Chapter 1 #2
“I promise,” William said, and as the wine flamed in his belly, the dream left him and he woke with a gasp to the crowing of roosters and the first stirring of movement amongst the occupants of Drincourt’s great hall.
For a moment he lay blinking, acclimatising himself to his present surroundings.
It was a long time since his dreams had peeled back the years and returned him to the summer he had spent as King Stephen’s hostage during the battle for Newbury.
He seldom recalled that part of his life with his waking memory, but occasionally, without rhyme or reason, his dreams would return him to that time and the young man just turning twenty would again become a fair-haired little boy of five years old.
His father, despite all his manoeuvring, machinations, and willingness to sacrifice his fourth-born son, had lost Newbury, and eventually his lordship of Marlborough, but if he had lost the battle, he had rallied on the successful turn of the tide.
Stephen’s bloodline lay in the grave and Empress Matilda’s son, Henry, the second of that name, had been sitting firmly on the throne for thirteen years.
“And I am a knight,” William murmured, his lips curving with grim humour.
The leap in status was recent. A few weeks ago he had still been a squire, polishing armour, running errands, learning his trade at the hands of Sir Guillaume de Tancarville, Chamberlain of Normandy and distant kin to his mother.
William’s knighting announced his arrival into manhood and advanced him a single rung upon a very slippery ladder.
His position in the Tancarville household was precarious.
There were only so many places in Lord Guillaume’s retinue for newly belted knights with ambitions far greater than their experience or proven capability.
William had considered seeking house room under his brother’s rule at Hamstead, but that was a last resort, nor did he have sufficient funds to pay his passage home across the Narrow Sea.
Besides, with the strife between Normandy and France at white heat, there were numerous opportunities to gain the necessary experience.
Even now, somewhere along the border, the French army was preparing to slip into Normandy and wreak havoc.
Since Drincourt protected the northern approaches to the city of Rouen, there was a pressing need for armed defenders.
As the dream images faded, William slipped back into a light doze and the tension left his body.
The blond hair of his infancy had steadily darkened through boyhood and was now a deep hazel-brown, but fine summer weather still streaked it with gold.
Folk who had known his father said that William was the image of John Marshal in the days before the molten lead from the burning roof of Wherwell Abbey had ruined his comeliness; that they had the same eyes, the irises deep grey, with the changeable muted tones of a winter river.
“God’s bones, I warrant you could sleep through the trumpets of Doomsday, William. Get up, you lazy wastrel!” The voice was accompanied by a sharp dig in William’s ribs. With a grunt of pain, the young man opened his eyes on Gadefer de Lorys, one of Tancarville’s senior knights.
“I’m awake.” Rubbing his side, William sat up. “Isn’t a man allowed to gather his thoughts before he rises?”
“Hah, you’d be gathering them until sunset if you were allowed. I’ve never known such a slugabed. If you weren’t my lord’s kin, you’d have been slung out on your arse long since!”
The best way to deal with Gadefer, who was always grouchy in the mornings, was to agree with him and get out of his way.
William was well aware of the resentment simmering among some of the other knights who viewed him as a threat to their own positions in the mesnie.
His kinship to the chamberlain was as much a handicap as it was an advantage.
“You’re right,” he replied with a self-deprecating smile.
“I’ll throw myself out forthwith and go and exercise my stallion. ”
Gadefer stumped off, muttering under his breath.
Concealing a grimace, William rolled up his pallet, folded his blanket, and wandered outside.
The air held the dusty scent of midsummer, although the cool green nip of the dawn clung in the shadows of the walls, evaporating as the stones drank the rising sunlight.
He glanced towards the stables, hesitated, then changed his mind and followed his rumbling stomach to the kitchens.
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.