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Limousin – April, 1177

 

IN HIS SIXTEENTH year, Guy of Gisburne knew for the first time that he was about to die.

He was no stranger to death. He had certainly seen enough of it for his intellect to grasp that it was often a real and immediate threat – a hovering, everpresent possibility. But what he encountered on this day was something new, something more. It was the absolute certainty that, in that moment, his end was upon him and his existence on earth was about to be snuffed out.

When they rode into the sheltered courtyard of the farm, he was feeling the sad euphoria following his first taste of defeat. The farmhouse where they had retreated to lick their wounds seemed to him an oasis – a sprawl of a building sheltered by large and ancient trees, miraculously untouched by the events of recent months. Dismounting, he and the other squires set about feeding and watering the horses and seeing to the needs of their knights. All were exhausted. But many had the same, strangely desperate feeling of joy at having survived. In some, it manifested as a slightly manic good humour. There was banter between the older squires – usually at the expense of the younger. The usual social division that existed amongst the squires – between the French-speaking sons of the wealthy nobles, and the small band of poorer, English-speaking boys who were habitually put upon by their loftier peers – was today forgotten.

Among them, however, one stood apart. His name was Eadwyn, squire to a knight named William of Tempsford. Gisburne watched out of the corner of his eye as the boy – not much younger than he – tended to his master’s horse. Sir William had not been on it – not since the routing of the army at Malemort. It was, Gisburne knew, almost a certainty that his master was dead, and that the squire now was without a knight. Gisburne was sure someone would take him under their wing, though. That was the way of things. For now, however, no one seemed keen to look him in the eye.

While de Gaillon and the knights took up residence in the farmhouse, the squires camped down wherever they could. Gisburne had been lucky. He had been with a large, rowdy group that taken over the small barn across from the main building. The others – mostly English, mostly poor – would have to make do with whatever shelter they could find outside.

The barn had the sharp tang of dead mouse about it, but he was too dog-tired to care. It was shelter, and peace, and safety. It had a bed of straw and it reminded him of home. For now, nothing else mattered.

It was not Gisburne’s first battle in support of his knight. De Gaillon was in the service of a petty baron who had pledged support to Duke Richard, and for almost a year now had been engaged in bringing other, more rebellious factions within the Angevin realms into line. Very soon, it had become clear to the young squire that his childhood notions of war were entirely wrong. When he had imagined battle as a child – stomach down on the mud of the yard, using acorns and twigs for soldiers – he had pictured two armies drawn up against each other in impressive formation; each of a single mind and purpose, charging in response to the heroic cries of their generals, and one side being swept before the other in the epic clash, before finally fleeing the field as the cheers of the victorious rang in their ears. It was an image of discipline and order – in which, through titanic struggle, a wider sense of order was restored.

There was indeed discipline amongst the knights and soldiers with whom he had served. A more powerful, palpable discipline than he could ever have imagined – made all the more immediate by the threat of chaos that constantly snapped at its heels. He now knew – because he had seen them up close, had looked into their death-haunted eyes – that those impressive ranks maintained their shape only by the continual exertion of an iron will. He had also seen that will fail. He had seen armies lose structure, command, sense of direction. He had participated in victories that seemed more like defeats, had been in skirmishes where he no longer knew which side was which or what bearing its outcome had on the wider battle – if it had any. He had been in situations so hectic that it had not even been possible for him to tell whether they ended in victory or defeat, or indeed what the difference was between the two. Afterwards, when the smoke cleared, Gilbert de Gaillon would explain to him how and why they had won. Then, it would seem to make sense once more.

But today, he had observed something quite different. It was not just the defeat of an army. It was the collapse of all order.

Every mile Gisburne was able put between himself and that morning’s disaster was a relief – one so deep, so all-pervading, that it seemed to throb within him like a longing. He was in no doubt that, somewhere back there, the dreadful conflagration still raged. Thinking of those grim, life-sapped figures – their tarnished, blood-drenched weapons, the dark look in their eyes like lamps gone out – his heart ached with gratitude at being alive. At feeling alive, at being vital amongst those walking corpses. On the road back, he had even caught himself muttering the words “Thank you, thank you, thank you...” over and over in time with the pounding of his horse’s hooves upon the dry mud road. To whom or what this gratitude was directed, he had no clear idea. He had never spoken aloud to God in his life, nor had any sense that anything out there would listen to his pleas. But today, the need to express it – even to a blank, indifferent universe – was urgent and overwhelming. And sometimes, perhaps, expressing it was enough.

