Blood of the Innocents

by Michael Jecks

  ‘I am sure,’ he said, and turned away.

  Sunday 21 August

  The force under Grandarse had ridden hard that morning. Without delays they made good time, while the men they pursued were in no such hurry. They sacked and despoiled all in their path: churches, farms, villages, all fell to them.

  It was in the late morning that they came to the little village. Smoke still rose from the ruins of the chapel in the midst of a reek of burned buildings and slaughtered cattle. In among the dead animals Berenger could see the hands and faces of numerous villagers. He sat on his rounsey and surveyed the scene, trying to control the dull throbbing at the back of his head as he took it all in. War was foul enough, but at least the King fought in order to impose his rightful claim on the land and the people. This, though, was mere outlawry. Men who demanded gold, food, lives, just because they could.

  ‘These people ain’t been dead long,’ Clip called. He was rootling about in the midst of the corpses with the optimistic air of a man who might find something of value. ‘Maybe a day or two.’

  Behind him, Gilles, the chubby youngster, peered with interest, his neck craning past Clip to see the body behind. On seeing a woman who had died a grim death, he turned a shade of green and pulled away again. Berenger soon heard his retching. ‘Longer than the nuns, though,’ he added, lifting a leg and seeing how the rigor mortis had stiffened the body.

  Berenger muttered, ‘Clip, just hurry up.’

  ‘Aye, Frip. But don’t you think it a waste to leave all these here?’ Clip said hopefully, waving a hand at the carcasses of cattle. ‘Just a leg or two would suit us for the evening.’

  He was correct, Fripper knew. The company had several carts carrying essentials, and he ordered one to wait while a butcher recovered some steaks. Meanwhile the rest of the men picked up bodies and set them into neat piles.

  Clip, as usual, was at his complaining best as he picked up a young woman by the arms. Gilles stared, but stood away, and Clip’s voice grew louder, rising to a derisory whine. ‘Come, you thick fucker, give me a hand! Pick up her legs. Sooner she’s up, the sooner we can go and dump her. Shit! Come on, will you? You want me to clump you about the head? Are you asleep?’

  Berenger snapped, ‘Just get on with it, will you?’ but even as he did, Hawkwood span and stared into the distance.

  Père et Fils were riding back at speed from where they had been scouting. Both were excited, and Felix panted as he said, ‘They’re up ahead! We saw them!’

  Archibald gave the metal a last rub with his oiled cloth, then pulled the coverings over the gonne again.

  ‘It’ll survive,’ Ed called.

  ‘This damned weather is foul,’ Archibald grumbled. He disliked the drizzle that fell constantly in this land. Today was dry, but he was sure that the gonnes could sense the weather to come. And whether or not his massive tubes could be affected, he was absolutely certain that his barrels of powder would be. ‘It’ll get into all the powder, and when we need it, we won’t manage more than a damp hiss if the weather keeps up like this.’

  ‘It will be fine. The barrels are all well coopered and sealed,’ Ed said.

  ‘When we stop tonight I’ll have the lids off every third barrel. We’ll test the powders and see how they are.’

  ‘Very well, Master Gynour,’ Ed said.

  Béatrice was silent. She sat on the wagon’s edge and stared ahead without speaking.

  ‘What, no comment?’ Ed said half-humorously.

  ‘There is nothing to comment about,’ she said.

  Archibald raised his eyebrows and glanced at Ed. She was not usually so reticent, but since the day Berenger had returned, she had been like this. Whereas before she would have argued and insisted on her own point of view, her own way of working with the powders, which were often irrational but sometimes more effective than Archibald’s own, now she was listless and uninterested.

  Ed and Archibald exchanged a look. Archibald wasn’t sure how much Ed understood about the woman, but for his part he was quite certain that it was the disappearance of Fripper that had led to her introspection. He was sad. She had adored Fripper when they first met all those years ago. She had confessed that to Archibald once, six or seven years ago, when she was miserable and deep in her cups, but the two had never discussed the matter again. He knew that she would be humiliated to think that he could remember the conversation. She was too proud to think of sharing her feelings with another. And since she would not discuss them, she withdrew into herself like a snail hiding from the sun.

