Harlequin. Part 22

Thomas made himself a torch from a sheaf of thatch lashed to a pole and, while its flame lasted, he led them across the marsh towards the distant ford. The flames flickered out after a while, but he was close enough to find his way to where he had seen the cattle. The tide had risen again and black water seeped and flooded all about the hors.e.m.e.n, who huddled on a shrinking ridge of sand.

'You can see where the other side is,' Thomas told the men-at-arms, pointing to the fires of the French, which looked to be about a mile away.

'b.a.s.t.a.r.ds are waiting for us?'

'Plenty of them too.'

'We're crossing anyway,' the leading man-at-arms said. 'The King's decided it, and we're doing it when the tide falls.' He turned to his men. 'Off your horses. Find the path. Mark it.' He pointed to some pollarded willows. 'Cut staves off them, use them as markers.'

Thomas groped his way back to the village, sometimes wading through water up to his waist. A thin mist was seeping from the flooding tide, and had it not been for the blazing huts in the village he could easily have got lost.

The village, built on the highest piece of land in all the marsh, had attracted a crowd of hors.e.m.e.n by the time Thomas returned. Archers and men-at-arms gathered there and some had already pulled down the shrine to make fires from its timbers.

Will Skeat had come with the rest of his archers. 'The women are with the baggage,' he told Thomas. 'b.l.o.o.d.y chaos back there, it is. They're hoping to cross everyone in the morning.'

'Be a fight first,' Thomas said.

'Either that or fight their whole d.a.m.n army later in the day. Did you find any eels?'

'We ate them.'

Skeat grinned, then turned as a voice hailed him. It was the Earl of Northampton, his horse's trapper spattered with mud almost to the saddle.

'Well done, Will!'

'Weren't me, my lord, it was this clever b.a.s.t.a.r.d.' Skeat jerked a thumb at Thomas.

'Hanging did you good, eh?' the Earl said, then watched as a file of men-of-arms climbed onto the village's sand ridge. 'Be ready to move at dawn, Will, and we'll be crossing when the tide falls. I want your boys in front. Leave your horses here; I'll have good men watch them.'

There was small sleep that night, though Thomas did doze as he lay on the sand and waited for the dawn, which brought a pale, misty light. Willow trees loomed in the vapour, while men-at-arms crouched at the tide's edge and stared north to where the mist was thickened by smoke from the enemy's fires. The river ran deceptively quick, hastened by the ebbing tide, but it was still too high to cross.

The sandbank by the ford held Skeat's fifty archers and another fifty under John Armstrong. There were the same number of men-at-arms, all on foot, led by the Earl of Northampton, who had been given the job of leading the crossing. The Prince of Wales had wanted to lead the fight himself, but his father had forbidden it. The Earl, far more experienced, had the responsibility and he was not happy. He would have liked many more men, but the sandbank would hold no more and the paths through the marshland were narrow and treacherous, making it difficult to bring reinforcements.

'You know what to do,' the Earl told Skeat and Armstrong.

'We know.'

'Maybe another two hours?' The Earl was judging the fall of the tide. The two hours crept by and the English could only stare through the thinning mist at the enemy, who formed their battleline at the ford's further side. The receding water let more men come to the sandbank, but the Earl's force was still pitifully small - perhaps two hundred men at most - while the French had double that number of men-at-arms alone. Thomas counted them as best he could, using the method Will Skeat had taught him: to divide the enemy in two, divide again, then count the small unit and multiply it by four, and he wished he had not done it for there were so many, and as well as the men-at-arms there had to be five or six hundred infantry, probably a levy from the country north of Abbeville. They were not a serious threat for, like most infantry, they would be ill-trained and badly armed with ancient weapons and farming tools, but they could still cause trouble if the Earl's men got into difficulties. The only blessing Thomas could find in the misty dawn was that the French seemed to have very few crossbowmen, but why would they need them when they had so many men-at-arms? And the formidable force that now gathered on the river's northern bank would be fighting in the knowledge that if they repelled the English attack then they would have their enemy pinned by the sea where the greater French army could crush them.

Two packhorses brought sheaves of precious arrows that were distributed among the archers. 'Ignore the G.o.dd.a.m.n peasants,' Skeat told his men. 'Kill the men-at-arms. I want the b.a.s.t.a.r.ds crying for the goats they call their mothers.'

'There's food on the far side,' John Armstrong told his hungry men. 'Those G.o.dd.a.m.n b.a.s.t.a.r.ds will have meat, bread and beer, and it'll be yours if you get through them.'

