by David Gilman
‘They won’t come now. Too late in the day,’ Will Longdon said as he checked the fletchings, fingering each arrow, and then, like the others, pressing its point into the ground, making a small forest of ash and goose feather. Each archer had been given two sheaves and each sheaf was twenty-four arrows. These men could loose a dozen arrows and more every minute. Thirty thousand arrows would fall from the clouding sky in the first two minutes of the attack. The carnage would be terrifying and no matter how Blackstone tried to imagine it, he could not. He had never seen an army stand and fight.
‘They’ll be wanting food and a bed for the night and then the Kings’ll parlay and decide on a time tomorrow, which suits me, because I could eat a donkey,’ Weston grumbled and smoothed a hand along the bend of his bow stave, seeming to derive comfort from it.
‘They’ll come,’ one of the Welshmen said. ‘They can’t wait to finish us off. Then they’ll bedroll and eat.’
‘Aye, they like a good slaughter, do the French,’ said Matthew Hampton.
And a murmur ran along the line. There was no doubt who were the underdogs. Blackstone felt for his talisman and the rough length of linen with the embroidered bird. Two women guarded his life – Arianrhod and Christiana. He looked at Richard, who still gazed with childish wonder at the sky; a boy who could kill as well as any man and barely a year younger than the Prince of Wales, who stood in the van of battle. Richard seemed not to understand the meaning of fear. He had proved his daring and courage often enough.
Blackstone was afraid but did not show it.
Of which son would the father have been most proud?
A roar, like a battle cry, broke Blackstone’s reverie. The men were on their feet. Above them on the ridge the King’s banner – the lions of England and the lilies of France – unfurled in the humid air and beside it the red-painted dragon battle standard.
‘Drago! Drago!’ the men roared.
The cheers settled as the King rode down on a palfrey, his great war horse already tethered with the thousands of others. The marshals Warwick and de Harcourt with the constable of the army, the battle-hardened Northampton, rode among the troops. The King, bareheaded, had not yet put on his armour and wore a green and gold pourpoint, the heavy, padded linen undershirt worn to make the armour a more comfortable fit. As he moved along the line of men, he pointed with a white baton to those he recognized. Then he would stop and address them, each of the three divisions. Blackstone and those around him could not yet hear the King’s words, but laughter and then cheers marked his passage. By the time the King drew rein in front of the men-at-arms and archers where Blackstone stood, the anticipation of being so close to their King ran through them like a shiver down a horse’s back.
‘Have we rested enough from our walk across Normandy, lads?’
‘We have!’
‘Aye!’
Men yelled out their answer.
‘And with a lesson or two in swimming, sire!’ one called. The King smiled and the men laughed.
‘Then we think it’s time to fight this King who lays claim to these lands and who believes that once he has beaten us this day he will settle in our kingdom and let his men become acquainted with those we call our own.’
The roar of disapproval brought another smile to the King’s face, but then his brow furrowed and his voice lost its cheerfulness. ‘We urge you all to stand your ground, never yield, do not break ranks, because we have the better of this King, my cousin. We know him and his army. They do not lack courage; they have a ferocity that is well known and this furor franciscus will spew its rage onto us all. But they cannot win this battle. They cannot, I swear to you. English and Welsh blood alike will be shed, that is a promise we can make and keep, but the day is already won, that is a promise we make in the eyes of God. Our own son will stand with you, he will live or die at your side. There is no ransom to be had from the capture of a noble knight or lord, and there is to be no robbing of the dead. This is our day of glory. Their destruction will be spoken of for ages to come. They do not know what fury it is we possess. Keep my words close to you. We take no prisoners. We give no mercy. Kill them. Kill them all,’ he commanded.
The blood-lust roar reverberated across the hills.
