Defiant Unto Death

by David Gilman

  ‘If victory were governed by how we look and whether shit floats we would all be Kings of France. I’ll swim with them until the barrels are in place and then return. Now, Master Jennah, you’ll keep your boat safe and tucked up here, because when the tide turns we must pray they don’t send river patrols out from that garrison. If they do, your ship is gone and your crew dead – and you with it. I’ll not be able to help you, because we will have put ourselves below that wall, waiting for the fire to take their attention.’

  Jennah wiped a hand across his face. The risk of being discovered and attacked was more of a reality now than it had ever been.

  ‘Sir Thomas, I can’t anchor here for long. They’ll see my mast sooner or later. You need the tide to float the tar barrels; you don’t need my ship. Give me leave to sail when the wind turns.’

  It was Meulon’s voice that carried: ‘You abandon us?’ The tightly packed men jostled forward, their mood quickly changing.

  The ship’s master took a step back. These violent men were as great a danger as the enemy. He crossed himself, uttering an invocation to Jesu, Son of God. Blackstone stepped between him and the men.

  ‘Master Jennah has done what I asked. He’s right: we have no further need of his ship. We either take this stronghold and are relieved by the Captal de Buch and his forces, or we die. And I for one would not go another hour on this bucket and leave my innards for the fish. I’ll fight, but I’ll not die on my knees, retching my arse through my throat!’

  His deliberately crude comment had the desired effect. ‘Amen, my lord,’ said Perinne.

  Others agreed. Meulon took his lead from Blackstone. ‘Then we’d best get ourselves beneath that wall while there’s daylight and try to stomach some of Master Jennah’s salted fish, because it will be a long night.’

  2

  The eddies settled as the tide turned. Within hours twenty feet of the riverbanks would be exposed as the water raced for the sea. Blackstone stripped off and slipped naked into the chilled water. He gasped with the cold, feeling his muscles tighten. Guillaume and Perinne followed him, but they would be in the marshes all night so stayed clothed, their weapons wrapped securely in oiled cloth. Using the calmer water to drift beneath the road bridge, each man pushed two of the half-barrels roped together, their staves already cracked by axe and covered in sackcloth to hold back their seepage. At times the men’s feet touched the bottom, giving them purchase as they pushed through into the water meadow, easing aside lush grass and reeds, praying that the breeze would cover the reeds’ movement. Once they were beyond the stronghold’s walls they dared to look back and saw the iron-studded doors and gatehouse, where the gloom of the closing day revealed the figures of two sentries guarding their posts. There was no sign of any others. The French commander had grown complacent. So well placed was the garrison it seemed obvious that the only way an enemy could approach would be along the road.

  Blackstone took one of the channels into the marshland; Guillaume and Perinne, who had tied a piece of wood beneath his chest, pushed their way into others. In the distance a church bell rang. A hundred yards further and they wedged the casks into the knotted clumps of vegetation and prised the cracked staves further open. Their flint and steel, and the tinder they carried beneath their leather caps to ignite the oil, would be kept safe and dry until the signal was given. Somewhere across the wasteland that same church bell would ring out in darkness, its lonely chime signalling the time to attack.

  Blackstone paddled back to the two men. The wind had dropped and the stench of marsh gas that bubbled from beneath the surface soured the back of their throats. Smoke drifted lazily from the garrison, the cold, heavy air pushing it down towards the river’s surface. They shivered not only from the wet and cold, but from the belief that lost spirits of the dead, trapped between heaven and earth, could rise from the bubbling, stinking underworld. Blackstone grabbed Perinne’s shoulder, forcing aside his own fear of the place.

  ‘They won’t rise at night, Perinne. If they manifest it will be now in the half-light. Don’t confuse that curling smoke with anything else. Get yourself onto this clump of reed and stay out of the water. You know what to do.’

  ‘Aye, Sir Thomas. I know.’

  ‘My life depends on you, as it has in the past. I need your courage tonight more than ever. And if there are spirits about they’ll be of our dead friends sent to protect us.’

