THE EARL (A HAMMER FOR PRINCES) (15 page)

Fulk looked around and met Thierry’s eyes. “A silly question, that one, uncle.” He held Thierry’s gaze a moment, to show he was not afraid of him, and galloped back toward the camp.

SIX

All the next day, they rode through the deep forest toward Fulk’s
castle
of
Bruyère-le-Forêt
. After his attack on the thieves, Thierry was the army’s hero. All the young men and many of the older knights rode near him, and he kept up a chatter of stories and jokes, lead them in roaring songs, and drank their wine and ate whatever they offered him. Glowering, Simon d’Ivry hung by his side.

Roger spent the morning trying to keep the column from straggling out along the road; he galloped back and forth alongside the moving army, read-faced from shouting. In the midst of it, behind Thierry, Fulk rode with Morgan beside him playing his Welsh harp and singing.

He thought there was no use in ordering the men away from Thierry. They would think it only part of his and Thierry’s private feud, not an honest order. The loose discipline of the army enraged him. While Morgan’s pure voice sang in his ear of ladies and wars, he brooded on ways to get rid of Thierry.

In the early afternoon, Roger rode up to him, his face coated with dust and sweat. “I cannot make them keep together. They are crowded up in front and straying off in the rear. Even de Brise is having trouble with his men.”

Fulk nodded. He had been so angry so long he hardly cared about the army, he only wanted to humiliate Thierry.

“Will we stay at Bruyère tonight?” Roger said.

“Yes. I want to talk to Robert and take care of the business of the manor.” Robert Molin was his bailiff at Bruyère-le-Forêt. We’ll have to camp the men in the field.”

“I hope we get there.”

Fulk glanced and him and went back to a plan for making Thierry the laughingstock of the army.

On either side of the road, the forest stretched away, dark and magical. The great trunks of the oaks, shrouded in vines, stood wide apart on the deep floor of the forest, but their high branches entwined, so that no light reached the ground except along the road. He could see light penetrating down to the lower canopy of leaves—broad bands of light that picked out colors in the dark and the leaves. The beauty of the forest interfered with his planning; in the middle of a problem he would catch the flicker of  squirrel’s tail, the green shine of a leaf unexpectedly in the sun, and all his attention would snap back, fascinated, to the forest. He remembered the face on the stump back at their last camp; for the first time he considered that a Christian had made it.

By God, he thought, Thierry is such a coward, they must see it, somehow. I can make them see it. But he knew that Thierry would use Fulks own broken arm for an excuse not to fight him.

Morgan was putting his harp away. Fulk looked over at him. “Why are you stopping?”

“You aren’t listening, my lord.” He laced up the case he had made for the harp and hung it on his shoulder. “I was listening, I like to hear you play. Go on.”

Morgan shook his head. “You weren’t listening,” he said calmly.

“None of you obeys me. I—”

He lifted his head, his stomach knotted up. Someone had screamed behind them, far behind. An animal, perhaps, or someone laughing. He pulled his horse out of line and galloped back along the side of the road, past the army.

The knights immediately behind him watched him in surprise. One shouted, “What is it?” Roger had seen him ride off and was following him, and Fulk left it to him to stop the column. He could see already that the men at the rear of the line were turning to ride back the way they had come, and they were drawing their swords.

“My lord,” Roger shouted, behind him. Fulk waved his good arm at him impatiently; he had the reins caught in the fingertips of his right hand. The road curved to the left, ahead of him, and the whole rear third of the army was galloping ack along it, past the curve. Now he heard the shouts of men fighting, and spontaneously his lungs filled with air and he shouted. He took the reins in his left hand and headed the bay along the edge of the road around the curve.

Men in the trees were shooting arrows down into the knights on the road below them. Three men were sprawled in the dust. Two loose horses galloped past him; one had an arrow in its flank. The knights in the road had their shields raised. There was no way they could fight back.