Richard Blackstone had not taken his eyes from his King. The silent world he inhabited was something he had understood since childhood. The scent of the wind and the change in weather comforted his senses as much as the colours of field and sky. This man chosen by God had looked at him and the air had vibrated with a hum as those around him bared their teeth and bellowed at the sky. They were angels on earth who would slay anyone who offered a threat. His brother had not looked his way and the warmth in his chest he once felt had deserted him. The fighting had been easy. It required strength and the ability to kill without feeling. He had both. Life in his caged world channelled his emotions elsewhere. The girl at home had once given him that warmth and he had tried to tell her through clumsy gestures and incoherent sounds. She would smile and stroke his head and reach down for his manhood and bring him to her. The soft moistness of her brought tears to his eyes. Nothing in the world was as tender as the rhythmic movement of that girl who laid her hands on his broken face and eased his lips onto her breasts. When her eyes closed and she smiled, he followed her into the same darkness to try to share that moment. He had not meant to kill her. The act was something he had buried within himself. When his brother had found out his secret it was as if a knife had cut into him. Now nothing could bring his brother back.
The long-haired men with spears, some with strange markings painted on their faces, avoided his gaze. The men who pulled their war bows, just as his father had taught him, were closer now than his own brother. They would jig and dance and some would fall down from drink, but all were simple savages who could kill to stay alive. There was no regret in slaying others to keep your own breath from bubbling through your chest from a sword thrust.
He looked down the line. Men in chain mail and armour stood ready, the spearmen leaned on their weapons and the men with bows had taken their places between the ranks. He could see a young man kneel before the King and the King kissed him on the lips as his brother once did to him. The King loved that boy just as his father had loved him. The boy was surrounded by the men who wore armour and coloured cloth, there were flags held around him. And then the father left the son and the boy pulled on his helm. He looked around him. Men were not bellowing now. Their jaws were set tight and their eyes squinted into the late afternoon light. He turned to look to his front and saw the green hills making a startling contrast with the colours of a multitude of men and horses.
The French had arrived.
Sir Gilbert ordered his men to their positions.
‘This is where we stand or die, lads. When the honour of France comes around that hill they’ll have their Oriflamme fluttering against the sky. It’s not blood-red without reason. It’s their sacred battle flag, blessed by every whoremongering priest in Christendom, and it means they’ll not be taking prisoners either. Any of us. King, Prince, earl or common man, they’ll mean to kill us all unless we kill them first. God bless you, lads. I’ll not leave this field until I am dead or our King’s enemy is defeated.’
Sir Gilbert took up his position in the front rank.
Elfred went to join his archers on the extreme flank and touched Blackstone on the shoulder as he passed by.
‘Till later, Thomas. Aim true. They mustn’t break the line.’
Blackstone nodded; the fear was already gnawing at his bowels, but he would not let his men see it. The sound of trumpets and kettledrums rolled across the hillside.
The French were coming to slaughter them.
Five thousand Genoese crossbowmen had been hurried along the road from Abbeville. Behind them the French mounted men-at-arms and knights could barely restrain their war horses. The way to fight a war was to charge, lances cut down to six feet to kill the third line of defenders once the first had been sk
ewered by crossbow quarrels and the second smashed by iron-shod hooves. Sword, mace, mallet and axe would scythe or cripple the rest. The world knew that the French army was the most powerful and efficient fighting force and, on this day at Crécy-en-Ponthieu, thirty thousand of them would crush an upstart King with fewer than ten thousand fighting men under his command. They who dared to confront King Philip VI of France were going to die.
As they rode towards the battlefield knights tilted their heads back with open visors, grateful for the rain that offered a respite from the humid air and dusty roads. At this pace they would soon be at the English lines. A long August twilight would give them time enough to end the day in victory.
The veil of rain that swept across the landscape swirled towards the men on the hill awaiting the onslaught. Without need of command the archers unstrung their bows and tucked the cords inside jackets and beneath leather caps. They were taking no chances of the damp stretching them and reducing the arrows’ flight. The downpour passed, the clouds blew further inland and sunlight spread a warm light that turned the wet grassland to gold and glistened off wet French armour and shields.
Blackstone glanced behind him and squinted at the low sun. The King and the marshals had chosen this place more carefully than he had realized. Not only would the attacking French be clambering uphill but they would be facing into the westering sun.
