by Angus Donald
‘Everybody down,’ I shouted. ‘I want every man on his belly below the ridge.’
As I spoke a trebuchet ball smashed into the front slope of the breach, showering all of us with stinging chips of rock. I felt a trickle of warm blood from a nick on my chin, but ignored it. A splash of wet mortar covered my right knee – the mason had been right, despite our braziers and all-night fires, it was a long way from being set. ‘Get down everyone, behind this line, on the reverse slope.’
More men were joining us, running in from across the courtyard or along the parapet behind the unbroken outer bailey walls and crouching, kneeling or lying flat below what remained of the wall. I took up a position in the centre of the line, burrowing my way into the jagged stones between Sir Thomas and Miles – who was grinning like a happy monkey – with a good sixty men, most of them knights, iron-mailed, steel-helmed, with long swords drawn, all packed in around and below me like the silver catch on a fishmonger’s tray.
I heard the first whizz of crossbow bolts and the harsh crack as they caromed off the stones. ‘Heads down, gentlemen,’ I said. ‘Heads down till I give the word; heads down till they reach the top of the breach; then up with me and start killing the bastards as quick as you can. We will show them who we are, this day; we will show them our mettle and make our names immortal. Today, men, we fight for England – we fight for liberty, for the charter and for an end to tyranny. Today … we fight!’
I have never had the gift for rousing speeches on the eve of combat – Robin managed it with ease and flair – but I did my best and my words were greeted by a suitably warlike growl from the knights around me and that warmed my soul.
Sir George Farnham, off to my left, shouted: ‘For England, for liberty!’
We might be lying flat on our bellies like dogs, we might be only a few men, but I knew that most of my little command were supremely trained in war, men of proven strength, skill and courage, and I knew too that those who had not fought before had been preparing for this moment since they were seven years old. They were English knights. The best in the land. And this was the bloody work they were trained to do. I was not without fear, no sane man is before battle. But I knew we could hold the breach until the sky fell and we would send all these savage Flemish dogs to hell.
I twisted my neck around and squinted up, behind me, looking to the south tower of the keep, the intact elder sister of the one that had been destroyed. I waved and I saw with a wash of joy a thin, fair figure, high above, holding a bow horizontally in the air above his head, pumping it up and down in response to my waving arm.
For we were not facing this onslaught alone.
Chapter Eleven
The arrow volley struck the first ranks of the Flemish spearmen like a shower of lethal hail. I was peering over the lip of the breach and I saw almost the entire first line of mercenaries, more than a score of men, knocked apart like skittles in a tavern alley when the wooden ball strikes true. Men dropped outright or staggered backwards, spurting blood, the blow landing just as they were beginning to make their climb up the rubble slope towards us. The roaring of their war cries was muted and replaced by the desperate screams of stricken men. And while the second rank were still trying to get past the dead and dying, stepping over the prone bodies and on to the loose scree of rock and broken stone, the second volley from Robin’s men high above up in the south tower of the keep swept into their ranks with devastating force.
Robin’s two dozen bowmen loosed volley after volley and the slaughter they did was truly dreadful, but not every arrow found its mark and not every man was felled by the merciless barrage. A few hardy souls, a couple of dozen brave men, were struggling up the slope to meet us, some stuck with several shafts, others miraculously unwounded. They shouted threats and curses and called upon the saints to aid them, and they charged upwards, spears levelled.
‘Up, men, and to your work!’ I shouted, leaping to my feet. Behind me a wall of English iron and steel rose up to meet the men of Flanders, the long swords flashing like terrible lightning in the grey November air.
One fellow, fair-haired under a cheap steel cap, rushed at me, his feet slipping and sliding on the loose rock. He drove his spear hard at my chest but I turned to the left, deflected the point with my shield and hacked down with my sword into the base of his neck, cutting easily through his quilted gambeson. He fell away but another was behind him and as his spear lunged for my face I had to duck hastily. I felt the spear-tip score a furrow in my helm and my sword flicked out purely by instinct to puncture his unguarded groin. He screamed like a pig at slaughter as I felt the sword-tip grating against bone, and a great pulsing jet of gore shot from his upper thigh straight into my face. Momentarily blinded, I just had the mother wit to raise my shield before a heavy axe blow crashed against my protected forearm. Miles, at my left, barged past and I heard him shout, ‘Die, you big Dutch bugger!’ and deal a pair of savage blows to a vast shape in front of me, knocking the man down and away.