Fulk jerked his horse to a step; he had no shield. The tail end of the column had obviously been ambushed. They were trying to ride out of the rain of arrows but the men galloping back to help them blocked the road. Arrows slithered down into their midst. Some of them were rising around in the forest, shaking their swords and trying to climb the trees after the bowmen.

“Turn around and go on,” Fulk shouted. You—
Jordan
de Grace, go up the road and stop them from—”

He spurred his horse hastily up the road a little; an arrow had grazed his cheek. “Stop them from blocking the road. Ger moving, you.” He put his hand to his face and it came away with a great smear of blood on the palm. But he could feel nothing. Knights galloped past him up the road.

One man, stripped of his hauberk, had managed to climb two thirds of the way to an archer in the high branches of an oak beside the road. The other bowmen were screaming to their companion to watch out. The knight scrambled up the last yard of the trunk in a rush and before the man could turn stabbed him and threw him down. The knights in the road cheered. The bowman’s body turned once in the air, bounced off a branch, and hit the road with a crunch.

“Ride off,” Fulk shouted. If they took it into their minds they would stay all day to kill one more. They heard him, and covered by their shields rode after the rest of the army. Fulk dodged a volley of arrows. He waited until the last man was out of bowshot and riding up the road, and crossed to the shelter of a tree with no archer in it.

He could see the men in the trees moving. They knew he was there, but they were leaving—they probably knew he had archers in the vanguard of his army, and they wanted to get out of the way. One by one they slipped down from the trees and ran off into the forest. A few of them dashed out to steal a cloak or a helmet from a fallen knight—nothing more, they were helpless on the ground, where a mounted man could run them down. They were outlaws, not King Stephen’s men or men of any baron, only outlaws. They even left their dead lying in the middle of the road.

When they were gone, Fulk jogged his horse out into the road and counted the bodies. There were five of the. He caught a loose horse that was standing in the ditch and galloped up to the army, which had stopped and was waiting for him, and sent men back to get the corpses. They could be buried at Bruyère-le-Forêt.

Roger was riding up and down beside the army, shouting. Fulk reigned up close enough to listen. Roger waved his arms and pointed with his whole arm down the road. “Now you have learned to ride close together, haven’t you? And when you are attacked, you don’t all bunch up together and stand around stupidly, do you? You take orders and clear the road so we can move along it, don’t you? Answer me.”

“Yes,” the knights mumbled. They stirred, trying to make their lines orderly. Roger shouted some insults.

“If you’re attacked from the trees, ride out of range. Are you idiots? Are you boys who have never been to a war? You’re all mad. Now, ride out. Who was in command back there—de Grace? Come here, I want to talk to you. Ride out, I said.”

Jordan
de Grace moved out of the tangle of riders and waited, and Fulk and Roger rode down on him from opposite directions. The column of knights, in much better order than before, trotted away beside them.

“It was my fault,”
Jordan
de Grace said, as soon as Fulk was close to him. “I know it. Don’t abuse me.”

“What happened?”

Morgan came up beside Fulk and straightened his sling.
Jordan
cleared his throat. “We were in loose order and they started to shoot—those men in the trees—and they seemed ahead of us. My horn blower was shot before he could sound the warning.”

“My lord,” Morgan said, you’re covered with blood.”

Fulk said, “It isn’t serious, let it go. Roger, did de Brise stop?”

Roger nodded. “He’s close enough to hear when somebody stops. My lord, if the outlaws were ahead of Sir
Jordan
’s men, we—”

“Must have ridden right under then,” Fulk said. “I suspect they stayed well out of sight until we had passed. Keep watch on the trees. We’ll change the order of riding tonight, at Bruyère.”

He met
Jordan
’s eyes. “I’ll expect all my captains in the great hall at Bruyère before we eat. Now suppose we go, You keep your men together, my lord, will you?”

“I will, my lord,”
Jordan
said. “Thank you.”

