The King’s Assassin (30 page)

The road was filled with men, horses and carts.

Thousands of them.

I took in the scene in one long sweeping glance. The track we were on led out of the woods and then north-west across the pasture to join the main road at a substantial bridge by a tiny settlement – a few huts and a small wooden chapel beside a stand of ash trees. The bridge crossed a wide sluggish river – from my briefings with Robin and the Flemish commanders who knew this area well, I knew it had to be the River Marque and the hamlet of Bouvines. To my left, I could see detachments of knights, some mounted, some off their beasts allowing them to graze on the lush grass. And a group of perhaps fifty crossbowmen were sitting or standing, distinctive because of their huge shields. The river had burst its low banks here south of the bridge and beyond the resting enemy bowmen was treacherous boggy ground. On the far side of the bridge, about half a mile away, I could make out banners and thick marching columns of footmen, many thousands, tramping towards Lille. The bridge itself was packed with men on horseback, and I thought I could make out the golden lilies of France on an azure field, King Philip’s own royal banner, in the middle of the throng. Tailing back along the road east was the rest of the French cavalry.

The first thought in my head was: we have them! More than half, perhaps two-thirds of the enemy, was on the other side of the bridge; on this side of the water, strung out along the road back to Tournai, was the rearguard, picked knights looking to defend the army from an attack from the east. If we could come up now with all our force and assault them before they finished crossing the river, we could destroy the rearguard – Philip’s best knights – before the infantry could recross the bridge and come to their aid.

My second thought was never properly formed. I heard Miles cry out: ‘’Ware right!’ I twisted my head and saw a mass of horsemen galloping at us from the east, along the edge of the wood. French knights, a dozen men, lances couched, charged into us without the slightest warning.

A fellow with a green oak tree emblem on his black shield was yards away from me, his lance reaching out for my guts. I got my horse moving just in time. His lance-head crashed into my shield with shocking force, rocking me back painfully against my cantle, but the angle of the shield was such that the steel head merely sliced across its face. He shouted something to me as he thundered past, an insult, no doubt. But I had better things to worry about. I hauled out Fidelity with the speed of sheer panic, and managed to bat away the next rider’s spear with the blade as it came at me out of nowhere. Others behind me were not so fortunate. I could hear screams, howls and the clash of steel on wood. A knight came at me swinging an axe; I caught the blow on my cross-guard, pushed it aside and punched my mailed fist straight into his roaring face. And they were all past me. I yanked my horse’s head around and saw that our lightly armoured scouts were beset by a swarm of furious knights, chopping with swords, and stabbing with their lances. At least three saddles were empty and I could see the huddled forms of my men on the ground.

Miles had a French knight on either side of him and the lad was fending off savage blows from both left and right with his sword and shield. I spurred my mount forward a dozen paces and crashed into the rump of the knight nearest to me. The impact jolted the man, unbalancing him, and I saw Miles’s sword flicker out and plunge deep into his eye. The second knight rode directly at me and I took his sword cut on my shield and returned the blow, cracking my blade laterally across his face, smashing into the nasal guard of his helmet and stunning the man. He reeled in the saddle and I smashed his spine with a roundhouse chop to the back of his mailed neck, striking an inch below the line of his helm.

I took an instant to look around me. We were only a dozen yards from the line where the pasture ended and the woods began. At least half my men were down, dead or mortally wounded. I saw one knight stop his horse and lunge downward with his lance at one of my scouts who was curled like a baby on the ground. Miles was at my elbow, grinning like a demon. Together we spurred at the bastard, yelling our cries, I cut at his arm, the one now holding the lance buried in my trooper’s guts, a full-strength blow with Fidelity, and had the pleasure of seeing my sharp steel cleave his limb off at the elbow. The arm fell, still grasping the lance. Miles slashed him deeply across the mouth with his sword as he rode past and the man toppled, screaming, spitting teeth and gore, to the turf. The rest of the knights, half a dozen men, seemed to have drawn off, about thirty paces towards the river, but they were not down, not defeated – they were regrouping. Worse, I could see beyond them the grazing horses being mounted and at least twenty fresh men-at-arms gathering up the reins and cantering towards us.

