by Angus Donald
I fought once more that day — charging a group of men-at-arms who were looting a church, and killing one with Fidelity, then riding another down and crushing him under Shaitan’s hooves — but we were all aware, from the clouds of dust kicked up by hundreds of hooves, that a great battle was taking place a few miles ahead. Mercadier had come up from the south and had attacked the King of France and his household knights directly — he had only with difficulty been driven off. We hurried to join up with the scar-faced mercenary and his murderous ruffians, and did so some two miles later, but it was clear that the French were by now in full retreat. I felt a little queasy at the sight of King Richard embracing Mercadier — who had captured a score or so of noble prisoners by his exertions that day — when they met a mile or so outside Gamaches, and I busied myself with the welfare of the Westbury men, tutting over their scrapes and bruises — none had been killed, mercifully, or badly wounded — and congratulating them for the courage they had shown.
And we had indeed done well; the scouts had reported that Philip had been forced to retreat far to the south, probably as far as his castle at Mantes, a good fifteen miles away. His powerful thrust into Normandy had been halted and bloodily repulsed; he had been out-fought, his army mauled and sent packing — but our task was by no means finished. Richard might have expelled Philip from his lands, but our sovereign now meant to return the compliment and take the fight deep into French-controlled territory. We bivouacked in and around Gamaches that night, the King naturally staying in the castle with his senior barons and knights, but I made myself scarce and slept amongst my men. I could not stomach another royal feast in which Mercadier would be praised to the skies as the hero of the hour. Worse, I might be asked to compose a victory song in praise of his actions. I told myself that, if that were to happen, I would rather refuse and offend the King, but I did not want to put my resolve to the test. And so I spent the evening with a barrel of wine that Ox-head had ‘captured’, carousing, singing and telling bawdy tales with the Westbury men and Thomas in a thicket of ash, half a mile from the castle. It was a loud, raucous and enjoyable night, the little of it I can remember.
Hungover but happy, we set off again the next day: the King was determined that this would be the campaign, this would be the season in which God would give us Gisors. That mighty fortress, key to the border, was perhaps the most powerful castle in Normandy after Chateau-Gaillard — surrounded as it was by a ring of four lesser castles. Gisors was the prize, Richard always insisted. To take back Gisors was, in effect, to win the war. Accordingly, we headed eastwards into the lands of the enemy, our hearts beating strongly, our heads as high as our hopes.
However, the Westbury men and I took little part in the fighting over the next few days, as Richard’s army, with a grim, mechanical skill, took possession one by one of the outlying fortresses of Dangu, Courcelles, Boury and Serifontaine that stood guard around Gisors. Dangu had been in and out of our hands several times in the past years, and there was a certain resignation in the face of the elderly French knight who surrendered it to us without a fight, after seeing Richard with overwhelming force camped before him. Courcelles defied us, but a very swift, bloody surging attack by Mercadier’s men overran its walls, and then that was ours, too. Boury, we took by bribery; the Constable, a young, ambitious man, agreeing to open its gates to William the Marshal in exchange for a grant of lands in western Normandy and England. Four miles to the north of Gisors, the Earl of Leicester’s men broke down the front gates of Serifontaine, and within a week the great prize itself was halfway surrounded, its defensive ring of smaller forts all in our hands.
The King based his court at Dangu, and there he paused for a day or so, resting the horses. His troops were a little scattered, some occupying the newly captured castles around Gisors, others, who had been summoned from the far corners of Normandy, still in Chateau-Gaillard. News arrived that his powerful siege train with its massive ‘castle-breakers’ had unfortunately become mired somewhere outside Rouen — but few of us, wrapped as we were in the glow of victory, believed that this was important. We were winning; we might all be tired, but our successes made our steps light. Nevertheless, after the exertions of the past week, we all felt we needed to regroup and rest — all of us, that is, save Richard.
The Earl of Locksley’s men, who were some of the freshest troops, had been given the task of patrolling aggressively beyond the River Epte, the traditional border between France and Normandy, and we sent out large parties of men forty or fifty strong to raid the farms and scout the land. And, more often than not, the King would join these tiring, dusty patrols, as if he were a young knight or squire of tender years and not the greatest of all the Christian monarchs and comfortably past his fortieth year.
