The Greatest Knight (2 page)

The Drincourt cooks were accustomed to William’s visits and he was soon leaning against a trestle devouring wheaten bread still hot from the oven and glistening with melted butter and sweet clover honey. The cook’s wife shook her head. “I don’t know where you put it all. By rights you should have a belly on you like a woman about to give birth.”

William grinned and slapped his iron-flat stomach. “I work hard.”

She raised a brow that said more than words, and returned to chopping vegetables. Still grinning, William licked the last drips of buttery honey off the side of his hand and went to the door, bracing his arm on the lintel and looking out on the fine morning with pleasure. The peace of the moment was broken by the sound of shouts from the courtyard. Moments later the mail-clad Earl of Essex and several knights and serjeants raced past the open door towards the stables. William hastened out into the ward. “Holà!” he cried. “What’s happening?”

“The French and Flemings have been sighted on the outskirts!” a knight panted over his shoulder.

The words hit William like a bolt of lightning. “They’ve crossed the border?”

“Aye, over the Bresle and down through Eu. Now they’re at our walls with Matthew of Boulogne at their head. We’ll have the devil of a task to hold them. Get your armour on, Marshal, you’ve no time for stomach-filling now!”

William sprinted for the hall. By the time he arrived his heart was thundering like a drum and he was wishing he hadn’t eaten all that bread and honey for he felt sick. A squire was waiting to help him into his padded undertunic and mail. Already dressed in his, the Sire de Tancarville was pacing the hall like a man with a burr in his breeches, issuing terse commands to the knights who were scrambling into their armour.

William pressed his lips together. The urge to retch peaked and then receded. As he donned his mail, his heartbeat steadied, although his palms were slick with cold sweat and he had to wipe them on his surcoat. Now was the moment for which he had trained. Now was his chance to prove that he was good for more than just gluttony and slumber, and that his place in the household was by right of ability and not family favour.

By the time the Sire de Tancarville and his retinue joined the Earl of Essex at the town’s West Bridge, the suburbs of Drincourt were swarming with Flemish mercenaries and the terrified inhabitants were fleeing for their lives. The smell of cooking fires had been overlaid by the harsher stench of indiscriminate burning and in the rue Chaussée a host of Boulonnais knights were massing to make an assault on the West Gate and break into the town itself.

Eager, nervous, resolute, William urged his stallion to the fore, jostling past several seasoned knights until he was level with de Tancarville himself. The latter cast him a warning glance and curbed his destrier as it lashed out at William’s sweating chestnut. “Lad, you are too hasty,” he growled with amused irritation. “Fall back and let the knights do their work.”

Flushed with chagrin, William swallowed the retort that he
was
a knight and reined back. Glowering, he allowed three of the most experienced warriors to overtake him but as a fourth tried to jostle past, William spurred forward again, determined to show his mettle.

Roaring his own name as a battle cry, de Tancarville launched a charge over the bridge and down the rue Chaussée to meet the oncoming Boulonnais knights. William gripped his shield close to his body, levelled his lance and gave the chestnut its head. He fixed his gaze on the crimson device of a knight on a black stallion and held his line as his destrier bore him towards the moment of impact. He noticed how his opponent carried his lance too high and that the red shield was tilted a fraction inwards. Steadying his arm, he kept his eyes open until the last moment. His lance punched into the knight’s shield, pierced it and even though the shaft snapped off in William’s hand, the blow was sufficient to send the other man reeling. Using the stump as a club, William knocked the knight from the saddle. As the black destrier bolted, reins trailing, William drew his sword.

After the first violent impact, the fighting broke up into individual combats. Nothing in his training had prepared William for the sheer clamour and ferocity of battle, but he was undaunted and fed upon the experience avidly and with increasing confidence as he emerged victorious from several sharp tussles with more experienced men. He was both terrified and exhilarated: like a fish released from a calm stewpond into a fast-flowing river.

