Master of War

28




Days passed as the men rode across miles of deserted countryside. Bodies lay scattered in fields and on roadsides, groups of travellers lay dead around a cold campfire. Some of Blackstone’s villages fared well, and he instructed the inhabitants how to protect themselves; others were wastelands of ghosts and were burned. Their journey yielded food and abandoned livestock and in exchange for some of the supplies two more manor houses yielded to Blackstone without a sword being drawn as impoverished knights swore loyalty to hold their land in Blackstone’s name. Every day they made camp he had the men strip and show themselves to be free of buboes or rashes, and he did the same so that each knew the other was not infected. By the time the weary men returned to Chaulion they had two carts drawn by villeins’ palfreys and loaded with sacks of grain, barrels of smoked meat and pickled fish, and caged chickens. They arrived at the crossroads with a procession of goats and cows. Blackstone had allowed no swine to be taken and slaughtered those that were found in the infected villages. He called Perinne to the bridge and ordered that the men keep back as they made their way to the gates of Chaulion. Once there he summoned Guinot and ordered him to take the supplies and animals in hand. He and the men then dismounted and hobbled their horses. Soldiers and townspeople gathered on the walls.


‘Guinot! Put food and drink out. And vinegar water! We’ll stay over there for a few days,’ Blackstone said, pointing to an area a hundred paces away.

The Gascon barked his orders and Blackstone’s instructions were carried out. Meulon and the two men were already building a fire as Blackstone moved closer to the walls where Guinot leaned down.

‘Is there news from anyone? Messengers?’ Blackstone asked.

‘No one. Not a damned word from anywhere. No pilgrims, no travellers. Is the world dead?’

‘Damned near enough,’ Blackstone told him. ‘Thank God for the walls.’

‘Aye, well I’m glad for them, but I’ve been rotating the guard at the monastery more often than you said because the men are going wall-crazy. Much more of this and we’ll have fighting on our hands. Some of the whores are complaining!’

‘Complaining or moaning?’ Blackstone said.

Guinot laughed. ‘Yes, all right, I can handle that problem, but we need these men out of here.’

Blackstone knew what it meant to be caged behind walls.

‘All right. I’ll do something. Get fresh clothes for us. These still carry the stench no matter how often we wash them. My wife and son?’

‘All well. We’ve had no plague in here, but we’ll be glad of that food.’

Guinot turned away to arrange Blackstone’s demands and Christiana suddenly appeared, leaning over – looking for him.

‘You’re safe?’ she cried.

He smiled. ‘We’re blessed. You’ve been praying!’

He saw her nod and smile, and caught the glint of tears that she quickly wiped away. ‘Day and night. Guinot has kept good discipline. Everything here is as you would wish.’

He wanted to tell her how he yearned for her. How the fear of what he had felt beyond the safety of the walls had brought her even closer to his heart than she had been before. There was so much to say, but the walls were crowded. He nodded and turned back to where Meulon and the other men were already stripping off and tossing their clothes into the fire. The cold wind shivered the forest but the naked men ignored it.

Meulon seemed as big as a bear as he dropped the last of his clothes into the flames. Four townsmen came through the gates carrying buckets and left them thirty yards away. Blackstone took two of them, another of the men loped forward and grabbed the others. By the time Blackstone had undressed the four men were in full view of those on the wall. None of the men looked that keen to begin their scrubdown with the astringent-laced water.

‘Christ, that’s going to sting my arsehole!’ one of the men said.

‘At least your shit will smell sweeter,’ the other told him.

Blackstone bent and scooped water over himself, then raked his fingers through his soaked hair. He gasped as the vinegar stung his lips.

Meulon tried hard not to flinch. ‘My cock feels as though it’s being thrashed with nettles.’

A voice from the walls carried on the wind. ‘Hey, Meulon! Wash that weapon of yours! The whores need it to rid themselves of cunny crabs!’

A ripple of laughter spilled over the walls.

Matthew Hampton added his own insults. ‘That’s big enough to use on the butts. Let it swing, Meulon, I can use it for target practice!’

