Defiant Unto Death (34 page)

All the horses were gone, most likely taken by the raiders. Only the old swayback that had brought them from Paris had been slaughtered. Blackstone rode around the smouldering village; the torn earth meant the horsemen had come in from the Harcourt road. He wondered if the Countess had escaped in good time. The pitted track suggested there must have been fifty or more riders. Blackstone rode slowly for the first two miles; then he found a blood trail on the road towards Chaulion. He found the bodies at the side of the road. One man lay sprawled, partly covered by the tall ferns. Another lay twenty yards further on, his body half on the road, half in the trampled foliage. A running battle had taken place. Flies buzzed and crows flapped stiffly away as he moved through the wet ferns and found more bodies, swords by their sides and blood splattered on the nearby leaves. Four were Blackstone's men, the others he did not recognize. It looked as though they had fought a rearguard action. There was no fair-haired boy, no ringletted daughter showing among tangled stems. No embroidered dress, the same warm colour as her hair, that Christiana wore when riding. Blackstone caught his own sense of desperation and acknowledged his heart's entrapment by his family.

If Guillaume had had some warning of the attack and disobeyed Blackstone's orders, his family would be safe behind Chaulion's town walls. The men who had done this were unlikely to lay siege to a walled town held by fifty of Blackstone's men.

He urged his horse on in fear for his family and a deepening hatred for Jean le Bon – King John ‘the Good' – who had executed his friend so cruelly and sent killers to his home. It could be no other than the Savage Priest who did the King's bidding. The man Christiana had urged him to kill.

Guillaume had killed Marcel and then turned back to the village. Panic gripped him until the galloping horse's urgency focused his mind into an iron-strong determination to do as Blackstone had commanded. Save his lord's family. Marcel's confession of betrayal laid bare King John's trap. Jean de Harcourt and his conspirators would be snared at Rouen at the Dauphin's feast. Guillaume realized King John had played his hand well. When Guy de Ruymont leaked the information to Blanche he knew she would ride to warn her husband, and that the trusted servant Marcel would be used to draw Blackstone away from his home and his family. The favoured servant had been bought by de Ruymont over the months. A lifetime of sleeping on cold floors and endless hours of labour could render the most loyal susceptible. Marcel had been offered more silver coin than he had ever seen and promised a more exalted position in de Ruymont's own service. Slowly, as a creeping sickness sucks life from the body, his loyalty had been bled from him. Old age would be soothed with comfort and status. And if the servant had failed and Blackstone had chosen to stay with his family then King John's killers would already be on the road. Either way Blackstone would be caught in the net.

Christiana refused Guillaume's demand to leave immediately and seek refuge at Chaulion as Blackstone had ordered. She argued, demanding he ride after Blackstone and warn him.

Guillaume's love for his master and his family was as deep-rooted as the memory of the terrifying fear those ten years ago, when Blackstone the English archer had pulled aside the curtain of the boy's hiding place in the castle at Noyelles. Blackstone had given him life and honour. Fear was something to be overcome, spat out like the poison it was, and Christiana's fear could throw them to the wolves. He grabbed her, risking rebuke at his disrespect for her status. Countess Blanche de Harcourt might already be taken at Rouen because of her own desperation to warn her husband. Sir Thomas would do what he could, but he would not sacrifice his life needlessly. Now Christiana had to make a decision. She could ride to Rouen, blinded by emotion, and play into the King's hands, or she could submit to her husband's command and allow Guillaume to take her family to safety. The King's mercenaries would be here soon after first light. Would she abandon her trust in Sir Thomas's skills as a knight? For a moment it seemed that she would strike Guillaume, but she relented and obeyed the man entrusted with her family's safety.

Guillaume picked out three of the best horses: coursers – big, powerful hunters that would carry them far and fast. Christiana had gathered bedrolls for the children and packed food and drink. Fearful servants were calmed; they would come to no harm providing they declared their loyalty to the King and their denial of Blackstone. Guillaume redistributed the provisions between the three horses and threw down the bedrolls. No unnecessary weight would be taken on their escape. He told Christiana to dress the children warmly.

