Blood of the Innocents

by Michael Jecks

  ‘No. It may well not, but it does have Amaury de Craon and some hundreds of men inside, according to some scouts we captured. We cannot afford to leave them here as we pass. They might take it into their heads to fall on our rear. We have to try to take them.’

  Grandarse shrugged. ‘Well, it shouldn’t take too long. It’s tiny, isn’t it?’

  Friday 2 September

  ‘Remind me never to listen to you when you predict whether a job will be easy or not,’ Berenger said.

  ‘I wasn’t to know, was I?’ Grandarse said.

  The two were sheltered in an abandoned merchant’s shop and house, the vintaines dotted about the street in similar accommodation, sipping from cups liberated from a potter’s further up the town.

  It had taken only a matter of hours for the English to breach the walls and take the town by storm. The walls were in no condition to keep out a determined army, and Berenger had watched as men-at-arms had clambered up the scaling ladders, while archers loosed flight after flight to force the defenders to keep their heads down and stay away from the walls. The English took the outer walls while the defenders were still trying to gather and organise themselves. They soon left the walls and the town to the English and moved to the castle itself. The outer bailey was taken after some hard fighting, and the defenders had to move into the keep.

  And now, two days later, they were still there.

  ‘It didn’t look like they were going to offer much fight, did it?’ Grandarse said defensively.

  Berenger looked up as the sound of hammering and shouting came across the street. ‘Doesn’t look like they’re going to give up soon, does it?’

  He could see the walls of the castle from here. The citadel loomed over the town now, since so many of the buildings nearer had been destroyed. Those which the English had not pulled down had been smashed by the rocks hurled with such abandon from the walls of the castle by the defenders. Now the English were collecting all the spare beams and planks from the shattered remains of the houses and were building mobile towers from which to assault the castle walls. They had plenty of time, after all. The castle was showing no signs of surrendering to the English.

  Berenger bit off a hunk of bread and eyed the walls. Smoke drifted in front of them and he wiped at his eyes as they began to smart again. There was little attractive about a battle of this sort. There was a bare foot sticking out from a pile of rubble at the other side of the street, and he wondered who the owner was. If he were to dig down, would he find a man or woman? Someone of great age, or a mere stripling? War was a leveller. All people were brought to the same height. Some were fortunate and would be buried in their own graves, but all too many wouldn’t find their way, and would be left to rot, eaten by wild creatures and maggots.

  He stared at that foot. It looked so forlorn, lying there in the dirt and mess. He tried to imagine the owner, a faceless, sexless being wandering the streets here, but all too soon the creature became a woman, and then it took on the appearance of Alazaïs.

  Berenger had to look away. He could not meet her accusing gaze. He should have found Will by now.

  Will had not appeared for two days after the attack at the river. He had trotted back and rejoined the army hours before the town came into view, but Berenger had not heard until that night, when Archibald told him, and by then Will and all his vintaine had been sent to another place in the line of march.

  He would find the man, but it was taking time. He had thought Will would be easy to find here while they all laid siege to Romorantin, but so far there had been no sign of him. It seemed clear to him that someone was trying to keep him away from Will. Perhaps Sir John had decided to avoid any embarrassment by ensuring Berenger would never find his enemy. If that was his intention, he may have sent Will on more scouting duties.

  If he had, it would at least have the merit of being a sensible action. They had to try to find where the French were. From all that they had gleaned from towns and French scouts for the last days, King John had demanded that all men of fighting age should join him at Orléans, ready to fight the English. He would have to come down and find them soon.

  When he did, Berenger hoped that they would have left this place far behind them. He did not want to be caught in this crumbling, devastated town with the might of the French army waiting outside. The idea of being held in here was not appealing.

  ‘Come! Archers and men-at-arms!’ a man bellowed from further up the street.

  Berenger cocked an eyebrow at Grandarse, who shrugged, stood, and hoicked up his belt. ‘They probably need new latrines for the senior commanders, Frip. You’d best take your men over there. I’ll gather the rest of my centaine.’

