Blood on the Sand

by Michael Jecks

  ‘What would you do now, then?’ Clip said, unwilling to surrender his dreams, but always ready to learn from another seasoned campaigner.

  ‘Me, I’d leave this eyesore and work my way down the rivers towards the richer little towns. You could take a town with a small force, and rule it like a lord. That would be fine work. To have a little place all of your own, tax all the people, maybe set up your own tolls outside the town, and take a share of the money from travellers passing by.’

  ‘And have the French King breathing down your neck inside a week?’ the Earl said with disdain. ‘I can think of faster ways of having my neck stretched, but not many.’

  ‘Are you as big a fool as you look, then?’ John of Essex asked. ‘You think the French King has men to spare just now, with his main town on the coast being held ransom? And if it were not just me, but four or five groups of men had the same idea, we could take over a county, perhaps. Capture a bigger town and the area all about it, and form alliances with the men in other towns. Man, it would be easy!’

  Jean de Vervins was nearby, and now he joined in the discussion. ‘There are indeed rich towns in France. You are correct, my friend. Look at Champagne, for example. There are magnificent places there. Many. I would think of one such as Laon. That would be worth some effort.’ He spoke with a curious twist to his mouth, as though he had seen a joke that was hidden to all the others.

  ‘What do you know of such places?’ Berenger demanded.

  ‘I know all the Champagne area. I was born there, and I’ve spent many happy hours riding about the land,’ Jean de Vervins smiled.

  ‘When we were fighting up at Durham, I saw you in the middle battle. You were there, fighting, although you’d been told to stay back.’

  ‘Yes. The fighting was already mostly done, and I thought that since the men had been striving so hard for three hours of the day, I with my fresh arms and unweary muscles could do some good.’

  ‘The French fellow saw you – the youth called Godefroi whom we caught. He recognised you – why?’

  ‘You mean the man we caught after I saved your life, Vintener?’

  ‘That doesn’t answer my question.’

  Jean’s eyes narrowed, and his expression reminded Berenger of a man who was hooding his thoughts.

  ‘Do you know who Godefroi was?’ Berenger persisted.

  ‘Yes. He was a messenger for the French King, up in the north to exhort the Scottish to fight. I was on the same ship as him, travelling to Scotland.’

  ‘He was a messenger?’

  ‘Of course. He was to give messages to the Scottish, and then fight with them to encourage them in their campaign. According to the French, my own task was the same. If one of us were to die, the other would survive, you see.’

  ‘And you succeeded?’

  ‘My interest lay in delaying the army so it would do less damage. I believe I succeeded. You know the little tower in Northumberland – Selby’s? Well, Selby had sworn fealty to King David some years ago and it made the King angry to see him so content in his English castle. So I suggested that the insult to his honour should be razed, just as the castle should be laid waste.’

  ‘Godefroi was convinced that there was no chance the English would hold back the Scottish invaders,’ Berenger stated. ‘Why would he have been so certain of that?’

  ‘Perhaps he merely considered that with King Edward here in France along with all his army, the Archbishop and his allies could not hope to hold the March against such a strong foe as the Scottish.’

  ‘And perhaps he had been misled by someone.’

  ‘What do you mean?’ Jean enquired mildly.

  Berenger wasn’t sure himself. The idea that this man Jean de Vervins could have been a spy for the English was curious enough, but was it any more preposterous to think that he could have been serving both sides? Or that he could have served one side, but appeared to serve both? Perhaps he had convinced the French and Scots that he was on their side, while in reality he was helping to destroy them?

  It sickened Berenger. He thought of Godefroi’s face again, seeing that moment when the pole-axe broke into the boy’s skull and his eyes died, as though his soul was no more than a candle-flame to be snuffed. It was one thing to know that a man had died in a fair battle, but quite another to think that he had died because he had believed in a lie told by a man pretending to be a friend who was in reality determined to see his destruction.

  ‘I serve your King,’ Jean de Vervins said, and this time he smiled.

  Berenger could happily have smashed that smile with his gauntleted fist.