It so happened that we were riding through a thick wood, a mile or so to the east of Boury; Robin, myself, Little John, Thomas and a score of Locksley men-at-arms and my ten Westbury fellows; together with Richard and a dozen of his younger household knights, when the King held up a hand and stopped us all. We were in thick woodland, unable to see beyond fifty yards in any direction, but the King said: ‘Listen!’ And we all dutifully strained our ears.
I could make out nothing at first, and then I caught it — a faint metallic jingling noise like a man idly playing with a large bag of silver. ‘Blondel, you’ve got young eyes, go forward on foot,’ said the King, ‘quietly now — go a hundred paces, see what can be seen, and report back.’
I slipped off Shaitan and handed the reins to Thomas, who was beside me looking grim and grown-up on his brown palfrey, a long lance in his right hand. I walked forward as quietly as I could, keeping behind the thicker trunks as the woodland petered out into scattered trees, and finally gave way to a wide fallow field.
And beheld an army.
I saw a long line of horsemen, mailed, armed and shod for war — hundreds of French knights in bright surcoats, the trappers of their destriers matching their riders’ attire. They were coming from the south-east, from Mantes, at a guess. The chinking noise had grown louder; it was the tinny sound of several hundred buckles, stirrups, spurs and assorted accoutrements clashing against iron mail. I was looking at the flower of French chivalry, coming north to challenge Richard’s bold intrusion, and push him back into his own lands. In the centre of the line, among a score or more of bright flags, in red and silver and green, I saw the white and gold fleur-de-lys of King Philip himself.
I made a rough count of the numbers of armoured knights and hazarded three hundred, but behind them came long lines of sergeants and mounted crossbowmen, and last of all blocks of marching infantry wielding spears. It was a horde — perhaps six or seven hundred strong. We could not possibly hope to face them in battle and triumph.
I made my way back to the King and said: ‘It is Philip, sire, and three hundred of his knights, coming up fast and heading towards Courcelles; if we are quiet, I believe we can make it to Boury and evade them, and we can send word to Courcelles to shut up their gates.’
‘What are you talking about, Blondel?’ said the King, frowning at me as if he genuinely could not comprehend my speech. ‘The enemy is before us; you say that thief Philip himself is there; and you want me to run away like a craven? What in God’s name is the matter with you?’
‘Sire, there are three hundred knights yonder, and as many men-at-arms; we are fewer than fifty men here — we cannot fight them,’ I said, but I knew the King tolerably well by then and the flesh all over my body was contracting, pimpling in excitement, fear and a little joy equally mixed, a coldness in my stomach, my cheeks flushed — it was madness, wonderful, magical, royal madness — for I knew exactly what the Lionheart must say.
‘Nonsense, Blondel, we have plenty of men for the task; we will attack at once and show these French fellows the true meaning of prowess.’ He turned to the youngest of his household knights, a nervous-looking youth, three or four years younger than I. ‘Sir Geoffrey, be so good as to ride to Boury; the Marshal i
s there. Tell him that I shall be attacking the enemy directly and would consider it a great favour if he would stir himself, sally out and join the fun.’
I caught Robin’s grey eye and he merely gave me a half-smile and a slight shrug of his shoulders. When the King commands, we his loyal men must obey.
‘Well, come on then,’ said Richard; he was grinning all over his face, a wolfish predatory expression that I had seen him wear many times before on the eve of battle. Richard was about to do what he had been born to do; what he loved to do more than anything else in the world: a glorious headlong charge into an unsuspecting enemy, followed by a great and terrible slaughter — hopefully a great and terrible slaughter of the French knights. Oddly, I found myself grinning like a moon-crazed maniac, too.
