by David Gilman
‘Hold… hold…’ A command had been given from some arse-scratching commander in the background. ‘Wait for the trumpets. Wait…’
Better if he had been in the baggage train tethering horses than standing here with men watching their chance to get into the city being denied every moment they waited, while it was being reinforced. You had to be blind not to see the chance that was being lost.
‘Hold…’
And then the archers broke free of the command, no longer able to ignore the opportunity. Sir Gilbert’s handful of men-at-arms ran with him, chain mail hissing, armour clanking and breath heaving. Welsh spearmen yelled an incoherent cry of defiance and raced them to the gate. Elfred’s archers led the way, but after a hundred long strides the centenar raised his arm and stopped their charge, letting the heavier armed men carry through their lines. The archers, following his lead, nocked their arrows, drew cords and sent a withering hail of fire that landed twenty yards ahead of the charging men, slaying defenders, buying Sir Gilbert time to get closer. Then they ran towards the screams and the first clash of steel against shield and spear. Another thirty yards and they fired again. English archers and Welsh spearmen fell as crossbow bolts thudded into their unarmoured bodies. The defence was hard fought and the grunting, heaving sounds of hand-to-hand combat blurred into the vision that Blackstone saw before him. The lightly armoured troops fought savagely against the French men-at-arms. The ferocity of the English and Welsh attack pummelled the defenders back. Men clambered across barricades, Welshmen jabbed their long spears down into the defenders as Sir Gilbert’s men wielded sword and axe. They were breaking through. Blackstone recognized men wearing the same surcoats as those who had ambushed them. They leaned across the walls, using every piece of rock and stone as cover, as they cranked their crossbows, loosing the bolts into the attacking men.
Once again Elfred stopped the advance. Blackstone watched him jab a handful of bodkin-pointed shafts into the ground before him. Archers followed his example. A path needed to be cleared. The trajectory was low; the fire had to be rapid.
Through the roar of blood in his ears, Blackstone heard Elfred’s command: ‘Nock! Mark! Draw! Loose!’
Every archer’s hands and body followed the rhythm of the command. Richard was a half-pace behind him and followed Blackstone’s actions to the second. Half a dozen more times Elfred called the rate of fire and bodies fell in the path of the men-at-arms.
Then they charged again. Elfred had drawn his long knife and slashed at a man as he clambered across the trenches and barricades. A crossbowman aimed and loosed and the bolt struck a spearman at Elfred’s shoulder. Blackstone had drawn, but his brother’s arrow loosed first and the Italian defender fell with the shaft through his throat. Blackstone was almost at the barricade. Smoke began to funnel through the narrow streets as soldiers fought their way along the slender passageways, burning the tightly packed houses as they went. And then it was hand-to-hand. Blackstone panicked, forgot he even carried a sword, and struck a French defender in the eye with the horned nock at the tip of his bow. Jabbed, and jabbed again as the man’s hands scrabbled for the stave, crying out in agony, but Blackstone was yelling something. A voice within his head echoed others shouting their battle cry: Saint George! Saint George for King Edward! SAINT GEORGE! The force bellowing from his lungs powered Blackstone’s panic across the writhing man. A surge of bodies carried him forward. His brother was no longer with him. He turned, saw him drawing and releasing an arrow, killing a Frenchman wielding a halberd, and then the fighting and the press of men heaved him out of sight.
A glancing blow caught Blackstone on the side of his head. He tasted blood, faltered, saw the Frenchman bring his sword down from the high guard position, ready to cleave the archer from collarbone to hip. A bloody sword slashed past his face. Someone behind him had lunged a blade into the man’s armpit, piercing chain mail and heart. It was an English man-at-arms, his wounded arm lame at his side but his striking arm still swinging his sword. Blackstone looked at the man’s visor, could see nothing, but laughed anyway. Laughed at the ferocity, laughed because he was still alive. At the heightened fear.
‘Fight on!’ the man-at-arms shouted, turning away, slashing left and right, leaving the archer he had just saved.
