The knight in ‘all-white’ held up a hand for silence. ‘You’ve no need to vouch for this young man, Sir Thomas. I know him.’ From the eyes that twinkled behind the eye-slits of his visor, Kemp fancied that the knight was smiling. ‘We met at Saint-Vaast-la-Hougue, did we not?’
Kemp frowned, trying to remember which knights he had met at Saint-Vaast, but the knight was no longer paying any attention to him. ‘Sir John, take Sir Roger and Sir Guy and three hundred archers, and attack the men posted at the Nieullay bridge. Sir Walter, take my son, a hundred men-at-arms and a hundred and fifty archers and sally out of the eastern gate of the town. The rest shall come with me, and we shall attack de Chargny from both sides.’
As the men-at-arms and mounted archers formed up in the square in front of the castle, Kemp saw Preston ride out with Conyers and the other men of Holland’s retinue. Even Brewster was there, dressed in a habergeon of mail and a steel bascinet. Seeing Kemp, he called out.
‘Martin! God be praised!’
‘How did you come here?’ demanded Preston. ‘We heard you were dead.’
‘There’ll be plenty of time for telling of our adventures when the fighting’s done,’ called Holland. ‘Are you coming with us, Kemp? You look as though you’ve had a hard time of it already.’
Kemp shook his head. ‘I’m coming, Sir Thomas. I’ve a number of scores to settle with de Chargny.’
* * *
‘De Pavia’s taking his time,’ grumbled de Chargny, while he waited with Geoffroi le fitz, de Ribeaumont, and the rest of his force outside the Boulogne gate. The breath billowed from their mouths in the chill air of the winter’s night. ‘He is making us die of cold!’ They had dismounted from their horses to stretch their legs.
‘In the name of God, the Lombards are avaricious people,’ said another knight. ‘He is looking over your écus, Sir Geoffroi, to make sure none are false, and they are all there.’ There was general laughter amongst the men who were close enough to hear.
De Chargny did not laugh, however. Frowning, he suddenly waved the men around him to silence. ‘What’s that noise?’
From somewhere inside the town, they could hear the clop of hooves on cobbles. ‘At last,’ said de Ribeaumont.
The gate opened, and suddenly a trumpet sounded the charge. Armed men were surging out, knights, men-at-arms and archers, hundreds of them, all under the banner of Sir Walter Mauny. They turned, bearing down on de Chargny and his men, the hooves of their horses pounding the frozen soil.
‘Mauny to the rescue!’
‘Havoc! Havoc!’
The causeway was barely wide enough for twenty men to stand abreast; there was not enough room for a mounted charge, and the land on either side of it was too marshy for horses. The English dismounted, knights and men-at-arms along with the archers, and began to move towards the French.
De Chargny drew his sword. This was not the town’s pathetically small garrison. ‘Betrayed!’ he hissed to de Ribeaumont, and then turned in his saddle to address his men. ‘Gentlemen! If we retreat now, we shall lose all. It will be better for us to fight valiantly, that the day may yet be ours.’
‘By Saint George, you speak the truth,’ jeered an English man-at-arms who had been close enough to hear him. ‘The Devil take anyone who thinks of fleeing!’
Everything seemed to happen at once. In all Kemp’s previous battles there had been a build-up, a pause while he and his companions awaited the attack of the French, their inner fears stoking them up into a fever-pitch of nervous excitement. But tonight it was the English who charged. Kemp and his companions found themselves swept along the causeway by the fast-flowing tide of events, thrust at once into the thick of battle without being given a chance to muster their courage.
Led by Mauny, the English knights and men-at-arms charged along the causeway on foot, wielding their swords and battleaxes above their heads. The French outnumbered them over ten to one, but there was not enough space on the causeway for them to bring the full weight of their numbers to bear. De Chargny had been caught off-guard, and had no time to adopt any coherent formation. The English smashed into the enemy ranks, gouging a path through the closely packed bodies. The silence of the night was shattered by the clash of steel, shouted war-cries, and the screams of the wounded. Men fell dead or mortally wounded on both sides, and it was not long before the corpses lay so thick on the causeway that those who still fought stumbled over the bodies of their comrades.