  She had been so much better these last few years, too. It was sad to see how she had changed. Archibald checked the ropes holding the gonnes down, and climbed back onto the wagon, a foot on the axle, second foot on the wheel’s rim, and up. Béatrice did not look at him as he rested his buttocks on the wall of the cart’s bed and took the reins from her. ‘All well?’

  ‘Why should I not be?’ she asked.

  Archibald shrugged. The army was starting to move again, and he snapped the reins. The bullocks began to move as the boy with the prod jabbed at their rumps, and Archibald rolled with the wagon as it lumbered over the ruts and bumps in the road.

  The army was spread over a vast front. Someone had told Archibald that the devastation wreaked by this little army covered a front of some thirty miles, and he could believe it. Here he was surrounded by perhaps a centaine of men who had been instructed to ensure that he was safe and that the gonnes and serpentine powder were not put at risk. The French would dearly love to be able to capture both, or at worst send the powder and its manufacturer to meet his maker. Black powder was becoming a vital element in battle, terrifying horses and disrupting charges before the knights could muster. Yes, archers had their uses still, but Archibald knew full well that his powders were the way of the future. It was powder that would reduce a castle to ruins in the future, powder that would horrify and shock whole armies into submission on the battlefield, powder that would drive the English to victory over the French. Nothing could match the effect of a number of gonnes belching flame and smoke to their own thunderous timpani.

  As yet there was no French army to dispute the right of the English to trample this land into the mire. There were still occasional scouts visible, watching, but no force. Archibald was beginning to wonder whether they would ever show. In the past, the French had been most agile to avoid any encounters. There had been little fights, yes, up and down the country when captains like Dagworth and Manny had forced local French soldiers to come to blows, but they were sporadic little events, not pitched battles. The only time that the French had succumbed to the rage that English depredations had caused, they had been so heavily defeated it was hard to believe they would dare risk another drubbing.

  ‘Ten years ago,’ he mused.

  ‘Hmm?’ Béatrice turned to him.

  ‘I was thinking: ten years since Crécy. That was the last real battle fought by the French. They have deliberately avoided all English armies since.’

  ‘They cannot continue to do so.’

  ‘No. They’ll have to contest our rights at some point,’ Archibald said. The wagon rolled heavily down a larger rut, its massive weight crushing rocks in the soft mud of the roadway. ‘Else they will find they’ve lost the kingdom without a fight.’

  But he did wonder when they would begin. There were rumours of the French King having laid siege to some town in the north, taking over lands that had once been owned by the King of Navarre, but Archibald was doubtful. The French King was considered a vacuous fool, easily cowed. He had not the heart and stomach of an English peasant!

  It was as he was smiling to himself, reflecting that there was little that could stop an English army, when the first horn blasts came from the English vanguard.

  ‘What in God’s name?’ he muttered, and then Archibald grabbed for his long-bladed knife, staring out to the east of their cavalcade.

  There, in the murk of the dust kicked up by hundreds of hoofs and booted f
eet, he could vaguely make out a party of horsemen.

  ‘Shit!’

  Berenger and the men rode along a broad, flat plain with a ridge of trees on their right. Further ahead trees rose on both sides, as if they were entering a funnel. A long range of hills, blue with distance, stood clear on their left.

  He rode along deep in his own thoughts. Grandarse tried to speak to him, but Berenger only shook his head. The morning’s discovery at the village had been sobering. Many of his troop were still unused to the sight of death, and he was not sure that he was acclimatised to it himself.

  The landscape here was empty. No smoke rose from fresh victims. In the far distance there was a hamlet, but it looked undamaged. The only sign that his company had passed by lay in the broad path of flattened grasses and ruts where carts and wagons had trampled the ground.

  ‘Frip? What’s that?’ Saul was peering ahead and pointing. ‘Is it smoke?’

  Grandarse held up his hand and the call was sent back to the others to halt. Berenger glanced at Hawkwood. He had the better eyes. The younger man stood in his stirrups, but even with his eyesight he could discern little. ‘It could be mist. Perhaps there is a river down there?’

