ignored the stinging attack on his bare head.

‘How many men?’ the imprisoned man asked.

‘Twenty.’

Blackstone could almost see the look of disappointment on the man’s face. It was certainly in his voice.

‘Twenty?’

Blackstone heard the sentry stamp his feet, trying to drive out the cold.

Guinot said, ‘I don’t know. There’s at least that many here. More, I think. Thirty – forty even. More men arrived and joined Saquet. There are ten of them in there,’ he said, meaning the guardroom. ‘Others with their whores. Scattered in the town. Twenty men, you say?’ He extended his hand and grabbed Blackstone’s arm. ‘I hope you survive. We can’t help, even if we could break free. We’re too weak. Good luck, stranger.’

The effort to stay upright through the cage bars took their toll and Guinot eased himself down into the dank pit.

It was either time to abandon the daring attack on the town or retreat to the monastery and draw Saquet into the open when he returned from his wild goose chase. Blackstone raced for the steps that would take him to where Meulon and the men crouched shivering in the cold on the other side of the wall. The short, sharp sleetstorm had passed, the cold blast easing as the sky filled with a descending swarm of snow. It was a good omen. The snow would camouflage the attacking men.


The sentries’ muscles were cold and stiff from such a bitter night and their minds numb from the tedium of guard duty. They were the first to die. Meulon left two of his men with crossbows in their position, knowing there would soon be enough light for them to pick out short-range targets. Blackstone told Meulon his plan, but the older man suggested a different tactic. If Blackstone and a half-dozen men could deal with the guardroom he would torch a couple of buildings and then hide in the shadows across the square to cover Blackstone’s back. Once the alarm was raised the bastard routiers would run into the square from the alleys. Blackstone would bear the brunt of the attack but Meulon would reinforce him.

Blackstone ran quickly to the guardroom with eight men and one of the sacks they had carried from the monastery stuffed with sheep’s wool and felt, tied and soaked in lamp oil. A sack flared from the square’s lantern that Blackstone broke over it, and as one of the men kicked in the door another threw the blazing bundle into the room. They pulled the door closed and rolled a barrel into place to slow their victims’ escape. It took only moments for the fire to take hold and cries of alarm from the guardroom could be heard across the square. The guardroom door finally yielded as the smoke-choked and burnt men stumbled into a night where fire swept down from heaven. There were snowflakes tumbling out of the black sky and across the town’s roofs, tinged with red from another burning house that Meulon’s men had torched. It was a controlled burning to save the whole town from going up in flames, using the wind to fan the flames across another three or four buildings before they reached the stone walls. This bewildering conflagration of ember and snowflake was the last thing the soldiers from the guardroom saw as Blackstone and his men cut them down.

Blackstone deliberately kept his group in the open and the looming firelight. Shadows crawled across the walls as the alarm bell rang and his men opened the gates to allow the townspeople to escape. Those living nearest the burning buildings ran across the square in ones and twos as routiers dashed into the square. Blackstone and his men blocked their path and cut them down. Some turned to run for the steps onto the walls but the first few fell to the crossbowmen, who now had clear targets from the light of the burning houses.

Saquet’s men were a ragged, disparate group of mercenaries, who had tumbled from the alehouse and whores’ beds when the town’s bell rang out its alarm, but a dozen men appeared suddenly as a fighting group, and then another fifteen or more from a dormitory close by and they called out to those others who stumbled from the alleyways. Now this body of men could resist more effectively and they charged, yelling their abuse and rage at Blackstone who was already fighting in the square. The men clashed, spectral figures cursing and slipping in the bloody snow beneath their feet. Blackstone had positioned himself forward of the others, who flanked him in a spearhead, and as he stood his ground and parried the blows of the attackers, those who survived his sword stumbled into his men, who hacked the routiers down. But more of Saquet’s men appeared from the town, alerted by the cries of the fight in the main square, and they outnumbered Blackstone’s.

‘Now!’ Blackstone yelled. ‘Now!’

But there was no sign of Meulon.

A sudden shock of abandonment and fear took hold but he spat it out and threw more weight into his sword arm.

‘On me!’ Blackstone shouted, and the men drew themselves closer to him, forming as tight a line as they could against the onslaught.

