move to intercept him and-What was that?”
Geoff had heard it, too, a muffled shout. Fulk de Barnham, one of Roger’s household knights, pointed off to his left. “It came from that alley.” Crossing the street, they peered into the alley, hands on sword hilts. Raising his lantern, Geoff saw enough to draw his weapon. He did not know the rights or wrongs of the fight, but he did not like the odds-three to one. As he moved forward, Roger and his companions followed; they might not share Geoff’s strong sense of chivalry, but they were not at all averse to ending the night with a brawl.
A young man had been backed against the wall. Bleeding and bruised, he was defending himself with a wooden stick, and getting the worst of it. But his assailants broke off the attack as soon as they realized they were no longer alone. One glance at the drawn swords and they fled toward the other end of the alley, disappearing into the night. Their victim slowly sank to his knees, gasping for breath. All Geoff could see of him was a thatch of bright hair, as yellow as primroses. “Are you hurt?” he asked, leaning over to touch the other’s shoulder. When he raised his head, Geoff saw that he was little more than a boy, fifteen, sixteen at most. His words came out in a rush, and Geoff guessed they were being thanked, but he had trouble understanding all that was being said, for he had a rudimentary grasp of English, and the boy’s East Anglican accent rendered his speech all but indecipherable.
Roger and his knights were far more fluent in English than Geoff, and they soon had the youth’s story. “He says his name is Ailwin,” Roger related, “and he was set upon by those cutthroats as he left the alehouse up the street. They saw him as easy prey, I suppose, a lad alone, fresh from the country. Look what he was using to fend them off.”
Geoff shone his lantern upon a long wooden handle with a shorter, stouter stick attached at the end by a leather thong. It seemed vaguely familiar to him, and after a moment he recognized it as a flail, a farming implement used to thresh wheat. “Why would he be wandering around St Edmundsbury with a flail? The last time I looked, there were no crops to be harvested in the center of town!”
Ailwin was struggling to get to his feet and Fulk gave him a hand, while Roger put a few more questions to him. “He says he came here to fight the Flemings. The flail was the only weapon he had.”
Geoff almost laughed at the notion of this green farm lad going off to war with a flail, but stifled it in time, not wanting to hurt the boy’s feelings. Roger was speaking again to Ailwin and when he glanced over at Geoff, his face was bleak. “Leicester’s Flemings burned his village and killed his family.”
They looked at one another and then at Ailwin. “We cannot leave him bleeding here in the alley,” Geoff said finally. “Tell him to come with us back to the abbey. At least he’ll have a bed for the night.”
“The shire is full of Ailwins,” Roger said. “Leicester has much to answer for.” He did not add the words “as does my father.” But the unspoken thought seemed to hang in the air between them, and Geoff could only hope that the day of reckoning would soon be coming-for all their sakes.
Geoff could not dismiss Ailwin from his mind, though, and the next morning while breaking his fast with his granduncles and the Earl of Gloucester, he told them about the boy’s rash quest. “I cannot blame him for wanting to strike back at the men who killed his family,” he concluded. “But God help him if he should actually run into some of the Flemish routiers!”
Gloucester looked at Geoff blankly, unable to understand why they were wasting time discussing the fate of a runaway peasant, but Ranulf and Rainald were intrigued by the image he’d conjured up-a country ceorl wielding his flail in the interest of justice.
“There’s no use trying to talk the lad out of it,” Rainald asserted, spearing a large piece of sausage with his knife. “Better he tags along after the army than to go roaming off on his own. There’s safety in numbers, after all.”
“Rainald is right.” Ranulf helped himself to a chunk of freshly baked bread. “If he is set upon vengeance, he’ll not be discouraged by anything you say. He has a just grievance, after all, and-”
“‘A just grievance,’” Gloucester echoed in astonishment. “You are talking about a lowborn villein, a drudge, a…” He paused, groping for words, and finally settled upon “nithing,” an English term of contempt. “He is no more capable of understanding the concept of honor or a blood-debt than my favorite lymer hound! What you should have done, Geoff, was report him to the sheriff, for if he is bound to the land, he has no right to run off like this and ought to be punished.”
