Fields of Glory (39 page)

‘What’s this? Come to get your own share, my Lord Knight?’ a sarcastic voice called. It was Tyler.

‘All in this room are guilty of looting and disobeying the King’s command,’ Sir John announced. ‘You will leave this chamber at once.’

‘This is our victory, Sir Knight,’ Tyler said in his sneering tone. ‘You want us out, you’ll have to pay us to go!’

There were some muttered assents to this, and heads were set nodding.

Sir John called to Berenger’s men, and Jack and Geoff entered. Without needing to ask, they grabbed the nearest man and flung him bodily down the staircase. After that example, the men
ignored Tyler’s exhortations and followed down the stairs themselves. None was in a fit state to argue their cause.

Amongst the men Sir John saw three he recognised, and he glanced at Berenger, whose face was filled with misery. Shaking his head, the vintener walked outside, waiting until Gil appeared.

‘What were
you
doing here, Gil?’

Gil’s faded blue eyes were almost grey, and although he was sober, he looked washed-out and anxious. ‘We helped them, just as you said.’

‘You knew your orders, didn’t you? You knew no one was to attack a town or manor, but to keep moving, to prevent the French from catching up with us. What did you think would
happen?’

The men were marched from the abbey’s grounds. Geoff and Jack were despatched by Berenger to see if anyone had survived the assault, but even Geoff looked shocked at the
sights in the cloister.

‘Two men in there, they’d been tied to a wall and crucified. They were tortured first. Frip,’ he said in a quiet voice. ‘I’ve never seen things like that before.
They didn’t even choose the sort of men who would know where any treasure would be stored, but just grabbed anyone: servants or lay-brothers, from the look of them.’

Berenger had the captives herded back towards the army. When they arrived, the marching troops were commanded to halt, and a passageway was opened for the renegades. Riding slowly down it,
Berenger saw the Prince approaching beside his father from the far end of the corridor. The King, a tall, handsome man in his middle years, was known for a sense of humour. But today there was no
smile on his face. Today, he was bitterly angry.

He held up his hand to halt his escort.

‘Is it true, what my son has told me?’

Sir John allowed his rounsey to side-step to expose the men with Tyler behind him. Berenger watched as the King allowed his gaze to fall upon each of the bound men in turn. ‘Where were
they?’

Sir John took a breath and cleared his throat reluctantly. ‘At the monastery over there, Your Magesty. All inside were slain. Some tried to defend their convent, but they were cut down. I
think no monks or lay-brothers survived.’

‘And for what?’ the King demanded in a low, furious voice.

‘We sought to wage war with fear, just as you told us,’ Tyler said boldly. ‘You brought us all here to fight a war of
dampnum
. You told us to attack towns and cities,
farms and villages. We continued what you told us to do.’

‘I gave orders that the whole army was to ignore tempting targets today, and should ride with determination to the Somme. That was the sole purpose of our day, to make it to the river
before the French get there. It will be our purpose tomorrow too. We must prevent ourselves from being trapped here. But you decided to slow us, to entertain your own base greed for profit. By your
treachery, you may have cost us more than treasure!’

‘Sire, we did what you wanted us to do all the way here! How were we to know that this one day you would choose to alter your plans?’

‘Silence! I will not debate with you about this act of callous treachery! You have betrayed my trust: Sir John, have them form a line.’

Sir John nodded and motioned to his esquire. ‘Do as your King bids.’

The men were forced from their horses, and pushed and shoved into a line. Men armed with bills kept them in their places.

King Edward motioned, and the men at his side rode forward a few paces. On the King’s left was the Earl of Warwick, and he now pointed with his baton to more foot-soldiers. They marched
up, bills at the ready.

‘These men have broken my command,’ the King declared, his voice singing out in the silence. ‘They knowingly rode out on adventure for their own benefit. Their greed has
endangered our army, for their arrogance caused us delay, and our enemy is hard on our heels. For this there has to be a punishment that fits the severity of their offences. The first man will step
to the left, the second to the right, the third to the left, and so on through the men in the line. Those on the right shall be reduced to the rank of the foot-archers and their money shall be
stopped at that level. They will have to prove their loyalty afresh.’

He paused while the men were prodded and beaten into their new lines, and then the foot-soldiers marched down between the two lines and separated them.

The King stared at the second line.

‘These other men shall be executed now.’

Ed listened to the King’s words with breathless disbelief.

When the men had all been marched back to the army, he had thought that there would be a court, an opportunity to explain – and yet here he was, with the sentence of death on him!

He looked about him frantically as he realised the full awfulness of his situation. When they were forced into a line, he had shuffled between Gil and Walt. There, with their two solid forms
before and behind, he had felt safe. It was like standing between the walls of an fortress. He was out of sight – and that meant he was out of mind.

And then he heard the King’s judgement, and suddenly his confidence was stripped away as he realised his danger. Men came marching down the line, pulling a man to the left, then to the
right, and as they came closer and closer, Ed saw that Gil, in front of him, and Walt behind, would both be pulled out to one side, leaving him on the other.

He wanted to ask to be allowed to stay with his friends, but the man tugged him away, and he found himself on one side of a polearm held across a guard’s chest, while beyond he could see
Gil and Walt. The polearm was one of many forming an impenetrable fence, and the look in the guard’s face told Ed that any pleading would be useless.

And then he heard the King’s pronouncement.

Time slowed to a heartbeat’s drum-pace. He found his gaze moving helplessly from side to side, trying to seek an escape, already knowing that there was none. A horn blast sounded clear on
the air, and he knew that shortly he would be marched away.

A shiver convulsed his frame. Tears wanted to spring, but the full shock of his situation seemed to prevent them. He was soon to be executed, and he couldn’t even plead his innocence. God
stood by, waiting for his supplication, but he could not move his lips.