The laughter increased and Blackstone laughed with them.

‘We’re home and we’re alive. That’s good, isn’t it?’ he told the scowling Meulon, who finally gave in to the jibes and opened his big, bearded face in a grin.

‘It’s good,’ he agreed and then turned his back to those on the wall, bent over and slapped his buttocks.


No plague entered the walls of Chaulion or the monastery.

As weeks turned into months Blackstone allowed the inhabitants and monks to begin, under strict control, a slow return to their normal lives. The monks were allowed back into their fields under guard by Talpin and Perinne’s outriders. Those few travellers who came towards the crossroads were kept at spear point and moved on. They would find no sanctuary on the road north and none cared whether they survived or fell by the way. There were towns and villages that never knew of the plague, their isolation a protective cloak against the outside world. The Norman lords were as vulnerable as any peasant, but their castle walls saved most, although fighting in the south between Philip’s territorial strongholds and those held by the English King’s seneschals went on sporadically despite the pestilence. Gaillard had reached de Harcourt without incident and, as the year drew to a close, the baron sent riders with written messages to those who were in alliance. The messengers understood they were not to enter any stronghold and that the letters should be left in plain sight in exchange for food and water for rider and horse. Then an answer could be written and sent back by the same means. It was this method of couriers that allowed the towns, and the lords who controlled them, to know of events. One of the first such letters arrived months after Blackstone had returned to Chaulion. No name appeared on it in case the courier was stopped. It was simply a letter of news about the state of the Norman towns.

‘Thousands died in Rouen and in Paris. The cities ran out of burial space,’ he told Christiana.

‘But they are still safe? Jean, Blanche and the children?’

‘Yes. Others not. King Edward’s sister died on her way to marry a Prince of Castile.’

Christiana put her hand to her mouth in shock. ‘We must pray for her, Thomas. As you must for your King.’

‘Prayers won’t help him. That marriage would have given Edward an alliance with the Spanish kingdom. The plague has taken more than a princess; it’s probably snatched peace from him.’ His eyes followed the scratchy writing and once he saw their meaning he carried on. ‘King Philip is trying to raise another army, but now there are not enough taxes. Too many have died. And – there’s still a price on my head.’ He handed the letter to her. ‘Blanche writes to you.’

She kept from lowering her eyes to the page, as eager as she was to hear from Blanche de Harcourt. ‘Will they hunt you?’

He gestured to the letter. ‘It’s in there. If they capture me they regain the territory and the towns. I’m a threat. So it looks as though Jean’s idea worked.’

‘It was not my Lord de Harcourt who suggested you undertake to risk everything. It was you. Blanche told me.’

‘What good would I have been without my bow arm? There’s no need for you to worry. You’re safe here, anyone would be hard-pushed to get past the monastery, let alone breach these walls now.’ He knew in his heart that any determined enemy with sufficient numbers could smash their way through to Chaulion, but it was unlikely, given the ravages of the plague. He wondered how much more he could do.

Time was measured only by the ringing of the monastery bells. Day turned into night and then day again as month after month passed. It was as if they had been cast into a wilderness, remembered only by the occasional messenger. Blackstone had changed the face of Chaulion by putting every man and woman in the town to work. Idleness bred fear and under Guinot’s guidance they did as he ordered, because by now they had recognized that he was their master. They not only laboured in the fields under the watchful eye and protection of the soldiers but he used them to dig a broad ditch around the town whose spoil made a protective bank several feet high. Blackstone himself laid the stone foundations for a narrow bridge, which the town’s carpenters built, wide enough for a wagon. It was added protection for what would become a key town in his defence of the territory. The withered corpses of the headless routiers went beneath the shovelled dirt, and by the time Henry Blackstone was walking and pulling tablecloths and ornaments from tables in their home, the Englishman had diverted the small river that flowed around Chaulion. It was only a narrow moat, but it would deter attack by escalade and the fortified town could be held with a small garrison aided by the town’s inhabitants. Blackstone had allowed no rest for his men. Soldiers who were used to garrison duty alone were of no use to him if he led a raid, and he had berated both Guinot and Meulon, a ploy to spur competition between their men. The two commanders had drilled the soldiers in lance and shield wall, defence and attack; battered them with mace and sword and culled the weakest by shaming them until they begged to be released from sentry duty and allowed to return into the fighting group. Blackstone spared no one, including himself, from the rigours of training.