Then the two sides disengaged, the French withdrawing a short way while the English rallied for another. Positioned behind the knights and men-at-arms, Kemp could see Sir John Beauchamp leading his forces along the beach to the west of Calais, to take the bridge at Nieullay from de Fiennes’ men and cut off the French retreat.
But de Chargny had seen how few the English who attacked him were, and ordered one of his trumpeters to rally his men. He formed his men-at-arms into a line across the causeway, four ranks deep, their foreshortened lances levelled to receive the next charge.
The unknown knight in ‘all-white’ armour was still in command of the situation. Seeing the French rally, he turned to Holland. ‘Take those archers over there to yonder island,’ he commanded, indicating an area of more solid ground in the middle of the marsh, to one side of the causeway. ‘I’ll take these over there. We’ll catch the French in a cross-hail.’
‘Aye, sire.’ Holland hurried away, and the unknown turned to the two platoons of dismounted archers who stood around him. ‘Who’s in charge here?’
Preston and another serjeant-at-arms stepped forward. ‘We are, sir,’ said Preston.
‘Bring your men and follow me.’
‘Says who?’ demanded the other serjeant.
‘I do,’ replied the unknown, raising the visor of his bascinet, and it was not until that moment that Kemp recognised him. ‘I am Edward of Windsor.’
Abashed, the serjeant went down on one knee before his king. ‘My apologies, your Majesty. I did not realise…’
‘Nor could you be expected to,’ the king replied kindly. ‘Take your men to yonder spit of sand, and shoot at the French from there.’
‘Aye, sire.’ As the two serjeants descended into the marsh, followed by their men, the king ran to join the men-at-arms further down the causeway to encourage them to greater efforts. The archers stripped off their habergeons, holding their bows above their heads as they waded through the mire.
‘Christ’s body!’ grumbled Jarrom. ‘I thought we’d seen the last of this God-damned swamp!’
‘Stop grumbling!’ snarled Preston. ‘Nails and blood! Come back, Jankin Newbolt, all is forgiven.’
‘Who the hell is Jankin Newbolt?’ Jarrom muttered under his breath.
‘He was in our platoon before you came,’ said Kemp, holding aloft a bow that Conyers had found for him as he stumbled waist-deep through the morass. ‘He was always grumbling too, but he was a better man than you, aye and like.’
‘Was?’
‘He died at Crécy.’
Jarrom laughed. ‘He can’t have been that good. Even I survived Crécy.’
‘More’s the pity,’ jibed Conyers.
They reached the area of dry sand and hauled themselves out of the marsh, clambering up the muddy bank to the drier ground at the top of the spit, shivering. The frozen wet sand beneath their feet was too hard to stick their arrows in, so they took them out of their retainers and thrust them under their belts.
They had only brought two dozen arrows each. ‘Make every shot tell,’ ordered Preston. ‘Shoot at will. In your own time.’ They had no mounted charge to hold off; it was simply a matter of killing as many of the enemy as they could from their vantage point.
The French provided an easy target, a close-packed body of men on the causeway barely two hundred yards from where the archers were positioned. At the front, the French were still engaged with the English men-at-arms, but the foot-soldiers straggled out behind the French men-at-arms, far enough back for the skilled archers
to be in little danger of hitting their own countrymen. Kemp nocked an arrow to his bow and loosed, quickly reaching for another. He was back in his element, doing what he did best. His eyes searched constantly for de Chargny’s distinctive jupon as he sought out fresh targets but he could not see the French knight anywhere.
Aware of the killing hail that harried their flanks, many of the French foot-soldiers climbed down the sides of the causeway to advance on the archers. As they waded through the morass, however, their heavy armour weighed them down and they were vulnerable targets.
The sky was growing lighter with the coming of the false dawn, making it easier for the English archers to see their prey. The king was at the centre of the mêlée on the causeway, swinging his sword left and right under Mauny’s banner. Seeing de Ribeaumont hacking away at his opponents, the king pushed his way through the press of men to face him and the two engaged in single combat in the midst of the confusion. De Ribeaumont was as tall and strong as the king, and beat him back with savage blows which the king countered with difficulty. He sank to his knees under the onslaught. But as de Ribeaumont tried to bring his sword down against his opponent’s head, the king parried his blow, holding the tip of his blade in his gauntleted left hand, and driving the fist that clutched the hilt of his sword into de Ribeaumont’s stomach. Winded, de Ribeaumont staggered back as the king rose and hacked at him repeatedly, each blow accompanied by cries of: ‘Ha! Saint Edward! Ha! Saint George!’