By the time I had wiped my eyes free of the sticky mess, the spearmen were already in full retreat and there was a tidemark of dead men at the feet of the sword-bristling English line, indeed the whole slope was carpeted with dead and wounded. Beside me Sir Thomas was wiping his bloodied blade on the hem of his cloak and looking thoughtfully out at the enemy hordes. Miles, dagger in hand, was grimly sawing through the throat of a writhing Fleming with a shaft through his belly and his left leg flayed open.
The arrows still fell on the enemy like an evil rain but only sporadically, for the Flemish spearmen were beaten and now streaming back into the town or east towards the cathedral, leaving three score of their fellows in the dirt behind them.
‘Down, back down again,’ I shouted. ‘Quickly now.’ And with a good deal of happy grumbling, the knights went back to their prone positions on the reverse slope.
‘Is it nap time already, Nanny?’ called out Miles from behind me. ‘Aw, what a shame. I’d only just begun to play.’ Laughter rolled about us. But the men were back down into the cover of the rocks – just in time, for some of the enemy crossbowmen had crept closer and were now no more than forty paces away. With the breach clear of their own men they began to span their bows and loose their quarrels at our line in a fair imitation of Robin’s murderous arrow barrage.
The iron-tipped bolts cracked and sparked against the stones or whistled overhead. I dared a peek over the top and did not like what I saw at all. Through the open town gate I could see another formation of men being herded into position. Red-and-blue surcoats adorned these spearmen and they were in twice the numbers of the first assault; worse, I could see a swollen conroi of knights, fifty men at least, gathering to our right behind the trebuchet lines, dismounting from their destriers and handing the reins to their squires. They would assault us on foot and, by the looks of them, they were easily a match for our English line. I glanced at the sky – the short day was nearly done, but could we hold till nightfall? I was less sure now. We were about to be menaced by some four hundred spearmen and fifty dismounted knights. Even with Robin’s protective arrows it was poor odds.
Just then I heard a deep voice calling my name: it was d’Aubigny himself, with a pair of squires, below the breach on the ground of the outer bailey. Then he was making his way very carefully up the reverse slope, placing his feet between the limbs of the lying men, and giving each fellow he passed a quiet word of praise. He came to my side and knelt behind the line of rubble, just his big, grey, curly head poking over the top, and Thomas and I made room for him, squirming uncomfortably aside on the hard stones.
‘They are coming again, sir,’ I said, pointing at the enemy, now in a tight formation behind the town gate, a dense column of red and blue, spear points gleaming atop the forest of shafts above their heads.
D’Aubigny opened his mouth to speak and at that moment a crossbow quarrel flashed between us, inches from the constable’s ruddy face, and clattered noisily against the stone of the keep twenty yards be
hind us. We both ignored it.
‘We have most of the men and stores inside the keep, now, Sir Alan,’ he said.
I nodded, not quite sure what to say.
‘Hold them here, if you can, as long as you can. But when the breach falls, and it will do, mark my words, don’t leave it too late to get yourself and your men inside with the rest of us. I need you alive – I need all of you alive.’ He said the last slightly louder so that all the knights around us might hear.
‘My lord of Locksley will give you ample cover when it’s time to go.’ And he jerked his head up towards my lord atop the south tower. ‘God be with you!’
‘Yes, sir,’ I said.
D’Aubigny began to make his way carefully back down the slope. I watched him reach the level courtyard safely and begin to stride back towards the bastion. But after two strides, he turned and shouted up: ‘You hear me, Alan Dale, don’t leave it too late. We can fight them off from the keep much better than from here.’
