It was a relief when Tyler gave a shout and the little party stopped. There ahead were more men – a second party of English soldiers who had been scouring the land for provisions.
‘How much further?’ Ed asked as he allowed his load to tumble to the ground.
‘Until we find the army? I don’t know,’ Gil admitted, but before he could say more, Tyler called out.
‘There is a monastery two miles north of us. It has a rich tithe barn, with stores from the area, and there are cattle and pigs for the taking. What do you say?’
‘We were told to return to the army,’ Ed said.
‘Yes,’ Gil said. ‘But if we find more food and drink, that won’t matter.’
‘Is that all that is in his mind?’ Ed asked.
‘It’s a monastery,’ Gil said. ‘Any man’s mind will turn to gold and silver: but there could be food too.’
‘I don’t like this,’ Ed confessed. ‘God will not reward us if we attack His churches.’
‘He won’t object to us taking a little food and drink from these priests and monks,’ Gil said reassuringly. ‘He will know we need to eat to be able to do His work, and it’s only natural that we should seek food from any source.’
Ed was not convinced. So now another monastery was to be sacked and looted.
To his mind, the English were now the criminals. And he was one of them.
Berenger was glad to see Geoff and Jack return. They rode along with the rest of the army, for once not scouting for the enemy at the front, but in the midst of the main groups of fighting men.
‘There are benefits to being in the lead, you see,’ Sir John chuckled. The dust from thousands of boots and hooves was rising all around them in a cloud, clawing their way up Berenger’s nostrils and irritating his eyes with tiny particles of grit.
‘Damn this dust!’ Sir John muttered under his breath. How are your men?’
Berenger shot him a look. ‘They are well enough. The marching is getting to them, and it’s hard to see long-standing comrades die. We’ve lost several now.’
‘I know of Will and . . . that man James. Who else?’
‘Matt died today. And of the newer recruits we collected in the last muster, three or four are dead. Two others are badly injured. One will come back, the other won’t.’
‘So, of twenty, you’ve lost five or six?’
‘We never were twenty. When we left Portsmouth we were four under our number. Now, we’re half-strength.’
‘The boy?’
‘Yes. But he’s gone, too.’ Berenger met Sir John’s stare. ‘He had some trouble with the Welshmen, as I told you. In Caen, after the sack, they found him and tried to hang him. Apparently they mistreated him before he met us, before we sailed, and they held a grudge, or wanted to silence him.’
‘Oh, yes. That was why you attacked them, I recall.’
‘I was in a black rage that they should try to murder one of my men. I would do it again.’
‘You would be a poor leader of men, were you not to take their health and well-being in hand. And avenge them in death.’
‘I do my best for them,’ Berenger said.
Sir John nodded. ‘It is no more than I would expect.’ His eyes suddenly widened. ‘What is that?’
Ahead, and a little to the north, was another thick column of smoke. The wind caught at it and tugged it this way and that, but the pall was so thick and oily that it still remained hanging over the whole area.
Sir John studied it for some while, and then he beckoned his esquire. ‘Richard, go and ask the Prince if we may ride to investigate that. It is far from our line of march. None of our men should be there. Suggest that we and two vintaines should go and reconnoitre.’
‘Sir.’
The esquire wheeled his horse and cantered back to where Edward of Woodstock rode with the Earl of Warwick. Soon he was back.
‘Sir John, the Prince thanks you for your observation. He says he would be grateful if we could go and investigate.’
‘Good! Berenger, you come with me, and bring your men. We’ll take Roger and his vintaine too,’ Sir John said. He glanced at his esquire. ‘We can ride and investigate, and if there is nothing, at least we shall have escaped this damned dust for a while,’ he added.
They took their horses across the path of a swearing, furious wagon-master, and thence up a gentle rise to the top of a broad hillock. In the distance they could plainly see a series of large buildings enclosed by low walls.
‘It’s a monastery,’ Richard said. ‘If those are our men, they will pay a heavy price for this. The King wants no insults to God this late in the campaign.’