The Count of Boulogne ordered more troops into the fray and the battle for the bridge became a desperate crush of men and horses. Armed with clubs, staves, and slingshots, the townspeople fought beside the castle garrison and the battle swayed back and forth like washing in the wind. It was close and dirty work and William’s sword hand grew slippery with sweat and blood.

“Tancarville!” William roared hoarsely as he pivoted to strike at a French knight. His adversary’s destrier shied, throwing his rider in the dust where he lay unmoving. William seized the knight’s lance and urged the chestnut towards a knot of Flemish mercenaries who were busy looting a house. One man had dragged a coffer into the street and was clubbing at the lock with his sword hilt. At a warning shout from his companions, he spun round, but only to receive William’s lance through his chest. Immediately the others closed around William, furiously intent on dragging him from his mount.

William turned and manoeuvred his stallion, beating them off with sword and shield, until one of them seized a gaff resting against the house wall and attempted to hook William from his horse. The gaff lodged in his hauberk at the shoulder, the lower claw tearing into the mail, breaking several riveted links and sinking through gambeson and tunic to spike William’s flesh. He felt no pain for his blood was coursing with the heat of battle. As they surrounded him, trying to grab his reins and drag him down off the horse, he pricked the chestnut’s loin with his spurs and the stallion lashed out. There was a scream as a shod hind hoof connected with flesh and the man dropped like a stone. William gripped the stallion’s breast strap and again used the spur, forward of the girth this time. His mount reared, came down, and shot forward so that the soldiers gripping the reins had to let go and leap aside before they were trampled. The mercenary wielding the hook lost his purchase and William was able to wrench free and turn on him. Almost sobbing his lord’s battle cry, he cut downwards with his sword, saw the man fall, and forced the chestnut forwards over his body. Free of the broil of mercenaries, he rejoined the bulk of the Tancarville knights, but his horse had a deep neck wound and the reins were slippery with its blood.

The enemy had forced the Drincourt garrison back to the edge of the bridge. Smoke and fire had turned the suburbs into an antechamber of hell, but the town remained unbreached and the French army was still breaking on the Norman defence like surf upon granite. Bright spots of effort and exhaustion danced before William’s eyes as he cut and hacked; there was no longer any finesse to his blows. It was about surviving the next moment and the next…holding firm and not giving ground. Every time William thought that he could not go on, he defied himself and found the will to raise and lower his arm one more time.

Horns blared out over the seething press of men and suddenly the tension eased. The French knight who had been pressing William hard disengaged and pulled back. “They’re sounding the retreat!” panted a Tancarville knight. “God’s blood, they’re retreating! Tancarville! Tancarville!” He spurred his destrier. The realisation that the enemy was drawing off revitalised William’s flagging limbs. His wounded horse was tottering under him but, undaunted, he flung from the saddle and joined the pursuit on foot.

The French fled through the burning suburbs of Drincourt, harried by the burghers and inhabitants, fighting rearguard battles with the knights and soldiers of the garrison. William finally ran out of breath and collapsed against a sheepfold on the outskirts of the town. His throat was on fire with thirst and the blade of his sword was nicked and pitted from the numerous contacts with shields and mail and flesh. Removing his helm, he dunked his head in the stone water trough provided for the sheep and, making a scoop of his hands, drank greedily. Once he had slaked his thirst and recovered his breath, he wiped the bloody patina from his sword on a clump of loose wool caught in the wattle fence, sheathed the blade, and trudged back to the bridge, suddenly so weary that his shoes felt as if they were made of lead.

His chestnut was lying on its side in an ungainly way that told him—even before he knelt at its head and saw its dull eyes—it was dead. He laid his hand to its warm neck and felt strands of the coarse mane scratch his bloodied knuckles. It had been a gift at his knighting from the Sire de Tancarville, together with his sword, hauberk, and cloak, and although he had not had the horse long, it had been a good one—strong, spirited, and biddable. He had expended more pride and affection on it than was wise and suddenly there was a tightening of grief in his throat.

