The Scourge (Kindle Serial) (8 page)

BOOK: The Scourge (Kindle Serial)
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“All I want is to shelter at Hadleigh with my men for the night,” I say. “I haven’t spoken to King Richard in more than a year, and the only mission I am on is to find my wife. As a further point, I would counsel you to avoid referring to the king of England as a ‘gangly whelp.’”

“But he is a gangly whelp,” Sir John says. “He is a little boy who plays with his friends while his kingdom rots. Where is Richard? Where are England’s armies? Why is nothing being done about this demonic invasion?”

The questions are ones that I share. I don’t know where King Richard’s armies are. Or where Richard himself is. The last I heard, the king was preparing for an assault on Scotland. The plague swept across the kingdom so quickly that everyone was cut off from one another. England became a Kingdom of islands. Of fiefs and isolated villages once more. Where was King Richard? Where were the armies of England?

“I’m sure King Richard is fighting for England.” I cut at the scrawny pheasant on my plate. “Each man must take responsibility for his corner of the kingdom now. As you have done, Sir John. As I am trying to do.”

“And you expect me to believe that you are fighting your way through England — braving vast armies of demons, risking not only your life but your very soul — for one woman? A woman who most assuredly is dead or plagued already?”

I set down my serving knife and finish chewing a strip of gamey pheasant. I wipe at my mouth with the tablecloth, then rise to my feet, setting fists on either side of the plate.

“I don’t give a rat’s bollocks what you believe,” I growl. The confidence slips from John’s face. “I would hack my way through purgatory and battle the legions of hell for my Elizabeth. If you think I give a camel’s cock about who runs this castle, then you are a bigger fool than King Richard or any of his friends.”

Sir John clears his throat, regains some of his composure. “You are not a spy for Richard? Then swear it.” He glances around the room. There are eleven knights in the chamber, not including Tristan and Morgan, and a dozen soldiers and servants. “A Bible! Someone get me a Bible!”

A servant runs from the room to get one, but Sir Morgan walks the length of the table and drops his tattered book in front of Sir John before the servant can return. Sir John flips through it before handing it to me. “Swear upon this that you are not Richard’s spy.”

I look at the Bible and wonder if God still listens to oaths sworn upon it. I wonder if God still listens to anything. But I place my hand upon the worn Bible and meet Sir John’s gaze. “I swear I am not a spy for King Richard. I swear that my only mission is to find my wife. And I swear, before God, that you were far more courteous the first time we met, Sir John.”

Sir John’s scowl fades. He nods to me as Morgan takes back the Bible.

“I am sorry, Sir Edward,” John says. “Courtesy must come second to safety. We have worked hard to secure these lands, and I won’t let a bumbling whelp like Richard wipe away our toils.”

“I understand your concerns,” I say. “I have had clashes with the upper nobility in the past.”

Sir John laughs, and he is twenty-three again. “Yes!” he shouts. “Is it true that you challenged the king’s uncle to a duel during a Court of Lords?”

I take interest in the pheasant upon my plate again.

“Twice,” Sir Tristan says. “Sir Edward called him a festering imbecile with more bile than bollocks.”

The knights and soldiers join in the laughter and look my way. I shrug. “I spent a week in a dungeon for it. And that was only John of Gaunt I insulted. Just the King’s uncle. What do you think they’ll do to you, Sir John, if they hear that you called the king ‘a bumbling whelp’?”

Sir John doesn’t seem concerned. “There’s a new law in England, Sir Edward. The kingdom is reborn and good men will rise to the top. King Richard’s days on the throne are all but over.”

Sir Gerald, out of his armor now, slams his tankard on the rough-hewn oak table.“Long live King John!” The other knights and soldiers raise their tankards and repeat the words. “Long live King John!”

The brashness of it makes my jaw clench. What they chant is treason. Sir John has enough humility to look embarrassed.

“I am not your king,” he says.

“Not yet,” one of the knights calls.

“Long live King John!” Sir Gerald shouts.