Alleyways seethed as men-at-arms mingled with spearmen. The French fought with desperate courage; none would yield. Blackstone clambered over another barricade, French fighters still slashing at their attackers. Elfred was already thirty paces ahead; Skinner, Pedloe, Richard Whet, Henry Torpoleye and the others were separated as the defenders drew them into side streets and there stood their ground. Blackstone’s scabbard caught in a wicker fortification and he fell headlong just as a sliver of steel slashed past his face. Forgetting Sir Gilbert’s advice had saved him. The French man-at-arms had half a dozen men dead at his feet. His helm visor was closed, his armour smeared with English and Welsh blood. His arcing blows kept men dying from his striking rhythm, a smothering close-quarter battle where the man seemed tireless in his killing. He swung his war sword with a relentless efficiency. His splattered surcoat showed a bear in profile against an azure field with a fleur-de-lys in each corner. He was a knight of high standing and he could not yield to anyone of lesser rank. And it was known that archers neither gave nor expected mercy in a fight. Blackstone regained his balance, stepped across savaged bodies, levelled his bow, and drew back. All he needed was a clear shot for one second, a brief moment when the attacking men either fell at the knight’s feet or swarmed past him to fight others. The bodkin arrowhead would take the man through his plate armour. No matter how brave his heart, it would not survive a strike from this distance.
A spearman behind Blackstone gasped as a crossbow bolt shattered his face. Gurgling terror spluttered blood across Blackstone’s neck as the man’s body slumped against him, knocking him off his feet. The arrow flew harmlessly into the side of a smouldering house as flames sought its lath walls. Blackstone regained his foothold and saw the French knight give ground before the press of English footsoldiers, who now fought with axes, knives and maces taken from the dead French. Forced against a wall, he could retreat no further and the Englishmen began to overpower him, like hounds tearing down a stag. Knives and swords stabbed and swung; spears jabbed until they cut his legs from beneath him. Then he went to his knees and they hacked him to death. It was over within seconds. Blackstone spat blood from his mouth and felt an unaccountable despair over the courageous knight’s death.
‘Richard!’ Blackstone shouted, desperate to be heard above the clash of fighting, knowing his brother would never hear his cry, but hoping others would know where the fight had taken him.
Sweat sluiced down his spine; the leather jerkin worn beneath the padded gambeson for added protection felt as clammy as a second skin. He fell into a doorway, tripping over a body. The momentary stillness of the dimly lit passage gave a brief respite from the clamour. The stench of stale urine stung his nostrils. Blackstone steadied himself, trying to cage his fear. A hand reached out and touched his ankle. He twisted around, slamming his back against the wall, knife in hand, ready to strike.
A ruptured cough came from the dying man on the floor. His hose were stained with dark blood from a stomach wound, his vital organs pierced, his death inevitable. A sucking wound in his chest bubbled with frothy blood. The grey-whiskered man was old enough to be his grandfather. His balding head was plastered with wisps of sweat-caked hair and his cap long since discarded or lost. His stave lay broken, hacked by sword blows, his arrow bag, from which fletchings of grey goose feathers protruded, was half-full. The man said something in a language Blackstone could not understand and then he realized he was a Welsh archer, one of those who had attacked with the spearmen. The dying man’s grip was fierce and Blackstone yielded to it. He wiped the older man’s face, smearing away blood and sweat from his eyes.
‘Archer?’ the old man whispered in English.
Blackstone nodded.
‘The best of men…’ the old man smiled, then faltered. ‘Kill… the bastards, boy…’ He pushed his arrow bag into Blackstone’s hands. In that moment his eyes locked onto the young archer’s face, read the fear that had still not left him.
‘It’s nothing … dying… Don’t be afraid. You’re an archer… eh?’
‘I am,’ Blackstone whispered.
‘Well then… they’re more scared… of you.’
The veteran’s bloody teeth were bared in a grin. He tugged a small medallion from around his neck, pressed it to his lips and put it in Blackstone’s hand, gripping his own gnarled fist around it. Then his grip slackened and a final bubble of air escaped from his chest wound.