“Won’t be the last you’ll lose,” said de Lorys gruffly, leaning down from the saddle of his own dappled stallion which had several superficial injuries but was still standing, still whole. “Fact of war, lad.” He extended a hand that, like William’s, was bloody with the day’s work. “Here, mount up behind.”

William did so, although it was an effort to set his foot over Gadefer’s in the stirrup and swing himself across the crupper. The cuts and bruises that had gone ignored in the heat of battle now began to strike him like chords on a malevolently plucked harp, especially across his right shoulder.

“Wounded?” Gadefer asked as William caught his breath. “That’s a nasty gash in your mail.”

“It’s from a thatch gaff,” William replied. “It’s not that bad.”

De Lorys grunted. “I won’t take back the things I’ve said about you. You’re still a slugabed and a glutton, but the way you fought today…well, that makes up for everything else. Perhaps my lord Tancarville has not wasted his time in training you after all.”

***

That night the Sire de Tancarville held a feast to celebrate a victory that his knights had not so much snatched from the jaws of defeat, as reached down the throat of annihilation, dragged back out, and resuscitated. Badly mauled, the French army had drawn off to lick its wounds and, for the moment at least, Drincourt was safe, even if the neighbouring county of Eu was a stripped and pillaged wasteland.

William sat in a place of honour at the high table with the senior knights who f êted him for his prowess in his first engagement. Although exhausted, he rallied beneath their camaraderie and praise. The squabs in wine sauce and the fragrant, steaming frumenty and apples seethed in almond milk went some way to reviving his strength, as did the sweet, potent ice-wine with which they plied him. His wounds were mostly superficial. De Tancarville’s chirurgeon had washed and stitched the deeper one to his shoulder and dressed it with a soft linen bandage. It was sharply sore; he was going to have the memento of a scar, but there was no lasting damage. His hauberk was already in the armoury having the links repaired and his gambeson had gone to the keep women to be patched and refurbished. Men kept telling him how fortunate he was. He supposed that it must be so, for some of the company had left their lives upon the battlefield and he had only lost his horse and the virginity of his inexperience. It didn’t feel like luck though when someone inadvertently slapped him heartily on his injured shoulder in commendation.

William de Mandeville, the young Earl of Essex, raised his cup high in toast, his dark eyes sparkling. “Holà, Marshal, give to me a gift for the sake of our friendship!” he cried so that all those on the high table could hear.

William’s head was buzzing with weariness and elation but he knew he wasn’t drunk and he had no idea why de Mandeville was grinning so broadly around the trestle. Knowing what was expected of him, however, he played along. The bestowing of gifts among peers was always a part of such feasts.

“Willingly, my lord,” he answered with a smile. “What would you have me give to you?”

“Oh, let me see.” De Mandeville made a show of rubbing his jaw and looking round at the other lords, drawing them deeper into his sport. “A crupper would do, or a decorated breast-band. Or a fine bridle perchance?”

Wide-eyed, William spread his hands. “I do not have any such items,” he said. “Everything that I own—even the clothes on my back—are mine by the great charity of my lord Tancarville.” He inclined his head to the latter who acknowledged the gesture with a sweep of his goblet and a suppressed belch.

“But I saw you gain them today, before my very eyes,” de Mandeville japed. “More than a dozen you must have had, yet you refuse me even one.”

William continued to stare in bewilderment while a collective chuckle rumbled along the dais and grew in volume at William’s expression.

“What I am saying,” de Mandeville explained, between guffaws, “is that if you had bothered to claim ransoms from the knights you disabled and downed—even a few of them—you would be a rich man tonight instead of an impoverished one. Now do you understand?”

A fresh wave of belly laughter surged at William’s expense, washing him in chagrin, but he was accustomed to being the butt of jests and knew that the worst thing he could do was sulk in a corner or lash out. The ribbing was well meant and behind it, there was warning and good advice. “You are right, my lord,” he agreed with de Mandeville. The shrug he gave made him wince and brought a softer burst of laughter. “I didn’t think. Next time I will be more heedful. I promise you will receive your harness yet.”