  Robin of London was peering with a frown wrinkling his brow. He had good eyes, Berenger knew. ‘What do you see, Robin?’

  The tall man turned his head a little, favouring his right eye. Then he reached down to the bow that was at his back. ‘To me that looks like dust kicked up by a large force of men. I think it’s your company, Fripper.’

  ‘Dust?’ It had been raining much of the previous day, and yet already the sun had dried the mud enough for hoofs to stir it.

  Berenger looked at Grandarse, who nodded and then wheeled his mount around.

  The centener bellowed, ‘Company! Ahead are the men who have caused all this damage. They are riding on to their next victims. One of their prisoners is Denisot’s wife. He wants his wife back, and I want the head of the man responsible for looting and stealing all this way. So we will break their campaign now! Archers! Archers, dismount and string your bows! We’ll ride with lances to the front, archers at the rear!’

  Berenger cast an eye over the men nearest him as the archers swung their legs over the rumps of their beasts and began to drag bowstaves into their familiar curves, sliding the string up to the notches where they held. It was impossible to string a bow on horseback. In his own vintaine, Loys and Fulk sat on their horses gazing ahead, fingering their swords, while Saul sat behind them on his short pony drawing his bow and releasing it, getting a feel for the string under his fingers. Clip too had strung his bow, and now slouched grumpily in the saddle, scratching his cods. Berenger knew he would be bold enough in any battle.

  Clip glanced at Dogbreath. ‘Makes no sense.’

  ‘What?’ asked Berenger.

  ‘Those bodies back at the last place were cold and solid,’ Clip said. ‘If these had just been there, I’d expect the whole lot to be warm still. I’d have said they were dead for days.’

  ‘No matter,’ Berenger said. ‘These are our men.’

  The archers were all remounting now, and Grandarse pointed towards the dust cloud.

  ‘When we are in bowshot, lads, dismount on my command and loose as fast as you can. Don’t delay, but send your flights as quickly as possible and stop when you see us reaching them. I don’t want a clothyard in my back just when I engage the buggers!’

  Berenger called to his men. ‘Imbert, Felix, Pierre, Gilles, you will ride with me. Fulk, Saul, Loys, you know your work: stay at my side. The rest of the vintaine, you follow us. We will ride them down swiftly, with luck. Denisot, you stay at my side. Is that clear?’

  Hawkwood and the other vinteners were making their own dispositions while he spoke, and as Berenger finished, there was a lull. Hawkwood nodded to him, and Grandarse clasped Berenger’s forearm, then did the same to each of the other vinteners in one last sign of comradeship.

  His best archers he left with the other bowmen. ‘Robin, Clip, Dogbreath, I leave you here with the archers. Keep them together, make sure they don’t hit us, and when your arrows are spent, take your knives and join us. Fulk, Saul, Loys, when we have broken into their party, you will hopefully be able to separate the prisoners from them. When we have engaged them, form a guard between the fighting and their prisoners. Denisot, are you content?’

  ‘I am.’

  ‘Good.’

  Then, as Grandarse raised his clenched fist and began to trot onwards, Berenger stood up in his stirrups and drew his sword. ‘Let’s catch those bastards and kill all who will not surrender immediately! Come!’

  They rode forward at a steady canter, the men with lances at the fore. Berenger felt the first stirrings of excitement, and he was shocked to find that he was anticipating the shock of their collision with glee. He glanced to left and right and saw that Fulk and Saul were riding steadily. Neither looked concerned at the imminent clash. Imbert looked more nervous, while Denisot looked grimly determined.

  Ahead the mistiness was growing. Gradually Berenger became aware of a large mass at its centre: a wagon. At either side he could see men tramping on over the dry ground. The trees on either side were closer now, standing over the road and leading the riders into the narrowing gap. It would, Berenger thought, make it harder for the company to disperse and hide in the woods. So much the better.

  A pang of doubt struck him, but he quelled it, swinging his sword over his head like a berserker of old.