One morning, before daybreak, Blackstone was already up and about when he heard the monastery bell ring for matins. It was another day that promised a bitter wind and he was thankful that, over time, he had sent soldiers into the forest to guard the townspeople as they loaded carts of fallen timber. They had cut fresh logs, but it was the seasoned timber that would give them the warmth they needed. They had stored chestnut wood in the byres and barns, but that was useless unless it had been kept for two or three seasons. He had given orders for them to seek out ash wood because it would burn well whether it was wet or dry – that and slow-burning oak. But this morning the bell rang with a different urgency and it took him a few minutes to realize that it was not the call to prayer but a summons for the guard to turn out to the monastery.

Meulon had already kicked men from their beds and sent stable lads to saddle the horses. By the time they were out of the gates the bell had ceased its demands. As they rounded the bend in the road that brought the monastery into sight it began again, only this time in a different rhythm, for matins. As they drew closer they realized that no threat awaited them, only a dishevelled figure on horseback wearing a tunic and who looked barely able to stay upright. Another palfrey held by a trailing rein carried a knight’s shield and sword. Although Blackstone could not make out the coat of arms, he did not have to. He knew the rider.

‘Let the men have their breakfast here, Meulon,’ he said, staring at the drooping figure.

Talpin came forward as the men dismounted. ‘He called for you and you alone. Said he knows you and that he wouldn’t move until you were here. I can’t tell whether he’s sick with pestilence or not, but we warned him off. Had one of the archers put a shaft close to him.’ Talpin looked concerned.

‘You did everything as I’ve ordered. There’s no favour for anyone in these times,’ said Blackstone and strode past the men who stood their guard at the wall. Blackstone walked as far as the bridge. The horse had not moved and the rider’s head drooped on his chest, exhaustion claiming him.

‘Guillaume,’ Blackstone called. His voice made the horse shift its weight and the boy raise his head.

Like a man being pulled from sleep in the darkness, Guillaume Bourdin looked uncertainly towards the figure who stood across the bridge. ‘Sir Thomas? Is that you?’

‘I’m here.’

‘Forgive me. I had no choice but to come to you,’ he said with a voice that breathed weariness.

‘That’s all right, boy.’ He turned and called to Talpin. ‘Bring a basket of food and drink. Hot food with bread and spiced wine. Tell Brother Simon to put a potion in the drink, something to help the boy, tell him what you see.’ He looked up at the sky. Rain or snow was coming, either one would finish off Henri Livay’s page if he didn’t have shelter. ‘And I want canvas and ropes.’

The wind cut at them but the boy showed no sign that he felt it. Blackstone knew that meant he was beyond exhaustion. He turned back to Guillaume who swayed in the saddle. ‘Guillaume! Listen to me, boy! You hear me?’

Once again he raised his head. ‘I must sleep, my lord. I must.’

‘You will not. The cold will kill you unless you eat first. Obey me or you’ll die! And you did not come all this way to die at my door. Tell me what’s happened. Come on – talk to me, lad.’

‘My Lord Livay is dead. And his household. Servants and squire. All of them.’

‘How? The pestilence?’

Guillaume’s head sagged again.

‘Guillaume!’ Blackstone bellowed, desperately wanting to reach for the boy.

Blackstone’s voice snapped the boy’s head back. ‘Pestilence. Yes. He took in a merchant… gave him shelter and… in days… they were all dead. I brought his shield and sword so that they were not stolen.’

Talpin hurried back with a basket containing a small earthenware pot cradled by bread and a hand-sized piece of cheese wrapped in cloth. Two other men followed with a folded sheet of canvas and ropes. Blackstone took the food and pointed to an outcrop of rocks.

‘Make a shelter there. Tie it fast, batten it with wood and stone and then bring straw from the stable.’

