The Grail Quest Books 1-3: Harlequin, Vagabond, Heretic

by Bernard Cornwell

  The oriflamme?’ The King pretended not to understand.

  ‘May I have the honour, sire, of carrying it to battle?’

  The King sighed. ‘You outnumber the enemy ten to one,’ he said, ‘you hardly need the oriflamme. Let it stay here. The enemy will have seen it.’ And the enemy would know what the unfurled oriflamme meant. It instructed the French to take no prisoners, to kill everyone, though doubtless any wealthy English knight would still be captured rather than killed, for a corpse yielded no ransom. Still, the unfurled triple-tongued flag should put terror into English hearts. ‘It will remain ,here,’ the King insisted.

  The Duke began to protest, but just then a trumpet sounded and the crossbowmen started down the hill. They were in green and red tunics with the grail badge of Genoa on their left arms, and each was accompanied by a foot soldier holding a pavise, a huge shield that would protect the crossbowman while he reloaded his clumsy weapon. A half-mile away, beside the river, Englishmen were running from the tower to the earth entrenchments that had been dug so many months before that they were now thickly covered with grass and weeds. ‘You will miss your battle,’ the King said to the Duke who, forgetting the scarlet banner, wheeled his great armoured warhorse towards Sir Geoffrey’s men.

  ‘Montjoie St Denis!’ The Duke shouted France’s war cry and the nakerers thumped their big drums and a dozen trumpeters blared their challenge at the sky. There were clicks as helmet visors were lowered. The crossbowmen were already at the foot of the slope, spreading right to envelop the English flank. Then the first arrows flew: English arrows, white-feathered, fluttering across the green land, and the King, leaning forward in his saddle, saw that there were too few archers on the enemy side. Usually, whenever the damned English gave battle, their archers outnumbered their knights and men-at-arms by at least three to one, but the outpost of Nieulay seemed mostly to be garrisoned by men-at-arms. ‘God speed you!’ the King called to his soldiers. He was suddenly enthused because he could scent victory.

  The trumpets sounded again and now the grey metallic tide of men-at-arms swept down the slope. They roared their war cry and the sound was rivalled by the drummers who were hammering their taut goatskins and the trumpeters who were playing as if they could defeat the English with sound alone. ‘God and St Denis!’ the King shouted.

  The crossbow quarrels were flying now. Each short iron bolt was fitted with leather vanes and they made a hiss as they streaked towards the earthworks. Hundreds of bolts flew, then the Genoese stepped behind the huge shields to work the ratchets that bent back their steel-reinforced bows. Some English arrows thumped into the pavises, but then the archers turned towards Sir Geoffrey’s attack. They put bodkin-headed arrows on their strings, arrows that were tipped with three or four inches of narrow-shafted steel that could pierce mail as if it were linen. They drew and shot, drew and shot, and the arrows thumped into shields and the French closed ranks. One man was pierced in the thigh and stumbled and the men-at-arms flowed around him and closed up again. An English archer, standing to loose his bow, was hit in the shoulder by a crossbow bolt and his arrow flew crazily into the air.

  ‘Montjoie St Denis!’ The men-at-arms bellowed their challenge as the charge reached the flat ground at the foot of the slope. The arrows hammered into shields with sickening force, but the French held their tight formation, shield overlapping shield, and the crossbow-men edged closer to aim at the English archers who were forced to stand high in their trenches to loose their weapons. A bolt went clean through an iron sallet to pierce an English skull. The man toppled sideways, blood spilling down his face. A volley of arrows whipped from the tower’s top and the answering crossbow bolts rattled on the stones as the English men-at-arms, seeing that their arrows had not checked the enemy, stood with unsheathed swords to meet the charge.

  ‘St George!’ they shouted, then the French attackers were at the first entrenchment and stabbing down at the English beneath them. Some Frenchmen found narrow causeways piercing the trench and they streamed through to attack the defenders from the rear. Archers in the two rearmost trenches had easy targets, but so did the Genoese crossbowmen who stepped from behind their pavises to rain iron on the enemy. Some of the English, sensing the slaughter to come, were leaving their entrenchments to run towards the Ham. Edward de Beaujeu, leading the crossbowmen, saw the fugitives and shouted at the Genoese to drop their crossbows and join the attack. They drew swords or axes and swarmed at the enemy. ‘Kill!’ Edward de Beaujeu shouted. He was mounted on a destrier and, his sword drawn, he spurred the big stallion forward. ‘Kill!’