Not a word was uttered between them as they rode. And yet, as mile piled upon mile with no slackening of pace, that relief was magnified by a further realisation. If this small band of battle-hardened knights – men who he had known eat and even sleep whilst conflict raged nearby – had felt the need to retreat this far, then the horrors they’d left behind must be terrible indeed. Gisburne felt vindicated by it. Less alone in his fears, and more connected to the men he so respected. It was one of those moments when he began to believe he could be one of them.

But it brought, too, a kind of creeping dread.

It was a dread founded on no one simple, graspable object – nothing that could be contained or defined. It was a dread of madness. Of a world infected by chaos. Of a dark creature that had been loosed upon it – murky, shifting, insubstantial, but a monster all the same – one that could not be tamed or destroyed, and which would stalk him to the ends of the earth.

That was what he had seen when their army had been routed at Malemort. It was not so much the battle that had horrified Gisburne – though that was bloody and bitter enough. It was the chaos that came after.

In his training, Gisburne had been schooled in much more than the practical techniques of fighting. He had also learned of the many types of men who engaged in it – the components of an army. There was the knight, of course – the model of courage and honourable conduct. The archer – low in social status, but of such strategic importance that he could sway a battle. The serjeant – a respected fighting man said to be worth half a knight, but often, in the thick of close combat, worth much more. There were endless divisions and subdivisions, encompassing all classes, from the loftiest prince to the most lowly footsoldier.

In his rather more intense education on the battlefield, he had learned about another kind of fighting man. The mercenary. Although anyone from a knight to an infantryman might be a mercenary, and the practicalities of combat were exactly the same for them as for anyone else, they were a separate species – one that made young Gisburne, a knight aspirant, uneasy. He was uneasy with the concept of fighting for pay. He was uneasy with the mockery this made of the concept of loyalty. And, when he finally encountered them, he was uneasy with the natures of the men themselves. Some were men who had lost all notion of honour, if they ever had it. Others were victims of ill fortune – outcast by their community, or forced to make a living by the only means they knew how. A few, he was sure, were probably criminals. Yet, even amongst their own kind, there were classes who were regarded with suspicion, or contempt, or fear.

Most terrifying of all he had enountered were the “rotten”. Gisburne didn’t know what the nickname meant, nor how it had been acquired. But it seemed fitting enough.

His first sight of the army of Brabançon mercenaries fighting for Richard under the command of William of Cambrai stayed with him forever. The “rotten” were protected from head to foot in leather jerkins, armed with staves and weapons of steel and iron. When not hired by kings or dukes, they went about in bands of thousands and reduced monasteries, villages and cities to ashes. None could stop them. None dared. They had no fear. Believing it no sin, they committed violence and adultery, openly proclaiming there was no God. Fugitive rebels, false clerks, renegade monks and all who had forsaken God joined them. These were the men who, on this day, had formed the greater part of Richard’s army.

Malemort should have been a simple action: the suppression of a rebellious population. But such was the wrath of the citizens that they smashed Richard’s assault. When William of Cambrai – leader of the “rotten” for the past ten years – had been killed, the cohesion of his army evaporated. And there was Hell on earth.

When he was ten years old, Gisburne had shot an arrow at a wasps’ nest that hung high in a tree at the edge of the pasture. His father had repeatedly warned him away from the spot. But he was lost in a game, shouting out commands to his imaginary army and issuing threats to their enemies. He cursed haughtily at the wasps and fired an impulsive shot. The last thing had he expected was for it to hit. But not only had it done so, it had knocked the whole nest to the ground. He remembered being incapacitated by a kind of cold dread, standing rooted to the spot as a furious, buzzing cloud rose from the vibrating, papery ball. The sound made him feel sick. But as he looked on in horror, he began to realise that the wasps swarming about the nest were paying him as little attention as they would a tree or gatepost. He was a little distance from it – and, in his state of shock, he had remained completely still. Perhaps it was this that had saved him. The thought paralysed him further. Every muscle tense, he watched for what seemed a lifetime, unable to move, the hectic army wheeling about the air above the besieged nest until its armoured soldiers finally began to settle, regrouping, repairing, crawling all over its surface, obscuring it in a seething, shining mass of buzzing black and yellow.

It was then that the idea came into his head. When a knight was down, he was vulnerable. That was when you dealt the death blow. You should not flinch from it. The thought terrified him. But as he stood, the compulsion to act on it grew. He fought to overcome that fear – to conquer it, and to conquer his enemy. Thinking these things, he drew the wooden sword from his belt, raised it high over his right shoulder, and crept towards the nest.