‘Here they come,’ someone said calmly as the archers restrung their bows.
The tramping of thousands of feet and hooves vibrated through the ground. Richard Blackstone could feel it more keenly than most, the trembling land speaking to him. He breathed in the damp air and held it for a moment in his nostrils and lungs. The grass smelled sweet and the air carried a fragrance from meadows and forest. He moaned a sound of contentment. Blackstone turned and looked at his grinning face. The sadness he felt at the loss of the mute boy’s innocence could not be concealed. He reached out and touched the boy’s shoulder. He would give anything not to have known about the girl’s death. Richard read the pain in his brother’s eyes. Blackstone touched his heart and lips and then reached out his hand. A final gesture of love before the uncertainty of battle. The crooked-jawed boy took it and pressed his wet mouth against the rough palm.
Genoese crossbowmen and marines, whose numbers equalled more than half of the English army, roared insults at the stoic English. They were the first of three divisions wide, three deep, the huge Oriflamme battle flag carried by the rear division for all the English to see. The crossbowmen were soaked, and they were tired and hungry. The French treated them with disdain and had hurried them to the battlefield. When crossbowmen loosed their bolts it took time to crank their weapons’ mechanisms to fire again. In a set battle they would normally be protected by large shields big enough to hide behind as they reloaded, but today their French paymasters had left these paviseurs with the baggage train. It was expected that the crossbowmen would cut down the English front ranks and then the armoured destriers and knights would do the rest. French impatience and a cloudburst would prove the downfall of the Genoese.
The English faced the bellowing ranks now within crossbow range and watched as several thousand steel-sprung bolts were loosed. As they fluttered earthwards the second rank had moved through them and fired. Massed trumpets and drums picked up their tempo, a cacophony of bravado. But the English and Welsh ranks did not flinch. If those bolts had fallen into them it would have been lethal, but they fell short, striking the ground in front of the English men-at-arms. Facing the sun and shooting uphill, they had misjudged their distance and the twisted rawhide cords on the crossbows had stretched from the rain.
A murmur of satisfaction rippled through English ranks.
‘Poor bastards,’ Will Longdon muttered. ‘Is that the best they can do?’
They could hear the commands of the centenars from the right and left flanks. ‘Nock! Mark! Draw! Loose!’
Blackstone and the others craned their necks as the dense hail of arrows shivered through the air. Then the thunderclaps of the ribalds, bound four-inch barrels mounted on small carts that spewed smoke and metal pieces, added their firepower. Edward had placed them each side of the archers’ flanks. They were not effective killers like the bowmen, but their booming and their belching smoke and flame caused fear and confusion, ending in death when the arrows fell. It was carnage. The English went on loosing and the iron-tipped arrows plummeted into flesh and bone. The Genoese broke and ran.
‘Look at that!’ Blackstone said as he saw hundreds of French knights ride forward, trampling the Genoese and then killing those survivors that sword and lance could find. Sir Gilbert turned where he stood on the front rank, shield raised, sword held in the loop of his belt because every man-at-arms and knight held a lance, ready to jam into the muscles of the French stallions – those that had escaped being crippled by the pits – when they reached the lines.
‘All right, lads, that’s the French King’s brother doing that. He’s an impatient bastard, is the Duke of Alençon, and he wants to get at us. He’s getting a few obstacles out of the way first. If they close on us cry out for Saint George. Shout loud. Not everyone has surcoat or shield to identify themselves. Here they come. Archers!’
The pounding charge surged across the dead Genoese, a line of knights so broad and deep that Blackstone could not see the divisions behind them. War horses, snorting nostrils blood-red, carried the armoured men forward at the charge. The destriers, heads and chests encased in arrow-deflecting plate, galloped shoulder to shoulder, battle-trained into a ruthless, crushing mass of unstoppable power. ‘Broadheads!’ Blackstone shouted and the archers nocked the ragged-edged hunting arrows. The triangular barbed heads would rip muscle and tear vital organs. The archers on the flanks loosed another cloud of arrows, and moments before they arced out of the sky Blackstone aimed at the horses’ legs, pushing aside the long cloth coverings, the rich hues of the trappers rustling like the knights’ banners.