Rainald and Ranulf looked at the younger man, marveling that their beloved brother Robert could have sired such a son. Geoff had neither their patience nor their long experience in dealing with Gloucester’s bad manners, and he set down his ale cup so abruptly that liquid sloshed over the rim. “That makes perfect sense,” he said, with enough sarcasm to have done his father proud. “We are facing a rebel army that is far larger than ours, an army made up of Flemish routiers eager to turn all of England into a charnel house. So of course our first priority ought to be tracking down and disciplining a lad who may or may not be a runaway villein.”
Gloucester scowled, but when Geoff showed no signs of being intimidated by his disapproval, he decided it was not worth his while to engage in a public quarrel with this insolent stripling. Getting to his feet, he made what he hoped was a dignified departure, ruing the day that a king’s sinful spawn must be treated as if he were lawfully begotten, on equal footing with those born in holy wedlock. And his contempt for Geoff was not in the least diluted by the fact that his own father had been a royal bastard, for Gloucester had never been one to let his reasoning be undermined by facts.
As he walked away, Rainald leaned over and punched Geoff playfully on the arm. “Well done, lad. Now we can enjoy our meal in peace. Our prospects are not as dire, though, as you made out. It is true Leicester has three thousand Flemings under his command, but they are more like a pack of hungry dogs than a true army.”
“But routiers are feared the length and breadth of Christendom,” Geoff protested. “Look how easily my father’s Brabancons overcame the Breton rebels.”
“Fortunately for us,” Ranulf said, “Leicester’s routiers are not as battle-seasoned as Harry’s soldiers. He hired them on the cheap, taking any men willing to sign on, and he was in such a rush that he had no time to separate the wheat from the chaff. A goodly number of his so-called routiers were weavers, bedazzled by the prospects of rich plunder in England. They’ve been stealing anything that was not nailed down on their marches, singing a cheery little ditty, ‘Hop, hop, Wilekin, England is mine and thine.’ But they’ve not yet been battle-tested, and it remains to be seen how they’ll respond when they are.”
Although he would not have admitted it, Geoff had been troubled by the disparity in size between the two armies, and he was heartened now to think Leicester’s Flemings were not as formidable as people feared. “We’ve been lucky, too,” he commented, “in the quality of the battle commanders we’ve been facing. The French king and Leicester: who’d fear either of those stout-hearts on the field?”
Ranulf and Rainald were expressing their amused agreement when there was a stir across the hall. As they turned toward the sound, they saw Roger Bigod hastening in their direction. “Our scouts have just ridden in,” he reported breathlessly. “Leicester is on the move. He is making ready to ford the River Lark north of the town!”
Roger Bigod had been given the honor of bearing the standard of St Edmund, and as they rode out of the town’s Northgate, Geoff’s eyes kept returning to that sacred banner, flaring as the wind swirled it, proclaiming to all that they were marching under the saint’s protection. The sky above them was a brilliant blue, a harvest sky, and the October sun spangled the countryside in dazzling golden light, burnishing the autumn foliage so that the trees seemed on fire, ablaze with leafy flames of yellow and scarlet. Geoff had never been so aware of the physical world around him, so grateful for the beauty that the Almighty had bestowed upon them. But if his senses had been honed as sharp as his sword, his emotions were soaring like St Edmund’s banner. He was caught up in the surging thrill of the hunt, eager to test his prowess and his courage, to make his father proud and see the rebel earl brought low. His nerves were vibrating like Welsh harp strings, but there was no fear in him, not yet. On such a day, defeat was impossible to imagine.
The Earl of Leicester had made a fateful decision to cross the River Lark at the hamlet of Fornham St Genevieve just four miles from the royal army at St Edmundsbury. Henry’s commanders could not understand why he’d chosen to take such a risk, could only be grateful for it. They’d been ready to move as soon as they received confirmation from their scouts of the earl’s whereabouts, and they raced north with the stirring words of the aged Earl of Arundel ringing in their ears, “Let us strike them for the honor of God and St Edmund!”
When they were within sight of the rebel force, not a man among them doubted that the Almighty was on their side. They’d caught Leicester in the very act of fording the river, and while his knights had already reached the west bank, his Flemish foot soldiers were still massing on the east bank, his army split in two by the rushing waters