Engaged with a man-at-arms nearby, de Chargny recognised the war-cry, and glanced towards the knight in ‘all-white’ armour who was fighting de Ribeaumont. Certainly the man had the right build, and yet it seemed incredible… but he had often heard that the English king liked to fight incognito at tournaments. If he could capture or kill the King of England, the day might not yet be lost…
He dispatched his opponent with a sword-thrust to the throat, and tried to push his way through the crush to where de Ribeaumont fought the English king. Three men-at-arms blocked his path. He drove his sword into one’s chest, ducked as the second swung at him with a battleaxe, and lashed out at the third with one foot, hearing the man’s kneecap smash. As the man went down with a scream, de Chargny withdrew his sword from the first and swung at the second, his broadsword biting deep into the man’s side.
But now there were even more men between him and King Edward. Surrounded by his own troops, de Chargny paused to take command of the situation once again. ‘You, you and you!’ he snapped at three Frenchmen-at-arms. ‘I want a path cut through to where Sir Eustache is fighting that knight in “all-white”, understand?’
The archers had exhausted their supplies of arrows by now, and Preston led them back through the mire to join the fight on the causeway with their swords. Kemp followed him willingly; he did not consider himself particularly brave, but he found it intolerable to stand by as a spectator while the battle was being decided only a few hundred yards away. Jarrom, Elliott and Gower did not see it the same way: they were archers and, when their arrows were gone, considered the rest was up to the men-at-arms. When Preston wasn’t watching, they slipped back down the other side of the sand spit, leaving Preston, Kemp, Conyers, Brewster, Hamo Newton and the archers of the other platoon to advance on their own.
A few crossbowmen remained on the causeway, and they loosed a few shots at the advancing archers, but most of them were caught up in the hand-to-hand fighting with the English knights and men-at-arms.
Kemp hauled himself from the marsh and scrambled up the side of the causeway, drawing his sword as he plunged into the foray. He was beyond exhaustion, his mind so numb it ignored the signals his body sent it to tell him he had had enough for one day. He struck at a Frenchman from behind with his broadsword, the blade cleaving through mail and flesh, and then ducked as a foreshortened lance was thrust at him. Pulling his blade free of the first man, he stabbed the second, and barely had time to parry as a third man slashed at him. Struggling to keep his footing on the edge of the causeway, he thrust at the third man’s face, stabbing him in one eye.
Glancing around for another victim, he struck at a man, his blade glancing harmlessly off a steel bascinet. The knight turned with a roar and thrust at Kemp’s midriff, but he did not have enough room in the crush to move fast enough, and Kemp dodged the blow. He lifted his broadsword, hacking at the man’s face and slicing into his visor. Blood gouted through the eye-slits, and the knight fell to the ground to be trampled underfoot.
‘Kemp!’ Conyers had seized a knight from behind in an armlock, holding his victim’s arms out so he could not use his sword. There was no room for Kemp to use his own sword, so he took the dagger from the knight’s belt and jabbed its slender blade through the eye-slit of his visor.
Then a French man-at-arms in turn grabbed Kemp from behind. As another man-at-arms moved in front of him to stab him while he was helpless, Kemp kicked the man in the chest, sending him sprawling back so Conyers could hack at his head with his short sword. The kick also knocked the man holding Kemp off-balance, and Kemp broke free, whirling round to slash at his throat.
‘Look out!’ Conyers’ voice again. Kemp ducked instinctively, and a lance aimed at the back of his head passed over him to plunge into a Frenchman’s neck. Kemp turned, swinging his broadsword, and the blade sliced through to the bone of his attacker’s arm. More blood spurted, and the man staggered back with a scream of agony, lost his footing and tumbled down the side of the causeway.
But the English were growing weary and at last the weight of numbers was beginning to tell on the side of the French. De Chargny’s men had cut a path through to where the king fought, and de Chargny himself was about to go to de Ribeaumont’s aid when Kemp saw his jupon and recognised his coat-of-arms. ‘De Chargny!’ he roared.