For another agonising moment he stood over the heaving, poisonous globe, uncertain whether he could do the deed, yet unable to go back, wasps whining about his head.

Before he knew it had happened, his will had reconnected with his muscles. The sword crashed down. The nest split in two. Black beads of venomous rage exploded in every direction. He fled, the throb of mad fury behind him – ran and ran until his legs could take no more, until the angry whir of vibrating air had faded into distance – and, with his heart thumping against his chest, flung himself into a cornfield and collapsed in a heap. He lay there, panting hoarsely, gradually becoming aware of the dozen or so stings on his arms. He laughed at that – at the boldness of his victory, the genius of his escape – and began to wonder how long wasps might hold a grudge. If they could recognise him. If they would come after him.

A long time after, he crept back to the battlefield. He was not prepared for what he found. It seemed the colony had gone insane, attacking anything they could find. He found dozens half-dead with their stingers stuck in pine cones, in the gnarled bark of trees, in the nearby bulrushes. Hundreds floated on the surface of the pond about a trio of dead frogs. Not far from the nest, he found a grass snake writhing, a few clinging, deranged berserkers still stabbing at it. Further out, on the grass, stiff and contorted, a crow lay dead, more of the striped creatures stuck to its blue-black feathers like jewels. And everywhere on the ground, others crawled, exhausted, their purpose lost, their lives spent. Only the nest itself was completely free of them. It lay, burst open like a conquered castle, utterly abandoned, as if now cursed – a shattered relic. No birds sang. But there was a stranger sound. In the next field, his chestnut pony, maddened by the crazed insects stinging its head and eyes, had careered into the fence and impaled iself. It lay groaning and close to death.

Gisburne lied to his father. The nest had fallen, he said. To his surprise, his father took it calmly. Years later, he learned that the old man had seen the arrow embedded in the tree bough – where it remained ever after – and had guessed exactly what had happened. But he was simply glad that it was only the pony, and not his son, that had died.

His father had told him that, most likely, the king of the nest had perished, and, leaderless, they had gone mad. The horror of the destruction that he had unleashed haunted him long after.

Today, it came back to him afresh. He had watched as the mercenary army had been smashed open, its furious survivors dispersed. The images of destruction that followed burned in his brain.

As he attended de Gaillon at that night’s meal, he had been finally moved to ask a question which had long troubled him, but which he had thought too stupid to put into words. “What is the difference between victory and defeat?”

De Gaillon almost laughed – the grim, ironic laugh that emerged when things were so bad they were absurd, and which, bit by bit, was becoming the only laugh he had. “You’re more tired after a defeat,” he said, with no expression in his voice. Then he snapped a morsel of meat from his knife point, chewed on it with little relish, and added: “But both can kill you.” He forced himself to swallow.

Gisburne was surprised by the cynicism. De Gaillon was a realist – sometimes, brutally so – but he was not one for giving up. Not ever. After a time, perhaps aware that his reply was inadequate, he sighed and paused in his eating again. “What a battle really is,” he said, pointing with his knife, “is a world brought to the brink of chaos. The purpose in fighting a battle – and the primary objective of a knight – is to bring it to a conclusion, to restore order, as rapidly and decisively as possible. To establish peace. The ultimate enemy is not the one who stands opposite you on the field. It is in here.” At this, he tapped the side of his head with the blade of the eating knife. “And it is out there.” Here, he gestured all around. “It is the chaos that threatens to overrun us when our guard is down. The enemy of peace. The enemy of happiness.”

De Gaillon had made similar pronouncements before. At the time, Gisburne had not fully understood them. But today, he did.

It was not long before Gisburne realised the ghastly mistake he had made in his choice of bed. The straw that had seemed inviting from a distance revealed itself to be musty and thick with crumbling rat droppings. With the doors closed, and nowhere for it to go, the acrid stench of decay that seemed to seep out of the creaking fabric of the barn concentrated and closed about them with sickening intensity. Something had died in here, and was still here – a mouse, a rat, perhaps something bigger. The boys outside in the ragged tents – or even just sleeping in the open of the cool night air – had by far the better bed.

But none complained or made a move. He certainly would not be the first to crack, the first to admit defeat. He’d had enough of defeat today. And besides, his own flesh was too exhausted to answer his commands. And so he lay, aching, his heart thumping, his brain teeming – almost feverish – until finally he drifted off to the chorus of snorting and shuffling, the reek of sweat and dead rodent in his nostrils.