'And don't waste your arrows,' Skeat growled. 'Shoot proper! Aim, boys, aim. I want to see the b.a.s.t.a.r.ds bleeding.'

'Watch the wind!' John Armstrong shouted. 'It'll carry arrows to the right.'

Two hundred of the French men-at-arms were on foot at the river's edge, while the other two hundred were mounted and waiting a hundred paces behind. The rabble of infantry was split into two vast lumps, one on each flank. The dismounted men-at-arms were there to stop the English at the water's edge and the mounted men would charge if any did break through, while the infantry was present to give the appearance of numbers and to help in the ma.s.sacre that would follow the French victory. The French must have been confident for they had stopped every other attempt to ford the Somme.

Except at the other fords the enemy had possessed crossbowmen who had been able to keep the archers in deep water where they could not use their bows properly for fear of soaking the strings and here there were no crossbows.

The Earl of Northampton, on foot like his men, spat towards the river. 'He should have left his foot soldiers behind and brought a thousand Genoese,' he remarked to Will Skeat. 'We'd be in trouble then.'

'They'll have some crossbows,' Skeat said.

'Not enough, Will, not enough.' The Earl was wearing an old helmet, one without any face plate. He was accompanied by a grey-bearded man-at-arms with a deeply lined face, who wore a much-mended coat of mail. 'You know Reginald Cobham, Will?' the Earl asked.

'I've heard of you, Master Cobham,' Will said respectfully.

'And I of you. Master Skeat,' Cobham answered. A whisper went through Skeat's archers that Reginald Cobham was at the ford and men turned to look at the greybeard whose name was celebrated in the army. A common man, like themselves, but old in war and feared by England's enemies.

The Earl looked at a pole which marked one edge of the ford. 'Reckon the water's low enough,' he said, then patted Skeat's shoulder. 'Go and kill some, Will.'

Thomas took one glance behind and saw that every dry spot of the marsh was now crowded with soldiers, horses and women. The English army had come into the lowlands, depending on the Earl to force the crossing.

Off to the east, though none at the ford knew it, the main French army was filing across the bridge at Abbeville, ready to fall on the English rear.

There was a brisk wind coming from the sea, bringing a morning chill and the smell of salt. Gulls called forlorn above the pale reeds. The river's main channel was a half-mile wide and the hundred archers looked a puny force as they spread into a line and waded into the tide. Armstrong's men were on the left, Skeat's on the right, while behind them came the first of the earl's men-at-arms. Those men-at-arms were all on foot and their job was to wait till the arrows had weakened the enemy, then charge into the French with swords, axes and falchions. The enemy had two drummers, who began thumping their goatskins, then a trumpeter startled birds from the trees where the French had camped.

'Note the wind,' Skeat shouted at his men. 'Gusting hard, she is, gusting hard.'

The wind was blowing against the ebbing tide, forcing the river into small waves that whipped white at their tops. The French infantry were shouting. Grey clouds scudded above the green land. The drummers kept up a threatening rhythm. Banners flew above the waiting men-at-arms and Thomas was relieved that none of them showed yellow hawks on a blue field. The water was cold and came to his thighs. He held his bow high, watching the enemy, waiting for the first crossbow bolts to whip across the water.

No bolts came. The archers were within long bowshot range now, but Will Skeat wanted them closer. A French knight on a black horse caparisoned with a green and blue trapper rode to where his comrades were on foot, then swerved off to one side and splashed into the river.

'Silly b.a.s.t.a.r.d wants to make a name,' Skeat said. 'Jake! Dan! Peter! Settle the b.a.s.t.a.r.d for me.' The three bows were drawn back and three arrows flew.

The French knight was hurled back in his saddle and his fall provoked the French to fury. They gave their war shout, 'Montjoie St Denis!' 'Montjoie St Denis!' and the men-at-arms came splashing into the river, ready to challenge the archers, who drew back their bows. and the men-at-arms came splashing into the river, ready to challenge the archers, who drew back their bows.

'Hold hard!' Skeat shouted. 'Hold hard! Closer, get closer!' The drumbeats were louder. The dead knight was being carried away by his horse as the other French edged back to the dry land. The water only reached to Thomas's knees now and the range was shortening. A hundred paces, no more, and Will Skeat was at last satisfied. 'Start putting them down!' he shouted.