  The Vidame was definitely not expecting to see the huge figure of Bertucat approaching him openly in the town, and he felt his anger flare.

  ‘I have to speak to you,’ Bertucat mumbled, and was gone.

  The Vidame caught up with him further into Villeneuve-la-Hardie within sight of Calais’ walls. The artillery was loosing stones at the walls in a steady barrage, the huge wooden structures swinging around, the slings releasing their vast weights into the sky, tumbling and spinning lazily until they slammed into the walls with a hideous impact. If a piece were to hit a man, some were large enough to cut him in half. As it was, the smaller pieces could inflict severe injuries.

  ‘What is it?’ the Vidame hissed as he came closer. He was tempted to pull out his knife and stab the fat man where he stood.

  ‘Jean de Vervins,’ Bertucat said flatly.

  ‘What of him?’

  ‘He was on the ships going to Scotland to help advise them of our King’s support. I’ve been waiting at the docks to learn what happened. It’s not good news.’

  ‘Tell me!’

  ‘I overheard some of the messengers coming back. There has been a great victory – our allies were crushed. There will be no more support from Scotland. The English even captured their King. He’s been hurried away to a safe prison.’

  The Vidame felt as if he was holding his breath at this appalling news. He wondered whether God truly had moved to support the English. They seemed invulnerable. He had a sudden sense of impending disaster. France, it seemed, was deserted. She was alone, desperate and bereft, while the English stamped on her and trampled her into the mud.

  ‘There’s more,’ Bertucat said. ‘Your spy has returned and says he must speak to you. It is urgent. He said he has seen Jean de Vervins.’

  ‘Good. Did Jean have any news?’

  ‘You don’t understand me. He saw Jean because Jean is a traitor. Jean de Vervins has become an agent of the English.’

  The Vidame’s voice shook. ‘My God!’

  Turning, he stared at the walls of the town. They looked impregnable, but even as he watched, a rock struck the parapet of the nearest wall and knocked off two castellations. It looked like the beginning of the end for the town. For the first time, the Vidame began to suspect that Calais might fall. And if Calais, why not Rouen, or even Paris?

  The Vidame felt weak and lonely. If Jean de Vervins had double-crossed them, whom could he trust?

  Berenger’s face was itching. Tooth Butcher had come with the army from Percy, and now appeared to have adopted Berenger as his own personal experimental patient. Every few days Berenger would see him in the roads and he would peer closely at his stitching with every sign of satisfaction. No matter how often he heard the barber tell him to leave it alone or he would scratch it into gangrene, he could not help but worry at the edges of the bloody clots.

  ‘You’ve seen gangrene, haven’t you, Frip? It’s a horrible thing. Eats away at you under your skin. And it all comes about, I reckon, because of daft buggers like you, who keep fiddling with your scar, and before long you’ll have killed off the skin and got yourself diseased. You do that, and I won’t be answerable. It’ll be a coffin for you, and that’s the truth.’

  ‘As a barber, you are good; as a bone-fixer or hacker off of other men’s limbs, you are competent, I’ll give you that. But when it comes to things like this, you have no idea how g
reatly it plagues me! I have to scratch to get some relief!’

  ‘It’s your life, Fripper. And I’m not your mother. Just don’t come running to me when you find that your face is falling off and you’re being eaten away from inside, that’s all I’m saying. Got that?’

  Berenger took his advice and tried to keep his hands from his face – but Christ’s cods, it was difficult! On an evening like this, when the bitter wind was blowing, shrinking a man’s balls to the size of acorns, it was even harder. The chill seemed to inspire the scar tissue to produce greater heat in comparison. The worst of the scabs had fallen away, but the feeling of tightness, and the sense that inside the wound there was a scrabbling of insect feet trying to escape, was utterly maddening.

  Things were not eased by the discussion he was forced to have with Sir John and Sir Peter of Bromley. Sir Peter made it clear he thought the full responsibility for the death of the messenger lay at Berenger’s door, and insisted that Berenger was demoted; no longer a captain, but merely a vintener again. He had demanded that Berenger be reduced to the rank of archer, but there Sir John drew a line. He threatened to take the matter to his friend Prince Edward, and on hearing that, Sir Peter reluctantly backed down. Sir John was known to have the Prince’s ear.