Each of these knights swore fealty to their liege-lord, and to King Richard. I wonder at how quickly men will abandon their allegiances. But Sir John has cleared the lands around Hadleigh of plague. He has protected the populace and obviously has plans for the future. And what has Richard done?

I suppose there could be worse kings than Sir John. But I am sworn to Richard, and that means more to old warriors like me than to young knights such as these. I wonder if sacred oaths can be enforced when God no longer listens.

“I wish you well on your mission, Sir Edward,” Sir John says. “She must be a special woman indeed. You may rest here as long as you wish. My castle is at your service. If you want to stay at Hadleigh, I ask only that you earn your keep. Bring food for my people, kill the demons that wander the countryside. Assist in any way you can.”

“Perhaps I will return and do my part,” I say, “but I leave in the morning with my men, Sir John. We have a long journey still to make.”

“Of course,” Sir John says. “But while you are here, would the three of you care to join our council meeting? We have a grave problem facing us. A problem that must be addressed quickly.”

“A problem?” Sir Morgan asks. “Something to do with the plague?”

“No, Sir Morgan, I fear it is worse than this scourge that the archbishops call a plague.” Sir John looks older than his years again.

“Worse than this plague?” Tristan asks. “What could be worse than half of our kingdom trying to eat the other half?”

Sir John seems to consider this for a moment. He nods once, seemingly to himself, then rises and motions for us to follow him. We leave the great hall and climb the six flights of winding stairs in the castle’s massive high tower. We emerge into the night, where the scent of brine is thick in the cool air. Sir John gestures past the crenellations toward the east, where I had seen the column of smoke earlier. Sir Morgan gasps.

“Oh dear God,” Tristan says.

I run my hands over my head. Sir John is right. It is worse than the plague.

The French are in England.

Chapter 12

We creep quietly in the darkness, along the sodden earth of a village called Lighe. Cold winds from the North Sea rake our bodies, ripple the high grasses and flutter our cloaks. Hadleigh Castle is a quarter mile behind us, a stone crown upon a high ridge.

I hunch down among a wall of hedges and peer up through the gaps at a new church built upon a towering hill in the village. The French have taken the church as their command post. I would have done the same — the hill commands a perfect view of the entire village. Not that the entire village is that hard to see. It is little more than a dozen wooden cottages, some fishermen’s huts along the sea, and fifteen or twenty crooked docks of fading wood that jut out into the lapping waters of the Thames.

Tristan is with me, as are Morgan, Sir John, and Sir Gerald. Sir John has heard of my exploits in France. He has never fought the French and he wants my help in defeating them.

“Just advice,” he said at the castle. “I seek only advice on how best to deal with them.”

In return, he offered provisions for our journey as well as new swords for the three of us, and a new crossbow for Sir Tristan.

“Just advice,” I said.

“Just advice,” he agreed.

I told him that I wanted to see the French encampment up close to gain a measure of the invaders’ strength. And what I see now is no comfort at all. They number somewhere near a thousand. More than half of those wear mail. I estimate that thirty or so are knights with horses and full harness.

They are busy little Frenchmen. Even at dusk they work. Two wagons pulled by oxen carry the towering bronze bells of a nearby church. Plunder to be sold or melted down or to adorn one of their own froggy churches. Men maneuver one of the bells onto a gangplank to be loaded onto the largest of their five ships.

“They are here for a raid,” I say. “Burning and plundering. They’ll be on their way soon enough. My advice is to leave them alone.”

“Are you certain?” Sir John asks.

I open my mouth to answer but my words dry up. At the far end of the encampment, near the fishing huts, I see a dozen men working beside a massive campfire. A stack of long, thin trunks lie outside the huts. Each man has one of the logs from the stack and is whittling at its end. Sharpening the wood into a deadly point. Strips of wood fly in the firelight as the men whittle and laugh.

“No,” I say. “I’m not certain.”

Sir John raises an eyebrow. I point to the men sharpening the logs. Sir John still does not understand, and I wonder if I was as ignorant when I was his age. Tristan saves me from lecturing the boy.