Guillaume took Henry into the stables. As simply as he could he explained the bare truth. His father was in danger and would return to them, but men were coming to the village to seize him, his mother and sister.

‘What will they do to you?' the boy asked.

‘I'm your father's sworn man. They'll kill me.'

The boy thought for a moment. ‘What do you want me to do if that happens?'

Guillaume tucked his sheathed dagger into the boy's belt. ‘This was mine when I was your age. I once threatened your father with it because I was trying to protect someone. I want you to protect your mother and sister if anything happens to me. Can you do that?'

The boy nodded, uncertainty clouding his thoughts for a moment. ‘Yes,' he said decisively, knowing he would push the knife into anyone who threatened his mother and sister.

Guillaume had Henry take one of the horses from the stall. The boy had only ridden palfreys – reliable but less spirited horses than the big courser he would now have to manage, the one his father rode when not using his destrier. Holding the reins the boy gazed up at the flaring nostrils. Guillaume watched him raise his arm and let the horse snuffle his hand. It shifted its weight unexpectedly; this stranger was not the usual stable-hand who groomed and fed him, or the tall man who could command him.

‘Come,' Henry said calmly to the horse, ‘we have to go a long way. You'll be all right. You'll run faster than any of them with me on your back.' Henry allowed the horse a moment to listen to his voice and then gently but firmly tugged the reins. Blackstone's son would do well, Guillaume decided. They would be forced to ride hard. Christiana would have no choice but to carry Agnes, held close to her.

Guillaume picked half a dozen armed men to ride with them for protection; then he summoned the villagers. He offered assurances and told them the King's men sought Sir Thomas and that their lord's orders had been made clear. Defame and deny the man who had protected them these past years. A few called back asking why danger was suddenly upon them. There was no time to explain – he urged them to do everything the King's men demanded. Their lives were in their own hands. John's men would soon be there and they were to obey Sir Thomas's command.

At first Henry struggled with the horse's power, slowing the party to a canter. Guillaume rode close, one hand ready to snatch at the reins, but the boy's determination kept him in the saddle. They were barely three miles from the house when one of Guillaume's men cried out a warning. Guillaume turned in the saddle and less than half a mile back five horsemen gave chase. He realized they were probably scouts for the main party. As the track rose up he could see beyond the trees and the smoke already filling the sky from the burning village. There would be no mercy given to Blackstone's people.

‘Stay on the road, Henry! I'll follow!' he shouted to the boy. ‘Hang onto his mane! Gallop, boy!'

There was no time to wait for an answer, or to offer any soothing comfort to the frightened boy. Guillaume turned the horse and spurred back to join his men. Agnes was bound to her mother by a broad swathe of embroidered linen and Christiana spurred the horse upwards to crest the hill. Life or death was moments away. Guillaume's sword was already drawn as he shouted commands to the rearguard. The men turned to meet the attack head-on and Guillaume led them. Seven to five, the advantage was theirs. The men clashed. Sweat-streaked horses whinnied, men bellowed curses, striking each other in desperation. Guillaume parried a blow with his shield and thrust his blade beneath his attacker's exposed armpit. He wheeled the horse and slashed the back of the skull of another man who was besting one of his own men. The horsemen were common hobelars; they wore no coat of arms, had no colours of the King, or of a lord. They were hired men – and they were as fierce as Guillaume's, who held their own for only moments longer. Two defenders were already down, unhorsed, one of them trampled and killed; the other ran for the safety of the forest through waist-high ferns. Guillaume called to the man, but he was already being pursued and seconds from death. Guillaume took a fierce blow and reeled in the saddle. Two men attacked him simultaneously and as one beat savagely against his shield the other swung a cutting blow across his body. Guillaume pressed tight with his left leg and kicked his horse around with his right; the momentum pushed back the shield attacker and allowed him to parry a sword strike from the other. The swordsman was committed, the momentum of his horse carrying him past Guillaume, who struck down across the man's exposed neck. Guillaume's horse churned the ground as it wheeled to his command and he fought off the second man, who made a mistake in his panic at seeing his companion's death, and allowed Guillaume to lunge beneath his guard. Blood seeped below the man's jerkin onto his legs from a stomach wound and as his head lowered in disbelief at the pain that suddenly gripped his guts, Guillaume slashed again. The man rolled like a drunk from the saddle and lay unmoving. The remaining attacker in the ferns turned and galloped back towards Blackstone's village.

