Master of War (17 page)

The army slowly gathered behind them, men and animals packed tight on the riverbank, their ranks lying in depth, jostling back into the trees, across pastureland and cornfields. Twelve thousand men to ford a river estuary two thousand yards broad on a firm footing so narrow as to permit only ten men to stand shoulder to shoulder. If the French approaching from the south caught up with them now there would be no chance to form battle lines. They’d be slaughtered mid-river.

They waited for the tide and watched as a French contingent from the main army at Abbeville secured the far bank.

‘How long to get across, d’you think?’ Will Longdon said.

‘Sun’ll be quartered, up near them clouds,’ Elfred answered. It would be nearly an hour before their feet touched the distant shore.

‘Aye, that’s what I thought,’ Longdon confirmed. ‘Was hoping I was wrong. I go down, someone’d better drag me up.’

Elfred turned to Blackstone. ‘Thomas, you get Richard on hand to haul his soggy arse up. I need him for killing them bastards.’

Blackstone nodded. ‘Might be better if we all took a swim,’ he said pointing to the far shore.

The horizon changed shape as pennons and banners cluttered the skyline along the hundred-and-fifty-foot-high embankment on the far shore. The French defenders drew up in three lines along the water’s edge.

‘They must have known this was the only ford,’ Sir Gilbert said. He looked at the French banners, some of which he recognized. ‘Godemar du Fay. He’s a Burgundian knight. He’ll be the one laying that defence across the shoreline.’

‘Beloved Christ, don’t ask Thomas how many there are or he’ll tell us,’ said John Weston as he gazed at the swarming infantry and men-at-arms.

‘We’ve not seen the worst of it yet, lads,’ Blackstone said, his eyes fixed on the embankment where five hundred crossbowmen swarmed into position, keeping to the heights, giving themselves additional range.

‘I was just about to say I were glad there weren’t no bloody crossbowmen with ’em,’ Will Longdon said.

‘You think their eyesight’s as good as ours?’ John Weston asked.

‘You’ll know when a quarrel takes your head off,’ Sir Gilbert answered.

‘Hey! French bastards!’ Weston shouted and walked to the shallows, untied his hose and pissed in the river. ‘Can you see this?’

The men laughed and roared derision at the Frenchmen and their hired mercenaries.

‘God help us, Weston, we’ve to wade in there. Your piss could rot armour,’ Sir Gilbert told him.

‘It’s chilly in there, Sir Gilbert, I was just warming it up for you.’

Fear slipped behind their bravado; a healthy disdain for the enemy could drive a soldier to face a hellish attack. Blackstone’s brother edged towards him, and tugged his sleeve. He uttered a muted sound and gestured. He wanted to be at Blackstone’s shoulder. Blackstone saw the longing in his face. He had tried to forgive, had tried not to think of the boy killing the girl he professed to love. There was no forgiveness. But there was duty. Blackstone nodded. The boy made no sign of joy but tears welled momentarily and then he stood a pace behind Blackstone’s shoulder.

The Earl of Northampton stood in front of the company.

‘The French think we’re coarse, ignorant ruffians! And they’d be right!’

The men shouted their approval. The earl raised his sword.

‘Their knights will ride down their own infantry in order to kill us. You archers are going to make them bleed and then we will slaughter them until this damned river runs red. Kill them, and keep killing them until they weep for mercy and then kill them some more! Go to it!’

A wave of battle cries carried across the broad expanse of water like a threatening summer storm about to strike.

Sir Gilbert tied a leather loop around his sword grip and wrist. He smiled. ‘My blood knot. I’m not losing hold of my damned sword because a squirming Frenchman spews blood all over me. Good luck to you, Thomas.’

‘You too, Sir Gilbert.’

Three hours after prime, the eighth hour from midnight, on St Bartholomew’s Day, Sir Reginald Cobham with the Earl of Northampton and Sir Gilbert Killbere formed a column of one hundred men-at-arms. To their front Elfred’s hundred archers formed an extended line, ten men wide and ten men deep, across the breadth of the ford.

With their bows raised to keep their cords dry they waded into the water.

