Chapter Twenty-Two #2
“I will bring her something soothing,” she said as she scooted off.
Annabeth and Bridget exchanged relieved glances that the old woman had left them alone. Ellowyn, however, was insistent that they go down to the bailey where Magnus was, so they calmly escorted her down the big wooden stairs to the dusty, rocky bailey below.
It was windy upon the mountain top, gusts whipping around hair and hemlines.
Magnus was with several other soldiers near the stable block to the south.
Melesse had a wide open and sloping bailey because of the shape of the mountaintop they sat upon, and the stables were lodged on perhaps the flattest part.
Ellowyn pulled free of her escorts and gathered her skirts, racing across the dust until she came to the smelly stables.
She didn’t want to wait any longer for whatever news Magnus brought.
“Magnus!” she called as she approached. “Magnus!”
Magnus was just removing his helm as he heard Lady de Russe’s voice. Startled, he whirled around to see that she was racing towards him. With her big belly evident, he did what her ladies often did – he made haste towards her and tried to stop her momentum.
“Lady de Russe,” he said, grasping her by the arms. “Why are you running? You should not be exerting yourself so.”
Ellowyn would have none of his mothering. “Stop telling me what I should and should not be doing,” she snapped. “Everyone tells me that and I hate it, do you hear? Tell me where my husband is this instant.”
He wasn’t surprised by the tone of the demand. Lady de Russe was well known for her snappish manner at times, made worse by the babe she carried. In fact, all of the knights had lived in fear of it, including her husband, making going to war somewhat of the less fearful option.
“He is a few days behind me, my lady,” he replied steadily. “He has sent me back to Melesse to wait for him.”
Ellowyn cocked her head, calming now that her husband was the subject of the conversation. “Wait for him?” she repeated. “What do you mean?”
Magnus sighed faintly and it was then that Ellowyn noticed he looked particularly pale. So pale, in fact, that the circles beneath his eyes were almost green in tint. She peered closely at him.
“Magnus, are you well?” she asked. “What is the matter?”
He took her elbow and turned her for the keep. As they walked, Ellowyn and her ladies noticed that he was moving particularly slow.
“I was wounded nearly two weeks ago,” he replied. “I have been unable to keep up with Lord de Russe although I have tried. I was nearly killed yesterday because my reflexes are slow, so the duke asked me to return to Melesse and rest until he returns.”
Ellowyn was very concerned for him. “Where were you wounded?”
Magnus gingerly touched his right hip area. “Here,” he replied. “We were in a skirmish near the town of Niort and I took a bad blow. At least the poison seems to be diminishing now, but I am fairly useless in battle at the moment.”
Ellowyn watched his face carefully. “Is there a lot of battle now?”
They had reached the steps leading up into the keep. Magnus’ gaze fell on the heavy woods stairs, the rocky ground, and the massive keep. Anything but her face. When he finally spoke, it was quietly.
“Aye,” he replied. “There is a lot of it now.”
“More than usual?”
Magnus looked at her, then. “Edward has begun his push for supremacy,” he said.
“We have been pushing north from the Aquitaine for weeks now – burning, looting, and raiding, the likes of which I have never seen before. We will push all the way to Paris and finally conquer this country. It has begun.”
Ellowyn didn’t like the sound of that. “What has begun?”
“The beginning of the end for the monarchy of France.”
Apprehensive, she put a hand over her mouth in mounting horror at the very thought of what he was suggesting.
“Where is my husband?” she hissed. “What is he doing?”
“He is in the middle of it,” Magnus said quietly.
“The Angel of Death has been unleashed. Edward has driven the man to a frenzy and the l’ange noir is doing what he was bred to do.
He is killing and he is conquering, making a path for Edward to follow.
I have never seen anything like it in my life. ”
Ellowyn could feel the tears in her eyes. “What has happened that Edward would drive him so?” she asked. “Is my husband well?”
Magnus nodded. “He is well,” he replied.
“But he is like a man possessed. The prince has denied him repeated requests to return home for a short time, so he is quite angry, as you can imagine. He fights with the Earl of Warwick and various other lords, all of whom have tried to maintain calm counsel with him, but he is not a happy man these days. He wants to return home to you. He told me to tell you that he will see you very soon and he hopes you are of good health.”
