A Flight of Arrows by A.J. MacKenzie (mobi reader android .txt) 📕

‘Yes!’ Despenser spun around, pointing at Roger Mortimer. ‘I am accusing you, you treacherous bastard! My father, my grandfather, my great-grandfather have all been butchered by Mortimers! Are you trying to add a fourth generation to the tally?’

Mortimer had gone pale in the firelight. ‘Don’t be ridiculous, Despenser. I can’t shoot. I don’t even own a bow.’

‘No, but your friends do. Gurney! You have a longbow, don’t you? I’ve seen you at the butts with your men, shooting like some damned peasant.’ Despenser threw the arrow down at Gurney’s feet. ‘Is that yours?’

‘No,’ said Gurney, and his voice was cold. ‘Be very careful what you say, Sir Hugh.’

‘Or what? Or I too will end up with a poker up my arse? Or with an arrow in my back, like Bray?’

‘Sir Roger is right. You are ridiculous,’ Gurney said. ‘Bray was my kinsman and I would never have harmed him. Seek your enemies elsewhere, Sir Hugh. You have plenty to choose from, after all.’

‘Enough,’ said Merrivale.

Silence fell. The herald walked forward until he stood between Gurney and Despenser, his ornate tabard glittering in the firelight. ‘Must we repeat that dismal scene at Valognes, when you embarrassed your lord the prince and humiliated yourselves?’

No one answered. ‘Sir Hugh, if you have evidence that either Sir Roger or Sir Matthew was behind an attempt to assassinate you, then lay it before his lordship the constable, whose duty it is to oversee discipline. Have you such evidence?’

Despenser said nothing.

‘Then I think you should all retire and get some sleep,’ Merrivale said. ‘At dawn we advance on Caen.’

Burghersh cleared his throat. ‘You heard what the herald said, gentlemen.’

Despenser spun on his heel and walked away. Swaying a little, the prince returned to the pavilion. The others dispersed, talking in low voices. Merrivale waited until they had gone, and turned to Burghersh.

‘I know what you are thinking,’ the prince’s tutor said before Merrivale could speak. ‘Why do I let them get out of hand? Why don’t I exercise more control over the prince?’

‘I have a feeling you are going to tell me.’

‘The king’s orders. This campaign will turn his son from a boy into a man, he says. But the prince has to be given his head and allowed to make his own decisions.’

‘Including bringing those who are mortal enemies into his household and expecting them to work together in amity?’

Burghersh nodded. ‘He must make his own mistakes, and learn from them. In his Grace’s words, “let the boy win his spurs”.’

‘A harsh approach to fatherhood,’ Merrivale observed.

‘But not necessarily the wrong one. The king is wiser than he sometimes appears. And he has been a better father to his son than his own father ever was to him.’

‘Of that there can be little doubt,’ the herald agreed. ‘Good night, Sir Bartholomew.’

Just as the fires began to die down, a night wind came, fanning them back into life once more. Merrivale found Gurney standing outside his tent staring into a night ripped apart by flames. ‘What do you see?’ the herald asked quietly.

‘The pits of hell.’

That might be a metaphor, Merrivale thought, or it might not. ‘May I ask you a couple of questions, Sir Matthew?’

‘If you wish.’

‘You said Bray was your kinsman. How were you related?’

‘We were cousins,’ Gurney said. ‘His mother was my aunt.’

‘Your family are from Somerset?’

‘Yes. My father held the manor of Gurney Slade, not far from Wells.’

‘Slade,’ the herald said. He paused for a moment, thinking. ‘An archer named Jack Slade deserted at Pont-Hébert.’

‘Yes, I know him. His father was the miller in Gurney Slade. I tried to recruit him for my retinue, but he went to Edward de Tracey instead. Tracey has deeper pockets than me, and offered a larger bounty.’

‘You sought him out deliberately. Was he a good man?’

‘Yes, I thought so. Careful, reliable, and a good shot, too. I was very surprised to hear he had deserted.’

He was also a terrible shot, Tracey had said. For a moment, the herald wondered if they were talking about the same person. ‘Have you seen him since?’

Gurney gave him a hard stare. ‘Of course not. If I had, I would have arrested him and handed him over to the constable.’

‘Of course,’ Merrivale said. ‘Was there any bad blood between you and Bray? Any ill feeling?’

‘You mean beyond the normal revulsion most people feel for the son of a regicide? No, none. In fact, Bray was more polite to me than most.’ Gurney’s eyes met the herald’s. ‘I did not kill him, and I did not shoot at Despenser. And I don’t believe Roger Mortimer had anything to do with it either.’

Someone is stirring the pot, Courcy had said this morning. He was right, and it wasn’t just the archers; someone was setting the knights against each other, provoking quarrels, casting suspicions; and more than that. Someone had tried to drown Mortimer on the causeway at Saint-Côme-du-Mont; now, someone had narrowly missed shooting Despenser.

The Despensers and the Mortimers had been at feud for eighty years. Who had suggested to the prince that he bring them together under his command, along with other equally divisive figures like Holland, Gurney and Salisbury? Surely the prince would never have thought of this himself; but who had put the idea into his head?

‘No,’ Merrivale said. ‘I do not believe it either. Good night, Sir Matthew.’

Outside the door of his tent he paused, suddenly tense. Something had moved in the night, a rustle right on the edge of hearing. He stood silent, straining his ears and listening, but no sound came.

For the second time that night, an archer cloaked in shadow raised his bow and lined it up on the back of his target. Silently he drew an arrow from his quiver and nocked it, drawing back the bowstring until the nock and flights were resting just in front of his ear.

In the split second before he released, someone grabbed the herald’s arm and pulled him hard