They came on again in the same way, a massed charge by the spearmen, protected by crossbowmen at their flanks. And in just the same way, Robin decimated their ranks. But this time, hard on the heels of the spearmen, came the dismounted knights – well-born but impoverished men from Hainault and Holland, Bruges and Brabant. Yet I still believe we could have held them, were it not for one appalling, unheard-of tactic that King John employed, a tactic I had never in my life imagined might be used by any commander who called himself a Christian.
We slaughtered the spearmen who survived the arrow storm and scrambled to the top of the breach. We chopped them down without mercy, the well-armoured English knights hacking apart peasants in their old leather armour and padded cloth coats with only a few weeks’ marching drill under their belts. They died by the score. Miles on my left was a demon with a dancing blade, slicing, hacking, chopping and pounding the enemy down, insulting them as they fell to his sword; Sir Thomas killed with a quiet and deadly efficiency, a minimum of motion, a quick cut and a short lunge and another man fell, ripped and howling, at his feet. I did my share of killing too but all I can recall of that battle is the sheer hard labour, the effort to kill and kill again, hacking down man after man, only for another to spring up in his place. They all blurred into one, one immortal red-and-blue-clad foe, who no matter how often I hacked him apart always returned as a screaming, red-dripping spectre to challenge me again.
The enemy knights below the breach were urging the spearmen onward and upward to their deaths with the points of their swords, and in a short lull in the fighting in front of me, I saw a knight strike down a fellow in a red-and-blue surcoat who had thrown away his spear and tried to run. However, it was not this disregard for the lives of John’s men that defeated us, but another brutality far worse.
The trebuchet ball smashed into the centre of the line of struggling men, red-and-blue spearmen and grey-clad English knights. It left half a dozen Flemings smeared across the rubble and cut Sir George Farnham into two pieces. There was a tiny pause – a miraculous break in the fray as every knight and spearman stopped his blow mid-strike – and each recognised what had just happened. King John had loosed his artillery on the breach despite it being filled with his own men. It was evidently worth the cost to the King to slaughter his own folk if it meant the chance of killing some of ours.
The second trebuchet ball landed short, splashing into the packed ranks of Flemings attempting to scale the breach and spattering red soup across the whole battle area. A dozen of their men were crushed by that strike alone.
A third trebuchet missile squelched through a file of their spearmen and ripped off the head and arm of an English man-at-arms on the far left of our line.
It was time to go. I prayed it was not too late.
‘Back, back,’ I shouted. ‘To the keep!’
With Miles and Sir Thomas warding my back, I started hauling men out of the line, shouting in their ears that they must retreat. But it is no easy feat to persuade an English knight whirling high with the frenzy of battle to disengage and flee. Some men stared at me in amazement, unable to understand the order; others cursed me, shoved me off and waded back into the fight, bloody swords singing.
Another devastating trebuchet strike turned the tables. The Flemish spearmen were melting back, ignoring the cries of their knights to fight on, appalled that their own side should seek to cut them down so cruelly. And so I was able to get a few of the more blood-crazed Englishmen to begin to stumble back down the slope. The slow retreat became a rout, with men pouring down the rocky incline and running full tilt towards the forebuilding, a massive stone box that guarded the main entrance to the keep. We had not far to go, a matter of fifty paces or so, and I was running with the best of them. But I did manage to snatch one last glimpse at the top of the breach, now lined with red-and-blue battle-stunned spearmen staring at our sudden flight with equal joy and utter surprise. Arrows from high on the keep were thwocking into them, slaying by the dozen, but they scarcely seemed to notice.
Then the trebuchet struck a final blow and the line of spearmen exploded into spinning limbs and bloody scraps.
After I had counted my men into the keep and slammed the iron-bound door shut behind the last, I was astounded to know that I had lost only nine men in that desperate fight, and of the seventy-two I had led to safety only two dozen were wounded and but one of those seriously. Good mail pays for itself, the better armourers are wont to tell you, and they are right.