Fires still burned but the flames battered themselves against the stone walls and, finding no purchase, began to falter. Seeing that the fire was being contained, some of the townspeople began to draw water and douse the flames, but others still panicked and ran for the gate to escape the slaughter and it was they who impeded Meulon and his contingent across the square. Women’s screams mingled with cries of alarm as Saquet’s mercenaries hacked their way through them. Pressed hard by the vicious attack, Blackstone and the others retreated. Blackstone took a blow across the shoulder but the sword failed to bite through his chain mail. He shouldered the man, ramming him aside, and then, cleaving downward with Wolf Sword, he shattered his opponent’s collarbone. He stepped quickly to one side and thrust the sword into the man’s chest, then turned again, sensing the next attack, twisting away as another routier struck down on him from the high guard. Blackstone had only a moment to strike before the blade took him across his exposed shoulder. With no time to turn his own blade he brought both hands up on his sword’s grip and smashed the pommel under the man’s nose. His attacker’s momentum met the full force of Blackstone’s strength and the double-fisted blow shattered his skull and threw him back into the gore-splattered snow. Vital seconds bled away. They were losing. They couldn’t hold their line much longer.


And then a swarm of shadows charged across the square and Meulon’s men began their slaughter.

The turmoil swirled about Blackstone. One of the attackers caught him a glancing blow on his head and a trickle of blood ran into his scar, making his face look even more fearsome. He snatched at a terrified woman who ran between him and an attacking routier, seeing her unmistakable terror as she caught sight of his scarred face when he shoved her away from the strike. He was too exposed. The blade could not be parried. Meulon took a stride forward, his sword low, striking from waist height into the man’s stomach.

The attacker’s momentum faltered and Blackstone took a stride forward and then another, taking the fight to the enemy, cutting through the curtains of white that fell and the men who squinted into the storm’s blinding snowflakes – he had the wind at his back. One man came at him with a battleaxe, his beard caked with snow and blood, his eyes wild and focused. There was something familiar about him, but Blackstone didn’t know what it was until he saw the stitched leather binding on the stump whose fingers he had severed weeks ago.

Blackstone’s feet went from under him, slithering in the snow as the flat surface of the axe’s blade struck him on the side of the head. The axe-man’s effort brought others, ready to counter-attack, but Blackstone’s men quickly formed a barrier around their stunned leader, their spears lunging at the mercenaries, whose surge faltered. Blackstone stared up at the one-handed man who suddenly folded in on himself as a spear ripped into his stomach. He crashed into the snow not an arrow shaft’s distance away. A moment later his contorted face was spluttering blood, his eyes glazing as the soldier who killed him stamped a boot into his chest and yanked his spear free.

A hulking shadow whose eyes stared past his helmet’s nose guard broke the darkness of his beard with a snarl. ‘Am I always going to have to do this?’ Meulon said, heaving Blackstone up. ‘In Christ’s name, stay on your feet!’ And then he pressed on with the men who had protected the Englishman.

He had known the weariness of battle before. An exhaustion that could claim a man to the point where he could not raise another sword stroke, but this was different. It was a short, vicious fight and the killing was rapid. It was over in less than an hour. The surviving routiers threw down their weapons and were herded into the square, forced to kneel in the snow, their wounds splattering the whiteness. Some lay into the wet coldness and let their blood seep away until they died.

By daylight the snow had diminished to an occasional flurry. The captives were chained with the same shackles that had held Guinot and his men, who had been released from the pit. Charred timbers from the burnt houses smouldered and stank like the fur of a wet dog. There had been forty-three routiers left in the town. Blackstone’s men killed thirty-seven with a loss of four and that, he realized, was thanks to Meulon’s ability to think of how he might inflict the most casualties. Meulon, though, had begged forgiveness for his late entrance into the fight, explaining how the fleeing townspeople had impeded his attack and that he had not wished to cause them injury. In that moment Blackstone understood that Meulon stood before him as a subordinate. He clapped the apologetic captain on the shoulder.

‘It was a good plan, Meulon, and you came in time. That’s all that matters. And I swear I’ll do my best to stay on my feet next time.’

Meulon grinned sheepishly for having said what he had in the heat of the fight, but also knew that Blackstone had once again been generous in his praise.