‘Back,’ I shouted, ‘back into the woods.’

There was nothing else for it but to run: we were scouts, not heavy cavalry, and we would be slaughtered if we stayed to hold our ground.

I gathered my stunned and battered men – those that still retained their saddles – and led them back into the shelter of the trees. Turning in the saddle as we entered the dark, dense woods, I saw knights peeling off the main road to our north and trotting down across the open pasture towards us. An icy fist gripped my bowels. We would be cut to pieces if we did not retreat.

And suddenly there was Robin and Little John and Sir Thomas and Hugh and a dozen other riders coming towards us along the path through the trees. Robin rode straight past me and up to the edge of the wood and looked out at the flattish green field, now littered with a dozen bodies, and half a dozen riderless mounts standing forlornly with their reins trailing. The French cavalry had formed up in a big
conroi
of perhaps three dozen men fifty yards away and they were staring at us over their horses’ ears. They looked to be readying themselves for a charge against the treeline.

‘I see you’ve started without the rest of us, Alan,’ said my lord.

He turned to one of his riders, a one-eyed veteran of a dozen battles. ‘Claes, get back to the main column, sharpish. Give my compliments to my lord of Flanders and tell him the enemy is here. Tell Ferrand that if he hurries himself we can smash them, here, now. Then find Mastin and tell him to get the archers up here at the double! They cannot come too quickly.’

Robin’s presence calmed me, I must admit, for I had been feeling the first tremors of panic. He had grasped the situation at once – and was instantly in control of it. My stomach relaxed, my courage flickered and flared like a fire with fresh kindling thrown upon it. But the next thing he said plunged my heart back into my boots. ‘Right, the wedge! Form on me. Quickly now. We’re going to teach those cavalry the proper respect for English arms.’

Robin’s men made up in the cavalry configuration known as the wedge in under a dozen heartbeats, with my lord at the point, Little John and myself directly behind him, Hugh, Sir Thomas and Miles behind us, and the rest of the dozen or so of riders behind them. A trumpet sounded, and we were off, galloping up the slight rise towards the formed French cavalry about fifty yards away.

It was an extraordinary tactic, against all the rules of horse-warfare. We were charging uphill towards a formed enemy that outnumbered us two to one. We should have retreated into the wood and waited for the enemy charge. Only Robin – and perhaps the Lionheart – would have attempted it, but it worked, by God! Mainly, I think, because of the total surprise. I could see the astonishment on the faces of the French
conroi
as we barrelled forward in the wedge and crashed into their standing ranks. Robin’s lance took a knight in the middle of the
conroi
plumb in the centre of his chest, hurling him from the saddle, and then we were in among them, hacking, stabbing, slicing with sword and spear. I lunged at a red-faced knight with Fidelity and he parried with his sword and punched at me with his shield, hitting me painfully on the shoulder and chest. But the move left his defences wide open and Hugh, who was right behind me, buried his lance in his guts. I lanced a second man straight through his shouting mouth with Fidelity, my sword-point bursting right out the back of his head in a shower of red. And suddenly I was through the
conroi
and out the other side in open space. The enemy was shaken but we had barely dented their numbers. However, we had cut right through their ranks and utterly destroyed their cohesion. Little knots of men were now fighting all over the southern part of the field. Little John’s horse was killed under him by a lance to the chest – but the big man kicked free of his stirrups and leapt from its falling body and began to wreak havoc with his poleaxe. He was a whirlwind of sheer fury, smashing at riders with his axe, skewering them with the long spear-point. I saw him hook one knight with the curved claw on the other side of the pole from the axe-head, and haul the fellow with main strength from his saddle, and when the knight was sprawled on the ground, stamp once with his right boot, with all his weight behind it, on the man’s mailed head, splitting the skull.

Sir Thomas laid about him with a cold and deadly precision, felling knights, it seemed, with every blow. Robin’s face was flecked with blood, and as he killed his opponent with a lunge to the throat, he seemed deliberately to wipe the spattered gore from his cheeks as he pulled his sword arm back from the blow.

And then it was over. The French ran. At least half of them completely unscathed but utterly unnerved by our savage and unexpected attack. We cheered ourselves hoarse. For the southern part of the field was ours.