She lost some of her apprehension and sadness as Magnus mentioned Brandt’s thoughts for her. The man was destroying a country for a greedy young prince and still, his thoughts were of her.
“I am quite well,” she said. “When do you suppose he will return?”
They reached the base of the steps leading up into the keep and Magnus came to a halt.
“Soon, Lady de Russe,” he said. “I cannot tell you exactly when, but soon.”
That seemed to satisfy Ellowyn for the most part.
She allowed Annabeth and Bridget to guide her up the stairs as Magnus slowly followed.
When she got to the top, she asked Bridget to assist Magnus because the man obviously wasn’t well.
Magnus was grateful for the assistance but kept a safe distance from the red-head because he knew St. Hèver would murder him in his sleep if he was forward with the woman.
As Ellowyn went to rest with Annabeth in attendance, Bridget and Mme.
Simpelace tended to Magnus and put the man to bed.
They discovered he was far worse off than he let on and the old chatelaine sent for the castle surgeon, a tiny rot of a man who had seen better days.
He wasn’t a particularly good physic but he was all they had.
A midwife tended Lady de Russe and she wouldn’t let the old man near the young mother.
While Magnus suffered through a wound cleaning, Ellowyn slept away the afternoon, her dreams filled with visions of Brandt.
*
The battle outside of Le Haye against Jean de Clermont, the Marshal of France, had been particularly bad.
Brandt and his army had held the front line of a very nasty skirmish in a rather sticky summer downpour, creating the epic mud he had warned Ellowyn about.
Brandt, however, had used it to his advantage.
De Clermont was arrogant and rash. Knowing this, Brandt had planted a line of knights and men in the distance for him to see while keeping the bulk of his forces, including his archers, hidden in the thick forests surrounding the fields just outside of Le Haye.
When de Clermont charged at the decoy army, Brandt brought his archers out of the woods and fired heavy volleys of arrows into the flanks of the charging horses.
The armor on the horses tended to be much weaker than the armor on the men, and the English arrows pierced the armor easily, bringing down hundreds of horses in a very short amount of time.
More than that, with the mud, they couldn’t maneuver very well or escape. They were like sitting ducks.
The results were devastating for the French.
Brandt unleashed his entire army on de Clermont’s foundering men and it was a slaughter from the onset.
Brandt himself was in the thick of the battle, using his massive broadsword to bring down heavily armed knights.
The Black Angel was in his element in the midst of a battle, slugging through the mud and rain, weakening de Clermont’s army to the point where the man eventually called a retreat. He vacated with heavy losses.
Brandt canvassed the battlefield with the rest of his men, looking for their own dead and wounded before moving to the French dead and wounded.
Those who were badly wounded were put to the blade and those who could walk or at least function were corralled as prisoners of war.
Brandt also had his men round up the chargers who hadn’t been mortally wounded in the arrow onslaught, and he ended up with some very fine horses that could be healed.
Those who were too badly injured were more mercifully put down than their human counterparts.
With their booty of horses and a victory for the prince, Brandt and his eight hundred men retreated to Edward’s encampment near Chavigny, east of Poitiers.
Brandt had secured a massive moated castle for Edward’s use and an enormous English and Gascon base camp had been erected around it.
As they approached from the north at sunset, the entire area around the castle was glowing with campfires and the air smelled like cooking meat.
Crossing the rebuilt drawbridge, the one that replaced the original bridge that Brandt had burned in the siege, Brandt couldn’t remember feeling so weary or so disillusioned.
He hadn’t seen Ellowyn in nearly two months and he felt his need for her in every pore of his body.
He was so desperate to see her that he couldn’t even think straight, so after the success with de Clermont, he had made the decision to return to Melesse with or without Edward’s approval.
He was tired of fighting. He just wanted to see his wife.
Chateau des Eveques was one of the biggest castles Brandt had ever seen.
Inhabited by the Bishops of Chavigny, it hadn’t been a difficult thing to invade it.
It was beautifully protected and built to withstand sieges, but the bishops and their somewhat aged ecclesiastical army was no match for the Black Angel.
He burned the gates and breached the gatehouse in less than four hours.