“No.” Hal’s throat was tight; he swallowed with difficulty. “The Count of Evreux reminded Louis that the townspeople do not yet know of their reprieve. He said we could take advantage of their ignorance, insist that they surrender as agreed upon.”
“That makes no sense. Do they expect King Henry to watch placidly as this takes place?”
“They…” Hal swallowed again, aware of a sour taste in his mouth. “The Bishop of Sens and the Counts of Blois and Champagne are going to my father tonight, asking for a day’s truce, and promising that Louis will meet with him on the morrow to negotiate an end to the siege. They will then summon the townsmen, tell them that their time has expired and they must surrender the town or their hostages will be hanged. My father’s army is encamped at Conches, about ten miles north of here, so by the time he learns that he has been deceived, it will be too late. The town will be ours.”
Will’s was an easy face to read, and Hal’s fair skin reddened. “Do not look at me that way. This was not my doing!”
“Did you protest?”
“Yes…” Hal ducked his head in embarrassment. “They laughed at me, Will. Louis’s brother and Simon de Montfort told me that I was still learning the lessons of war, that I was not seasoned enough to understand. They pointed out that guile is always an acceptable tactic, that ambushes are not dishonorable, that if the enemy can be tricked, so much the better. They reminded me that the first tenet of warfare is to lay waste the land, to burn the crops in the fields and torch the villages, to starve the enemy into submission. They said this was merely another stratagem…”
“And did you believe them?”
“No,” Hal confessed, “I did not. What they mean to do…it is not honorable, is it, Will?”
He looked so unhappy and vulnerable at that moment that Will felt a protective pang. Hal was his king, his companion, his comrade in arms, but there were times when he seemed like a younger brother, too, one in need of guidance and counsel. The answer he gave Hal, though, was utterly uncompromising, brutally honest.
“It is more than dishonorable. It is despicable and cowardly, and the French king will carry the shame of it to his grave.”
The Earl of Leicester had a castle at Breteuil, midway between Conches and Verneuil, but he’d fled at the approach of Henry’s army and Henry ordered the castle razed to the ground. He chose Breteuil as the site for his meeting with the French king, meaning to use the smoldering rubble to convey a message in and of itself. But the morning dragged on, and Louis still had not arrived.
Henry was stalking back and forth, casting frequent glances up at the sun, almost directly overhead by now. Willem and the Earl of Pembroke had just made a wager as to how much longer Henry would be willing to wait. Sauntering over to the king, he joked, “Seems like Louis overslept. I’d be willing to fetch a mangonel from Conches if you want to give him a wakeup he’ll not soon forget.”
“Do not tempt me, Willem.” Henry waved aside a wineskin being offered by one of his squires and shaded his eyes for another look at the sun. “Louis is prone to inconvenient attacks of conscience and remorse. Mayhap he is suffering from one this morn and is ashamed to face me after-Jesus God!”
Willem spun around, his eyes following Henry’s gaze. Billowing black clouds of smoke were spiraling up into the sky, coming from the south, from Verneuil.
Geoff had never seen a sight as sorrowful as the town of Verneuil. Much of it had been destroyed in the siege, and the one surviving ward was in flames. A few men were trying to drag tables and bedding to safety, and a few others had formed a bucket brigade in a futile attempt to fight the rapidly spreading fires. But most had gathered in small groups, watching in stunned silence as their homes and shops were consumed. Geoff was close enough now to see bodies lying in the street, and nearby a woman with a torn, bloodied skirt knelt in the dirt, weeping as she clung to a small, terrified child. The stench of death overhung the town, a sickening, rank smell of blood, urine, fear, and burning flesh, and Geoff would later mark this August Thursday in God’s Year 1173 as the day when he’d forever surrendered any youthful illusions about the glory and majesty of war.