  Perinne grinned. His teeth had almost stopped chattering. ‘Next you’ll be telling me my mother wasn’t a whore,’ he said.

  Blackstone pulled himself away through the tangled undergrowth. Arianrhod sat in the hollow of his throat, listening to his whispered prayer for protection as his naked body was caressed by submerged weeds and rotting fingers of roots. But his mind pictured the floating dead reaching up for him; it was all he could do to keep from crying out. The place was rank with evil. Yet he swam back twice again with the uncomplaining Guillaume, pushing his own fear aside and the remaining barrels into place. Guillaume would keep Perinne close to him. Two men’s courage was better than one man alone in the cloying mist. It was almost dark when Jennah’s men hauled the shivering Blackstone aboard and, as Meulon reported that he had sent Gaillard and two others forward with coils of light rope to mark the way, he rubbed himself dry with sackcloth, scouring his skin back to warmth. He could feel the boat moving in a gentle rise and fall as it scraped against the mud bank, straining for its release in its desire to join the ebb tide. A sullen bell marking vespers – the end of the day – sent its haunting sound across the marshland.

  Meulon took the men over the side and onto the riverbank, waiting for Blackstone.

  ‘Your two men in the water, their shields are still aboard,’ Jennah told him.

  ‘We can’t take extra weight with us. Do as you wish with them,’ said Blackstone, slinging his own shield across his back. ‘They’ll be given others to replace them.’

  ‘Then we’ll keep them with some pride, Sir Thomas. Mist is settling,’ Jennah said, thankful that it would help cover his departure. ‘It’ll sit around those gullies and cover you and your men till you climb over that wall. I wish you well and that God blesses your endeavours, but I have to let loose my boat and be gone from here.’

  Blackstone finished dressing. ‘Your cargo’s waiting for you, Master Jennah. The Saint Margaret Boat is yours again.’

  Jennah bowed his head while Blackstone secured his shield as the men ashore had done. ‘I’m a sailor, Sir Thomas. Your world frightens me. But I would have fought you for my ship, even though you would have killed me.’

  ‘Go and secure your profit and your freedom, Master Jennah of Hythe. I would rather die here than face that sea again. We each fight in our own way.’

  No mention was made of Jennah’s debt of life, or that his ship had also been spared. He watched Blackstone lead his men away into the darkness. No words passed between them; each fell into place, with every man knowing what was expected of him. The only sound Jennah heard was the soft squelch of their feet moving through the soggy ground.

  The boat turned into the tide. Master Jennah raised his arm in farewell.

  But Blackstone never looked back.

  They stood knee-deep in black, stinking quagmire, their backs pressed against the wooden wall. It had taken slow, painful hours to cross the spit of land, wary of their movement being seen by any sentry patrolling the rear ramparts. They had forded the tributary as the tide turned, each man helping the other as at times they waded deep into the foulness. Exhaustion was claiming them as a swell of water rippled like a great dark snake. The church bell had rung once more, telling peasant and lord, wherever they might be, to retire for the night. The next bell would be rung later in the night, calling the monks to prayer – and that would be the signal for Guillaume to set alight the tar barrels.

  And Blackstone now realized that it would be too late.

  Twenty men shivered and prayed as the water rose higher. Blackstone knew that Guillaume and Per
inne would be clinging to the roots of the bulrushes. And that oil would have seeped through the tangled mass, but the tide was coming in faster than Blackstone had thought possible. If Guillaume had fallen asleep or did not realize the quickness of the tide, the men against the wall would soon have a simple choice: drown or scale the walls and fall into the enemy’s arms.

  They heard the rushing tide before they saw the darkness move towards them. The river had spilled into the tributary of the spit of land and as it curled around the narrow headland the force of the water swept into the riverbank. The mud they had been standing in was now water tugging at their thighs. If they waited any longer the men would have no purchase beneath their feet to balance the throwing of the grappling irons twenty feet above their head.

  ‘Throw!’ Blackstone hissed.