‘God?’ Sir John snorted. ‘More to the point, the King wants as few English archers wasted in individual mercenary engagements as possible. He needs every single man. And he does not wish to be held up here, with the French breathing down our necks. If those are Englishmen, they will live to regret their actions for the rest of their lives. Although that may not prove to be a very long time.’
Later, sitting muzzily in the dark with a goblet of wine, Berenger would remember every moment of that afternoon.
Even as he cantered under the monastery’s gatehouse, Berenger had a premonition of disaster. Just inside, three bodies were sprawled in the dirt. Avoiding them, the vintaine rode in past the outbuildings and towards the main convent.
All about the grass, they saw, were more bodies – lay-brothers who had tried to defend their church and cloister, but had failed. Some had been pierced by arrows, while others had been beaten to death or stabbed. Fighting and killing those who were all but incapable of defending themselves was the action of outlaws, Berenger thought in disgust, not a disciplined army.
At a doorway, a porter lay draped over the steps. Berenger dismounted, and with Sir John and Geoff, he marched inside.
From the abbot’s chamber upstairs there came the sound of ribald celebration. Sir John drew his sword and, with a quick look at the men behind him, took the stairs in a rush.
At the top there was an already open door, and inside they found a party of thirty men.
All were drunk. A pair were dancing on the abbot’s table; beneath it lay the body of a man. A piper played a tune, beating time with his tambour, while others capered and sang, all brandishing goblets and cups which they refilled from the cask set on the sideboard. The cushions and hallings that had been hanging on the walls to keep the room warm, were thrown to the floor, and a man was pissing on them as Sir John entered. He turned, mouth agape, at the intrusion, but before he could make a comment, Sir John’s gauntleted fist smashed his lips against his teeth, and he crashed into the cupboard. Pewter and plate rattled and fell to the ground in a discordant cacophony, as though a box of hand-bells had been thrown on to a granite slab.
The piping, drumming and singing tapered off, and all the men in the room turned to stare at Sir John. He lifted his sword and pointed it at the men on the table. ‘Get down!’
‘What’s this? Come to get your own share, my Lord Knight?’ a sarcastic voice called. It was Tyler.
‘All in this room are guilty of looting and disobeying the King’s command,’ Sir John announced. ‘You will leave this chamber at once.’
‘This is our victory, Sir Knight,’ Tyler said in his sneering tone. ‘You want us out, you’ll have to pay us to go!’
There were some muttered assents to this, and heads were set nodding.
Sir John called to Berenger’s men, and Jack and Geoff entered. Without needing to ask, they grabbed the nearest man and flung him bodily down the staircase. After that example, the men ignored Tyler’s exhortations and followed down the stairs themselves. None was in a fit state to argue their cause.
Amongst the men Sir John saw three he recognised, and he glanced at Berenger, whose face was filled with misery. Shaking his head, the vintener walked outside, waiting until Gil appeared.
‘What were you doing here, Gil?’
Gil’s faded blue eyes were almost g
rey, and although he was sober, he looked washed-out and anxious. ‘We helped them, just as you said.’
‘You knew your orders, didn’t you? You knew no one was to attack a town or manor, but to keep moving, to prevent the French from catching up with us. What did you think would happen?’
The men were marched from the abbey’s grounds. Geoff and Jack were despatched by Berenger to see if anyone had survived the assault, but even Geoff looked shocked at the sights in the cloister.
‘Two men in there, they’d been tied to a wall and crucified. They were tortured first. Frip,’ he said in a quiet voice. ‘I’ve never seen things like that before. They didn’t even choose the sort of men who would know where any treasure would be stored, but just grabbed anyone: servants or lay-brothers, from the look of them.’
Berenger had the captives herded back towards the army. When they arrived, the marching troops were commanded to halt, and a passageway was opened for the renegades. Riding slowly down it, Berenger saw the Prince approaching beside his father from the far end of the corridor. The King, a tall, handsome man in his middle years, was known for a sense of humour. But today there was no smile on his face. Today, he was bitterly angry.