  Berenger decided he would reduce the distance by a half before commanding the archers to take position, and then he would charge the company with his men.

  Onward another fifty paces, he thought, and then he could allow the archers to fall away. That would be enough. Then . . .

  Something was wrong. The way that the dust rose: it wasn’t heavy enough for a party as large as Will’s. The doubts returned to him, redoubled. This was wrong.

  ‘Company!’ he shouted, and he was about to raise his sword to the sky when a sudden movement to the right, in the trees, warned him. He hauled back on the reins, then pulled away to the left bellowing, ‘To me! Ambush! To me!’ even as the first of the arrows and bolts began to hiss past and into the men. He heard the hideous thwack as a quarrel slammed into a man, heard the fellow’s hiccup of shock, then another wet sound as a bolt flew into a man’s head and toppled him from his horse, already dead. Six others fell, either they or their horses injured, before Berenger could withdraw the rest of his group.

  The archers had already dismounted, and were sending flights in among the trees on either side, covering their retreat, and as Berenger and the men reached a safe distance, Robin bellowed at them to cease and save their arrows.

  Fulk was at his side. ‘They got the idea of an ambush before us.’

  ‘I should have realised. They know me too well,’ Berenger said heavily.

  ‘Aye. We should both have realised,’ Fulk said.

  Grandarse sat on his horse puffing and blowing, interspersed with regular snatches of curses.

  ‘I can’t believe that! Fuckin’ treacherous, lying . . . fucking bastard fuckin’ mercenary . . .’

  Berenger was staring ahead. ‘What are they doing?’ he said to Robin, who was standing a short distance away with the archers.

  ‘Looks like they’re regrouping. There are a lot of them.’

  ‘How many?’ Berenger asked, cursing his lousy eyesight.

  ‘I’d think about a hundred, hundred and twenty. Not more than that.’

  One of Hawkwood’s men was panting and sobbing with pain, a bolt protruding from his left shoulder. He snarled through his gritted teeth. ‘Let me get to them, Hawk. I’ll take three of them with me!’

  ‘You won’t have to,’ Hawkwood said, squinting. ‘They’re coming.’

  Berenger turned his horse and pointed to the archers. ‘Clip, Dogbreath, you take the left flank. Robin, you take the right.’

  Grandarse spat into the dirt. ‘Yes. Hawkwood, we’
ll dismount and receive them here.’

  Berenger nodded and shouted, ‘Archers! Wait until I give the order! Clear?’

  There was no ground for defence, no time to dig pits to make the horses stumble. All they could do was stand and wait as the men-at-arms in the dust ahead of them casually climbed onto their mounts and formed a cavalry squadron. As Berenger watched, he could see them forming a long line, the horses jerking their heads and pawing at the ground, as excited as their riders, thrilling to the shouts and orders. Then, as Robin and Clip and the other archers stood nocking their missiles to their strings, Berenger glanced ahead and saw that the dust was rising higher. The sun had dried all the puddles and mud into solid lumps that were shattered and pounded into a fine powder that would clog a man’s throat in moments.

  ‘They are coming! Prepare!’ Berenger called, glancing left and right. Eleven men had lances clutched in their fists held low, butted against the ground to take the force of any charge. Behind them a second rank of men held their lances overhand. It was not enough, but it would have to do. More had taken their place in among the archers, ready to step forward when the enemy approached closer.

  ‘Where are the prisoners, Frip?’ Hawkwood murmured.

  ‘They must have them held in the woods,’ Berenger said. He threw a look over towards Denisot, who stood with a long-bladed knife in his hand, pale and resolute as he watched his wife’s kidnappers advancing. At his side, Fulk was gripping his great axe, his fingers clenching and unclenching as he stared at the enemy.

  The line of horses began to pick up their speed, from trot to slow canter, all in perfect unison. Berenger frowned to see a knight in the middle of the line, and then he saw three more men in modern armour, scattered among the line. Will must have stolen a knight’s steel, he thought, and then he saw the banners proudly declaring their owners’ pedigrees, and gripped his sword more firmly. The line began to gallop.

  These were not his old company!