Cruel as the Grave: 2 (The Queen's Man) by Penman Sharon

Author:Penman, Sharon [Penman, Sharon]
Language: eng
Format: azw3
ISBN: 9781781857052
Publisher: Head of Zeus
Published: 2013-09-15T16:00:00+00:00

William Marshal’s tent was sparsely furnished. He was a soldier first, a courtier second, and had only scorn for those who went off to war with all the comforts of home. The meal he offered up to Will, Justin, and Luke was plain fare, too, salted herring and round loaves of bread marked with God’s Cross and spiced wafers. The wine was excellent, though, and was poured freely as the evening advanced and the men sought in vain to resolve Justin’s dilemma.

“At the start of the siege, they made a few sallies out of a postern door to harry our men, but they’ve not ventured out in more than a week. Even if they try another foray, there’d be no way to sneak in through the postern. It is too well guarded.” Will paused to drink, then looked over at Justin with a regretful shrug. “That road leads nowhere, lad.”

So had all of the other proposals bandied around that night. Justin had been shy about offering suggestions of his own, for he had no battle experience to draw upon. But reticence was a luxury he could no longer afford. “My lords... I do not know if this would work, but if there was an exchange of wounded and dead, mayhap I could be one of them... ?” He read their silence as rejection and said, “I suppose that was a daft idea...”

“No, lad, actually it was a good one.” Marshal smiled approvingly at Justin. “But for it to work, we’d have to take one of the baileys first. Right now we have no bodies to barter—all their dead and wounded are still within the castle. I know, though, of a siege where a similar ruse was played, with great success...”

Memories were soon flowing as generously as the wine. William Marshal had passed most of his life in the saddle, sword in hand. He’d saved Queen Eleanor from an ambush by rebellious barons when not much older than Justin, had gained renown both in the brutal mêlées of the tourney and in the skirmishing and sieges of the Great Rebellion, the internecine civil war between Henry II and his sons. He’d gone on crusade to honour a promise to Eleanor’s dying son, where his exploits almost rivaled the tales told of Eleanor’s most celebrated son, the Lionheart. He’d known war in all its guises, and as the oil lamp sputtered and the hours ebbed away, he exercised a soldier’s bittersweet prerogative, talking of bygone battles and slain comrades, sharing those stories that had been swapped around army campfires since time immemorial.

He told them of his sojourn in the Holy Land and the constant turmoil in the Marches, and then he and Will began to trade legendary tales of sieges gone wrong. They told Luke and Justin of entire garrisons put to the sword when they refused to surrender, of treacherous guards bribed to let the enemy into their besieged cities, and accounts of suffering so great they had passed into myth.

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