The tide sucked at their legs; the taller men were knee deep, for the others the water was waist high. They cursed and grumbled, but they kept their formation as best they could. Three hundred yards from the shore the first crossbow bolts struck. Blackstone and the other archers could not yet level their bows in the deep water and the undefended men were the first to die. The added height of the embankment gave the Genoese bowmen extra distance and the bolts cut down twenty or thirty men in the first volley. Their bodies fell against others carrying them, floundering, into the current. Men cried out, others cursed.

‘Keep going! Keep going!’ someone shouted.

As men fell others took their place, surging forward to take the fallen men’s position, less through bravery than to get themselves to the far shore as quickly as they could. They were dying out here, exposed and helpless.

Iron-clad bolts whirred through the air, Blackstone ducked instinctively, heard them strike wooden shields of the men-at-arms behind them, tapping like a score of drunken woodpeckers.

‘Faster, for Christ’s sake, faster,’ Blackstone urged himself.
Dear God, don’t let me die… don’t let me die… not here… not like this.

The man next to Blackstone suddenly tumbled backward as a bolt smacked into his forehead with a sickening crunch. Too many archers were dying. Roger Oakley pushed forward. ‘Come on, lads, come on!’

His surge carried thirty-odd men with him, forcing their leg muscles to fight the water. Archers gasped for air, exertion and fear driving them onwards. More men fell. The splash of their bodies sounding as rapid as the terrible, unrelenting whirring wind that shuddered past the survivors.
Too many down! We’ll never get there! Sweet Mother of God, forgive me
. Blackstone’s mind taunted him with the prospect of dying in the river. What was being asked was impossible.

But they kept going.

Roger Oakley turned and looked at his men. ‘They’ll be crying for their mothers. Another two hundred yards, boys. That’s all! Push on, lads, push on!’ His constant encouragement was a beacon for the floundering archers to follow. ‘You’re my archers! And we’ll be first to take the bastards down and—’

The double strike tore through Oakley’s cap, shattering his face and jaw, the second bolt ripped through his throat. A gurgle of blood, and his twisting body was taken by the current. The line of men faltered.

A voice carried from behind. ‘Keep going, for Christ’s sake, or we’re dead!’ It was Sir Gilbert with his men-at-arms. If the archers failed the attack was doomed.

Blackstone saw Oakley’s death throes as he swirled in the water, a hand feebly trying to grasp air for a few seconds, but the shat­tered head and throat told them all he was already dead. Blackstone stumbled, but before he went down his brother’s grip hauled him to his feet. Neither looked at the other, their eyes fixed on the figures they could see on the skyline cranking their crossbows, while the French men-at-arms waited on the shoreline to kill the survivors.

And then the water shoaled. ‘Go wide!’ Elfred shouted, and the men broke the ranks to spread their line and lessen the target offered to the crossbows. One hundred and fifty yards from shore Elfred levelled his bow as did every man with him, and the first storm of arrows fell like God’s vengeance on the crossbowmen. In less than a minute the archers had advanced another thirty yards and delivered six more volleys until the Genoese dead lay scattered on the forward slope of the embankment or retreated to get out of the archers’ range.

Elfred looked for Roger Oakley and saw only Blackstone firing steadily with what remained of the line of men. Will Longdon and John Weston were to Elfred’s left.

‘Thomas! Take twenty men! Flank! Flank! You hear me?’ he cried as he veered left with the others, opening a gap for Sir Gilbert’s men behind them to pour through. Blackstone waded to the right.

‘With me! Take position!’ he called. ‘Men-at-arms! Kill the men-at arms!’

Northampton, Cobham and Sir Gilbert were already splashing through the gap created as the archers loosed again. Now the arrow hail beat down on plate armour and chain mail. By the time the English knights waded ashore they had to step over the French dead. The clash of steel and shield rolled across the water. And the archers fired until their missiles were depleted. But Edward and his marshals knew that unless the bowmen could sustain their fire the English men-at-arms could not fight and clamber uphill against so many – and he had ordered pages and clerics with armfuls of bound arrow sheaves to re-supply the advance. Knives quickly cut the wrappings of the bundles, and archers fired relentlessly until more men-at-arms pushed in behind those fighting on the shore. Where five men fell, another ten took their place. It was a desperate and determined attack to gain the heavily defended shore before King Philip’s army swept up from the rear and slaughtered them mid-stream.

