Harlequin. Part 15

'Yes, my lord.'

'All my archers are mounted,' the Earl said, then turned to one of his men-at-arms. 'Find the b.a.s.t.a.r.d a sway-backed nag till he can filch something better, then give him a tunic and offer him to John Armstrong.' He looked back to Thomas. 'You're joining my archers, which means you'll wear my badge. You're my man, devil's whelp, and perhaps that will protect you if Sir Simon wants too much money for your miserable soul.'

'I shall try to repay your lords.h.i.+p,' Thomas said.

'Pay me, boy, by getting us into Caen. You got us into La Roche-Derrien, but that little place is nothing compared to Caen. Caen is a true b.a.s.t.a.r.d. We go there tomorrow, but I doubt we'll see the backside of its walls for a month or more, if ever. Get us into Caen, Thomas, and I'll forgive you a score of murders.' He stood, nodded a dismissal and went back into the tent.

Thomas did not move. Caen, he thought, Caen. Caen was the city where Sir Guillaume d'Evecque lived, and he made the sign of the cross for he knew fate had arranged all this. Fate had determined that his crossbow arrow would miss Sir Simon Jekyll and it had brought him to the edge of Caen. Because fate wanted him to do the penance that Father Hobbe had demanded. G.o.d, Thomas decided, had taken Jeanette from him because he had been slow to keep his promise.

But now the time for the keeping of promises had come, for G.o.d had brought Thomas to Caen.

Part Two

Normandy

Chapter 7.

The Earl of Northampton had been summoned from Brittany to be one of the Prince of Wales's advisers. The Prince was just sixteen, though John Armstrong reckoned the boy was as good as any grown man. 'Ain't nothing wrong with young Edward,' he told Thomas. 'Knows his weapons. Headstrong, maybe, but brave.'

That, in John Armstrong's world, was high praise. He was a forty-year-old man-at-arms who led the Earl's personal archers and was one of those hard, common men that the Earl liked so much. Armstrong, like Skeat, came from the north country and was said to have been fighting the Scots since he had been weaned. His personal weapon was a falchion, a curved sword with a heavy blade as broad as an axe, though he could draw a bow with the best of his troop. He also commanded three score of hobelars, light hors.e.m.e.n mounted on s.h.a.ggy ponies and carrying spears.

'They don't look up to much,' he said to Thomas, who was gazing at the small hors.e.m.e.n, who all had long s.h.a.ggy hair and bent legs, 'but they're rare at scouting. We send swarms of yon b.a.s.t.a.r.ds into the Scottish hills to find the enemy. Be dead else.' Armstrong had been at La Roche-Derrien and remembered Thomas's achievement in turning the town's river flank and, because of that, he accepted Thomas readily enough. He gave him a lice-ridden hacqueton - a padded jacket that might stop a feeble sword cut - and a short surcoat, a jupon, that had the Earl's stars and lions on its breast and bore the cross of St George on its right sleeve. The hacqueton and jupon, like the breeches and arrow bag that completed Thomas's outfit, had belonged to an archer who had died of the fever shortly after reaching Normandy. 'You can find yourself better stuff in Caen,' Armstrong told him, 'if we ever get into Caen.'

Thomas was given a sway-backed grey mare that had a hard mouth and an awkward gait. He watered the beast, rubbed her down with straw, then ate red herrings and dry beans with Armstrong's men. He found a stream and washed his hair, then twisted the bowcord round the wet pigtail. He borrowed a razor and sc.r.a.ped off his beard, tossing the stiff hairs into the stream so that no one could work a spell on them. It seemed strange to spend the night in a soldiers' encampment and to sleep without Jeanette. He still felt bitter about her and that bitterness was like a sliver of iron in his soul when he was roused in the night's dark heart. He felt lonely, chill and unwanted as the archers began their march. He thought of Jeanette in the Prince's tent, and remembered the jealousy he had felt in Rennes when she had gone to the citadel to meet Duke Charles. She was like a moth, he thought, flying to the brightest candle in the room. Her wings had been scorched once, but the flame drew her still.