De Chargny’s pointed visor turned. The last time he saw Kemp, he had been a prisoner in the dungeons of the castle of Saint-Omer. He remembered giving Arnault specific instructions to kill the churl without any risk to himself. How had he survived, and come here? It did not matter: Kemp’s survival could swiftly be remedied. De Chargny tapped two of his men on the shoulder, pointing to Kemp. ‘Kill him!’
As the two men-at-arms moved to block Kemp’s path, de Chargny turned back towards the king and de Ribeaumont. At that moment, one of Kemp’s companions, Hamo Newton, seized the French knight from behind in an arm-lock.
‘Serjeant Preston!’
Preston turned and saw Newton holding a visored knight. He raised his sword to bring it down on the knight’s head. De Chargny swung his foot up between Preston’s legs, his steel sabaton catching the serjeant in the crotch.
‘Nails and blood!’ Preston gasped, sinking to his knees in agony. De Chargny flipped Newton over his shoulder so the archer landed on top of Preston, knocking him out. Then de Chargny reversed his grip on his sword, and plunged it down into Newton’s chest with both hands.
The first of the two men-at-arms, meanwhile, spun his sword around his head and swung at Kemp. Kemp parried the blow, and kicked at the man’s kneecap, shattering it. As the Frenchman fell, Kemp brought down his sword on top of his head, knocking off the man’s ‘kettle’ helmet. Kemp was forced to parry a blow from the second man-at-arms, swinging his sword at the man’s side. His blade did not penetrate his assailant’s mail, but the blow was strong enough to knock the man off-balance. That gave Kemp a moment to hack at the first man’s head before he could stab up at him. The blade cleaved through the steel links of his coif, and then went on through his skull, killing him.
The second man was aiming another blow. Kemp tugged his blade free with a roar of effort, and stabbed with all his might. The point of his sword pierced the man’s habergeon, and blood spurted as the blade penetrated his stomach.
‘Mauny to the rescue!’ Just as de Chargny was about to go to de Ribeaumont’s aid, the English battle-cry was renewed, and he looked up in time to see another knight in ‘all-white’ armour come riding into the fray at the head of another two hundred mo
unted men.
That swung it for the French. Panicked by the arrival of these English reinforcements, they began to throw down their weapons. Knocked on to his back, de Ribeaumont reversed his grip on his sword, offering the hilt up to his opponent. ‘Sir knight, I surrender myself as your prisoner, for the honour of the day must fall to the English.’
De Chargny ran to where his horse was tethered and swung himself up into the saddle. If he could fetch de Fiennes and his men from the bridge at Nieullay, the French might yet win.
Brewster ran up and seized the bridle of his horse. ‘Yield, sir knight! The battle is lost.’
‘It’s not lost until I say it is,’ de Chargny replied coolly. ‘And as for yielding to a churl… I would rather die.’ He swung his broadsword down at Brewster’s head. The blade did not penetrate his steel bascinet, but the force of the blow was such that it knocked him senseless. De Chargny dug his spurs into his horse’s flanks and galloped away in the direction of the bridge.
Soon it was all over on the causeway. De Renty, de Ribeaumont and de Chargny’s son were all prisoners, while the French soldiers were disarmed by the English men-at-arms and archers. Holland found Preston pinned under Newton’s body, and helped him to his feet. ‘What happened to you?’ asked the knight.
‘He got kicked in the bollocks.’ Conyers grinned with the relief of a hard-fought victory.
‘Oh aye, very funny,’ Preston grumbled hoarsely. ‘Where’s Kemp?’
The king was also glancing about. ‘Where’s de Chargny?’
* * *
Riding along the causeway towards the Nieullay bridge, de Chargny saw pockets of fighting taking place all over the marsh, although everywhere he turned the English were now gaining the upper hand. He approached the bridge in time to see his own crossbowmen wavering under the concentrated and repeated volleys of the English archers under Sir John Beauchamp. On the far side of the river he could make out de Fiennes’ banner being carried away as he escaped on horseback with a couple of squires. The French crossbowmen saw it too, and lost heart. Some of them fled towards Boulogne, but most threw down their weapons and called for quarter. The English quickly seized the bridge, cutting off any hopes de Chargny might have had of escaping in that direction. He wheeled his horse about, and began to ride back along the causeway towards Calais. Perhaps he could still challenge the English king to single combat…
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