The bowcords were drawn back to men's ears, then loosed. The arrows flew, and while the first flight was still whispering over the wind-flecked water the second flight was released, and as the men put their third arrows on the strings the first whipped home. The sound was of metal striking metal, like a hundred light hammers tapping, and the French ranks were suddenly crouching with shields held high.

'Pick your men!' Skeat shouted. 'Pick your men!' He was using his own bow, shooting it infrequently, always waiting for an enemy to lower a shield before loosing an arrow. Thomas was watching the rabble of infantry to his right. They looked as though they were ready to make a wild charge and he wanted to plant some arrows in their bellies before they reached the water.

A score of French men-at-arms were dead or wounded and their leader was shouting at the others to lock their shields. A dozen of the rearward men-at-arms had dismounted and were hurrying forward to reinforce the riverbank.

'Steady, boys, steady,' John Armstrong called. 'Make the arrows count.'

The enemy shields were quilled with arrows. The French were relying on those shields that were thick enough to slow an arrow, and they were staying low, waiting for the arrows to run out or for the English men-at-arms to come close. Thomas reckoned some of the arrows would have driven clean through the shields to inflict wounds, but they were mostly wasted. He glanced back to the infantry and saw they were not moving yet. The English bows were firing less frequently, waiting for their targets, and the Earl of Northampton must have tired of the delay, or else he feared the turn of the tide for he shouted his men forward. 'St George! St George!'

'Spread wide!' Will Skeat shouted, wanting his men to be on the flanks of the Earl's attack so they could use their arrows when the French stood to receive the charge, but the water rapidly grew deeper as Thomas moved upstream and he could not go as far as he wanted.

'Kill them! Kill them!' The Earl was wading up to the bank now.

'Keep ranks!' Reginald Cobham shouted.

The French men-at-arms gave a cheer, for the proximity of the English charge meant the archers' aim would be blocked, though Thomas did manage to loose two arrows as the defenders stood and before the two groups of men-at-arms met at the river's edge with a clash of steel and shield. Men roared their war cries, St Denis contending with St George.

'Watch right! Watch right!' Thomas shouted, for the peasant infantrymen had started forward and he sent two arrows whistling at them. He was plucking shafts from the arrow bag as fast as he could.

'Take the hors.e.m.e.n!' Will Skeat bellowed, and Thomas changed his aim to send an arrow over the heads of the fighting men at the French hors.e.m.e.n who were advancing down the bank to help their comrades. Some English hors.e.m.e.n had entered the ford now, but they could not ride to meet their French counterparts because the ford's northern exit was blocked by the wild melee of men-at-arms.

Men slashed and hacked. Swords met axes, falchions split helmets and skulls. The noise was like the devil's blacksmith shop and blood was swirling down tide in the shallows. A Englishman screamed as he was cut down into the water, then screamed again as two Frenchmen drove axes into his legs and trunk. The Earl was thrusting his sword in short hard lunges, ignoring the hammer blows on his shield.

'Close up! Close up!' Reginald Cobham shouted. A man tripped on a body, opening a gap in the English line, and three howling Frenchmen tried to exploit it, but were met by a man with a double-headed axe who struck down so hard that the heavy blade split a helmet and skull from nape to neck.

'Flank them! Flank them!' Skeat bellowed, and his archers waded closer to the sh.o.r.e to drive their arrows into the sides of the French formation. Two hundred French knights were fighting eighty or ninety English men-at-arms, a brawl of swords and shields and monstrous clangour. Men grunted as they swung. The two front ranks were locked together now, shields against shields, and it was the men behind who did the killing, swinging their blades over the front rank to kill the men beyond. Most of the archers were pouring arrows into the French flanks while a few, led by John Armstrong, had closed up behind the men-at-arms to shoot into the enemy's faces.

The French infantry, thinking the English charge stalled, gave a cheer and began to advance. 'Kill them! Kill them!' Thomas shouted. He had used a whole sheaf of arrows, twenty-four shafts, and had only one sheaf more. He drew the bow back, released, drew again. Some of the French infantry had padded jackets, but they were no protection against the arrows. Sheer numbers was their best defence and they screamed a wild war cry as they pounded down the bank. But then a score of English hors.e.m.e.n came from behind the archers, pushing through them to meet the mad charge. The mailed riders chopped hard into the infantry's front ranks, swords flailing left and right as the peasants hacked back. The horses bit at the enemy, and always kept moving so that no one could slash their hamstrings. A man-at-arms was hauled from his saddle and screamed terribly as he was chopped to death in the shallows. Thomas and his archers drove their arrows into the mob, more hors.e.m.e.n rode to help slaughter them, but still the wild rabble crowded the bank and suddenly Thomas had no arrows left and so he hung the bow round his neck, drew his sword and ran to the river's edge.