He walked closer to the horses. They didn’t shy at his approach and by the look of them they too had not eaten for days. He searched the boy’s face. Wind and dirt had pitted his skin but there was no sign of boils. But that did not mean the lad was not infected. He put the basket of food down.

‘Guillaume, ease yourself down and eat. And then get yourself into that shelter where you can sleep. Understand?’

The boy nodded and, like an old man, slowly lowered himself to the ground. His legs trembled and gave way. Blackstone instinctively took a step forward but then checked himself.

‘Do you have any sign of red buboes? Have you had fever or thirst?’

Guillaume shook his head and eased himself down onto the ground. ‘My master died in terror, Sir Thomas, he writhed like a wounded beast… his wife too… it was the merchant who… brought it… the sickness… and the warning… so I came to warn you…’ the boy said haltingly, his voice now barely above a whisper.

The boy is dying, Blackstone thought. His body had deflated like a pierced football in what seemed to be a final sigh of breath. He stepped around Guillaume’s body and eased the horses away and then handed the reins to one of the men. He took the man’s spear and turned it to use the blunt shaft to ease Guillaume’s body over. If the lad had come all this way to warn him of the pestilence then he had sacrificed himself needlessly. The boy flinched. There was life still trapped in his body, a reluctant spirit refusing to die. He prodded him again and, as the boy stirred, took off his cloak and threw it over him.

Guillaume gazed up at him.

‘Forgive me, Sir Thomas, I fell asleep.’

‘And I thought you dead. My cloak will keep you warm, and I’ll have blankets brought for the straw. Now do as I say and eat. Then you sleep. I’ll be over there beyond that wall.’

‘No, Sir Thomas, I must tell you something…’

‘Later,’ Blackstone commanded and waited to make sure that the boy put food into his mouth, no matter how feebly it was done.

He returned to the monastery wall where Meulon was waiting.

‘Does he have the devil’s kiss?’ he asked.

‘I don’t see any sign of it. We’ll wait a few days. There are two of Livay’s men here, aren’t there?’

‘One died last summer, when the clumsy bastard fell from his horse. Talpin’s the other.’

‘Yes. I remember. Tell him his lord and master is dead,’ Blackstone told him.

‘You forget, Sir Thomas, months turn into years. You’ve been his lord and master for more time than you remember. But I’ll tell him. And don’t worry about that boy out there. If he hasn’t got the plague he’ll live. Looks to me as though he’s been in that saddle for more than a couple of weeks. I’ll wager he’s a hard little bastard.’

‘He’s a page who will one day be a squire. Remember that, Meulon,’ Blackstone said.

Meulon’s face dropped and he bowed his head for his indiscretion.

Blackstone smiled and reached out and grasped the man’s shoulder. ‘You’re too serious, Meulon! You’re right; he’s a hard little bastard. He was prepared to kill me once.’



Guillaume Bourdin had survived the Blanchetaque battle and then helped his lord to safety at Noyelles castle where he then faced the English archer. And now that his new master Henri Livay had died in agony he forced his young body to cross the empty and hostile terrain with little sense of where the small town of Chaulion might be. A mendicant friar he passed on a track knew of the monastery and sent him in the right direction, but finding anywhere inhabited in that unknown landscape was down to luck and his horse’s ability to find water. Where there was a river or stream people would live, and if they were not afflicted they would know of the monks of Chaulion.

Blackstone stood every day at the wall and waited for the boy to die, but by the third day he was on his feet and as the sky cleared he had made a fire and busied himself drying the damp blankets, and by the fourth he was washing in the river and calling for Blackstone. When Blackstone got within thirty paces of him, the boy stripped away his tunic and shirt and raised his arms. There were no boils.

‘I was locked in the cellar,’ he told Blackstone as they sat in the monastery’s refectory and ate breakfast, a meal tolerated by the monks for their lay brothers before the midday dinner and insisted upon by Blackstone, who had taken food every morning since he had worked in the quarry as a child. He waited as Guillaume took a last slice of apple and swallowed the cup of warm goat’s milk.