Blackstone looked at the talisman, a simple figure in silver of a woman, captured in a wheel of silver, whose curved arms met above her head. He curled the cord and pushed it into the folds of his jacket, then forced himself back into the street. Infantry and archers fought side by side with spearmen as men-at-arms hacked their way through the retreating pockets of French defenders. Not a yard was given without fierce resistance. Blackstone caught sight of Richard Whet, shielded by a drunken-leaning house’s wooden supports as he fired steadily at Genoese crossbowmen in the upper windows. French troops had barricaded the next corner in an attempt to funnel their attackers into the narrow confines of the alleys, where citizens threw tiles and stones down onto them. Bodies littered the street; streams of blood congealed on the cobbles. Half a dozen archers sheltered in whatever cover they could find and brought down defenders, while the infantry and men-at-arms fought pitched battles along the stone-strewn streets. A surge took Blackstone closer to the Earl of Warwick’s men as they crashed into the barricade while another group of men pushed along a side street. Every corner was being fought for.
‘My brother?’ he shouted as Whet took the last arrow from his bag.
‘With Skinner and Pedloe. They followed Sir Gilbert.’ He pointed down an alleyway, deeply shadowed by the tightly packed buildings. Citizens mixed with soldiers as they defended their homes. A woman shouted abuse as she used a window shutter for a shield while her companion attacked a wounded man on the bloodied cobblestones. Whet’s arrow shattered the makeshift shield and the woman fell back, her hands clutching the wound, eyes wild with pain, testament to the shock and power of the shaft’s impact.
‘I need more arrows, Thomas!’
Blackstone pushed the Welshman’s bag into Whet’s hands and ran into the alley, an arrow nocked, held by finger and thumb, ready to be drawn and loosed. The narrowness of the street made it difficult to move quickly. He made his way past bodies slumped in doorways and sprawled across the ground, their injuries bearing witness to the brutality of the fighting that had gone before him. The alleyway widened. Smoke swept across the next junction, where knights from the Prince’s division fought on foot, shoulder to shoulder with their own infantry – common and noble killing their King’s enemies together. Blackstone fired into the defenders, then moved forward, finding deeper shadows to conceal him and thus make less of a target for the crossbowmen who still sent their lethal quarrels down into the street fighting. Whenever a crossbow edged across a rooftop’s skyline Blackstone sent an arrow three inches above its crescent, and an Italian mercenary would fall back. Several Genoese had tumbled into the street pierced through the head or throat as he moved position, instinctively seeking cover, denying the crossbowmen a standing target. His desperation to find his brother propelled him through the fighting and his fear.
Men whimpered in pain from hacked flesh, torn sinew and broken bone; the shock of brutal injuries sent them into unconsciousness from which they would never awake. He saw an injured archer, little more than a boy, crawling to safety – his face familiar, his name lost in the mayhem of conflict. A French infantryman lowered his spear to ram it into the injured boy’s ribs. Blackstone yelled a warning; the distracted Frenchman turned and Blackstone’s arrow took him through his chest. He ran across the street and dragged the archer into a doorway. His screams of pain lessened as Blackstone laid him as gently as he could against the wall.
‘Thomas! Thank God! My leg, bind my leg,’ the young archer begged. Blackstone tore the red-stained shirt from a dead man and bound the broken leg, using an arrow as a splint. The archer screamed again, forcing his arm into his face, biting into his jacket. Blackstone could do little for him. The archer gulped air. ‘Do you have water? God, I’m parched. D’you have any?’
Blackstone was suddenly aware how thirsty he was. ‘No. Nothing. Have you seen my brother? He’s with Skinner and Pedloe. And Sir Gilbert.’
The archer shook his head, then rested back against the wall. ‘Sweet Jesus, this hurts. Find me wine, Thomas – find me something, for God’s sake!’
Blackstone glanced back towards the square. The French were retreating. He remembered the boy’s name, Alan of Marsh. He was from the next village to his own. His mother was a bondswoman to Lord Marldon. Blackstone fought for her name in his mind in order to offer the boy some comfort, but it eluded him.