We bounded out of the woodland like a pack of starving wild beasts scenting their prey, fewer than fifty horsemen attacking an enemy ten times our number. To put it like that is to make it sound a desperate, foolish endeavour, a reckless gamble, but that does not do justice to our bold, but not completely brain-addled, leader. The enemy was spread out on the line of march, perhaps six or seven hundred men straggling over half a mile or more. We came boiling out of that wood in a tight, fierce knot and smashed into the centre of the enemy line, with precious little warning, bringing our furious blades to surprised and frightened men and cutting straight through the files of knights and squires, shattering them — it was as if an iron-bound mallet were swung against a long dry stick. King Richard led the charge, a dozen pounding heartbeats of pure exhilaration, and we crashed into the enemy ranks, screaming fit to burst our lungs, and the line of French horsemen disintegrated before us. My lance pierced a thin-faced squire just above the hip, the blade crunching through his young body and clean out the other side. I left the long ash shaft waggling in the air, the boy dying, white-faced with shock, and drew Fidelity. I saw that our charge had brought us right through the enemy line of march, sowing bloody disaster in our train, and we were now free and clear on the other side of the column. The enemy force had been cut cleanly in two by our assault. To the south were the mounted men-at-arms, and the plodding infantry, some being mercenaries and some mere militia, barely trained men recruited from the poorest stews of French towns that had been singed by the fires of war. They seemed terrified, stunned into immobility by our shattering eruption from concealment, although a few groups of more experienced men began to arrange themselves with a painful slowness into clumsy defensive formations. To the north, the tale was very different: there stood the cream of French chivalry, in all their gaudy, dangerous splendour. These heavily armoured aristocratic horsemen had immediately halted their march, turned to face us, and were forming up in their disciplined ranks with alarming speed. I saw that our scattered men, who had smashed so bravely through the middle of the French column, were soon to be charged in turn. Richard was shouting: ‘At them, at them! Before they recover!’ and gesturing with his sword at the French knights to the north of us, hundreds of them, who even now were ordering their neat lines, rank upon rank, knee to knee, lowering their lances, their horses taking their first steps towards us.
Robin was shouting: ‘A Locksley, A Locksley!’ And I realized that if we did not disrupt the French cavalry charge before it began, the sheer weight of their numbers would overwhelm us and we would all be crushed to bloody pulp. To my left, the King was bellowing to his closest knights, urging them to form up for the attack, his sword pointed to the heavens, the sunlight flashing on his steel and gold-chased helm; he was laughing once again, madly, happily, his face suffused with reckless joy. The royal blade swung down, pointing like a spear at the advancing enemy ranks; he punched back his spurs and his stallion took off like a startled stag, hurtling his master straight towards the wall of enemies. I slapped my own heels into Shaitan’s flanks and, pointing Fidelity in a similar manner, charged in my sovereign’s wake towards the oncoming ranks of the French. I saw King Richard, alone, smash into the body of the enemy line causing instant confusion to the neat rows of horsemen, his sword arm flailing, the blood flying with every sweep of his blade. In three heartbeats, I was among them too, beside my King, protecting him, swinging wildly with Fidelity and trying to force back the press of enemies on his left flank. I felt a massive hammer-blow against my shield, but the enemy lance slid away and then I was deep in their midst, hacking at enemy faces, chopping at mailed limbs. I caught a glimpse of Richard battering at the crumpled tubular helmet of a knight, relentlessly, again and again; his household knights had caught up with us by then, and were forcing their way into the gap Richard had made. I saw one of his companions chop efficiently through a darting lance that might well have skewered the royal back. But I had no time for gawping: suddenly I found myself alone and surrounded by yelling foemen. I fended off a lance strike to my chest with my shield, and dispatched the attacking knight with a lateral sword blow to the face, severing his jaw. I hacked the right hand from another man, whose horse barged into Shaitan, leaving the Frenchman screaming with a blood-pissing stump. Shaitan lashed out his hind legs, cracking his iron horseshoes into the nose of a beast behind him, which reared and spilled its French rider. Something smashed across my backbone, winding me, but I turned and lunged desperately at this new attacker, a savage-faced knight in sky-blue wielding a long sword. Mostly by good fortune, my sword entered a gap in his ventail, piercing his neck through and through, and with a spray of crimson, I ripped the blade free, and he wheeled away dying. Two horsemen parted before me and I caught another sight of King Richard battling two enemy knights at the same time, chopping left and right, left and right, the mailed sleeve of his sword arm red up to the shoulder, then one enemy was down, and one of Richard’s household knights hacked the head from the other man.