  ‘Vintaine!’ Berenger called. ‘To me!’ When he had counted them, he led them to the man who had called them, a burly, ginger-bearded sergeant Berenger had met before called Art.

  There was already a jostling, tense group standing about the fellow. He wore a rusted mail shirt and ripped tabard, but his voice was clear and precise. He stood on a lump of broken wall, and called as though speaking to friends in a tavern. ‘Englishmen, we have a task for you that will be to your liking, I think. We must take this tower. Your Prince is determined that we shall not waste any more English lives unnecessarily, and storming ladders are pointless. We need you to come with us. We have siege engines set about the castle now, and we shall attack from all sides. By evening we shall have the castle.’

  ‘I like his use of the word “we”,’ Robin murmured.

  ‘So, vinteners, follow me and bring your men,’ Art commanded, and stepped from his platform. He led them up to the siege tower. It stood a full two yards above the castle’s walls, and was set on a number of tree trunks. It would roll forward, and the men could pull the last roller from the rear of the tower, drop it in front of the tower, and then repeat the process to push the great cumbrous device right up to the walls.

  Berenger gazed at it and gradually his eyes rose up the sheer sides of it, to the fighting top many feet over his head. It was a massive construction, deeper than it was broad at the base, although it looked as though the uppermost platform would be square. The sides were smothered in untreated, fresh ox hides. It would be difficult for any burning arrows to make them catch fire.

  ‘Come on! Push!’ the sergeant roared, and Grandarse puffed out his cheeks, took two deep breaths, and set his shoulder to the beam at the back.

  ‘Come on, you lazy tarse-fiddlers!’ he roared, and Berenger and the others bent to it. Berenger reluctantly took hold of a rope, pulling from in front, and while the rest of the men fell in and took hold of his rope or the one next to it, Berenger glanced up at the walls. It would not be long before the men on the ropes would present an irresistible group of targets to the men with bows and bolts up on the walkways.

  ‘HEAVE!’

  Berenger leaned forward, all his body’s weight against the rope, the strain along the taut cable lying from his shoulder along his back. In front of him was Imbert, who was several inches taller, and the rope was lifted higher than was comfortable for Berenger, so he turned and pulled instead, his heels slipping on the dirt of the street’s surface, his teeth clenched and his lips tightly pursed. There was a sudden gradual movement, then a lurch, then a rumble that the men could feel from the ground and the rope, almost as though it was a thrumming in the air itself.

  There was shouting and cursing, and a sudden scream as a man’s muscles tore, and then Berenger had to take a step, and he saw the men carrying the first of the massive logs, more than he could be bothered to count, as they ran before the tower and dropped it in its path, then ran back to fetch another.

  Berenger felt his stomach muscles tightening and clenching with every effort, and the tower slid forward another few inches as the men pulling and those pushing sweated and swore, their muscles as hard as the cord he gripped so firmly.

  When they had manhandled the tower from that street and into the open area before the castle’s keep, the a
rchers in the castle had a free rein.

  There was a shriek and Berenger saw a man fall with the fletchings of an arrow protruding from his left shoulder. The whole of the rest of the missile was buried in his body, and he rolled about, kicking and jerking, his mouth opening and shutting like a trout thrown on the river bank, and Berenger could not be sure whether he was speaking or screaming because his world was full of the sound of creaking timbers and cords, the rumble of tons of wood rolling over logs, the roars and bellows of men urging their companions on, and then he became aware of the steady ‘tock, tock, tock’ of arrows plinking into stones nearby. They bounced up and rattled, but every so often there was another, wet sound of a man’s body being struck, and then the shouting grew louder as sergeants and others urged the tower on.

  Berenger turned and now he saw a hellish sight. Men were on the ground, flailing at their injuries as arrows and crossbow bolts flew at them almost vertically. More and more men were toppling.

  ‘This is mad,’ he muttered, and then, when he saw a man pinned to the ground by an arrow through his calf and foot, he came to a conclusion.

  ‘Drop the ropes, men! Back! Behind the tower! Push, leave the ropes!’