A Frenchman lunged at Thomas with a spear. He knocked it aside and brought the sword's tip flashing round to rip the man's gullet. Blood spilled bright as dawn, vanishing into the river. He hacked at a second man. Sam, baby-faced Sam, was beside him with a billhook that he sliced into a skull. It stuck there and Sam kicked the man in frustration, then took an axe from the dying enemy and, leaving his billhook in its victim, swung his new weapon in a great arc to drive the enemy back. Jake still had arrows and was shooting them fast.

A splashing and a cheer announced the arrival of more mounted men-at-arms, who drove into the infantry with heavy lances. The big horses, trained to this carnage, rode over the living and dead while the men-at-arms discarded the spears and started hacking with swords. More archers had come with fresh arrows and were shooting from the river's centre.

Thomas was on the bank now. The front of his mail coat was red with blood, none of it his, and the infantry was retreating. Then Will Skeat gave a great shout that more arrows had come, and Thomas and his archers ran back into the river to find Father Hobbe with a pack mule loaded with two panniers of arrow sheaves.

'Do the Lord's work,' Father Hobbe said, tossing a sheaf to Thomas, who undid its binding and spilled the arrows into his bag. A trumpet sounded from the northern bank and he whirled round to see that the French hors.e.m.e.n were riding to join the fight.

'Put them down!' Skeat shouted. 'Put those b.a.s.t.a.r.ds down!'

Arrows slashed and sliced at horses. More English men-at-arms were wading the river to thicken the Earl's force and, inch by inch, yard by yard, they were making progress up the bank, but then the enemy hors.e.m.e.n drove into the melee with lances and swords. Thomas put an arrow through the mail covering a Frenchman's throat, drove another through a leather chanfron so that the horse reared and screamed and spilled its rider.

'Kill! Kill! Kill!' The Earl of Northampton, bloodied from his helmet to his mailed boots, rammed the sword again and again. He was bone tired and deafened by the crack of steel, but he was climbing the bank and his men were pressed close about him. Cobham was killing with a calm certainty, years of experience behind every blow. English hors.e.m.e.n were in the melee now, using their lances over the heads of their compatriots to drive the enemy horses back, but they were also blocking the aim of the archers and Thomas again hung his bow round his neck and drew his sword. 'St George! St George!' The Earl was standing on gra.s.s now, out of the reeds, above the high-water mark and behind him the river's edge was a charnel house of dead men, wounded men, blood and screaming.

Father Hobbe, his ca.s.sock skirts. .h.i.tched up to his waist, was fighting with a quarterstaff, ramming the pole into French faces. 'In the name of the Father,' he shouted, and a Frenchmen reeled back with a pulped eye, 'and of the Son,' Father Hobbe snarled as he broke a man's nose, 'and of the Holy Ghost!'

A French knight broke through the English ranks, but a dozen archers swarmed over the horse, hamstrung it and hauled its rider down to the mud where they hacked at him with axe, billhook and sword.

'Archers!' the Earl shouted. 'Archers!' The last of the French hors.e.m.e.n had formed into a charge that threatened to sweep the whole ragged mess of brawling men, both English and French, into the river, but a score of archers, the only ones with arrows now, drove their missiles up the bank to bring the leading rank of hors.e.m.e.n down in a tangle of horses' legs and tumbling weapons.

Another trumpet sounded, this one from the English side, and reinforcements were suddenly streaming over the ford and spurring up onto the higher ground.

'They're breaking! They're breaking.' Thomas did not know who shouted that news, but it was true. The French were shuffling backwards. The infantry, their stomach for battle slaked by the deaths they had suffered, had already retreated, but now the French knights, the men-at-arms, were backing away from the fury of the English a.s.sault.

'Just kill them! Kill them! No prisoners! No prisoners!' the Earl of Northampton shouted in French, and his men-at-arms, b.l.o.o.d.y and wet and tired and angry, shoved up the bank and hacked again at the French, who stepped another pace back.

And then the enemy did break. It was sudden. One moment the two forces were locked in grunting, shoving, hacking battle, and then the French were running and the ford was streaming with mounted men-at-arms who crossed from the southern bank to pursue the broken enemy.

'Jesus,' Will Skeat said, and dropped to his knees and made the sign of the cross. A dying Frenchman groaned nearby, but Skeat ignored him. 'Jesus,' he said again. 'You got any arrows, Tom?'