While they had been gathering the men from the abbey, the King had sent a team of engineers to construct a large gallows-tree.

Three tree-trunks had been cut and conveyed to the army’s flank. Now they were embedded vertically in the French earth in a triangular formation. From the top of each trunk, a strong plank
ran to the next one. Thus, by linking the three tree-trunks, a triangle of planks stood some fifteen feet from the ground. Now men threw coils of rope up and over the planks, seven to each plank,
and a pair of hardy men looped and knotted these until each rope had a noose of sorts dangling.

No need for formality here. The King had issued his commands, and for men held under martial law, there was no higher authority. The first of the men in Ed’s line was pulled forward. A
thong was quickly lashed about his hands behind his back, a noose placed over his throat, and then to the command of a vintener, three men hauled hard on the other end of the rope, and the man was
slowly lifted into the air, his face reddening, eyes bulging, legs kicking and thrashing in the manner so familiar to those who had witnessed men dancing the Tyburn Jig before.

Berenger watched the second man. He had already soiled himself, and when he was hoisted aloft, his kicking spread ordure over the observers. Some laughed to see their comrades bespattered, and
there were ribald comments as the third went up. This one had managed to release his hands, and now he clung to the rope at his throat, desperately clawing at the cord. Berenger had seen men fight
the rope before. Inevitably their attempts failed, but not before they had raked the flesh at the rope into a bloody mess where fingernails had scraped away the skin of their necks.

It was a foul way to die, he told himself. When he looked along the line and saw Ed, a sense of melancholy settled on his spirit. Gil was in the first line of men, standing and watching the
frail little form of their Donkey as the King’s men pushed and shoved Ed and the others towards the gallows.

Ed found himself pushed forwards to his doom. To his side, the guilty men from the abbey who had been spared were watching. Some looked away; one had his hands over his eyes
– but many just stared without compassion. Tyler himself was there, Ed saw, with a look of indifference on his face. There was no sympathy for the men who had followed him so willingly to the
abbey and who now dangled, moving gently as the jerking of their legs lessened and gradually stilled.

Near him was Gil, who stared back at Ed despairingly.

Eleven were up now, and the twelfth was being hoisted up. The man in front of Ed would be next. All of a sudden, the man whirled around, punched the nearest guard and fled, weaving and ducking
to evade his pursuers. His run was ended suddenly as a bill swung and caught his leg. With a shrill squeal, much like an injured rabbit’s, the man was felled. He tried to rise, but he had
broken a leg, and now his screams of agony rose over all the other sounds. The guards moved in to grab him . . .

. . . And Ed felt a hand at his shoulder.

‘Boy! Donkey! Swyve your mother, boy!
Move!
’

He heard the urgently hissed command and allowed himself to be pulled back, and to his confusion, was tugged away from the line and concealed behind the guards, while Gil took his place in the
line.

‘But . . . what . . .?’ he managed.

Gil gave him a twisted smile. ‘You remember what I said to you, Donkey? You be a good soldier, if you make it that far. Don’t do as the rest of us have.
Understand?
’

The limping man was pulled bodily up to the ropes, his left leg dragging in the dirt, his face full of terror, staring up at the ropes and hanging bodies. A noose was placed over his head, and
soon his shrieking was cut off with a hideous gurgling as he tried to breathe. When his legs jerked, his shattered left leg moved irrationally, like a puppet’s, bending forward and sideways
as well as back.

Ed witnessed it all, and now, as he saw men take Gil’s arms and pull him, unresisting, to the next noose he heard a burst of laughter. When he turned and stared, traumatised, he saw the
King’s household sitting mounted on their great beasts, drinking wine from richly chased mazers. Only the King himself appeared to be watching his soldiers as they hanged, his eyes dark and
bleak below his thick brows.

When he turned his attention back to Gil, Ed saw that his companion was already in the air, his face growing purple as he span gently on the wind. When he revolved, his eyes sought out
Ed’s, communicating an especial urgency.

Ed went forward to him, and as the body turned, he jumped up and grabbed Gil’s legs, using his own weight to try to snap his neck, or at least hasten his end. His eyes screwed tight shut,
Ed clung there, as his tears fell.

It was the only means he had of repaying the debt.

18 August

Ed slept fitfully and only woke fully when most of the camp had already risen. He had passed the night beneath the wagon of the gynour, and felt worn out. His eyes were sore
from weeping, and he had a feeling of guilt that would not pass. Every time he closed his eyes during the night, he saw Gil’s body as it slowly revolved, dangling above him.

He sat up, rubbing his eyes. When he woke in the night, Béatrice had been beside him, but she was gone now. He rolled up the thick sheepskin that had softened the ground, and slid himself
into the cold, dark, pre-dawn light.

‘Oh, so you’re awake then?’ Archibald demanded. The gynour was sitting near a fire at a safe distance from the wagon, his eyes twinkling in the light. For an instant, when a
flame rose, his eyes glowed red, and Ed felt a superstitious dread at the sight. He almost recoiled.

‘God’s blood!’ he gasped.

‘Calm down, boy. I’m not the Devil! And you should not take the Lord’s name in vain.’

‘I don’t think He’s going to care what happens to me now’, Ed said miserably. The memories of the previous day came flooding back. The destruction and killing – and
Gil dying to save Ed’s life. ‘He must hate me.’

‘You think the Lord would desert you when you need His help most? He will care, if you behave. But, not if you behave as you did yesterday though.’

Ed scowled as the old man eyed him seriously. ‘I wasn’t there to loot and kill,’ he explained. ‘It was just difficult to get away when all those men started. I
didn’t
want
to be there.’