‘I had spoken out of turn and was knocked to the ground by my squire,’ he said.

‘What did you do to deserve the punishment?’

‘I served at my master’s table and the merchant told Lord Livay that a Norman lord had been promised a bounty for you because you were known as a vicious killer of women and children,’ Guillaume told him. ‘I couldn’t help myself and shouted out that that was a lie.’

‘A foolish act. Brave but foolish. He could have had you flogged,’ Blackstone said.

‘As you know, Sir Thomas, my Lord Livay was a good and kind knight and he spared me that.’

‘And the cellar saved your life,’ said Blackstone, quietly pleased with the boy’s bravery in finding him and bringing the warning of the Norman who hunted him. It had been two years since he had last seen Guillaume ride out of Castle de Harcourt with Henry Livay and he had grown taller and broader, but still with the gangly arms and legs of a youth.

‘I know about the bounty. Count de Harcourt and William de Fossat created a pretence of hunting me. It’s long over.’

Blackstone rose from the table and Guillaume quickly got to his feet.

‘Sir Thomas, it was not William de Fossat who was commissioned to hunt you down; it was Count Louis de Vitry. He was given a great payment from the mint and an army. He promised that he would retake the towns held by the Gascons and English. He’s already done that with places in the south. There was a plan to trap you at St Aubin where the King had his coin minted, but the pestilence caused them to move it somewhere else. I don’t know where.’

Blackstone felt a pang of alarm. It had been Jean de Harcourt who had suggested he attack the King’s gold and silver. Was that information planted by de Vitry or was de Harcourt abandoning him in favour of the French King? It seemed the plague or the Celtic goddess had saved him.

‘What else do you know?’ he asked the boy who must have served at Livay’s right arm like a sharp-eyed falcon who missed nothing.

Guillaume shook his head. ‘I’m not sure what I heard but there are other French lords with him and someone in Calais will betray your King and open the gates.’

The information would have little meaning to a page like Guillaume. Calais was just another city to be taken from the English, a part of the chequerboard of war, but to Blackstone it was more vital than knowing that he was a prize to be taken. The months of plague had passed over, and it was already across the water in London. What better time to strike at Edward? A double attack in the south where so-called English allies argued between themselves to the point of conflict, and when England stumbled almost to her knees from pestilence. The Captain of Calais would have insufficient men to protect the gateway to France if de Vitry and the others got inside the walls.

Blackstone gathered the bulk of his force. Their winter fat had been shed, the sloth of peace was banished.


Guillaume Bourdin begged to serve, but the thought of having a page attend him was too big a leap for Blackstone. And besides, he told himself, he would not be able to complete the boy’s training to the age when he became a squire. Once this fight was over he would be sent to a noble lord to complete his apprenticeship.

‘How old are you now?’ Blackstone had asked.

‘Thirteen, Sir Thomas – nearly fourteen – and I’m proficient in sword and other weapons, and I can read Latin and know verse.’

‘Then you will stay here and be a companion to my wife and son and when I return we will discuss your future.’

The boy had been insistent. ‘You’ll need someone to hold your horse when you fight and bring you food and water.’

‘I can look after myself, Guillaume. You’ll stay. There’s no telling how the fight will go and I’ve fought in city streets before.’ He raised his hand to stop further argument. ‘I promise you, when this is done I’ll seek advice of what to do with you.’

‘My lord,’ Guillaume said, bowing his head and going down on one knee. ‘I beg you! Give me your word that you will allow me to stay in your service when you return. I have no desire for yet another master.’

‘Goddamnit, boy! I’m not here to reason with you!’ Blackstone said, irritated with the boy’s persistence.

‘I apologize, Sir Thomas. But if I cannot serve you, then I would ask permission to leave Chaulion and find my own way in the world.’ He kept his head bowed, knowing it would be reasonable for Blackstone to strike him.

Blackstone cursed him. Time was short. But the damned boy secured his word.

Leaving Guinot as Captain of Chaulion, he led the men onto the north road and Calais. As Christiana had embraced him in farewell she did not tell him that her belly was already swelling with another child.