Others would soon be in pursuit, and it would be a far greater force than the few men they had just fought. Four of his men lay dead; two remained unharmed. The men gazed wildly at the spiralling smoke. They were soldiers who had fought for years and finally settled under the protection of their Lord Blackstone. They had married their whores and borne children and their families were back in the village.

‘No further for us, Master Guillaume, if you please,' one of them said, the horse beneath him skittish from the scent of blood.

Guillaume nodded. Life was precious, but a point came when something more was demanded.

‘Good luck to you,' Guillaume said, granting them leave to turn back.

‘And you,' the second man answered. Then both men wheeled their horses and headed back to the devastation that surely awaited them.

Guillaume watched them for a moment longer: drink-rotted soldiers who would kill without conscience sacrificing themselves at last for something that had some meaning in their lives.

He urged his horse on; there were those he had sworn to protect.

Blackstone skirted the crossroads at Chaulion's monastery. The walls were manned by more men than usual. Blackstone held off, keeping to the safety of the forest. He waited until a cloud slipped across the face of the sun, so that the men's faces were less shadowed. There wasn't a man he did not recognize. He was safe unless the raiders had breached the walls he and his men had built, and his men had joined the enemy. Trust was a currency in short supply. Blackstone had weeded out most of the scum from the men who looked to him for command, but there was always a risk. He rode forward.

When the defenders of Chaulion monastery recognized the rider, the gates opened and armed men gathered.

‘Perinne!' Blackstone called as the long-serving soldier pushed his way through the men. ‘All's well?'

‘Aye, m'lord. There's been scum sniffing their way around the crossroads.'

‘Did they approach?'

‘Not here,' said Perinne, one of the first defenders and wall builders at the monastery who had fought with Blackstone over the last decade. ‘They rode back and forth along the road; they could see they had no choice with the town and us held firm.'

‘Good. Keep the men alert. There's a war coming our way and I'll need you.'

A murmur of anticipation went through the men.

‘We'll be ready, Sir Thomas.'

‘Was there any sign of my family with those men?'

‘None. Have they been taken, lord?' Perinne asked; the men in the towns knew Blackstone's family from the time they spent with them.

‘It's not clear yet,' he said, turning the horse. ‘I'll ride to the town. Wait until Guinot sends my orders.'

He did not wait for a reply but spurred his horse down to what had been his and Christiana's first home together when he had fought for and won Chaulion.

There were five such towns spread across the countryside, unofficial outposts held by Blackstone for the English King, each garrisoned by fifty or more of his men. Each town controlled the immediate area around it, which meant the roads and trading routes could be restricted or harassed. The strongholds provided buffer zones between the mostly undefended villages that lay scattered across the countryside. The English held Brittany and Gascony and Blackstone's men held towns across Lower Normandy, some as far as the Périgord. Bastions of French noble houses were everywhere between, but offered no serious threat to the superior numbers holding the towns.

As he galloped down the road between town and monastery he kept his eyes on the forest ridge but there was no sign of raiders. Sentries called out his approach as horse and rider were recognized.

A thickset man with cropped grey hair and a face like worn leather grasped his master's hand in greeting. Another defender led Blackstone's horse to water.

‘What news, Guinot?' Blackstone asked, relieved to see his commander again. His eyes scanned the walls, checking that each man was in his place, that the town was properly defended.

‘A trader came through and told us he'd heard Évreux and the citadel at Pont-Audemer are under siege by the King John's troops. Lisieux may already have fallen. What's happening?'