Why was Bridget knew Brandt wouldn’t be away for too much longer. They had been counting the days. In fact, as she stood in the window watching the bailey below, a group of soldiers flooded in from the gatehouse. Because of the angle of the road and the trees surrounding it, it was often difficult to spot visitors to Melesse until they were upon them. Curious, Bridget peered closer to the worn-out group, suddenly realizing a knight from Brandt’s corps was with them. She recognized the charger.
“Magnus has returned,” she said, bolting away from the window. “He is in the bailey!”
Ellowyn was so startled that she jumped up, her knitting falling to the floor. “Is Brandt with him?”
She was rushing to the window with Annabeth on her heels. Bridget closed in on them and the three of them crowded around the window, straining to see the dusty bailey below. Ellowyn couldn’t see much now that the party had fully entered the bailey and, frustrated, she turned away.
“I am going to see Magnus,” she declared as she moved for the door. Then, she froze, eyes wide. “You do not suppose… Sweet Jesus, you do not suppose he is here to give me bad news?”
Annabeth and Bridget tried not to look fearful. Before they could reply, Ellowyn was bolting from the room and making haste towards the massive spiral staircase at the end of the hall that led to the first floor beyond. She was in a panic now, terrified that Magnus had come bearing news of Brandt’s injury or worse. By the time she reached the lower floor and fled to the keep entry, she was in tears.
Cooler heads prevailed with Annabeth and Bridget as they followed. They caught up to Ellowyn as she reached the entry and grasped her gently by the arms, stopping her panicked flight. By this time, most of the keep had been made aware of a knight’s return and even old Mme. Simpelace appeared. When she saw Ellowyn’s hysteria, she was naturally concerned.
“What is it?” she demanded. “Why is my lady so upset?”
Annabeth cast the woman a long look and shook her head, do not ask more. The old woman, silly and vindictive as she might be, took the hint. She may have been at odds with the ladies but she was not at odds with Ellowyn. She was genuinely concerned.
“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 s
ent 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.
Now, as he rode into the massive inner bailey that looked more like a neat and tidy cloister, his thoughts were of finding Edward. He had to make a report, which he planned to do, but at the end of that report, he would tell Edward that he would be returning to Melesse for a few weeks. He found himself growing increasingly edgy as he dismounted his charger and headed wearily for the hall, hoping that Edward was in a giving mood when he told him of the success with de Clermont. If the man wasn’t, and if he was unfortunate enough to deny Brandt’s wishes to go home, then he honestly couldn’t vouch for his reaction.
The great hall was built into the massive curtain wall of the chateau. Entering the cavernous chamber, Brandt was hit in the face by the heat and smell of it. It was cloying and uncomfortable. Removing his helm, he peeled back his hauberk because he was starting to sweat in the heat of the hall. There were quite a few people in the room, eating and milling about, and dogs were underfoot. He had to shove one out of his way as he made his way deeper into the hall.
“Brandt!”
He turned in the direction of the shout, seeing Edward standing at the table nearest the hearth. Brandt acknowledged the prince and made his way over to the table.
Edward was thrilled to see Brandt. Relatively tall like his great-grandfather, the young prince was slender but strong, with a head of dark-gold curls. At twenty and six years, he was young but extraordinarily experienced. Much of his training as a soldier had come from Brandt, and men like him, so the Prince of Wales had learned from the very best. As Brandt drew near, the prince reached out to grab his hand and shake it.
“I was told of your victory over de Clermont,” he said, excited. “My Angel of Death strikes again. Brilliant, my friend, truly. We are pleased.”
Brandt smiled weakly as he sat at the table and the prince began shouting for food. In little time, Brandt had an enormous trencher in front of him piled with well cooked beef and boiled carrots. He dug in without another word.
“You did what you set out to do,” Edward sat down beside him, watching him eat. “I never had a doubt that you would weaken de Clermont. We needed that, Brandt. You know this.”
Brandt nodded. “Our intelligence on de Clermont’s movements was correct,” he said, mouth full. “It was simply a matter of waiting for him. He played right into our hands.”
Edward was vastly pleased. “How many men would you say he lost?”
Brandt swallowed the bite in his mouth. “He must have had fifteen hundred men with him, but we felled several hundred. I would estimate when he retreated, he was down by half.”
“Excellent,” Edward said. He digested the victory, savored it, and collected his cup of wine. “You have been away for several days. Much has happened in that time, and your victory is a major contribution for our cause.”
Brandt looked up from his meat. “What has happened?”
Edward sipped his wine. “My dear friend, King Jean, has rallied his troops at Chartres,” he said, somewhat quietly. “As we speak, Suffolk, Salisbury, and Oxford are moving to reinforce my armies. Warwick is already here, as you know. I have received word from Jean that he wishes to discuss the situation to avoid what is sure to be a massive battle right here on this very spot. I want to move to Paris. He does not want me to move at all. It should be interesting here at Poitiers to say the least.”
Brandt considered the information. “How many men has the king rallied?”
“Our scouts tell us ten to twelve thousand.”
Brandt looked at him a moment before returning to his food. “They outnumber us.”
“Not by much.”
“Did you tell the king you would negotiate?”
“I told him we could speak but I do not negotiate.”
“When is this conference to occur?”
“By the end of the month. I have given no specific date.”
It was already the third week of the month. Brandt knew that if he was going to see his wife, he had to do it now. There was no time to waste. Too much was happening, building to what would surely be an explosion of epic proportions. He swallowed the bite in his mouth, took a long gulp of wine, and stood up.
“Then I am going to Melesse before these negotiations take place,” he told Edward, weaving wearily on his feet. “If King Jean truly has as many men as you say he does, and we sit here with seven thousand men at best, this conflict near Poitiers will come fast and furious. It could be devastating for us. If that is the case, I wish to see my wife before this battle to end al
l battles comes.”
He was already moving and Edward jumped up beside him, his hand on the man’s arm. “Wait,” he said urgently. “Brandt, you cannot go, not now. Did you not hear me? Jean is on our doorstep and….”
Brandt pulled his arm from the prince’s grip, cutting him off. “I heard you,” he said, his voice low and bordering on threatening. “I told you I am returning to Melesse. Make this conference with Jean at the end of the month and I will be back in time.”
Edward put both hands on him this time, the friendliness out of his expression. “You cannot go,” he said, his voice low. “I forbid it. I need you here.”
Brandt knew this moment would come. He had been expecting it, and he was prepared. Very calmly, he looked the prince in the eye.
“Edward,” he said, his voice so low that it was a growl. “I am going home and you cannot stop me. If you try, I will leave here, take my three thousand men with me, and fight for King Jean. You heard me correctly. I will take everything I have and side with the French. I have spent eleven years of my life doing everything you have ever asked of me and I do not like it when you deny me the small things I ask of you. At this moment, all I want to do is return to Chateau Melesse and see my wife. If you deny me, you will lose everything. Is this perfectly clear?”
Edward had a temper but he held it admirably. His jaw ticked, his face turned red, and his body tensed as if preparing for a fight. He wasn’t used to having his wants denied and he certainly wasn’t used to sharing someone he wholly depended on. He was possessive. But he also knew that what Brandt said was true. The man didn’t bluff.
“I will have you arrested if you try to leave now,” he muttered.
“Try it and there will be blood spilled everywhere. Is this truly what you wish?”