Christopher Buehlman - Between Two Fires

Thomas grabbed again for his lord’s reins, using the rowels on his spurs to guide his own horse, and turned them both away. The Comte de Givras groaned, as if in disappointment, and another shaft caught him in the back. Thomas spurred them both for the French lines, but the next wave of knights was charging at them, shouting “Saint-Denis!” and “Glory!” They were beautiful in their surcoats of many colors, a flock of exotic birds heading for birdlime. Some of them were dying already, as the arrows were falling their way now.

Only the fact that the archers preferred charging knights to retreating ones saved Thomas and his Lord from being riddled; the volleys had also opened up big enough holes in the ranks for the two men to pass through, although one knight in robin’s-egg blue glanced against Thomas so hard he knocked him into his seigneur, who nearly fell again. He was shaking his head, ashamed not to be dying on the field. But he was certainly dying.

His little page, Renoud, and Thomas’s squire, André, ran up with a barber-surgeon, who helped the injured men off their mounts. Thomas was nauseated from pain and all the blood he had swallowed, and the eye above the arrow wouldn’t stop tearing.

The surgeon used a pair of shears to cut the arrow on the comte’s back so he could lie down to die; the Comte de Givras was a more important man than Thomas, but the surgeon attended Thomas because he saw that he might live. He pulled the big man down and wedged a stone between his back teeth to keep his mouth open, then cut the corner of his mouth forcing the shears in to snip the shaft. He got the point out of the tongue—nothing had ever hurt Thomas so badly—then pulled the shaft up out of the cheek. His hands were slimy with blood, and his grip kept slipping. He would have stitched Thomas, but someone had him by the sleeve now, shouting, “The king’s musician is hurt, the king commands you!” and he was gone.

The page held the seigneur’s hand as Thomas heard his awful breathing; he was drowning. He died clenching his teeth and shivering. He was awake until the very end and knew what was happening to him, but he did not cry out. Thomas did, as much to see that the great man was dead as for his own pain.

It was the worst day he had ever known.

With the squire’s help, Thomas sat up and watched the second wave fail, too, though some had gotten close enough to exchange blows near the banner of the Prince of Wales. Soon they were finished, and a lull followed. Now bare-legged Welshmen ran from the English lines and stuck knives into the eyes and visors of the stunned knights on the ground, killing them as easily as boys hunting crabs.

Thomas’s eye was hemming itself shut as the injured side of his face swelled. Men who passed them did not recognize him. Now a man wearing the king’s livery came and took both Thomas’s warhorse, who was lathered in sweat and stooping his head, and his mild-mannered palfrey, who always did a side-to-side dance when he smelled lettuce. He never saw either horse again.

The sun went down and still the beaten French rallied again and again to ride into the gloaming. Thomas had a moment’s hope when he saw the windmill near the English king on fire, its great spars turning ablaze like a slow wheel in Hell; but the English had burned the windmill themselves to give their archers light to murder by.

It had been dark for an hour when the call went up to flee. There would be no more French charges; the English were coming down from their terraced hill, and there was nothing to stop them. Thomas was suddenly aware of being alone—he did not know where his squire was and could not remember the last time he had seen him. The cries of wounded men being killed on the ground grew closer, as did the rude, choppy language of their killers, confident now, calling out to one another. Thomas sat up as best he could with his sword pointed behind him, ready to take the leg off a Welshman before he died. He heard hooves and wondered if an English knight was about to spit him. He turned his head. Here was his squire with a horse, a tired old nag from the baggage trains. Thomas tried to speak but wept when his swollen tongue touched his palate. André made a shushing gesture and, with some effort, got Thomas up, and then on the nag’s broad back. He leapt in front of his master and took Thomas’s great weight on his back as he took the reins and they cantered away from Crécy-en-Ponthieu. The night was very dark. The nameless horse sometimes pitched to avoid the body of one who had tried to flee but succumbed to his wounds; so many had died that Thomas could not comprehend it. The plain below the English position would be known as the valley of clerks, for it would take an army of men with pens and field desks to record the names and titles of the French dead.

It was at the town of Amiens where Thomas convalesced, his squire having paid a surgeon to see to him.

“A good thing it was a bodkin point on that shaft,” the surgeon had said as he put first wine and then egg white in the punctured cheek. “A broadhead would have never come out. As it is, I’m scared that tongue will sour and kill you, so I’m tempted to have it off. But then what would you pray with?”

Before he pulled the tooth whose roots were knocked loose by the arrow, then stitched the tongue and face, the surgeon told the squire to hold Thomas’s head still. Thomas grunted something.

“That’s what they all say,” he said, “but he’ll hold you just the same. And if your lordship bites me, I’ll yank a good tooth as well.”

It had taken less than an hour, but it was the longest hour Thomas could recall.

The ten minutes he took to set the leg seemed merely purgatorial after the hell of little pliers fishing in his cheek for loose bone, and the dip and bite of the curved needle in his tongue.

“You’ll not be so pretty now, but you may live to thank the Virgin, if she saves you. The pain’s a good sign. I’ll come around again tomorrow night. Splash some more wine on that around suppertime, but no supper for you till Tuesday, and then only broth and raw eggs. God felt so bad about throwing man out of the garden, he gave us the chicken, which gave us the egg. Wouldn’t surprise me to find out angels’ blood was egg whites. God rest you, sir knight.”

The squire stayed with Thomas for two weeks while the arrow wound toyed with his life, first reddening around the margins, then running clear, then slowly, very slowly, beginning to heal. When he was out of danger, though still not well enough to travel, he sent his squire home to tell the lady of the manor he was alive. The seneschal, who had been watching for Sir Thomas, stopped André at the gate and told him what had happened.

The squire turned around quickly and rode hard for Amiens.

André stood in the little room with his hat in his hands and his hood thrown back. He measured his words and spoke them slowly, pausing before the worst ones.

“Sire…Your keep and the lands of Arpentel are…forfeit to the Comte d’Évreux, of Navarre and Normandy. Your seneschal made to stand against him and prepared for siege; but your wife, fearing the comte’s cruelty should he breach the walls, treated with d’Évreux and let him into your keep. And, it seems, after very little struggle…her bed. Your son, however, has been declared by the comte the lord of the manor and stands to inherit when he comes to majority. D’Évreux, in the interval, is regent and protector, and your rents will go to him, save enough for your lady to keep a modest household.”

Thomas shook his bandaged head and said words that sounded like “the king.”

“The king is weak now. The lords of Normandy scheme against him, and treat with England. King Phillip gave our fallen lord’s lands of Givras to the Norman to keep him from rising in plain revolt. And now he has seized yours, which border Givras. Because he can. Because you were faithful to your seigneur, and he was faithful to the defeated king, you have been…moved aside.”