  In those times, the only ease Berenger knew was when Béatrice took to caring for him. For the first few days after returning, when it felt as if he was going to have to scratch the whole of his face away, he was soothed by her soft hands. She draped cool cloths over his wound, murmuring gently to him all the while. When he opened his eyes and saw her face, he was struck by the compassion there. It was like looking into the eyes of a nun, or even the Madonna herself.

  Marguerite too was kind to him. For a woman who had suffered so much at the hands of the English, she worked like a saint. Every so often, he even thought he saw a little smile begin at the edges of her mouth, as though she was not tending him from duty alone, but from a sense of personal gratitude. Not that he had done anything for her. She had come here because Béatrice and Archibald had invited her and her son.

  Today, his wound was painful again.

  ‘Bad, Frip?’

  ‘I’ll live, Jack. Is there any news?’

  ‘Only that Sir Peter’s been given a bollocking by Sir John. It seems he blamed you for everything, from the death of the messenger to the bad harvest last year!’

  ‘I don’t trust that man,’ Berenger said.

  ‘I think you’ll find he views you in the same light,’ the Earl commented from near the fire.

  ‘If he were a spy, he could have spread news of our journey to Durham,’ Berenger said grimly. ‘He could have betrayed any of our missions.’

  ‘So could another,’ Jack said reasonably.

  ‘He’s a knight. He comes and goes on raids all the time.’ Berenger was thinking of what Béatrice had told him – that Sir Peter was often out, away from the siege. That would give him time to leave messages with others – messages that could be passed on to the French commanders. Sir Peter was only a recent turncoat, when all was said and done. What if he had never genuinely changed his allegiance? Besides, Béatrice detested the man and Berenger trusted her judgement in many matters.

  ‘What of it?’

  ‘Just warn the men to keep their eyes open where he’s concerned. Sir Peter of Bromley may have forgotten he’s supposed to have changed his allegiance.’

  It was mid-November, and the weather had grown steadily worse. The huts of their wooden town had become islands. The roadways between were filled with mud and puddles, reeking as middens overflowed and human waste lay in the streets. Any grass that had once filled the lanes was long gone, and the place had become infested with rats and wild dogs, both species slinking away warily when humans came close.

  It was the rats that had led to the men coming out here today. They had some small dogs with them and had been trapping all the rats they could find. Now several sacks’ worth were moving and scrabbling as the men began to heft them. The vintaine had cleared a space, lining it with close-fitting stones to make a small arena, and now the men emptied the rats into it. The creatures ran hither and thither, and Grandarse stood booming out his appreciation of the sport to come.

  Three small dogs, yapping and barking enthusiastically, were held in sight of their prey while men wagered coins as to how many each dog would kill; when all the bets were taken the dogs were released and thrown in amongst the rats.

  So far, the men had been sitting outside Calais for two and a half months. Berenger and his vintaine had at least been able to get away for a while, even if it had involved putting their lives at peril, but for the rest of the army, the dampness and monotony, with the ever-present risk of fever and death, was wearing all the men down. It was partly in order to counterbalance their demoralised state that Berenger had suggested the rat-catching. It certainly had an impact on the men in his vintaine.

  ‘Get that one, you poxed little wimp!’ Clip shouted in disgust as his terrier bounded over one rat and missed another. ‘What is it with you? I’ll bloody kill you meself if the rats can’t be arsed!’

  ‘Ah, did your special little doggie miss again?’ the Earl enquired with spurious sympathy. ‘Let me see, what did you call it?’

  ‘I think he called it the Berserker, didn’t he?’ the Pardoner grinned.

  ‘Someone or something’s berserk, I will agree,’ the Earl said.

  ‘Look at that! Mine has the big bastard by the throat!’ Aletaster cried.

  ‘Your little one is being played with,’ Dogbreath muttered. ‘If I was in there, that one would have been first to go.’