Snow crunched beneath Blackstone’s boots as he walked along the bodies laid out in the square. Guinot and his fellow prisoners had been moved into a building where a fire was stoked and food prepared. They were weak, but Blackstone sent a rider to the monastery to bring Brother Simon and his medications. It did not take long for Blackstone and Meulon to scour through Saquet’s quarters. The house, which had once been well furnished, a symbol of the owner’s success in his trade, now looked more like a whorehouse. Wine and ale had been spilled, bits of scorched cloth showed where some linen had caught fire, and wall coverings and mattresses strewn around the rooms suggested that Saquet and his lieutenants had spread themselves throughout the house. The cellar doors were bolted but were soon broken open.

Meulon gaped at the amount of booty stored in the room.

‘He must have raided every monastery and nobleman for miles,’ he said, tipping open boxes of coin and gold plate.

‘Except that of Abbot Pierre,’ Blackstone answered.

It was not enormous wealth that lay before them, but it was a sobering sight and was more than enough to buy men and favour for months to come.

‘Bolt and seal the doors, Meulon, and then bar the entrance. I want this here when we return.’

A delegation of burghers stood waiting respectfully for an audience with the scar-faced soldier who was obviously in command and who now held their town. They had not been threatened by Blackstone’s men but encouraged to bring those who had run from the fighting back into the town. Of the six surviving mercenaries, Guinot and the leading townsmen identified four who had taken delight in torture.

Meulon was at Blackstone’s shoulder. ‘The gates are secure and I’ve men on the walls. What about the prisoners?’

‘Find a carpenter. Build a gallows,’ Blackstone said.


By the time Brother Simon arrived under escort, Blackstone had gone among Guinot’s men. He determined that three would soon die from their injuries, but the others would recover quickly enough with rest and food. Those who lay recovering from their imprisonment and brutal treatment mostly slept now that their ordeal had ended. He stopped at one, and then another, lifting the men’s hands and rubbing his thumb along their fingers, feeling that familiar ridge of callus. He didn’t recognize them but he could swear they were archers. One of the bearded soldiers had long hair that clung to his face like seaweed. He was barely conscious and the wounds from the whipping inflicted by the mercenaries festered. The man shivered, a sure sign that the wounds caused the fever. There was something about him, though, that Blackstone recognized – a strength in the man’s physique, that slab of corded muscle that lay across his shoulders. He pulled back the hair from his face. It was that of someone who, months before, had stood at his side, unyielding when the wolves of war tore them apart at Crécy.

Matthew Hampton was one of Warwick’s men who had served Sir Gilbert Killbere loyally as one of Elfred’s archers and was one of the more experienced men in Elfred’s command, a man who had offered advice to the young Blackstone. How had he ended up here?

‘Matthew?’ Blackstone said gently, wiping his face with a wrung-out cloth from a water bucket.

Guinot half raised himself. ‘You know him, Sir Thomas?’ he asked, having been told by Meulon the name of their saviour.

‘Matthew Hampton. I fought across Normandy with him.’

‘We had a dozen archers sent to us by King Edward. We were to hold towns in the south and by the time we got here we thought we’d beaten the French King all the way back to Paris, but we hadn’t reckoned on routiers. He and a couple of other archers are all that survived Saquet’s attack. Matthew’s a good man, and if he’s a friend of yours, then he’s a fortunate one.’

Blackstone beckoned Brother Simon and the younger monk who had travelled with him as his assistant. ‘All of these men need your skill, Brother. When you’ve tended to them here and given what aid you can I want them taken to your infirmary where you’ll care for them.’


He laid a hand on the semi-conscious man’s face. ‘Matthew, if you can hear me, it’s Thomas. Thomas Blackstone. You’re safe now.’

There was no recognition or word from the older man. Blackstone stepped away to allow the old monk to examine the archer. He needed to question Guinot and find out how the mercenary had breached the town’s defences held by the Anglo-Gascon soldiers.

It had been easy.

