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Chapter Quick-Browse For Graven's Grotesque: A Gothic Epic

Chapter 2 Excerpt Teaser
Description: The Battle of Crecy ~ 6 Paragraphs

The English force had consisted of approximately twelve thousand men, over half of them archers. Men-at-arms stood, centring two spreading flanks of bowmen, forming a precise vee of roughly eighteen hundred yards in length. The French force numbered thirty-six thousand. Wave after wave—fifteen in all—of charging knights raced into the English funnel of arrows, only to heap themselves upon their dead and the ones dying before them. Betwixt the fleeing Genoese crossbowmen, the sun blinding their eyes and the untrained peasants’ mad screams about the battlefield, the French forces began to fall into complete disarray. The battlefield lay riddled with English arrows that stood out amongst the slain men and animals like stiff barley stalks. In the short space of ten hours, nearly half a million English arrows had rained down from the high ridge and over six thousand French and Genoese fell dead. Surely, ‘twas a Devil’s dance—and a wicked waltz it was.

The witching hour was upon him when the wounded Philip retreated. He had little choice but to abandon his injured where they lay. Two Kings, as allies to Philip, had fallen in the horrid slaughter; one of them was the blind King John of Bohemia. Philip had no recourse, save withdrawal. Yet, Edward took no prisoners. At midnight, his son, the Black Prince of Wales, moved under cloak of darkness and, with long knives, his men slashed the throats of the injured. In all, sixty-six hundred Frenchman and merely a few hundred Englishmen died in the battle. ‘Twas a battle, with which Lucifael was all too involved from the onset. Completely, the credit was hers; both Kings, Edward and Philip, were merely pawns in her much grander game. She was the reigning queen, and, unwittingly, two foolish Kings jousted as jesters before her.

Following the battle, Philip buckled. With the aid of two Avignon Cardinals as conciliators, a truce betwixt France and England was soon in place. Edward retained occupation of Calais and Philip became frantic. The English had removed chivalry from the rules of battle. Hand-to-hand combat, face-to-face confrontation—a battle pitting one man’s skill and power and courage against another’s—had been replaced by what amounted to spearing an enemy from behind. The English longbow was a slap in the face to the Knights’ class. Although French knights scorned it—labelling it as outright cowardice—distance combat proved highly effective for smaller armies, like Edward’s. And with Lucifael’s intervention, the art of war had changed and dusk had fallen on the glory days of knighthood.

In desperation, Philip considered seeking out the help of the Holy See and its vast numbers of educated priests. Yet, he required more than prayer of them. He needed finances and a solid counter to the English new weapon—the rapid-firing longbow and its armour-piercing bodkin arrow. He needed new strategies to counter the unchivalrous tactics employed by the English. He sought that decisive counter-weapon and the definitive counter-strategy might drive Edward out of Calais and back across the Channel. Nonetheless, Lucifael moved against all thrones, bitterly eager, as a wronged yet outwardly ever mastering Queen-of-queens. The throne of the Holy See and the Papal Palace of Avignon were not immune. The Pope, the College of Cardinals, and Apocrypha Cardinals were all equal prey in her game. And within them all, she wove her web.

Château Rouge ~ City of Avignon ~ April, 1347

Avignon’s Château Rouge served as guarded residence for several College Cardinals. A guard stationed at the rear entrance of the château shifted his feet—the prickling pain was in his left heel. He searched his boot, yet found no raised tack; no splinter or thorn inside it, however, he felt it again: a prick like a tiny dagger stabbing at his heel. It would allow him no peace. He studied the dead grounds. Not a soul gave sound in the late hour. With a furtive glance toward the arched entrance of his post, the guard stole into the shrubbery that flanked the thick stony walls of the château. He patted his pockets hopefully and grinned at finding a folded leaf of paper in a vest pocket. Leaning against the wall, he unlaced his boot and slipped the paper inside it. He was just retying the laces when the long shadow of a hooded figure fell across him. In a panic, he straightened hastily and nearly fell.
“Guard. You are not at your post,” the priest said softly. “Why?”
The guard moved toward the archway, looking chagrined, the shadowed figure also moving to block him. “I heard a noise, friar,” he stammered. ‘Twas but cocks roosting in the bush.”
“Ah, roosting cocks. I see.” In better light, the soldier saw the priest as tall and rather burly, with full black hair. He seemed to be eyeing the paving stones, however, when his dark eyes flashed over the face of the guard, they were piercing as daggers. “You chase clucking cocks with an unlaced boot?”
“I did not notice it, friar.”
“Ah, I see. You did not notice the loose laces.” The soft voice was an eerie contradiction to the flashing eyes, setting the guard’s teeth on edge. “Show me your orders, guard. This instant.”
Caught off guard—he had been wondering when this unnerving priest might leave him to his duty—the soldier reluctantly bent and removed his boot. He withdrew his makeshift bandage and offered it to the priest.
“In your unlaced boot? Ah.” The priest unfolded the paper and stood beneath a wall torch to read it. “Why are your orders in your boot, guard?”

The guard confessed all. The priest smirked and, returning the folded orders, said, “Then it appears your orders are best when trampled upon. Shall we keep the confession betwixt us?”
“If you would, friar. And how can I be of assistance, Friar—um—” the guard struggled for the priest’s name.
“Sevalle—Archbishop Lou Sevalle—here by personal appointment to see Cardinal Jean-Francois Blasi.”
“I shall summon the Master-at-Arms. He can arrange an escort.” The guard began to turn away, yet the priest seized his shoulder in a painful grip.
“I see by your orders that you are new to this post,” the big priest whispered. “I gather you wish no stain against you? I need not wait for an escort; I have been here many times. I shall find my own way.”
The soldier, who was indeed a raw recruit and none too hastily in the bargain, felt a haze fall over his mind. ‘Twas imperative, that he obeyed his orders; yet, allow a strange man into the château, unescorted? An unthinkable dereliction of duty, however, 'twas equally imperative that he obeyed the soft voice—and the command in the flashing eyes.
“Visitors are escorted. I must—”
“Is it possible,” the priest interrupted, “that I did not notice you away from your post? Is it likewise possible that you did not notice me enter? Do hear me, guard; gather me as merely another quiet roosting cock. ‘Tis late—I am weary. Do you gather my meaning?”
Looking away, the guard responded, “I gather it—as you say, then. I do not know you. Nor have I seen you.”
“A lie in good intent is no ill deed. Well done. I shall see the favour settled thrice as much,” the priest said, patting the guard’s shoulder with a sneer the soldier did not see. He disappeared beneath the arched entrance and drifted through the quiet corridors of the château. The priest came to a corner, and as he rounded it his features and dress were abruptly changed, metamorphosed into an altogether different form. Instead of a robe, he wore the battle dress of a French knight. On his chest gleamed the gold and gem-studded Blasi cross. He turned another corner and walked placidly through a stone wall, the armour-clad visage melding into the massive stones without a sound...

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