by Angus Donald
‘Perfect,’ said Hanno, grinning at me savagely from his saddle and displaying his awful rotting teeth. He wrenched his own small hand axe from where it was embedded in the top of the second knight’s spine and callously kicked the unstrung, speechless, dying man out of the saddle. ‘A perfect kill, Alan!’ Hanno it seemed was very pleased with my performance. ‘A soldier should be very happy to die from such a perfect strike. I teach you well.’
Neither of our victims had made more than a moan of complaint before we sent them to God. My mounted company was coming up the slope at a fast canter and we barely paused once they reached the top of the low hill. ‘Now,’ I shouted to the oncoming horsemen, their young faces rosy with the light of imminent battle, ‘now, we ride for our lives — ride for the castle gate, don’t stop for anything. Ride as if the Devil himself were on your heels!’
Chapter Two
We charged down that slight slope in two loose packs: the light cavalry — the mounted men-at-arms with their long lances — in the first group, the horse archers and our few pack animals, led by Thomas my squire, behind them. The plan, if our crude manoeuvre could be described as such, was for us to sweep down the slope, gallop across the trampled fields of wheat before the castle and ride directly up to its gates, which were about eight hundred paces ahead of our horses’ noses. The fifty lancers in the vanguard of our company were a hammer blow designed to smash the enemy out of our way and clear the path for the mounted archers and baggage animals, and then it would be down to speed and brutal sword-work as we all tried to cut our way through the entire French army. Trying not to remember that there were two thousand enemy soldiers between us and safety, I gripped my well-trained destrier Shaitan hard with my knees, couched my lance, shouted my war cry: ‘Westbury!’ and spurred down the slope at the head of the first wave of our men. The cavalrymen immediately behind me were screaming and whooping too; and with the pounding of the horses’ hooves, we made a spectacular and noisy entrance to the battlefield as we charged down on to the flat land before the castle — and yet the enemy were initially very slow to react. The murders of the two knights on the ridge had gone unnoticed, it seemed, and the first that the French soldiery knew of our attack was the sight of fifty spear-wielding, screaming men on fast horses thundering down the gentle slope into their midst.
A man-at-arms in a knee-length hauberk was stirring the contents of a huge cooking pot hung over a fire as we charged into the camp. He gawped at me as I galloped straight at him: he was unarmed, apart from an eating knife at his belt, and I lifted my lance point above his head deliberately to miss as Shaitan and I charged towards him, nudging my horse with my left knee in a battle signal to my huge mount that I’d practised hundreds of times in the three months that I had had him. Shaitan responded immediately, changing his line of gallop smoothly and smashing his black glossy shoulder into the man as we passed, the fellow reeling away and stumbling into the dust. Another fellow ran into my path, a brave man, unarmoured, dressed only in a dirty chemise, braies and torn, muddy hose, who pointed a crossbow at me and pulled the lever to send a foot-long bolt of hissing death at my face. My boar-device shield came up instinctively, the moment I saw him on my quarter, and I felt the impact reverberate in the bone of my left forearm as the quarrel thwocked into the centre of my stout shield. I turned my head to glare at him as I galloped past, and saw one of the horsemen in my wake, behind me and to my left, punch his lance deep in the man’s chest and leave him writhing in his death agony on the ground.
It must be conceded that, once they had realized that they were under attack, the French reacted well: a ripple of sound and movement travelled out through the huge camp from our point of impact. The whole surface of the encampment seemed to shiver like the skin of a horse that is troubled by stinging flies. Men-at-arms were running hither and yon, calling their comrades to arms. Horsemen were swinging up into the saddle, whether they were in armour or not — I even saw one knight leap astride his charger bare-chested, helmet-less, shouting at his squire to throw him shield and lance. From my bounding saddle, I could see the walls of the castle clearly, six hundred paces away, the battlements dotted with the black heads of the defenders — and something most curious struck my eye: on the dark wood of the tightly shut doors of the main gate some crude hand had drawn a giant image of a man wearing a large crown in thick white chalk lines. The man was pictured standing sideways on, and his right arm reached between his legs to where a round-headed, spiked battle mace was depicted as springing from his loins. Underneath the chalk drawing the words ‘Philip Augustus’ had been scrawled.