‘Draw!’ His left leg went a stride forward, the bow came up, the rough hemp cord pulled back to his ear. A magnificent animal barely controlled by the knight on its back was his target. ‘Loose!’
The fatal, hurtling arrowstorm struck the French from above just as their horses screamed in agony from Blackstone’s lower trajectory. A tumbling, broken mass staggered on the wet grass sluiced with blood, desperate for a foothold.
‘Sweet Christ,’ a pagan Welshman blasphemed, unheard by the archers who had already loosed three more arrows into the flailing hooves and crippled knights. Arrows pierced the terrified horses’ chests and flanks, making deep wounds that bled the vitality and life from them and inflicted more pain than any animal could endure. Legs snapped as they went down under the weight of their riders and the horsemen ploughing on from behind. Mud-spattered knights raked their spurs into their stallions’ flanks, kneeing them to manoeuvre around crippled and crazed horses.
‘Keep it steady!’ Blackstone shouted, as he bent and loosed, creating a rhythm of fire that was unrelenting. ‘Don’t waste your arrows. Aim and shoot. Aim and shoot!’
The French kept coming.
And dying.
A massive heartbeat of French kettledrums thumped louder, urging the knights forward. Trumpets blew a varying pitch as if their power could knock down the English. Packed men herded closer, lances down, shields raised. Some bore wounds but rode on, and those whose wealth afforded quality armour that deflected the archers’ attempts to slaughter them cried Montjoie! and came at the English in all their pride and savagery. Horses went nose-down at the pit-traps, others carried horrific wounds, but their courageous hearts pumped blood to muscle and sinew and kept their momentum going, urged on by vicious spurs from men who now gave no thought for the beasts they had once cherished.
Sir Gilbert’s men-at-arms stepped into the fray and cut the survivors down. No man died easily and the heavy clang of sword against armour echoed up and down the lines. It was hard, brutal work that demanded strength and
stamina. Men wearing seventy pounds of armour had no chance of regaining their feet if they went down. To slip or be stunned meant death. Thousands of crossbowmen were dead, hundreds of knights lay mortally wounded and not one defender had died. The French men-at-arms fell back to regroup out of the archers’ range. The horses’ screams were pitiful.
‘We should go and finish the wretched creatures,’ Will Longdon said. ‘It’d be a mercy.’
‘You know what the King said, Will: no mercy today,’ said Blackstone as he counted the arrows he had left. ‘Arrows?’ he called to the men.
‘Three,’ Will Longdon said.
‘I’ve five,’ John Weston moaned. ‘Couple of the fletchings look as though they’d throw the flight.’
‘It’ll be close range, John. Aim and loose,’ Blackstone told him. Others in the company were low on arrows. Each man called what he had: two, three, one, four, none. He could see boys and clerics running from the rear carrying tied sheaves to replenish the archers.
Sir Gilbert turned. ‘They’ll get closer next time. There’s so many of them they’ll get through eventually. You archers be ready to move back, you’ve no defence against men like these.’
‘We’ll stand our ground, Sir Gilbert. Once we have arrows we can take them head on.’
Sir Gilbert nodded, too tired to offer either admonition or praise. Boys ran with waterskins and buckets from the baggage train. Fighting men scooped handfuls, tipped the skins, sucked the life-giving moisture into their parched mouths.
The lull in the battle gave men a few moments to lean on their swords, slump onto the grass and loosen their helmets. Blackstone, sweat-soaked and hurting, considered that these armoured men could take no more battering. The fallen horses and pit-traps had slowed the French advance; they were no longer a disciplined attacking line. The ground had forced them to manoeuvre into fighting pockets of men, which left them vulnerable to infantry attack from the sides. Swarming soldiers, knights and spearmen were bringing down horsemen unable to defend themselves on all sides.