Guinot was on duty when one of the Englishmen in the mixed force called for Roger Waterman, the man-at-arms charged with holding the town with his fifty men. The new abbot of Chaulion monastery was at the gate with a gaggle of thirty villagers who had been attacked and whose homes had been destroyed by routiers. He begged shelter on their behalf. Waterman hesitated. Half his force was off duty and he didn’t trust this French monk, who perspired with desire at the sight of spring lamb on a spit. The abbot pleaded for a full half hour and it was only when a band of horsemen appeared on the road and began to ride towards the unarmed villagers that the commander of Chaulion ordered the gates opened to avert a massacre. The helpless peasants were no sooner inside the walls when they drew weapons and set about killing. They were mercenaries disguised in the clothes of those they had already slaughtered. The riders whose approach had triggered the act of mercy rode straight into the town. The terror lasted a full day and Waterman was cut down, his body dragged around the town. Guinot and his men barricaded themselves in a street but the force against them was too strong and one by one they fell. Some of the Gascons had their women in the town and they were dragged out and used to blackmail the survivors into surrender. Of the twenty-one men Guinot had gathered to resist Saquet’s raiders, only he and the men in the pit were still alive. The others had been taken out, one by one, then beaten and tortured to death in the main square.

Time was short. Saquet would return and Blackstone needed to be ready. Leaving only ten men under Meulon’s command to patrol the walls of Chaulion he prepared to take what was left of his force back to the monastery, taking Guinot and the ailing survivors with him.

‘Saquet will be gone three days, no more, and will then turn back,’ Meulon told him. ‘You’ve got a day left, maybe two at the most. You’ll need men at the crossroads. These townsmen will hold the walls with anything they can pour down on them if he splits his force and attacks, which he won’t, because when he rides back and sees what you’ve done at the monastery he’ll need to kill you, all of us, if he’s to retake this place.’

Meulon pressed his argument. If Blackstone was to return to the monastery with so few men it would be a gamble, especially now that he held Chaulion: the risk was that it could be lost.

Blackstone realized it made sense, and had the guildsmen, who held council in the town, summoned before him. The grain and food stores were to be opened and the food distributed. Half of the coin and plate that had been looted by the routiers would be returned, the remainder was his men’s spoils for taking the town. A bargain was struck, rather than a threat being made. Were the townspeople prepared and able to protect their own walls over the coming hours until Blackstone could leave a garrison of men to hold the town permanently in his name and, by default, that of the English King? The councilmen, thankful to be rid of the mercenaries, and with no particular love for the high taxation that would be placed upon them by the French King if they fell back under his rule, readily agreed. The Anglo-Gascon force that had been in place before Saquet came had caused them no injury other than their demand to be fed and patis to be paid.

‘Are there weapons here?’ Blackstone asked.

‘They had a half-dozen barrels stored with swords and falchions, some spears as well,’ answered one of the men.

‘And archers’ bows,’ another added eagerly, ‘a dozen of them. They tried to draw them but couldn’t.’

Blackstone stepped to the man. ‘Are there shafts for the bows?’

‘Yes, lord,’ the man answered, ‘but only a handful, a dozen at most.’

If any of those exhausted archers could have a bow put in their hand and they found the strength to use them, then even those few arrows would give Blackstone a great advantage for his outnumbered men. ‘Fetch them. Keep the swords and spears for yourselves,’ he ordered. ‘What assurances do you give me that you can keep the gates closed and the walls manned?’

The men conferred worriedly, their shoulders hunched. There were outbursts of disagreement until one, who was not the eldest but a young merchant, settled their differences. It was agreed that they would give a child from each of their families to be taken by the Englishman and held to ransom. If it was to be a choice between Thomas Blackstone and Saquet, they would take the Englishman. All they begged of the vicious-looking knight was that he kill the mercenary, because if he did not their lives would be forfeit.

Instructions were given to lay the dead mercenaries in the cold gulley and cover what was left of them in the spring. Those townspeople who were killed were to be buried in their own graveyard, despite the hard ground. Blackstone had Meulon gather his men and the prisoners. Meulon, satisfied that his reasoning had prevailed, organized a wagon for the wounded. ‘Where are the hostages?’ he asked Blackstone as they prepared to leave.

‘We don’t need them,’ he answered. ‘They were prepared to give their children; that’s proof that they’ll do as they say.’

Meulon shook his head. ‘You trust too easily, Master Thomas.’

‘I trusted you with my life, Meulon. Was I wrong then?’

There was nothing more the seasoned fighter could say. The Englishman had an answer for everything. And the right one at that.