For now.

We pulled back to the edge of the woods again and tended to our wounds and our weapons. The battle was not over – not by a long, hot summer’s day. Word of our arrival had clearly been reported to the main column, and the crowds of men at the Bouvines bridge seethed with activity, like a wasps’ nest smelling sweet wine. It seemed as if they could not decide whether to carry on with the march to Lille or stay and fight. I saw that King Philip’s golden lilies were now on this side of the river by the little chapel. The road was still clogged with traffic. But the French had not forgotten us. Three fresh
conrois
of cavalry were forming up about halfway between us and the bridge – perhaps a hundred knights. And they would certainly not be scattered by another mad uphill charge from the handful of Robin’s men still in the saddle.

Worse, the crossbowmen by the marshes had transformed into a disciplined column and were marching down the track towards the treeline. These bowmen stopped a bare seventy paces from us, they stuck their huge shields into the turf and, working in pairs, they began to loose their deadly quarrels into the trees; one would shoot, while the other reloaded his weapon behind the safety of the man-sized shield. As our men began to fall, we pulled back further into the trees, while the horses were led even further back into safety. Robin ordered every man to take cover behind thick trunks or fallen logs, but to hold his ground. The black bolts whipped and cracked through the leaves, an awful sound, and now and then an unwary man would cry out in pain.

‘Where the devil is Mastin?’ said Robin to me. We were crouching down behind a great fallen oak, peering over the mossy rim as the crossbowmen pelted us with their barrage. The French cavalry were now coming towards us at a slow, steady pace, walking their mounts, keeping their dressing, three hundred yards away and closing.

Very soon they would charge into the wood and we would be hunted from tree to tree and slaughtered like vermin.

‘Here, sir,’ said a Cheshire accent not ten yards behind us. And I turned to see the short, bald, burly shape of Mastin, captain of Robin’s archers, and behind him scores of men with long black bowstaves wearing dark-green cloaks and brown tunics that melded them perfectly into the woodland behind.

‘Good man,’ said Robin. ‘Get your men either side of the track in cover. Half on each flank. Don’t be seen. Don’t loose until I give the command. Don’t pay any mind to the crossbows for now. I want the cavalry. Hit them when they charge. Yes?’

‘Oh yes,’ said Mastin. ‘I understand you perfectly, my lord. And you should know that his honour the Count of Flanders is right on our tail, sir, with hundreds of his knights. Eager as a boy in his first brothel.’ He gave a low chuckle and was gone again.

As I watched the cavalry slowly walk their horses towards us, flinching involuntarily as the occasional crossbow quarrel rattled the branches above us, I was aware, without having to look, of dozens of stealthy men taking up positions in the trees behind us. A comforting sensation, the feeling of comrades at your back.

The French cavalry stopped a hundred paces away, three
conrois
still neat and squared, bold and bright with the colours of their surcoats, each lance upright and bearing a fluttering pennant. I could see the captains riding along the front face of the ranks, bawling encouragement and issuing last orders to their knights.

A trumpet blew, shockingly loud and close, and the central
conroi
was suddenly at the canter, heading straight down the track towards the wood, their banners flapping in the wind, the horses’ hooves shaking the ground. Behind them the other two companies were following on, surging down the track after the lead
conroi
.

‘Now, Mastin, now’s your time,’ shouted Robin.

And I heard the archer captain mutter, ‘As if I didn’t fucking know…’ before his words were drowned out by the whirr of sixty shafts slicing through the summer air as one.

The arrow storm smashed into the front rank of the leading
conroi
, and all but one saddle was immediately emptied. The second rank too was almost entirely destroyed. And in the third only half the men remained in control of their mounts. The charging French knights went from a bold display of perfectly arrayed charging horsemen, the very flower of French chivalry, to a blood-drenched shambles in the space of a couple of heartbeats. Horses, punctured by many arrows, sheeted with blood, staggered sideways and crashed into their fellows, mad with pain, the big destriers biting and kicking, throwing the entire formation into chaos. Other mounts collapsed or cartwheeled forward, creating obstacles for the mounted men behind.