I pulled my attention back to the situation at hand. A crowd of knights, perhaps twenty men, armed and armoured any old how in their haste to join battle, but mainly in hauberks and helms, lance and sword, were forming up directly to my front, barring the way to the castle. I shouted: ‘On me, on me. Westbury! Westbury!’ and guided Shaitan to head straight for the foremost knight, a big man on a bay horse, with a flat-topped tubular helmet and a bright gold-and-white device, a stag, on his shield.
He levelled his lance and spurred forward to meet me and I had only a heartbeat to raise my shield and aim my own spear at his lower belly before we collided with an ear-numbing crash of metal and splintering wood. A gigantic blow smashed my shield painfully against my left shoulder. The long ash lance in my right hand snapped in two, and though I didn’t have a moment to glance down at his midsection as we passed each other, I saw by the look of shock in his eyes through the slits of his helmet that I had found my target.
To my left I watched Hanno dip his spear and neatly skewer a half-armoured man on a frightened grey horse. But other enemy horsemen surged forward, swords and spear-points glinting in the sharp air. One man cut at me with a sword as he rode past, and missed, and I stopped a glancing axe blow from another with my quarrel-impaled shield. The rest of my cavalrymen were all around me now, protecting me, fighting like men possessed and steadily hacking, pushing, grinding their way forward. Pulling out my own side-arm — a beautiful sword, with a long, slim but strong blade and the word ‘Fidelity’ engraved in golden letters on it, and a great jewel set in the pommel — I looked to the castle. It was a scant four hundred paces away and I could clearly see the marks the French trebuchets had made on the walls. One section of the battlements east of the gate had been badly smashed, although it appeared the defenders had rebuilt that part with the rubble, and barrels and planks of green wood.
There were French troops coming from both sides, and from behind us; the enemy was fully alerted. An enemy knight charged out of nowhere and jabbed his lance at me and I flicked it out of the way with my sword, and cut savagely at his neck as he rode past me, my blade crunching against his mail. More of the foe were swarming towards us on foot, hundreds of them; the whole camp, it seemed, was flooding towards us like a great incoming tide of men. The archers had caught up with the vanguard and were now fighting alongside my lancers; hacking with their short swords and axes, stabbing with long knives. The back of a horse is no place to use a war bow. But I could see that my men were dying, as well as killing the enemy; their horses were crushed against the mounts of our foes, their blades ringing against helm and shield; though some were surrounded merely by a seething press of footmen. Somehow we had lost the momentum of our charge and become embroiled in a melee — a vicious slogging, hacking, shoving match against an enemy with twenty times our numbers.
It was a battle we could only lose.
To my right I could see Owain at the centre of a swarm of enemy knights, and men on foot, too, stabbing up with long lethal pole arms from a distance. They were attracted like wasps to wine by the black-and-white wolf’s head banner that he bore: Robin’s banner. Though the powerful bowman was laying about mightily with his short sword, and knocking men back with each stroke, they were too many. Before I could get close I saw him take a deep spear thrust to the small of the back from a French pikeman, and watched helplessly as a knight rode in and sliced
deeply into the meat of his shoulder with a backhand blow from his long sword. The air was thick with the screams of dying men, the crack of metal on wood, the wild shouts and oaths of the combatants, and flying clods kicked up by the circling horses’ hooves. A stench of fresh blood, horse dung and spilled guts filled my nose.