'Two left.'

'Jesus.' Skeat looked up. There was blood on his cheeks. 'Those b.a.s.t.a.r.ds,' he said vengefully. He was speaking of the newly arrived English men-at-arms who crashed past the remnants of the battle to harry the fleeing enemy. 'Those b.a.s.t.a.r.ds! They get into their camp first, don't they? They'll take all the b.l.o.o.d.y food!'

But the ford was taken, the trap was broken and the English were across the Somme.

Part Three

Crecy

Chapter 11.

The whole English army had crossed before the tide rose again. Horses, wagons, men and women - they all crossed safe so that the French army, marching from Abbeville to trap them, found the corner of land between the river and the sea empty.

All next day the armies faced each other across the ford. The English were drawn up for battle with their four thousand archers lining the river's bank and, behind them, three great blocks of men-at-arms on the higher ground, but the French, strung out on the paths to the ford, were not tempted to force the crossing. A handful of their knights rode into the water and shouted challenges and insults, but the King would not let any English knight respond and the archers, knowing they must conserve their arrows, endured the insults without responding.

'Let the b.a.s.t.a.r.ds shout,' Will Skeat growled, 'shouting never hurt a man yet.' He grinned at Thomas. 'Depends on the man, of course. Upset Sir Simon, didn't it?'

'He was just a b.a.s.t.a.r.d.'

'No, Tom,' Skeat corrected him, 'you're the b.a.s.t.a.r.d, and he was a gentleman.' Skeat looked across at the French, who showed no sign of trying to contest the ford. 'Most of them are all right,' he went on, evidently talking of knights and n.o.bles. 'Once they've fought with the archers for a while they learn to look after us on account of us being the mucky b.a.s.t.a.r.ds what keeps them alive, but there's always a few G.o.dd.a.m.n idiots. Not our Billy, though.' He turned and looked at the Earl of Northampton, who was pacing up and down by the shallows, itching for the French to come and fight. 'He's a proper gentleman. Knows how to kill the G.o.dd.a.m.n French.'

Next morning the French were gone, the only sign of them the white cloud of dust hanging over the road which was taking their huge army back to Abbeville. The English went north, slowed by hunger and the lame horses that men were reluctant to abandon. The army climbed from the Somme marshes into a heavily wooded country that yielded no grain, livestock or plunder, while the weather, which had been dry and warm, turned cold and wet during the morning. Rain spat from the east and dripped incessantly from the trees to increase men's misery so that what had seemed like a victorious campaign south of the Seine now felt like an ignominious retreat. Which is what it was, for the English were running from the French and all the men knew it, just as they knew that unless they found food soon their weakness would make them easy pickings for the enemy.

The King had sent a strong force to the mouth of the Somme where, at the small port of Le Crotoy, he expected reinforcements and supplies to be waiting, but instead the small port proved to be held by a garrison of Genoese crossbowmen. The walls were in bad repair, the attackers were hungry and so the Genoese died under a hail of arrows and a storm of men-at-arms. The English emptied the port's storehouses of food and found a herd of beef cattle collected for the French army's use, but when they climbed the church tower they saw no ships moored in the river's mouth nor any fleet waiting at sea. The arrows, the archers and the grain that should have replenished the army were still in England.

The rain became heavier on the first night that the army camped in the forest. Rumour said that the King and his great men were in a village at the forest's edge, but most of the men were forced to shelter under the dripping trees and eat what little they could scavenge.

'Acorn stew,' Jake grumbled.

'You've eaten worse,' Thomas said.

'And a month ago we ate it off silver plates.' Jake spat out a gritty mouthful. 'So why don't we b.l.o.o.d.y fight the b.a.s.t.a.r.ds?'

'Because they're too many,' Thomas said wearily, 'because we've only so many arrows. Because we're worn out.'

The army had marched itself into the ground. Jake, like a dozen other of Will Skeat's archers, had no boots any more. The wounded limped because there were not enough carts and the sick were left behind if they could not walk or crawl. The living stank.

Thomas had made Eleanor and himself a shelter from boughs and turf. It was dry inside the little hut where a small fire spewed a thick smoke.

'What happens to me if you lose?' Eleanor asked him.

'We won't lose,' Thomas said, though there was little conviction in his voice.

'What happens to me?' she asked again.

'You thank the Frenchmen who find you,' he said, 'and tell them you were forced to march with us against your will. Then you send for your father.'