Yet Miles was not among the men I brought back. I asked if anyone had seen him fall, but not a man could remember seeing Robin’s son after I gave the order to withdraw. I wondered if he had been slain as we all rushed headlong back to the keep but, in truth, we had not been hotly pursued. The spearmen and the Flemish knights had taken possession of the breach, when the trebuchet had finally ceased the bloody execution of their comrades, and had for the most part stopped there, awaiting more of their men to scramble up the rubble and join them. We had hardly been molested at all in the pell mell sprint to the keep.
So where was Miles?
I made the climb to the top of the south tower with a heavy heart: what could I say to Robin? That I had mislaid his younger son in the scramble to save my own life? As I came through the arch and into the fresh breeze on the darkling roof of the tower, Robin turned to me from the battlements and the first thing he said was:
‘He’s not dead, Alan.’
I hesitated, wondering if this was a question or a statement, and my lord said, ‘The bloody young fool. I saw him run the wrong way. When the rest of you came down, he went the other way, along the walls to the west. I couldn’t track him; we were busy hammering their assault with all we had. When I looked again he was gone. I don’t know what can have got into his thick head. That stupid, ill-disciplined child!’
Despite Robin’s angry words, I could see he was racked with worry.
‘I think I do,’ I said. ‘He knows a discreet way in and out of the castle – somewhere over there’ – I waved vaguely to the west towards the river. ‘It’s the same way he got out to forage for food two days ago. He has evidently decided he prefers to take his chance dodging Flemings in the darkness and maybe swimming the Medway than locked up tight in the keep with us.’
Robin looked slightly relieved. ‘Yes, he’s a resourceful boy. That’s true. Maybe he hasn’t foolishly thrown his life away. Thank you, Alan. You managed to creep into the castle; so maybe, with a bit of luck, he can creep out.’
Robin beckoned me over to the battlement. Below us the outer bailey was swarming with enemy troops, surging in and out of the buildings around the edge of that great space, looking for plunder. They carried flaming pine torches to ward off the gathering dusk and already the stables – emptied of horses, of course – were beginning to smoulder and smoke. As the greyness settled heavily across the land, the first sparks of light sprang up in the encampments all around and inside the town. We were surrounded by our enemies, shut up tight in a vast stone box
, with no hope of victory, rescue or surrender.
Maybe Miles had taken the sensible course, after all.
I looked at Robin and saw to my surprise that he had his head laid flat on the top of the crenellation, his ear pressed to the stone.
‘Listen to that,’ he said, tapping the masonry at his cheek with a finger.
I laid my head on the next crenellation along, wondering what he wished me to hear. And then it came, very faint, a short metallic sound – tink-tink-tink – like someone rapping a knife blade on a boulder a great distance away.
‘Miners,’ said Robin. ‘By the sound of it, very nearly under our walls.’
Chapter Twelve
I slept for two days straight after the fall of the outer bailey and dreamed of giant rats with fire-glowing eyes gnawing at my feet until I had nothing left to stand on and tumbled into a dark spinning abyss. Hunger will do that to you, give you strange and terrifying dreams. And it was the hollowness of my belly and the corresponding lightness of my head that obsessed me over the next few days and nights.
We had plenty of fighting men to stand guard duty inside the keep – still more than a hundred and fifty under arms, and a smaller number of serving men and women, grooms, cooks and so on – and we all took turns to watch from the four towers and numerous arrow slits of the keep as the King’s Flemings looted and burned the outer bailey and made merry in the town to celebrate their victory over us at the breach. Indeed, so many folk were inside the keep that it was uncomfortably crowded – and, although all the horses had been slaughtered, we were down to starvation rations: one bowl of vaguely meat-flavoured slop a day per man, no bread, no wine or ale. Robin’s archers hunted mice in the dungeons of the keep with pine torches and bows, loosing at skittering shadows in the corners, and those elusive creatures too were soon gone. D’Aubigny ordered the richer knights to surrender any stores of food they still had, which rendered a few chunks of dried pork sausage, a jar or two of preserves and a couple of cheeses. But with more than two hundred people to feed, these lasted less than a day.