  Ropes snaked up into the darkness, their iron claws biting into the top of the wooden wall. Twenty men, six ropes. Blackstone put his weight against one of them and tested its strength and then without another word began to climb hand over hand as his feet tried to find some grip on the slimy wood. Others were scrambling on either side of him, grunting with effort, overcoming the protests of stiff muscles and chilled bodies. Blackstone was first over the wall, crouching, lowering the outline of his body against the dark sky. The dull glow of flickering torches came from the four corners of the courtyard. The stronghold was little more than a glorified earthwork that had been fortified over the years, a piecemeal strengthening as demands dictated. Across the open expanse on the far side from where Blackstone and his men now stood the gatehouse silhouette reared up. A horse whinnied from a stable block. The men froze. Had the breeze carried their scent? A few muted voices came from one of the buildings below the wall. A dormitory door opened; torchlight flickered as a soldier stepped out and walked a few yards to another building – the latrines.

  Light up the night, boy! Now!

  When the soldier returned he would be facing directly where Blackstone and his men now crouched. No matter how low they tried to keep below the rampart, the shape of the wall would change and living in a garrison gave a man an animal sense of something altered.

  The door opened. They could see the man’s face plainly now.

  Burn it, Guillaume! Don’t wait for the damned bell! Light the oil!

  Coiled in tension the men dared not move. Blackstone sensed Meulon turn to face him, waiting for his lord’s command. Better to get down into the courtyard than be caught on the wall. Was there a chance they could run for the gatehouse and seize it? Blackstone wondered, his mind weighing the odds of survival rather than the chance of success.

  Better to fight and find out.

  And then the night sky flared into a curtain of fire.

  Sentries screamed their alarm and within moments the garrison was alive with shouting men as they gathered their weapons and ran for the front parapet. Blackstone signalled. Meulon took half the men to the right; he with the others skirmished left, each group running for the steps that would take them into the mêlée below. Beyond the walls reed beds caught in the flames flickered like burning stars that rose and died. Men shouted, a door slammed open and a bareheaded knight with a squire at his side ran out, buckling belt and sword, and joined the men sprinting for the gatehouse and the walls.

  Thirty, forty, men – at least. Kill them – how?

  The sky blazed and Blackstone spared a moment’s thought for his squire and Perinne. If they were badly placed there would be no escape from the inferno that would catch every dry reed. A memory flared: a windmill engulfed in flames when he was an archer lying close to death on the field of Crécy, his bloodied fist gripping the Bohemian knight’s sword that had slain his young brother. The blade that bore the mark of the running wolf. He had wrenched it from the knight’s hand and in a final brutal contest had killed him with it.

  Blackstone gestured with Wolf Sword to Gaillard, who took his six men and ran into the shadows of a building to protect Blackstone’s flank. Meulon had already positioned his men. Blackstone would take the centre ground and start the killing. When the time was right Meulon’s crossbowmen would loose their missiles into the unsuspecting soldiers. None of the garrison had yet looked behind them, unaware that the darkness held such deadly threat. They clambered up ladders and jostled onto the parapet as the soldiers already on the wall called to each other, trying to find where the threat might be coming from, pointing at shadows that swayed and deceived.

  Blackstone made his run across the open ground towards the ladder to kill the men who flocked together at that end of the wall.

  Horses whinnied when they heard the cries of panic and scented fire in the air. Some kicked at their stalls. A small group of four or five Frenchmen turned and ran back to the stables, their thoughts concentrated on calming the horses. It was they who saw Blackstone and his half-dozen shield-bearers run diagonally across the courtyard. These wild-eyed intruders looked briefly their way but, incredibly, chose to ignore them. In that moment, even though they were common soldiers, the Frenchmen recognized the shields’ design of a gauntleted fist clasping a cruciform sword and knew who was within their walls. That moment of fear held them fast as they turned to yell a warning. They died where they stood, disbelief and agony etched on their faces as Gaillard’s spearmen struck from their blind side, thrusting their long blades into their backs and then melting back into the shadows, by which time Blackstone was already at the steps, looking up at the crimson light that flooded the sky. If the garrison commander had allied noblemen within twenty miles then they too would know violence had befallen the garrison. Blackstone ran past the first dozen men, his shoulder banging and shoving them as he made his way along the parapet. None turned. In their efforts to reach the wall the soldiers had jostled and barged one another, so in their minds whoever it was who ran behind them now were others doing the same. Mesmerized by the racing fire that seemed to have set the vast water meadow alight, they watched as streams of burning oil and floating tar cut through the channels, blood-red claws raking the land.

