A glint of silver flashed among the trees, disappeared, then flashed again closer. Joscelin heard a shout and the thunder of hooves as a troop of horsemen moved to block the way out of the coppice. The leading knight whirled a mace around his head, the sunlight gleaming along its flanges. Then he caught it by the base of the haft and used it as a baton as he bellowed the command to attack.
Within moments the enemy troop was upon Joscelin’s. The advantage of surprise had been lost, thus the first impetus of assault was not as devastating as it might have been. Nevertheless, the odds were against Joscelin, for he was outnumbered and, with two baggage wains and a coffin cart to protect, unable to manoeuvre.
Two of the enemy hacked their way through the guard surrounding Linnet and Robert. A bay destrier drew level with Linnet’s roan and its rider seized the bridle to bring the small mare around. A screaming Robert was torn from her arms. She shrieked at the full pitch of her lungs for aid and looked desperately around. Malcolm struggled valiantly to respond but he was engaged in fierce battle with an opponent on either side of him and couldn’t break free.
A powerful chestnut stallion surged into the midst of the attempted abduction. The downswing of Joscelin’s sword took off one man’s hand clean through the wrist, freeing the restraint on Linnet’s bridle. Howling, the knight toppled from his saddle. Joscelin spurred Whitesocks around Linnet, thrust his shield into the swordstroke of the second knight who held Robert, heaved the blade off, and counterstruck. The knight doubled over, choking on blood. Joscelin caught Robert and hauled him to safety.
‘Take him!’ he gasped to Linnet.
She closed her arms convulsively around her child and then, seeing the blood, recoiled. Feverishly she dabbed at where it was thickest with a fold of her cloak, trying to gauge the extent of his injury.
‘God’s death, woman, it’s not his!’ Joscelin snarled. ‘You’ll have wounded aplenty to tend without fussing over trifles!’
She shot him a fulminating glare but he had gone, spurring Whitesocks towards one of the wains which the enemy had succeeded in capturing.
Joscelin’s driver was sprawled facedown on the coppice floor and in his place one of the attacking knights was making a competent effort at turning the horses. He had set his shield down while he handled the wain. The device of a golden firedrake on a scarlet background was enough identification for Joscelin but, before he could reach his brother and deal with him, his sword was caught and turned by a hand axe wielded by a paunchy knight, powerfully muscled in arm and shoulder. Joscelin tightened his thigh against the saddle to hold his seat and turned his wrist to free his blade. In the moment that the weapons disengaged, he locked eyes with Hubert de Beaumont and knew that this time there would be no backing down.
Beaumont swung the axe. Joscelin ducked. The blade sang past his ear and struck his shoulder. The blow bit through the links of his hauberk and rocked him back against his cantle, but in the surge of battle he felt no pain. Beaumont attacked again but Joscelin had his shield up now and struck back forcefully. Taught to fight in the routier camps of Normandy and Flanders, he could stand hard and Beaumont, although strong and well muscled, was not in the same physical condition. Joscelin’s sword-work was fast and inexorable. When he saw a gap he took it and the look of astonishment on Beaumont’s features was his final expression as he tumbled from the horse, struck the ground and was still.
Panting with exertion, Joscelin watched the baggage wain containing the Montsorrel strongbox disappear down the track in the direction of the Nottingham road, escorted by a dozen hallooing, jubilant soldiers.
‘Shall we ride after them, sir?’ asked Milo de Selsey.
Joscelin shook his head. ‘No, let them go. We’re outnumbered and we’ve been fortunate to escape with the mauling we got.’ His smile was brief and humourless. ‘Let Ralf savour his victory for the small time it is his. Safer, I think, to ride for Rushcliffe before he takes it into his head to look at his prize.’ He stared round the battle site. ‘Put our dead across horses. The men too badly wounded to ride can use the funeral wain.’
‘Yes, sir.’ Milo turned away and began shouting commands.
The uninjured men in his troop began the depressing task of tying their lifeless companions across spare horses like slaughtered deer at the end of a day’s hunting. Four dead in all and four too badly injured to ride with competence - almost a third of his troop. He picked his way among the men, talking, helping, until he came to Linnet who was bending beside one of the sorely wounded, comforting him while he waited his turn to be lifted onto the wain.
‘Malcolm?’ Joscelin crouched beside the young mercenary and looked at the bloody spear gouge that had ripped open the milky, freckled skin from collarbone to bicep.
‘I wasn’t fast enough, sir . . .’ Malcolm’s teeth clenched in a rictus of pain. Tears oozed from his eyes and trickled into the red hair fluffing around his ears. ‘There were two of them and I was stuck between them like a fox in a trap.’ He stared from Joscelin to Linnet, who was holding his blood-soaked shirt in her hand. ‘I’m going to die, aren’t I?’
‘Of course not!’ Joscelin snapped.
‘I’ll admit it is a nasty tear—’ Linnet’s voice was firm as she bent over him ‘but no worse than holes I’ve had to mend in my gowns. It can be darned and you’ll live to fight another day. See, it’s only of the flesh; no vital part has been touched.’
Beneath her calm authority, Malcolm’s breathing eased. ‘Ye must think I’m a bairn!’ he lamented.
‘No worse than any man,’ she said. ‘It’s going to hurt when they lift you but, God willing, you’ll soon be comfortable in a bed.’
As Malcolm was gently raised by two soldiers and taken to the wain, Joscelin laid his hand upon Linnet’s sleeve. ‘Thank you,’ he said.
She shrugged. ‘It was the truth. If he does not take the stiffening sickness and if the wound stays clean, he’ll survive with barely a scar.’
Her pragmatic tone sat completely at odds with her earlier hysteria over her son but Joscelin knew only too well how fierce the bond between mother and child could be. A glance showed him Robert cuddled in the maid’s arms, his eyes as huge as moons in his thin, pale face.
‘I am sorry I shouted at you,’ he said as he turned to mount up. ‘In the heat of battle, everything happens so fast.’
She shook her head and smiled ruefully. ‘You made me so angry that you killed my terror.’
He acknowledged their pax with a brief smile of his own but quickly sobered. ‘Hubert de Beaumont was leading them, so they must have been acting on Leicester’s orders.’ He looked grim. ‘My brother Ralf was with them, too.’
‘I’m sorry, it must be a grief to you.’
He shook his head. ‘I have never known Ralf as anything but my enemy. The grief is all my father’s.’
‘They took the strongbox.’
‘Yes, they took it.’ A look of understanding flashed between them. ‘And also five casks of vinegar and two of scouring sand for cleaning mail. Nothing of value.’ The hangings and tapestries, household goods and trinkets, were stored at Nottingham and would arrive later that week down the Trent by slow barge. Grimacing, he turned his stallion. ‘Nothing of value,’ he repeated bleakly, ‘but the lives of four good men. The life of Hubert de Beaumont is scarcely adequate recompense.’
Waiting impatiently for the ferry on the wooded banks of the Trent, Ralf looked over his shoulder, ears straining for the sound of pursuit, but the horizon remained innocent. He returned his stare to the sullen sheet of grey water. The ferry was a dark wedge on the opposite side of the river, and the two ferrymen were taking their own good time about pulling their craft across.