  The Englishmen in the forward trench were doomed. They struggled to protect themselves from the mass of French men-at-arms, but the swords, axes and spears slashed down. Some men tried to yield, but the oriflamme was flying and that meant no prisoners so the French swamped the slick mud at the trench’s bottom with English blood. The defenders from the rearward trenches were all running now, but the handful of French horsemen, those too proud to fight on foot, spurred across the narrow causeways, shoved through their own men-at-arms and screamed the war cry as they drove their big horses into the fugitives beside the river. Stallions wheeled as swords chopped. An archer lost his head beside the river that turned sudden red. A man-at-arms screamed as he was trampled by a destrier, then stabbed with a lance. An English knight held his hands in the air, offering a gauntlet as a token of surrender, and he was ridden down from behind, his spine pierced with a sword, then another horseman cut an axe into his face. ‘Kill them!’ the Duke of Bourbon shouted, his sword wet, ‘kill them all!’ He saw a group of archers escaping towards the bridge and shouted at his followers, ‘With me! With me! Montjoie St DenisV

  The archers, nearly thirty of them, had fled towards the bridge, but when they reached the straggle of reed-thatched houses beside the river they heard the hoofbeats and turned in alarm. For a heartbeat it seemed they would panic again, but one man checked them. ‘Shoot the horses, boys,’ he said, and the bowmen hauled on their cords, loosed, and the white-fledged arrows slammed into the destriers. The Duke of Bourbon’s stallion staggered sideways as two arrows drove through its mail and leather armour, then it fell as another two horses went down, hooves flailing. The other riders instinctively turned away, looking for easier pickings. The Duke’s squire yielded his own horse to his master, then died as a second English volley hissed from the village. The Duke, rather than waste time trying to mount his squire’s horse, lumbered away in his precious plate armour, which had protected him from the arrows. Ahead of him, around the base of Nieulay’s tower, the survivors from the English trenches had formed a shield wall that was now surrounded by vengeful Frenchmen. ‘No prisoners!’ a French knight shouted, ‘no prisoners!’ The Duke called for his men to help him into the saddle.

  Two of the Duke’s men-at-arms dismounted to help their master onto the new horse, and just then they heard the thunder of hooves. They turned to see a group of English knights charging from the village. ‘Sweet Jesus!’ The Duke was half in, half out of the saddle, his sword scabbarded, and he began to fall backwards as the men helping him drew their own swords. Where the hell had these English come from? Then his other men-at-arms, desperate to protect their lord, slammed down their visors and turned to meet the challenge. The Duke, sprawling on the turf, heard the clash of armoured horsemen.

  The English were the group of men the French King had seen. They had paused in the village to watch the slaughter in the entrenchments and had been about to ride back across the bridge when the Duke of Bourbon’s men had come close. Too close: a challenge that could not be ignored. So the English lord led his household knights in a charge that tore into the Duke of Bourbon’s men. The Frenchmen had not been ready for the attack, and the English came in proper array, knee to knee, and the long ash lances, carried upright as they charged, suddenly dropped to the killing position and tore through mail and leather. The English leader was wearing a blue surcoat slashed with a diagonal white band on which three red
stars were blazoned. Yellow lions occupied the blue field that turned suddenly black with enemy blood as he rammed his sword up into the unprotected armpit of a French man-at-arms. The man shook with pain, tried to backswing his sword, but then another Englishman hammered a mace into his visor that crumpled under the blow and sprang blood from a dozen rents. A hamstrung horse screamed and toppled. ‘Stay close!’ the Englishman in the gaudy surcoat was shouting at his men. ‘Stay close!’ His horse reared up and flailed its hooves at an unhorsed Frenchman. That man went down, helmet and skull crushed by a horseshoe, and then the rider saw the Duke standing helpless beside a horse; he recognized the value of the man’s shining plate armour and so spurred at him. The Duke fended the sword blow with his shield, swung his own blade that jarred on the enemy’s leg armour and suddenly the horseman was gone.