“Stakes,” Tristan says. “They are going to build a palisade. Our Frenchmen are going to build a home here and take wives and make little tadpoles, Sir John.”

“This isn’t a raid?” Sir John breathes deeply through his nose.

“It likely started as a raid,” I say. “But they found England unlocked.”

Tristan counts tents and ships and calculates the number of Frenchmen. “Eight hundred?”

“More likely a thousand,” I reply.

“Too many for the five of us?” Tristan asks.

“Don’t be daft,” Morgan says. “There’s loads of them.”

“Yes,” Tristan says. “But they’re French.”

Morgan and I chuckle, but there’s not much humor in seeing the French marching unchallenged in our country.

“How many men do you have, Sir John?” I ask.

“Soldiers or men?”

“Soldiers. Men who know how to fight.”

“One hundred and fifty,” he says. “And another hundred are being trained.”

I shake my head. One hundred and fifty. The French would annihilate them. They are well equipped and led by at least three battle-tested lords. I recognize the banners of Guy de Soissons, Henri Palise, and Tomas Montreville. I know little of them, but they were with the army that fought against us at Nájera. All three of them have fought in a war, and so have their men. Where have Sir John’s men fought? In the yard with wooden swords. Perhaps at tourneys. They would be massacred. All of them.

“You know these lands better,” I say to Sir John. “So you could defeat them with maybe six or seven hundred men. Do you have any friends in the area?”

“More men arrive every day,” he says. “But it would take months to gather that many.”

“No good,” I say. “Some of these men will go back home with the stolen treasures and blather about what they have seen here. We’ll have all of France clambering up our shores in a few months.”

And that realization drops upon me like an anvil. If any of these Frenchmen get home, England will fall. I think about this for a long, long time. So long that a Frenchman in a workman’s apron approaches the hedges to release some of the plundered Lighe ale. He is five paces from where we are, on the opposite side of the hedge. He unties his breeches and I hear the sound of ale spouting from his tap.

Sir Gerald stands up. I give him my best scowl but he ignores me. He takes two sidesteps so he is even with the worker. Tristan looks at him, then at me. I scowl harder at Sir Gerald, but the knight is not looking. He reaches through the hedges and grabs the man by his apron. The workman has time for one strangled cry before Sir Gerald rips him through the wall of hedges and covers his mouth. The man’s eyes are wide and darting, and his face bleeds from his journey through the hedges. Sir Gerald shushes him with finger to lips and draws a dagger. The man nods as if he understands. Gerald nods back, then smiles as he stabs the man in the chest with the dagger. The man thrashes, but Gerald stabs again and again and again, smiling through it all. Blood spatters everything. Sir Morgan and Sir Tristan wrench Sir Gerald away from the dead man.

“What is wrong with you?” Tristan’s whisper is dangerously loud.

Sir Gerald smiles at Tristan. “Nine hundred and ninety-nine to go.”

Sir John shakes his head at Sir Gerald but says nothing. I pull them all down low and we watch through the hedges to see if anyone heard the workman.

We wait, expecting the cry to go up at any moment. I realize I am holding my breath and let it out slowly. There is blood on the tiny leaves of the hedge. The blood looks black in the dim light. Two men in padded gambesons walk past the hedge wall speaking in French. Sir Gerald raises his dagger. I clamp my hand on his mailed arm and shake my head. One of the Frenchmen laughs and dumps his mug out. Then they are past.

No cry goes out. No one seems to have noticed. But we must go all the same. Someone will miss the workman. We leave the village, dragging the man’s body with us and dumping it into the Thames.

“There is no way to defeat them, then?” Sir John asks.

I take a deep breath. “I might know a way.”

“How?”

“I have friends in the area.”

“Friends?” he asks.

“Acquaintances.” I rub at my eyes as we walk. I will have to help this young knight defeat the French. I will have to spend a day here in Essex while my wife waits in East Anglia. But Elizabeth deserves to live under English rule. “Tristan, Morgan, we’re going to assist Sir John.”

BOOK: The Scourge (Kindle Serial)
6.14Mb size Format: txt, pdf, ePub
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