The arrival of armed men in their midst panicked some of the townspeople, but others were too dazed to react, staring at Henry and his knights with hollow, empty eyes. But as the wind caught the king’s red and gold banner, one man stumbled forward to clutch at Henry’s stirrup. Gazing down into that upturned face, streaked with smoke and tears, Henry recognized him as the mercer who’d carried to Rouen the town’s plea for rescue, and he swung from the saddle.
“I tried to stop them, my liege, from opening the gates. I kept telling them that you’d sworn you were coming to our aid. But they feared for our hostages and they thought they could save themselves by surrender.” The man’s mouth had begun to tremble. “We did what the French demanded, but it availed us naught. They’d promised we’d not be harmed. Then their soldiers swarmed into the town like mad dogs, stealing whatever they could carry away. We’d not hidden our women, thinking they’d be safe. The hellspawn paid no heed to the pleading of respectable wives and mothers, dragged them from their houses into the street as if they were whores, and when their men tried to protect them, they were slain. And then they set the fires, so many that there was no hope of putting them out. Why did they do that, sire? Why did the French king not keep his word?”
Henry shook his head, so angry he could not trust himself to speak.
Willem had joined them, not wanting to interrupt the mercer’s anguished account of his town’s betrayal, but now he touched Henry’s arm, gesturing toward the castle. “The drawbridge is coming down.” As they watched, the gates were swung open and men came racing out, with the castellan, Hugh de Lacy, in the lead.
“Thank God you are here, my liege!” Gasping for breath, de Lacy fell to his knees before Henry, as much an act of exhaustion as one of obeisance. “But if only you’d come a few hours sooner. We could do nothing, had to watch from the battlements as the townsmen surrendered and that treacherous French Judas turned the town over to his soldiers for their sport. But we were dumbfounded when we saw what was happening in the French camp. They were pulling out, leaving behind tents, carts, livestock, even their mangonels and other siege engines. We’d expected them to launch another attack on the castle, and instead they were retreating!”
Getting stiffly to his feet, de Lacy winced, for he’d incurred several minor wounds in the defense of the castle. “It makes sense now, though. They saw your banners, my liege, and fled like rabbits, the craven whoresons. They’ll never get over the shame of this-”
De Lacy broke off, for his king had whirled and was running for his horse. The other knights were quick to follow. Watching as they galloped away from the burning ruins of Verneuil, the castellan shouted after them, “Catch the bastards! Make them pay!”
They did not return to Verneuil until nightfall. The castle garrison came out to greet them, but asked no questions. The torch-fire playing upon the weary, grim faces told them all they needed to know. “We’ve run out of most of our provisions,” de Lacy said to Henry, “but what we have is yours, my liege. We would be honored to give you shelter tonight.”
“That is kind of you, Sir Hugh,” Willem interjected, “but we will continue on to Conches where we left our supply wagons.” He wanted to get Henry away from Verneuil, knowing the sight of the town’s charred remains would only salt his wounds, but Henry gave him a quelling look and shook his head.
“No,” he said curtly. “We stay here tonight.”
Willem knew better than to argue. Taking de Lacy aside, he told him that they’d overtaken the French army’s rearguard and killed those they’d caught. But Louis and his knights had gotten across the border to safety. “For now,” Willem added coldly, and then told the castellan of the day’s treachery. De Lacy was outraged. If the town had been taken by storm, the French would have been justified in pillaging, raping, even burning it to the ground. But once they’d made a truce, they were honor-bound to keep it. And the deceit they’d practiced upon Henry was such a flagrant violation of the conventions of war that it threatened the very foundations of their society. Sworn agreements of respite and truce were like the Peace of God, ways that the Church and kings sought to avoid guerre a outrance — war to the extreme, to the death.
When men heard of the French king’s shameless duplicity, de Lacy snarled, they would not be willing to serve such a lord. Willem hoped that was so, but he had a more jaundiced view of his fellow men and their flexible concept of honor. “This,” he said tiredly, “will be remembered as a day of infamy.” And he went in search of Henry.