  Another Englishman had pulled his leader’s horse away. A mass of French horsemen was coming down the hill. The King had sent them in hope of capturing the English lord and his men, and still more Frenchmen, unable to join the attack on the tower because too many of their fellows were assembling to help kill the garrison’s remnant, were now charging the bridge. ‘Back!’ the English leader called, but the village street and the narrow bridge were blocked by fugitives and threatened by Frenchmen. He could cut his way through, but that would mean killing his own archers and losing some of his knights in the chaotic panic, so instead he looked across the road and saw a path running beside the river. It might lead to the beach, he thought, and there, perhaps, he could turn and ride east to rejoin the English lines.

  The English knights slashed their spurs back. The path was narrow, only two horsemen could ride abreast; on one side was the River Ham and on the other a stretch of boggy swamp, but the path itself was firm and the English rode it until they reached a stretch of higher ground where they could assemble. But they could not escape. The small piece of higher ground was almost an island, reachable only by the path and surrounded by a morass of reeds and mud. They were trapped.

  A hundred French horsemen were ready to follow along the path, but the English had dismounted and made a shield wall, and the thought of hacking their way through that steel barrier persuaded the French to turn back to the tower where the enemy was more vulnerable. Archers were still shooting from its ramparts, but the Genoese crossbowmen were replying, and now the French slammed into the English men-at-arms drawn up at the tower’s foot.

  The French attacked on foot. The ground was slippery because of the summer’s rain and the mailed feet churrled it to mud as the leading men-at-arms bellowed their war cry and threw themselves onto the outnumbered English. Those English had locked their shields and they thrust them forward to meet the charge. There was a clash of steel on wood, a scream as a blade slid under a shield’s edge and found flesh. The men in the second English rank, the rear rank, flailed with maces and swords over their comrades’ heads. ‘St George!’ a shout went up, ‘St George!’ and the men-at-arms heaved forward to throw the dead and dying off their shields. ‘Kill the bastards!’

  ‘Kill them!’ Sir Geoffrey de Charny yelled in return and the French came back, stumbling in their mail and plate across the wounded and dead, and this time the English shields were not touching rim to rim and the French found gaps. Swords crashed onto plate armour, thrust through mail, beat in helmets. A few last defenders were trying to escape across the river, but the Genoese crossbowmen pursued them and it was a simple matter to hold an armoured man down in the water until he drowned, then pillage his body. A few English fugitives stumbled away on the farther bank, going to where an English battle line of archers and men-at-arms was forming to repel any attack across the Ham.

  Back at the tower a Frenchman with a battle-axe swung repeatedly at an Englishman, cracking open the espalier that protected his right shoulder, slashing through the mail beneath, beating the man down to a crouch, and still the blows came until the axe had laid open the enemy’s chest and there was a splay of white ribs among the mangled flesh and torn armour. Blood and mud made a paste underfoot. For every Englishman there were three enemies, and the tower door had been left unlocked to give the men outside a place where they could retreat, but instead it was the French who forced their way inside. The last defenders outside the tower were cut down and killed, while inside the attackers began fighting up the stairs.

  The steps turned to the right as they climbed. That meant the defenders could use their right arms without much encumbrance while the attackers were forever baulked by the big central pillar of the stairs, but a French knight with a short spear made the first rush and he disembowelled an Englishman with the blade before another defender killed him with a sword thrust over the dying man’s head. Visors were up here, for it was dark in the tower, and a man could not see with his eyes half covered with steel. And so the English stabbed at French eyes. Men-at-arms pulled the dead off the steps, leaving a trail of guts behind, and then two more men charged up, slipping on offal. They parried English blows, thrust their swords up into groins, and still more Frenchmen pushed into the tower. A terrible scream filled the stairwell, then another bloodied body was hauled down and out of the way: another three steps were clear and the French shoved on up again. ‘Montjoie St Denis!’