He could not be sure what woke him. Later, he supposed it must have been the sound of the barn door being opened. It might have been the light itself. In the dark of the night, the cool glow – of a moon almost full – seemed startlingly bright in the part-open doorway. He blinked sticky, blurry eyes, not wanting to stir any more than necessary. The moonlight formed a white halo about something in the doorway – a figure, in silhouette, standing motionless. Even before he could properly focus his eyes, he recognised the shape: a knight. The helm and armour were unmistakable. In the figure’s hand, a sword, unsheathed. Gisburne forced himself up on one elbow, his brain telling him to wake – but something terribly wrong about the scene, something definite but as yet indefinable, made his heart shrink and his limbs weak.

All at once, the knight-figure raised the sword and a wavering voice rose to fill the thick silence within the barn.

“Veni, creator spiritus!”

The whole room seemed to shift as one – bodies jerking into life, unfolding and disentangling from themselves and each other as the reedy, uncertain tones seemed to gather strength. Gisburne had immediately recognised the hymn so beloved of knights and crusaders – the call to the holy spirit to fill the soul, to steel the body for battle. He looked on, baffled, as the figure stepped in amongst them, and one of the older squires nearest to the door – Gisburne recognised him as Jonas – struggled to his knees in gruff indignation. Then the impossible happened. The sword swung and struck the still kneeling squire on the neck. Gisburne heard metal bite into bone, felt something wet strike his face. The squire jolted violently, legs straightening in a ghastly convulsion, and collapsed back onto his fellows with a horrid gurgling sigh, his head – Gisburne could see, even in silhouette – at a disconcerting angle.

All Hell broke loose.

There were shouts of alarm as bodies surged and limbs flailed, each boy trying to clamber over the others, some still bewildered from sleep. Gisburne struggled to gain his feet – was jostled and elbowed in the side of his head – but stood in time to see the sword fall again. And again. There were cries of agony now. The blade swung about, striking flesh and bone and teeth, sweeping closer as the wavering voice was raised in song, struggling to drown out the desperate cries of the boys. Gisburne felt the air move as the sword whooshed past his face. He tried to step back, found he could not. And then he knew. He would die here, in this barn. He would never see his father again. All things not yet done or said were hopeless dreams that he had mere seconds to contemplate.

The blade swung through the air. Something struck his head. He fell, a strange calm descending as he did so. It was inevitable. Unfair – wretched – but inevitable. All was lost. Now he would know if there was a God.

But he did not die.

There was a muffled sound, as if his ears were stuffed with cotton. A singing note in his head. Then a blaze of light. One eye registered nothing – but the other saw clearly.

Gilbert de Gaillon had burst in, half-dressed, sword slung about him, mace in one hand, torch in the other, his face more gaunt and skull-like than ever in its flame. The attacker turned and froze, his voice dying away, the light revealing the full horror of the scene – blood and gore everywhere about the barn’s filthy floor, bodies hacked, some moving, some now no more than meat for the flies, boys of all ages crushed and cowering against the barn’s interior, and in the centre of it all – dressed in his lost knight’s spare armour, the white surcoat spattered head to foot in blood – the wild-eyed, bereft figure of Eadwyn.

Without hesitating, de Gaillon struck him full force across the side of the head.

He spun full-circle and fell dead among the clumps of blood-sodden straw and rat bones, two of his teeth rattling against the far wall.

Gisburne put his hand to his head. The tip of the blade had caught his brow as it flew, and cut a vertical gash that parted his left eyebrow and the flesh beneath, blood blinding that eye. He blinked, sight returning. No more than a yard from him, one of the other squires fell to his knees, laughing. “Thank you!” he cried to the barn’s web-strewn rafters. “Thank you!”

“What are you doing?” barked de Gaillon with unexpected ferocity.

“I am giving thanks to God!” cried the lad. “God protected me. Now I know He loves me!”

With a sudden, gruff sound in his throat, de Gaillon clouted the boy with the back of his hand, sending him sprawling across the bloody floor.

“Imbecile!” he said. “Do you think God loved them any less?” He gestured towards the heaped, bloody bodies of his fallen comrades. “That they deserved this? If God protected the pious, then the world would be replete with good men and we could all lay down our swords. God is not so simple – and He certainly doesn’t waste His energies on the likes of you. Now get out of my sight.”

And he kicked the flabbergasted squire out of the door.

The hand that de Gaillon extended to him, that raised him up off the ground, was perhaps the most welcome human contact that Gisburne had ever known.

He knew, that day, that the natural order of the world was chaos, and that overcoming it lay in the hands of men.