I shouted: ‘Men of Locksley! To me, to me!’ I swung my blade hard at a mounted foeman but he jerked his horse aside just in time. My path cleared for one instant and I dug my spurs in Shaitan’s side and launched myself through the gap towards Owain and the battle standard. Shaitan knocked a footman flying and I chopped into the arm of a passing half-armoured knight, and he reeled away, swaying in his seat, fountaining blood and screaming the Blessed Virgin’s name. Then I was knee to knee with Owain; my friend was sliding from me, his body limp in the saddle, and I reached out a hand and hauled him back into his place — but I could see life ebbing fast. His eyes were fluttering and his face was as white as a field of fresh snow. But he had the strength to rise, reach over and push the staff of the wolf’s head flag into my shield hand before slumping back in the saddle.
I let the shield hang loose by its loops on my left forearm, lifted the standard high in the air, and screamed: ‘A Locksley! A Locksley — to the gates. To the gates!’ I looked round and was relieved to see that a score or so of my men were forcing their way through the murderous crush towards me. When I glanced back at Owain I saw that his saddle was empty. There was no time to gather his body or even to mourn: I gave a signal to Shaitan, putting a mailed toe hard into his flank behind the off-side foreleg. My huge stallion reared up on his haunches, the forelegs windmilling in front of his long black nose, cracking an enemy footman’s skull and clearing a small space immediately in front of us. I spurred my mount into that space, swung Fidelity at the helmet of an enemy knight, drove the spiked butt-end of the standard into another man’s face, and urged Shaitan forward once more. I bellowed: ‘Come on, come on. A Locksley — to the gates! Follow me to the gates!’ And my men were coming towards me, pushing their horses through the struggling crowds of enemy. With the battle standard in my left hand and my sword in my right, I charged straight into a milling knot of enemy horsemen, guiding Shaitan with only my knees and killing with a desperate ferocity; dropping one man with a blow to the back of the neck, hacking deep into another’s face, ducking a sword stroke that whistled over my helmet, and cutting down another man-at-arms with a savage backhand across the spine as I passed him: but with Shaitan’s weight and a pack of yelling Locksley men pressing close behind me, we burst through the cloud of enemy cavalry and suddenly we were free and clear, with only two hundred yards to go before the castle gates, which were black and forbidding and closed tight ahead of us. The scurrilous chalk-drawn image of King Philip seemed to beckon us on with his phallic mace as we all barrelled forward at a frantic, pounding, heart-in-mouth gallop towards the castle gates.
An evil thought struck me: what if the defenders refused to open for us? Had they received our message: a note tied to an arrow and shot into the castle the night before by Owain? Did they know that we were friends and this was not some lunatic cavalry assault on their unbroken walls?
We were clear of the French horsemen now, with only a hundred yards to go, the rattling drumbeat of hundreds of hooves filling my ears, and looking behind I could see at least a good sixty or perhaps seventy so of our men, mostly archers but some lancers, too — including little Thomas, galloping on his brown mount, half-crouched in the saddle and still leading the packhorses, his mouth a grim line of determination. Hanno was on my left shoulder, urging his horse to greater speed with smacks from the flat of his sword. We thundered forward — and the gates remained firmly shut before us. The French were re-grouping; I could hear shrill trumpets sounding above the thunder of our pounding steeds. I called upon St Michael, the warrior archangel — ‘Oh holy one, let them open the gates! I beg you, let them open the gates!’ But I knew in my heart that the defenders had not received our message: we’d be pinned between the stout portal of the castle and the might of King Philip’s whole army and be crushed like a beetle under a workman’s boot.
Fifty paces to go: I opened my mouth to give the order for us to veer right to attempt to make some kind of escape to the west. And stopped just before I gave tongue. Was it true? Could it be? Oh praise be to God Almighty: for the great gate of Verneuil was opening, men were clustered around the two huge wooden doors that were slowly swinging inwards under their combined efforts.