  An Englishman with a blacksmith’s hammer came down the steps and he beat at French helmets, killing one man by crushing his skull and driving the others back until a knight had the wit to seize a crossbow and sidle up the stairs until he had a clear view. The bolt went through the Englishman’s mouth to lift off the back of his skull and the French rushed again, screaming hate and victory, trampling the dying man under their gore-spattered feet and carrying their swords up to the very top of the tower. There a dozen men tried to shove them back down the steps, but still more French were thrusting upwards. They forced the leading attackers onto the swords of the defenders and the next men clambered over the dying and the dead to rout the last of the garrison. All the men were hacked down. One archer lived long enough to have his fingers chopped off, then his eyes prised out, and he was still screaming as he was thrown off the tower onto the waiting swords below.

  The French cheered. The tower was a charnel house, but the banner of France would fly from its ramparts.

  The entrenchments had become graves for the English. Victorious men began to strip the clothes from the dead to search for coins, when a trumpet called.

  There were still some Englishmen on the French side of the river. There were horsemen trapped on a patch of firmer ground.

  So the killing was not done.

  The St James anchored off the beach south of Calais and ferried its passengers ashore in rowboats. Three of the passengers, all in mail, had so much baggage that they paid two of the St James’s crew to carry it into the streets of the English encampment where they sought the Earl of Northampton. Some of the houses had two storeys, and cobblers, armourers, smiths, fruiterers, bakers and butchers had all hung signs from their upper floors. There were whorehouses and churches, fortune-tellers’ booths and taverns built between the tents and houses. Children played in the streets. Some had small bows and shot blunt arrows at irritated dogs. The nobles’ quaners had their banners displayed outside and mail-clad guards standing at their doors. A cemetery spread into the marshes, its damp graves filled with men, women and children who had succumbed to the fever that haunted the Calais swamps.

  The three men found the Earl’s quarters, which was a large wooden dwelling close to the pavilion that flew the royal flag, and there two of them, the youngest and the oldest, stayed with the baggage while the third man, the tallest, walked towards Nieulay. He had been told that the Earl had led some horsemen on a foray towards the French army. Thousands of the bastards,’ the Earl’s steward had reported, ‘picking their noses up on the ridge, so his lordship wants to challenge some of them. Getting bored, he is.’ He looked at the big wooden chest that the two men were guarding. ‘So what’s in that?’

  ‘Nose pickings,’ the tall man had s
aid, then he shouldered a long black bowstave, picked up an arrow bag and left.

  His name was Thomas. Sometimes Thomas of Hookton. Other times he was Thomas the Bastard and, if he wanted to be very formal, he could call himself Thomas Vexille, though he rarely did. The Vexilles were a noble Gascon family and Thomas of Hookton was an illegitimate son of a fugitive Vexille, which had left him neither noble nor Vexille. And certainly not Gascon. He was an English archer.

  Thomas attracted glances as he walked through the camp. He was tall. Black hair showed beneath the edge of his iron helmet. He was young, but his face had been hardened by war. He had hollow cheeks, dark watchful eyes and a long nose that had been broken in a fight and set crooked. His mail was dulled by travel and beneath it he wore a leather jerkin, black breeches and long black riding boots without spurs. A sword scabbarded in black leather hung at his left side, a haversack at his back and a white arrow bag at his right hip. He limped very slightly, suggesting he must have been wounded in battle, though in truth the injury had been done by a churchman in the name of God. The scars of that torture were hidden now, except for the damage to his hands, which had been left crooked and lumpy, but he could still draw a bow. He was twenty-three years old and a killer.

  He passed the archers’ camps. Most were hung with trophies. He saw a French breastplate of solid steel that had been pierced by an arrow hung high to boast what archers did to knights. Another group of tents had a score of horsetails hanging from a pole. A rusty, torn coat of mail had been stuffed with straw, hung from a sapling and pierced by arrows. Beyond the tents was marshland that stank of sewage. Thomas walked on, watching the French array on the southern heights. There were enough of them, he thought, far more than had turned up to be slaughtered between Wadicourt and Crecy. Kill one Frenchman, he thought, and two more appear. He could see the bridge ahead of him now and the small hamlet beyond, and behind him men were coming from the encampment to make a battle line to defend the bridge because the French were attacking the small English outpost on the farther bank. He could see them flooding down the slope, and he could also see a small group of horsemen who he assumed were the Earl and his men. Behind him, its sound dulled by distance, an English cannon launched a stone missile at Calais’s battered walls. The noise rumbled over the marshes and faded, to be replaced by the clash of weapons from the English entrenchments.