He held up his hand to halt his escort.
‘Is it true, what my son has told me?’
Sir John allowed his rounsey to side-step to expose the men with Tyler behind him. Berenger watched as the King allowed his gaze to fall upon each of the bound men in turn. ‘Where were they?’
Sir John took a breath and cleared his throat reluctantly. ‘At the monastery over there, Your Magesty. All inside were slain. Some tried to defend their convent, but they were cut down. I think no monks or lay-brothers survived.’
‘And for what?’ the King demanded in a low, furious voice.
‘We sought to wage war with fear, just as you told us,’ Tyler said boldly. ‘You brought us all here to fight a war of dampnum. You told us to attack towns and cities, farms and villages. We continued what you told us to do.’
‘I gave orders that the whole army was to ignore tempting targets today, and should ride with determination to the Somme. That was the sole purpose of our day, to make it to the river before the French get there. It will be our purpose tomorrow too. We must prevent ourselves from being trapped here. But you decided to slow us, to entertain your own base greed for profit. By your treachery, you may have cost us more than treasure!’
‘Sire, we did what you wanted us to do all the way here! How were we to know that this one day you would choose to alter your plans?’
‘Silence! I will not debate with you about this act of callous treachery! You have betrayed my trust: Sir John, have them form a line.’
Sir John nodded and motioned to his esquire. ‘Do as your King bids.’
The men were forced from their horses, and pushed and shoved into a line. Men armed with bills kept them in their places.
King Edward motioned, and the men at his side rode forward a few paces. On the King’s left was the Earl of Warwick, and he now pointed with his baton to more foot-soldiers. They marched up, bills at the ready.
‘These men have broken my command,’ the King declared, his voice singing out in the silence. ‘They knowingly rode out on adventure for their own benefit. Their greed has endangered our army, for their arrogance caused us delay, and our enemy is hard on our heels. For this there has to be a punishment that fits the severity of their offences. The first man will step to the left, the second to the right, the third to the left, and so on through the men in the line. Those on the right shall be reduced to the rank of the foot-archers and their money shall be stopped at that level. They will have to prove their loyalty afresh.’
He paused while the men were prodded and beaten into their new lines, and then the foot-soldiers marched down between the two lines and separated them.
The King stared at the second line.
‘These other men shall be executed now.’
Ed listened to the King’s words with breathless disbelief.
When the men had all been marched back to the army, he had thought that there would be a court, an opportunity to explain – and yet here he was, with the sentence of death on him!
He looked about him frantically as he realised the full awfulness of his situation. When they were forced into a line, he had shuffled between Gil and Walt. There, with their two solid forms before and behind, he had felt safe. It was like standing between the walls of an fortress. He was out of sight – and that meant he was out of mind.
And then he heard the King’s judgement, and suddenly his confidence was stripped away as he realised his danger. Men came marching down the line, pulling a man to the left, then to the right, and as they came closer and closer, Ed saw that Gil, in front of him, and Walt behind, would both be pulled out to one side, leaving him on the other.
He wanted to ask to be allowed to stay with his friends, but the man tugged him away, and he found himself on one side of a polearm held across a guard’s chest, while beyond he could see Gil and Walt. The polearm was one of many forming an impenetrable fence, and the look in the guard’s face told Ed that any pleading would be useless.
And then he heard the King’s pronouncement.
Time slowed to a heartbeat’s drum-pace. He found his gaze moving helplessly from side to side, trying to seek an escape, already knowing that there was none. A horn blast sounded clear on the air, and he knew that shortly he would be marched away.
A shiver convulsed his frame. Tears wanted to spring, but the full shock of his situation seemed to prevent them. He was soon to be executed, and he couldn’t even plead his innocence. God stood by, waiting for his supplication, but he could not move his lips.