  Nothing loath, the men scuttled back to the safety of the area behind the tower, and Berenger hurried to Grandarse. ‘We need archers to keep their men from the walls, Grandarse. Let me have two vintaines and enough arrows and no more of our men need be killed.’

  Grandarse was staring at the carnage before the tower. A man was trying to crawl back to the tower, with a bolt in his lower back and another in his leg. As he watched, another bolt hit him between the shoulder blades and he slumped.

  ‘Fetch your bows, Frip,’ he said, and gripped Berenger’s shoulder. ‘Kill those fuckers!’

  Berenger soon had his men back. They stood, studying the walls contemplatively.

  ‘Remember, aim a little high,’ Berenger shouted so that they could all hear him over the noise of the battle. ‘You will need to use your arrows fast at first, and then sparingly. Don’t waste your missiles!’

  There was a bellow, and the tower began to creak and grind forward again, making a graunching noise as logs rolled over and crushed rocks and timbers under its ponderous weight, and then there came a high, shrill cry of horror like a rabbit caught in a snare, and Berenger saw that a man had fallen, and the first log was rolling up his leg. His ankle was already gone. It was only a smear of blood when the log rolled on, and luckily two men darted forward, an axe swung, and the screaming man was dragged away. Bolts from the walls missed the three only narrowly.

  That was enough to make Berenger set his jaw.

  ‘Archers! Nock!’

  He had his own bow at the ready, and now he raised it high over his head.

  ‘Archers! Draw!’

  He drew the string, bringing his arms down, the bow bending as he felt his back muscles tightening, until his hand was beneath his ear.

  ‘Archers! Aim!’

  He felt the intolerable pain begin in his shoulders as he squinted along the arrow, letting the tip touch a figure at the castellations, then lifting the point so it was over the man’s head.

  ‘Loose!’

  The relief as the arrows flew was better than release with a woman: a great surge went through him as though it was passing through his very soul, and his left hand jerked as the string snapped straight, and he saw his missile leap into the air like a live thing, climbing quickly until it reached the top of its flight and dropped swiftly to his target. He saw it miss and strike the wall before the man, but then a second arrow smacked into the man’s head and he was thrown down.

  ‘Archers! Loose at will!’ he bellowed, and pulled another arrow ready. It was nocked and aiming almost before he had finished speaking, and when he loosed it, he saw his target fall.

  Beside him the men were roaring and stamping their feet as the tower was shoved further, the logs snatched up from behind and carried quickly to the front, then the same crackling and rumbling as the tower was pushed and cajoled forward.

  Berenger sent six more aimed arrows into flight, but then he saw the men being detailed to climb up the tower. Some of the first were archers, and he urged his men to hurry and keep the men down from the walls. Soon there were more arrows being sent towards the keep from the top of the tower, and a cheering from inside the tower spoke of the morale and confidence of the men inside. They were being urged to great feats of courage, and Berenger thought to himself, ‘Rather you in there than me,’ and he looked across at Grandarse, and saw that he was thinking the same. There was no need to speak. Both had been at the forefront of a battle often enough in the past. They knew the dangers.

  There was a fresh rattling as the chains were slipped, and now the great drawbridge of the tower fell and crashed onto the stones of the battlements. A scream went up from the walls, and then Berenger was sure he could see a figure with a crossbow. He lifted his bow, but the man had loosed already and the first of the Englishmen fell tumbling from the drawbridge before his feet had touched the walls, pierced through with a bolt.

  It was then that the French sowed the seeds of their own destruction. A fire had been prepared, and now pots of boiling pitch were hurled at the drawbridge, each shattering and showering the wooden frame with the sticky, foul contents. And men tossed three burning torches into it as the attackers were running across the bridge.

