The Grail Quest Books 1-3: Harlequin, Vagabond, Heretic by Bernard Cornwell Read Free Book Online Page B

fool, the Earl thought, and shivered. He might not have minded the cold so much had the army been enjoying success, but for two months the English and their Breton allies had stumbled from failure to farce, and the six assaults on La Roche-Derrien had plumbed the depths of misery. So now the Earl had called a council of war to suggest one final assault, this one to be made that same evening. Every other attack had been in the forenoon, but perhaps a surprise escalade in the dying winter light would take the defenders by surprise. Only what small advantages that surprise might bring had been spoiled because Sir Simon's foolhardiness must have given the townsfolk a new confidence and there was little confidence among the Earl's war captains who had gathered under the yellow sailcloth.
    Four of those captains were knights who, like Sir Simon, led their own men to war, but the others were mercenary soldiers who had contracted their men to the Earl's service. Three were Bretons who wore the white ermine badge of the Duke of Brittany and led men loyal to the de Montfort Duke, while the others were English captains, all of them commoners who had grown hard in war. William Skeat was there, and next to him was Richard Totesham, who had begun his service as a man-at-arms and now led a hundred and forty knights and ninety archers in the Earl's service. Neither man had ever fought in a tournament, nor would they ever be invited, yet both were wealthier than Sir Simon, and that rankled. My hounds of war, the Earl of Northampton called the independent captains, and the Earl liked them, but then the Earl had a curious taste for vulgar company. He might be cousin to England's King, but William Bohun happily drank with men like Skeat and Totesham, ate with them, spoke English with them, hunted with them and trusted them, and Sir Simon felt excluded from that friendship. If any man in this army should have been an intimate of the Earl it was Sir Simon, a noted champion of tournaments, but Northampton would rather roll in the gutter with men like Skeat.
    'How's the rain?' the Earl asked.
    'Starting again,' Sir Simon answered, jerking his head at the tent's roof, against which the rain pattered fitfully.
    'It'll clear,' Skeat said dourly. He rarely called the Earl 'my lord', addressing him instead as an equal which, to Sir Simon's amazement, the Earl seemed to like.
    'And it's only spitting,' the Earl said, peering out from the tent and letting in a swirl of damp, cold air. 'Bowstrings will pluck in this.'
    'So will crossbow cords,' Richard Totesham interjected. Bastards,' he added. What made the English failure so galling was that La Roche-Derrien's defenders were not soldiers but townsfolk: fishermen and boatbuilders, carpenters and masons, and even the Blackbird, a woman! 'And the rain might stop,' Totesham went on, 'but the ground will be slick. It'll be bad footing under the walls.'
    'Don't go tonight,' Will Skeat advised. 'Let my boys go in by the river tomorrow morning.'
    The Earl rubbed the wound on his scalp. For a week now he had assaulted La Roche-Derrien's southern wall and he still believed his men could take those ramparts, yet he also sensed the pessimism among his hounds of war. One more repulse with another twenty or thirty dead would leave his army dispirited and with the prospect of trailing back to Finisterre with nothing accomplished. 'Tell me again,' he said.
    Skeat wiped his nose on his leather sleeve. 'At low tide,' he said, 'there's a way round the north wall. One of my lads was down there last night.'
    'We tried it three days ago,' one of the knights objected.
    'You tried the down-river side,' Skeat said. 'I want to go up-river.'
    'That side has stakes just like the other,' the Earl said.
    'Loose,' Skeat responded. One of the Breton captains translated the exchange for his companions. 'My boy pulled a stake clean out,' Skeat went on, 'and he reckons half a dozen others will lift or break. They're old oak trunks, he says,