Fulk grunted. His arm hurt and his throat was raw with dust. With Roger trailing after him and Morgan beside him he trotted up the road toward his place in the column.

Thierry, he saw, was no longer singing and making jokes, although his friends still clung to him.

The porter of Bruyère leaned out over the gate. “Is that Roger de Nef? It is. My lord! Wait a moment.” Roger had sent a messenger ahead of them so the drawbridge was down, and they rode onto it, two by two, while the porter cranked the portcullis up.

Bruyère-le-Forêt stood on a hill at the edge of the forest, looking out over the plowed ground of its manor. Inside its great wall stood another, with three towers on it; Fulk had taken advantage of King Stephen’s uncertain control to build the outer wall with its double gate and dig the ditch around the top of the hill. While the teeth of the iron portcullis rose slowly into the arch of the outer gate, he studied the new wall. When the wars were over, the king would surely order all unlicensed castles to be torn down, but Fulk hoped enough of Bruyère-le-Forêt was honest that he could excuse the rest as mere additions. With the new wall and the ditch, Bruyère could withstand anything but a prolonged siege. They rode in under the portcullis.

Between the two gates there was a little paved court, with a rowan tree growing in it; in the shade of the tree Robert Molin was standing, a smile on his face, and when Fulk stopped he came up to greet him.

“My lord. I’m very pleased to see you again. Did you find enough room for your men? What happened to your arm?”

“I broke it. The army, save what you see, is camped between here and the village. I hope you told the villagers to keep their daughters in.” Fulk dismounted and shook Robert’s hand. “You look well. I’m glad. How has the spring gone for you?”

“Oh—” Robert shrugged. He was watching the knights ride through the gate into the main courtyard. “Will you come this way, my lord? The spring came and went, I hardly knew it was here. Ulf can take your horse.”

Fulk gave his reins to the groom and followed Robert to the ladder up to the rampart. An old war wound had crippled him in the left leg, and he walked with a hitch of his shoulder, dragging his bad foot after him. Fulk kept his strides short. They climbed up onto the top of the inside wall and started along it toward the nearest of the three towers.

“Prince Eustace came through twice,” Robert said. “Once I got enough men together to chase him, but he burned two villages and drove off their beasts. The villagers have been using our oxen to plow and I think they’ve planted every field they are supposed to, although I haven’t been there to see. You have your uncle with you.”

Fulk nodded. Thirty feet below, in the courtyard, Thierry and Simon d’Ivry stood among the chickens and geese, peeling their saddles off their horses’ backs. The other knights staying in the castle were walking their mounts around to cool them off. The kitchen maids, with bread and fruit hidden in their aprons, were strolling nearby, laughing, their cheeks red as apples.

“We met some outlaws, in the forest northwest of here,” Fulk said, watching them. “Do you know anything about them?”

“Yes.” Robert stopped at the door to the tower and opened it and stood aside. “Knights gone to robbery and murder. Did they attack you? I wouldn’t have thought them strong enough.”

“They were not. We were lax.”

Fulk went into the great hall. A fire was burning here—outside, it had been warm, but indoors the chill of the coming night soaked out of the walls. The warm, dry breath of the fire drew him, and he went to stand on the hearth.

“I was sorry to hear of the death of my Lady Margaret,” Robert said. “You have my sympathy and the sympathies of all your people here, my lord.”

“Thank you.”

“We have some guests in the castle—travelers, the Lady of Highfield and her retinue, and some knights of
Lincoln
. But if you would prefer not to greet them, I am sure that they would respect—”

“No. Ask them to have dinner with me. I have to talk to my captains before then. You must have matters to talk over with me, shall we do that after dinner?”

“Yes. I’m glad you came, as I said. There are instructions I must have. Do you want ale?”

“Please.”

Morgan came in through the courtyard door. Fulk sat and let him pull off his boots. “I thought you expected to have wine this year—from those new vines?”