While they had been gathering the men from the abbey, the King had sent a team of engineers to construct a large gallows-tree.
Three tree-trunks had been cut and conveyed to the army’s flank. Now they were embedded vertically in the French earth in a triangular formation. From the top of each trunk, a strong plank ran to the next one. Thus, by linking the three tree-trunks, a triangle of planks stood some fifteen feet from the ground. Now men threw coils of rope up and over the planks, seven to each plank, and a pair of hardy men looped and knotted these until each rope had a noose of sorts dangling.
No need for formality here. The King had issued his commands, and for men held under martial law, there was no higher authority. The first of the men in Ed’s line was pulled forward. A thong was quickly lashed about his hands behind his back, a noose placed over his throat, and then to the command of a vintener, three men hauled hard on the other end of the rope, and the man was slowly lifted into the air, his face reddening, eyes bulging, legs kicking and thrashing in the manner so familiar to those who had witnessed men dancing the Tyburn Jig before.
Berenger watched the second man. He had already soiled himself, and when he was hoisted aloft, his kicking spread ordure over the observers. Some laughed to see their comrades bespattered, and there were ribald comments as the third went up. This one had managed to release his hands, and now he clung to the rope at his throat, desperately clawing at the cord. Berenger had seen men fight the rope before. Inevitably their attempts failed, but not before they had raked the flesh at the rope into a bloody mess where fingernails had scraped away the skin of their necks.
It was a foul way to die, he told himself. When he looked along the line and saw Ed, a sense of melancholy settled on his spirit. Gil was in the first line of men, standing and watching the frail little form of their Donkey as the King’s men pushed and shoved Ed and the others towards the gallows.
Ed found himself pushed forwards to his doom. To his side, the guilty men from the abbey who had been spared were watching. Some looked away; one had his hands over his eyes – but many just stared without compassion. Tyler himself was there, Ed saw, with a look of indifference on his face. There was no sympathy for the men who had followed him so willingly to the abbey and who now dangled, moving gently
as the jerking of their legs lessened and gradually stilled.
Near him was Gil, who stared back at Ed despairingly.
Eleven were up now, and the twelfth was being hoisted up. The man in front of Ed would be next. All of a sudden, the man whirled around, punched the nearest guard and fled, weaving and ducking to evade his pursuers. His run was ended suddenly as a bill swung and caught his leg. With a shrill squeal, much like an injured rabbit’s, the man was felled. He tried to rise, but he had broken a leg, and now his screams of agony rose over all the other sounds. The guards moved in to grab him . . .
. . . And Ed felt a hand at his shoulder.
‘Boy! Donkey! Swyve your mother, boy! Move!’
He heard the urgently hissed command and allowed himself to be pulled back, and to his confusion, was tugged away from the line and concealed behind the guards, while Gil took his place in the line.
‘But . . . what . . .?’ he managed.
Gil gave him a twisted smile. ‘You remember what I said to you, Donkey? You be a good soldier, if you make it that far. Don’t do as the rest of us have. Understand?’
The limping man was pulled bodily up to the ropes, his left leg dragging in the dirt, his face full of terror, staring up at the ropes and hanging bodies. A noose was placed over his head, and soon his shrieking was cut off with a hideous gurgling as he tried to breathe. When his legs jerked, his shattered left leg moved irrationally, like a puppet’s, bending forward and sideways as well as back.
Ed witnessed it all, and now, as he saw men take Gil’s arms and pull him, unresisting, to the next noose he heard a burst of laughter. When he turned and stared, traumatised, he saw the King’s household sitting mounted on their great beasts, drinking wine from richly chased mazers. Only the King himself appeared to be watching his soldiers as they hanged, his eyes dark and bleak below his thick brows.
When he turned his attention back to Gil, Ed saw that his companion was already in the air, his face growing purple as he span gently on the wind. When he revolved, his eyes sought out Ed’s, communicating an especial urgency.
Fields of Glory Page 28