‘Alan, I’ll find us something,’ he said and shouldered the half-open door into a darkened room. No one had ransacked it, the fighting having bypassed the small rooms that made up the ground floor of the townhouse. He kicked aside a pallet with its grimy straw mattress, and turned the reed flooring in case there were any hidden cavities in the floorboards that might yield hidden supplies. All he could find were carrots and onions soaking in a bowl of water and a few of last season’s apples still mouldering on a rack. He found a small cask, its cork reddened by the contents, but there was no sign of fresh water and the communal well could be anywhere.
Blackstone unplugged the barrel, then slumped in the doorway with the injured boy. The wine would revive him, and the raw onion tasted almost as good as the soggy apple. For a few moments neither archer spoke, exhaustion of battle and the scourge of fear depleting them. Blackstone got to his feet, feeling his leg muscles complain. He had rested too long. He wished he could crawl back inside the darkened room and sleep on the lice-infested mattress, leaving the battle to end when it must.
‘I’ll come back for you when it’s finished,’ he said, touching the boy on the shoulder. He unhooked his scabbard and drew the blade for the boy so he might have a weapon. He would be unable to use his bow to defend himself propped against the wall. The wine had eased the boy’s pain and thirst, though Blackstone knew that unless a physician could be found his chances of survival would be slender.
‘Tell my father and mother, Thomas. When you go home. Tell them I killed more than the others. And give them some plate, there’s plunder in every house. Send them something for me, I beg you.’
The boy’s parents were peasants – ignorant, superstitious and untrustworthy – and would as soon steal your firewood as kill for a pig. Consumed by superstition, they prayed to spirits of the woods and fields, and the death of their son would prove a curse because he was no longer able to bring in the harvest. But to the wounded archer it was home. Blackstone hesitated. How far adrift must a man be to lose hope?
‘I’ll come back for you – then you can tell them yourself,’ he said.
Hope was everything.
Thousands of men crammed the streets, defenders and their attackers milled back and forth as informal fighting groups gathered and attacked each strongpoint that they encountered. Blackstone ran, searching for his brother, praying not to find his body among the many that lay in huddled groups. Wherever he found a dead archer he took his unused arrows, though there were few; the archers had sold their lives at great cost to the French. Blackstone saw a dozen Welsh spearmen and as many archers – the Earl of Oxford’s; others showing Cobham’s colours. There were none of Blackstone’s own men. Few had more than two or three arrows left.
Blackstone ran among them, seeking out anyone he might know. By the time he got to their head screams and shouts came from the other side of the barricade. Men were streaming across the marshes; Wel
sh spearmen waded into the river in a suicidal attack against the barges and the Genoese bowmen. To their rear English and Welsh archers covered them as best they could, but the spearmen were being slaughtered. Those on Blackstone’s side of the barricade had no choice – they had to throw themselves at the French men-at-arms.
Smoke swept across the barbican towers that stood sentinel by the city gates and the defended bridge. The spearmen gathered at the edge of a tower’s walls. An older man, shoulder-length white hair tied back with cord, commanded respect, others nodding in agreement at what he said. There was no choice, they had to attack the heavily defended barricade at once. Their countrymen on the other side were going down under the hail of crossbow bolts. The man looked at Blackstone.
‘Can you and your men cover us?’ he said.
Blackstone realized that of the archers present his surcoat was the most bloody and that the head wound sustained at the barricade had encrusted his hair. He looked as though he had fought through the worst of it. He nodded.
‘As best we can. There’s no more than two volleys.’
‘Ready yourself,’ the Welshman said.
Blackstone turned to the archers without thought that there were veterans in the group. Elfred had shown him the way earlier and these men would follow the regimen of command.
‘Nock!’ No one questioned.
‘Mark!’ All obeyed.
‘Draw!’ The disciplined English killing machine was ready. The stretch of hemp cord and bent yew and ash staves sounded as one.
‘Loose!’ he cried.
The Welshmen charged.
The French heard their battle cry and turned. A dozen went down from the archers’ volley, but others stepped forward and hacked five or six of the men down. Blackstone saw the white-haired soldier thrust at a man-at-arms and then disappear from view as men around him fell beneath savage, hacking blows.