  Blackstone was halfway down the line of men. His luck would not hold much longer. He rammed Wolf Sword into the back of a man whose sudden contortion turned the man next to him. Terror-stricken, the man’s face twisted into a macabre mask as he tried to bring up his blade. Wolf Sword severed his arm and Blackstone shouldered the screaming man aside with his shield. The alerted soldiers turned and attacked. Blackstone heard the clash of arms behind him: his men already savaging the startled defenders. There was little room to manoeuvre on the narrow rampart and, as he sidestepped the first attacker, someone behind him thrust a sword into the man’s chest. Blackstone’s men fought at his shoulder, lending their weight as the next Frenchman met his shield and strength as he braced against the surge of soldiers now bearing down on him. The sudden whisper of crossbow quarrels became muscle-tearing thuds as they struck home. Meulon had gauged the threat and his men loosed their bolts as their sworn lord was under attack, slamming into the dying and wounded men who fell on top of each other, some tumbling into the courtyard. Blackstone turned back. At least twenty enemies lay dead, for the cost of two of his own. That section of the wall was now secure. Meulon had not wasted time reloading the crossbows but led the men towards the gatehouse. Ragged knots of French defenders ran out of the half-light from across the courtyard towards the fighting. Confusion splintered them further as sudden attacks from Blackstone’s men from the shadows, led by a heavy-set bearded man, cut and thrust at them, killing and maiming, and then retreated quickly. Another group of armed men attacked near the gatehouse. Screams and incoherent commands among the besieged French caused chaos. There was no place to make a stand. The attackers seemed to be everywhere.

  Two square-built towers rose thirty feet on either side of the gate, joined above the entrance passageway. The two rooms above the vaulted doorway formed the gatehouse that held the portcullis’s winding mechanism and the guard commander’s quarters. Meulon ran to the east tower as Blackstone�
�s men hacked at the bolted door with axes. Resistance was sporadic now as Gaillard’s group still engaged in random violence against the disorganized defenders and Meulon’s men held the other side of the gatehouse. Blackstone knew there were at least twenty or thirty Frenchmen left alive and sooner or later someone would realize how few the attackers were and organize themselves into a fighting unit. Then Blackstone’s isolated raiders would be cornered and picked off. As the wooden doors splintered amid the shouts of alarm from those inside the tower, Blackstone looked beyond the crenellated walls and saw two bedraggled figures drag themselves onto the narrow road out of the smouldering clumps of reed beds.

  Agonizing screams soon faltered into whimpering pain and then fell silent as the wounded were put to death. Blackstone stepped into the tower and saw Meulon cutting a wounded man’s throat. His men stood gasping for air, their lungs heaving, this final assault sapping the last of their strength. Blackstone knew they all needed sleep, food and a safe haven, but there were still men in the stronghold who could gather their wits and their weapons and hunt them down.

  ‘Bring it up,’ he commanded. Meulon and two others took to the windlass as Blackstone stepped back out into the night and called for the others. ‘Gaillard. The bridge! Lower it! And open the gates!’

  Gaillard’s unmistakable lumbering figure led others from the cover of one of the low stone buildings towards the two counterweights below. Once they were released the ten-foot drawbridge would drop into place across the defensive ditch and join road and castle.

  Inside the tower his exhausted men secured the windlass and slumped against the wall. Only Meulon remained standing, but Blackstone could see that even he had little left in him to carry on the fight.

  Blackstone said: ‘The garrison’s not yet surrendered. Meulon! Two men who bear wounds remain here for the portcullis. They see French reinforcements – drop it. Everyone else outside.’