29 - The Oath Read Online Free PDF

oaths. He was grounded firmly in the feudal tradition. There should be nothing unique in that.
    But many were forsworn. They gave different reasons for their dishonour: distrust of the King’s advisers, fear of the King’s jealousy, dread of being asked to fight against the Queen and her son, the Duke of Aquitaine – but, as so often, the truth was more mundane. They wanted money.
    In the past, life had been so much easier. A man gave his word to his lord and served him. That was enough.
    Sir Ralph felt his rounsey stir beneath him and patted his neck gently. ‘Easy, my friend, easy.’
    ‘What do you think, Sir Ralph?’ Bernard said.
    Bernard was a younger man, of some five-and-twenty years, with long, flaxen hair and blue eyes. He always said that his family were knights from some strange country to the east of the Holy Roman Empire, but that they had lived in England since the days of King John, and from his looks it was easy to believe. He was looking at the older man now with exasperation.
    ‘Think about what?’ Sir Ralph asked.
    ‘How far must we keep running?’
    ‘You shouldn’t speak of such things,’ the knight reprimanded him.
    ‘Everyone else in the camp is,’ Bernard said reasonably. ‘The ones who don’t are leaving in the night. Look about you!’
    ‘They are false, then.’
    ‘Sir Ralph, I don’t care whether they’re false or honourable, I just want them to remain here so that it’s not you, me, Alex and Pagan who have to defend the King on our own.’
    ‘There’re bound to be more men who come to our aid,’ Sir Ralph said stoutly.
    ‘In truth? Well, that’s good to hear at least,’ Bernard said. ‘Sir Ralph, you know me well enough. I am not the man to moan and bleat at every twist of a sour fate. But even now, I can sense the men around us leaching into the woods. There are very few who’ll stay for honour’s sake.’
    ‘Go and help the pages,’ Sir Ralph said shortly.
    He watched his squire stride off, bellowing at the two as they tried to take down the tent, and sighed.
    There was little he would prefer more than to disappear into the woods himself, but the oath he had given the King had been made before God and was binding. A man was defined by how he behaved: whether he stood by his word or broke it. There might be cowards who were prepared to forswear themselves, but he was not one of them. He had never broken a vow in his life, and if it now cost him even that much, at least he would have lived honourably.
    To distract himself, he urged his rounsey into a slow walk across from their tent so that he could look out over the men in the camp.
    In the past he had ridden with the King’s host from Leeds in Kent up to Scotland, and over all the lands between. He had seen enthusiastic forces gathered; he had seen the shattered remnants of all-but-destroyed ones. The cheery, the furious, he had seen them all. But never before, not even when he had ridden back with his men from the north, when they had been roundly defeated by The Bruce, had he seen their mood so sombre.
    Here the men moved about the remains of this village like lost souls. Such a small number . . . When they left London there had been hundreds. Now, perhaps one hundred remained. No more. They stumbled as they walked, exhausted. Cold and wet, they had taken every item of wood from this vill, even down to the cottage doors, in order to feed their fires, but the flames would not give them any cheer. This force was defeated before a single sword had been drawn.

CHAPTER FOUR
     
    Second Saturday after the Feast of St Michael 8
     
    Near Marshfield
    Paul yawned as he came out of his little cottage. He had run out of bread and had to walk down to the vill, as the Abbot was most insistent on maintaining his rights here.
    It was the Abbot of Tewkesbury who owned the benefice of this vill, the manor, and the mill; all those who lived here must take their grain to his mill down near Marshfield. The miller, generally a