We were so few, a handful of bold knights in a sea of French foes, and yet they feared us and seemed to hang back, melting away before our ferocity. I saw that Little John had joined the melee and was taking heads and lopping limbs from the saddle of his huge horse with great sweeps of his axe, and now the Locksley men in their dark green cloaks were fighting all about me like the heroes of old. Robin was beside me too, and I saw that we had miraculously come through the first ranks of attacking knights and were into a space behind them. The Earl shouted: ‘There, Alan, there — the King! It is Philip!’ and pointed with his gory sword. Fifty yards away, at the head of a slight rise, I could see another wall of knights, perhaps eighty men, bright in their surcoats, lances at the ready and mounted on snorting, pawing, battle-roused destriers, and above their heads the weakly fluttering white and gold of the French royal standard.
‘Come on,’ my lord shouted. ‘Come on!’ And threw back his head and howled: ‘A Locksley!’ I bawled ‘Westbury! Westbury!’ and together we charged up the incline towards that waiting line of shining death. We were not alone; I could sense rather than see the clustering of green-cloaked Locksley horsemen and some of my own red-decked men around Robin and myself; and the sound of royal bellowing from behind my right shoulder told me that Richard had fought his way through, had seen our prize and was coming with his surviving household knights to help us take it. I managed to snatch a glance at the King’s face as he raced towards Robin and myself: beneath the spattered blood and sweat of battle, framed by the gleaming metal of his helm and his golden beard, I saw that he was still smiling, a wide, easy smile of glorious satisfaction.
The French knights came down the hill to meet us; in a magnificently controlled charge, their front rank as straight as an arrow, they sliced into our men, emptying a dozen saddles in a single moment. Out of the corner of my eye, I saw a green-clad man-at-arms hurled from his mount by an elegant lance strike. On the other side a Westbury man went down screaming. But I was too busy to take much notice of other men; a lance came at my face out of nowhere and almost tore my cheek open, but I managed to get my shield up just in the very nick of time and deflect the spear, the blade scraping over my domed helmet. And once again I was in the middle of
a hellish melee, enemies all around, blows raining down from every quarter. I hacked and cut and swore, I lunged and killed, and my battered red shield took half a dozen blows that would have ended me. We were surely lost. We had attempted too much. Our reckless arrogance had been our downfall. I could see none of my friends. I found myself duelling with a knight, a big man full of desperate rage; I blocked a welter of massive overhand blows from his sword, and then saw an opening, and took it. I killed his horse with a single downward slice into its arched neck, and the poor beast dropped as if poleaxed. I left the man trapped and roaring on the churned earth of the field, his right leg pinned under the weight of the dead beast.
I drew back from the fray, circling Shaitan away from the enemy lines. We had so few men still in the saddle, and there was no sign of Robin. Green-clad bodies littered the weedy fallow field; forlorn horses nuzzling their dead owners. I saw, a dozen yards away, King Richard, also momentarily disengaged from the battle; he was leaning over his saddle, panting, a young knight on foot was speaking to him with a concerned expression. King Philip was still surrounded by a knot of a score or so knights; not a gleaming, multicoloured wall as before, more ragged, and smaller, their numbers fewer too, and milling about uneasily as the King’s closest personal knights watched the fight below them, restrained from joining it by their master. But they were still a formidable force.
For all our valour, we had failed to break through to the heart of the enemy position, and very soon the French King, safe behind his household knights, would rally his surviving men, summon his militia and his mercenaries to him, gather his full overwhelming strength and come down from that hill and destroy our remaining scattered, wounded men on their exhausted horses. Soon, all would be lost. Or so I believed then. Of course, Richard had known better. For at that very moment, William the Marshal, the knight ‘ sans peur et sans reproche ’ threw his fresh men into battle.