  ‘If you were in there, my friend, the rats would all have fled from the stink,’ the Earl said.

  Dogbreath turned on him, snarling, and would have leaped upon him, but Berenger was glad to see that the Pardoner and Clip both took a shoulder each and heaved him back to the entertainment. The vintaine’s survivors were melding well into a unit.

  Berenger watched as a terrier snapped a rat’s spine. One bite, a jerk of the head, and the rat’s back was broken. It dangled limply, one leg pawing at the ground as it was dropped, and the dog ran to its next victim. A snap, a shake, and another died. It was like watching a hunt – when the alaunts and hounds ran to a fox or a hart, the leader of the pack snapping the spine and killing so swiftly. Few men could kill so cleanly, he thought. Some did: he knew an expert warrener who would catch his rabbits, softly stroking them as he disentangled them from his nets, deftly calming them until he quickly broke their necks. They died without fear at his hands.

  Not all these rats did as well. Running wildly in their panic, they were hunted down by the vintaine’s terriers. One rat, he saw, was flung high into the air, and he watched as it flew up – but as it fell, his gaze remained fixed on the distance.

  ‘What’s up, Frip? What is it, man?’ Grandarse demanded.

  ‘Archers!’ Berenger bellowed. ‘Archers, to arms!’

  ‘What the fuck’s going on?’ Clip said.

  ‘French ships! They’re resupplying the town!’

  The Vidame was in his tent when the doorway was opened.

  ‘I am glad to see you here,’ Jean de Vervins said. He wore an ingratiating smile on his face.

  The Vidame drew his lips tightly over his mouth. ‘And I you. I heard you were serving with the English against the Scots.’

  ‘Yes. It was an interesting little engagement. Quite lively.’

  ‘May I offer you wine, Sir Knight?’

  ‘No, I thank you,’ Jean said. ‘I merely wanted to come and find a friendly face.’

  ‘You can always rely on me,’ the Vidame said. ‘After all, when we renounced our vows to King Philippe, and became servants of King Edward, we burned our houses and vills behind us.’

  ‘I did not,’ Jean said with a trace of asperity. ‘Mine were all stolen from me before. When the King took my enemy’s part, that was when I was forced to choose a different route. He betrayed me, just
as he did you, too.’

  ‘He betrayed us all,’ the Vidame said. But in his heart he was screaming at Jean de Vervins that there was only one traitor in the tent.

  As soon as Berenger had spotted the ships, the men had scurried away from the rat-killing, apart from Clip who leaned down, quickly cuffed his losing dog, and grabbed their arms and bows and arrows. With Georges, whom they had adopted as the replacement for Donkey, to push their cartload of arrows, they hastened to the docks and boarded a fishing vessel.

  Casting off, Sir John and Grandarse had to threaten to kill a member of the crew to persuade the shipmaster to take them to the midst of the French ships. As soon as they drew near, the archers began to loose their arrows. Some sailors could be seen leaping from the rigging as arrows ripped through sails or struck, quivering, into masts and spars, while many lost their grip and fell screaming to the deck beneath. One man was hit and fell, only to strike the wale with such a loud crack that Berenger could hear it from his boat. The man had surely broken his spine, and started to shriek with every movement of the ship, unable to free himself.

  Sir John stood at the prow, his sword drawn, yelling with rage at the ships moving before him. ‘Aim for that one!’ he bellowed, and the shipmaster turned her prow towards the vessel indicated, but before they could reach it, another was close to ramming them. ‘Mind that!’

  As the ship turned to save her hull, Sir John roared at the men to get grapnels and draw nearer to this new target, but although some archers kept up their practice, to aim and loose from a rolling, bucking deck was no easy feat. Many arrows flew too high, and as many ended up planted in the hull of the ship. Few indeed found their mark, and as they worked, so did the French sailors, hacking with swords or axes at the grapnel ropes as soon as they landed. One parted with a great crack, and the men holding it were thrown backwards as the rope flailed. The rope-end knocked another man senseless, opening his brow to the bone from temple to temple.