Blackstone and the archers had sown a field of death and scram­bled from the shallows to stop any attacking force outflanking the tenuous beachhead. Cobham cut and thrust, his high guard scything the men to his front and side, his steady, forward pace and skill matched only by Northampton, bloodied from head to foot, and Sir Gilbert, the three of them relentlessly killing those before them. French bravery could not be faulted; they fought for every inch of the gore-drenched sand.

Blackstone was eighty yards away from Sir Gilbert. He saw French men-at-arms bearing down on his sworn knight, who braced his stance and fought the first four men away, but the numbers would soon overwhelm him. Half a dozen of his own men around him were killed or wounded. The French attack surged.

Blackstone could run no harder towards the beleaguered knight. An arrow was already nocked, the cord drawn back. He hesitated, seeing the flight in his mind’s eye – all of a second’s thought, for if he was wrong the arrow could kill Sir Gilbert. Two men struck Sir Gilbert – hard, stunning blows from mace and poleaxe. It was a relentless assault; Sir Gilbert went onto one knee, shield raised. A French knight raised his sword for a double-handed strike. Blackstone was already reaching for another arrow when the first knifed through the knight’s plate armour. His knees buckled and he fell backwards. Blackstone saw Sir Gilbert try to stand, still stunned from the blows.

Richard bellowed and ran forwards, past Blackstone’s shoulder.

Two arrows flew in quick succession. Blackstone grabbed all that remained from his bag and stuck the six shafts into the ground at his feet. In swift succession those arrows landed two yards in front of Sir Gilbert, who struggled to get to his feet. Two vital accurate yards, the skill of a man raised by a master archer and taught to use every fibre and thought to loose a yard-long shaft exactly where its archer determined it should fly. The lethal pin-cushion slayed four more men and badly wounded another two.

And then Richard Blackstone was there with more Englishmen at his heels. The boy bent and dragged Sir Gilbert as the English soldiers surrounded him. Sir Gilbert struggled, but Richard pinned his body to the ground. The exhaustion and his wounds, aided by the mute boy’s weight and strength, finally made the injured knight slip into the dark river of unconsciousness. As the Englishmen held their ground, fighting around the fallen knight, Blackstone’s brother lifted Sir Gilbert across his shoulders and loped back to the safety of the trees as if he carried a slain sheep.

Blackstone had run ahead of his own men, sidestepping dead and injured. One wounded man half raised himself and swung his mace in a futile, dying gesture. It slipped from his blood-soaked gauntlet and struck Blackstone on the side of the head, reopening the wound he had suffered at Caen. His steel-rimmed leather helmet took most of the impact but he stumbled, felt the earth spin, and in that moment knew he was vulnerable to a killing blow. He had to stand and defend himself. Using his bow as a crutch he hauled himself to his feet, hand on knife, ready to kill. There was no need. His attacker lay dead and the French men-at-arms were shuffling back across their fallen men as their war horses were committed to the fray, relying on the extra momentum given by the slope to trample those Englishmen below. But Edward’s men had torn a mortal wound in the French defences, and as those on foot skirted their attackers, English mounted knights cantered across the narrow ford. King Edward had taken the greatest risk of all and committed his whole army across the stretch of water – and prayed that the main French force was no closer than he suspected. The destriers’ power took the fight onwards, the weight in English numbers forcing the French horsemen back from the contested ground.

Blackstone, wiping the blood from his face, saw that his brother had taken Sir Gilbert to safety and raised his war bow above his head. He roared in triumph as the French retreated before the lances and swords of the English knights and their men-at-arms.

And every man left standing, including the great Earl of North­ampton, William de Bohun, and the old warrior at his side, Sir Reginald Cobham, roared with him.

And roared again.

Against the odds a small contingent of lightly armed men of the English army had attacked a well-defended position and defeated a well-prepared enemy in a strong position – a fight they should have lost. This feat of courage crushed King Philip’s plan of entrapping the English army. The Prince of Wales’s retinue splashed across the ford, his dark armour muting the sunlight that glistened from the water. Godfrey de Harcourt reined his horse to where wounded men sat amidst the devastation as men-at-arms and hobelars rode after French survivors. The stench of death hung over the field like a sickly fog and the carnage that littered the beachhead testified to the savagery of the fight.