  The bridge flashed like a barrel of black powder. A great roiling, orange and red flame leaped to the sky, and from its midst Berenger saw burning figures rush forward, or topple and fall, still alight, all the way to the base of the tower where their screams were mercifully cut off. But the French had miscalculated. The tower was so tall that the bridge dropped down to the wall. When the containers were hurled onto the drawbridge, it was so warm that it ran like water, and dripped back inside the castle’s walls. Some of the English ran onwards, and fell, burning, inside the walls, and as they did so, the pitch that had fallen inside was soon ablaze. There was little the French could do to put out the flames while the poor demented devils rolled and wriggled, screaming in agony as their flesh burned away. Water would not kill the flames. Soon it was clear that the keep itself was on fire.

  The planks of the tower were well alight already, and there was nothing to be done to save it. The men inside were ordered to leave, and the archers from the top soon evacuated their posts, just in time as the rest of the tower began to burn, filling the square with the reek of burning hair and flesh from the ox hides spread over it.

  Berenger had seen enough. He called to his men and they returned to their room, sitting and waiting for the next command to go to fight, all of them seeing again crushed men, and men burning like torches.

  The keep surrendered the next day.

  Tuesday 6 September

  They were marching again when the rain suddenly fell in sheets.

  It was a grey day, a miserable day, in which the men slogged on, the infantrymen with mud up above their knees, while the horsemen and archers hunched their shoulders and sought what cover they could by pulling waxed hoods on, if they had them, or just endured the grim weather with the patience of those used to living outdoors.

  Berenger could hear the men’s rising irritation.

  ‘When’re we going to stop swimming and get to a place with a roof?’ Clip demanded.

  ‘They said that the end of the world was coming, and there’d be floods,’ Felix said. ‘This could be the start of it.’

  ‘Best look to building an ark quickly, then,’ Imbert said. ‘We wouldn’t want to think your boots could get wet.’

  ‘No problem with my boots,’ Felix said with a surly glance at the bigger man.

  Imbert sniggered to himself.

  ‘He means if it’s the end of the world, your feet will get wet if you’re not in a ship,’ Dogbreath said.

  ‘I don’t think it’s very funny to joke about things like that,’ Pierre said flatly.

  Imbert sniggered a
gain. The other men drew away from him. Even Baz, who was closer to Imbert than the others, threw him a disgusted look. There were times when his difference in attitude would bring all the vintaine together in their mutual dislike of him.

  Denisot ignored Imbert. He rode along with a bitter expression twisting his features as they covered the miles. Berenger had still not told him of the woman held by Will and his men, and he had failed to learn anything more about her, even though Béatrice had sought her. Gaillarde could have been spirited away. Certainly Béatrice had enjoyed no success in finding her.

  ‘Ach, I’m buggered with this shite!’ Grandarse said. He pulled off his hat and rubbed his hand through his lank hair. ‘I tell you, for a penny piece I could tell the army to go and take a . . .’

  ‘Yes, Grandarse?’ Sir John enquired. He had ridden up behind the men without being noticed, and now he sat eyeing his centener with amusement.

  ‘I could tell the army to take a more gentle road and wait till better weather, Sir John. How good it is to see you,’ Grandarse said with hardly a change in inflexion.

  ‘I am glad to hear it,’ Sir John said.

  ‘Sir, where is the next town?’ Berenger asked, keen for a change of conversation.

  ‘We are heading for Tours.’ Sir John stared ahead in silence for a moment. ‘We have received some good news, some bad, which necessitates our hurrying westwards. First, the Duke of Lancaster is in France and is heading to us to swell our numbers. We are aiming to find him in the next week, I believe.’

  Grandarse nodded. ‘Aye, that is good. But you said there was bad too?’

  ‘Yes. The King’s original idea was to sail to Picardy and from there to join up with Lancaster to attack King John from the west. We were supposed to march north and meet them, hopefully assaulting the French in the rear or flank, and thus win a glorious victory.’

  ‘And now?’

  ‘The French have hired Aragonese galleys. Our King cannot risk the Channel while they threaten the crossing, so we are on our own. Tours lies in our path and blocks our passage west to meet the Duke of Lancaster. We cannot cross the river because all the bridges have been broken, and now we hear that the man who calls himself King of France is on his way to meet us too. Which means we have need of some haste.’