My heart rocketed like a lark in summer; I lifted Robin’s wolf’s head banner high in the air and shouted: ‘Westbury!’ at the top of my aching lungs, and what seemed like only a dozen heartbeats later Shaitan and I were pounding through the open gates, and reining in puffing and panting before the bulk of the old stone keep, my wonderful black stallion rearing up and dancing momentarily on his hindquarters with the excitement of the day. My men poured in behind me and, in moments, the central courtyard of Verneuil was filled with red-faced, shouting, laughing, sweating folk on horseback. And as the tail end of my little company — those who had survived the desperate charge and the short but murderous melee — cantered into the open space, the defenders swung the great doors closed, just in time, and barred them tight against the enemy with a welcome crash of heavy timber.
We were safe.
We had lost twenty-three men in that mad gallop through the enemy ranks — nearly a quarter of my force. And while the survivors, many with light wounds, grinned at each other, swapped jests and slapped backs, I could not help feeling that I should have handled things better. So much for Alan the great warlord: I had lost one fourth of my men and my second in command in the first clash of arms, and we still had to hold this castle for several days until King Richard arrived with the relieving army. So, while I was surely happy to be alive and unwounded, I was not in the least proud of myself. And I was already missing Owain — his kindly face and reliable strength. I offered up a prayer for his soul and begged God’s forgiveness for not reaching him in time to save him.
This was not the moment for self-recrimination, however. The angry French horsemen had followed us down towards the gates and I speedily sent as many archers as I could to the battlements to take some revenge for their fallen comrades. After a dozen French knights and men-at-arms had been pierced with the bowmen’s pin-accurate shafts, the enemy withdrew out of bow-shot and contented themselves with shaking their fists at us and bawling inaudible threats.
The castellan, a tall spare leathery Norman knight, came over to greet me as I was checking Shaitan’s glossy black hide for injuries. He named himself as Sir Aubrey de Chambois and welcomed me to his command. I thanked him for his timely opening of the gates and he merely shrugged: ‘It is I who should thank you, Sir Alan. You have saved us; in another day we would have had to render ourselves to Philip. Our walls could not have borne much more battering and the next full-scale assault would have swamped us.’
And he gestured with his hand around the courtyard and walls of his stronghold. I saw then, clearly for the first time, what a desperate situation the defenders were in.
The castle of Verneuil, which had been built in King Richard’s grandfather’s day to protect the southern flank of his duchy of Normandy, was square in shape, covered roughly an acre and sat on the north bank of the River Avre. It was rather small by the standards of some of the castles I had known; in truth it was not much bigger than a fortified manor. On three sides, north, east and west, it was protected by a three-foot thick wall, made of the grey local stone, about fifteen foot high, with a walkway all the way round it on the inside that allowed a man to stand and fight with only his helmeted head exposed between the crenellations. At each of the four corners of the castle was a strong square tower. In the centre of the northern wall was the gatehouse and the gate we had just tumbled through in such scrambling haste — a stout wooden construction, I was pleased to see, reinforced with heavy oak cross-beams on the inside. To the south, th
e wide slow brown Avre and its boggy, reed-covered banks formed a formidable barrier against metal-clad attackers — and the stone exterior of a mill, a brewhouse and several store houses built of brick created the castle’s defensive wall on that side. I did not believe the enemy could come at us successfully from that quarter; the south, at least, was safe.
The northern wall on the eastern side of the gatehouse, however, had been severely pounded by the French siege engines — a gap the height of a man and wide enough for three men abreast had been smashed clear through the stonework at the top of the wall. It had been patched by Sir Aubrey’s men using the rubble from the breach itself and an assortment of old sheep hurdles, wine barrels and a dozen lengths of freshly cut wooden planking. The repairs looked a little rough and untidy, but I reckoned the patched section still presented a difficult obstacle for an attacking infantry force to overcome. However, it was a sign of what terrible destruction the boulders hurled by the trebuchets could wreak on the old masonry of the castle. Several of the wooden buildings in the courtyard had been reduced to loose piles of timber and kindling, smashed by barrel-sized stone missiles that had overshot the walls. While the small hall at the rear of the courtyard was still intact, in other buildings fires had plainly broken out, probably caused in the chaos of the trebuchet bombardment.