The army advanced on Caen in three battles, each of about four thousand men. The King commanded one, the Prince of Wales the second while the third was under the orders of the Bishop of Durham, who much preferred slaughter to sanct.i.ty. The Prince had left the encampment early to stand his horse beside the road where he could watch his men pa.s.s in the summer dawn. He was in black armour, with a lion crest on his helm, and escorted by a dozen priests and fifty knights. As Thomas approached, he saw Jeanette was among those green-and-white-blazoned hors.e.m.e.n. She was wearing the same colours, a dress of pale green cloth with white cuffs, hems and bodice, and was mounted on a palfrey that had silver curb chains, green and white ribbons plaited into its mane and a white saddle cloth embroidered with the lions of England. Her hair had been washed, brushed and coiled, then decorated with cornflowers, and as Thomas came nearer he thought how ravis.h.i.+ng she looked. There was a radiant happiness on her face and her eyes were bright. She was just to one side of the Prince and a pace or so behind him, and Thomas noted how often the boy turned to speak to her. The men in front of Thomas were pulling off their helmets or caps to salute the Prince, who looked from Jeanette to them, sometimes nodding or calling out to a knight he recognized.

Thomas, riding his borrowed horse that was so small his long legs hung almost to the ground, raised a hand to greet Jeanette. She stared into his smiling face, then looked away without showing any expression. She spoke with a priest who was evidently the Prince's chaplain. Thomas let his hand drop. 'If you're a b.l.o.o.d.y prince,' the man beside Thomas said, 'you get the cream, don't you? We get lice and he gets that.'

Thomas said nothing. Jeanette's dismissal had left him embarra.s.sed. Had the last weeks been a dream? He twisted in his saddle to look at her and saw she was laughing at some comment of the Prince's. You are a fool, Thomas told himself, a fool, and he wondered why he felt so hurt. Jeanette had never declared any love for him, yet her abandonment bit his heart like a snake. The road dropped into a hollow where sycamore and ash grew thick and Thomas, turning again, could not see Jeanette.

There'll be plenty of women in Caen,' an archer said with relish.

'If we ever get in,' another commented, using the five words that were always spoken whenever the city was named.

The previous night Thomas had listened to the campfire talk that had all been about Caen. It was, he gathered, a huge city, one of the biggest in France, and protected by a ma.s.sive castle and a great wall. The French, it seemed, had adopted a strategy of retreating into such citadels rather than face England's bowmen in the open fields, and the archers feared they could be stranded in front of Caen for weeks. The city could not be ignored, for if it was left untaken its huge garrison would threaten the English supply lines. So Caen had to fall and no one believed it would be easy, though some men reckoned the new guns that the King had fetched to France would knock down the city's ramparts as easily as Joshua's trumpets had felled the walls of Jericho.

The King himself must have been sceptical of the guns' power for he had decided to scare the city into surrender by the sheer numbers of his army. The three English battles moved eastward on every road, track or stretch of meadow that offered a path, but an hour or two after dawn the men-at-arms who served as marshals began halting the various contingents. Sweaty hors.e.m.e.n galloped up and down the ma.s.ses of men, shouting at them to move into a rough line. Thomas, wrestling with his stubborn mare, understood that the whole army was being formed into a huge crescent. A low hill lay in front and a hazy smear beyond the hill betrayed the thousands of cooking fires in Caen. When the signal was given the whole clumsy crescent of mailed men would be advanced to the hilltop so that the defenders, instead of seeing a few English scouts trickle from the woods, would be presented with an overwhelming host and, to make the army seem double its real size, the marshals were pus.h.i.+ng and shouting the camp followers into the curved line. Cooks, clerks, women, masons, farriers, carpenters, scullions, anyone who could walk, crawl, ride or stand was being added to the crescent, and a host of bright flags were raised over those bemused ma.s.ses. It was a hot morning and the leather and mail made men and horses sweat. Dust blew in the wind. The Earl of Warwick, Marshal of the Host, was galloping up and down the crescent, red-faced and cursing, but slowly the c.u.mbersome line formed to his satisfaction.

'When the trumpet sounds,' a knight shouted at Armstrong's men, 'advance to the hilltop. When the trumpet sounds! Not before!'

That army of England must have looked like twenty thousand men when the trumpets tore the summer sky with their ma.s.sed defiance. To Caen's defenders it was a nightmare. One moment the horizon was empty, even though the sky beyond had long been blanched by the dust kicked up by hoofs and boots, and then there was a sudden host, a horde, a swarm of men glinting iron-hard in the sun and topped by a forest of raised lances and flags. The whole north and east of the city was ringed with men who, when they saw Caen, gave a great roar of incoherent scorn. There was plunder ahead of them, a whole rich city waiting to be taken.

It was a fine and famous city, bigger even than London and that was the biggest city in England. Caen, indeed, was one of the great cities of France. The Conqueror had endowed it with the wealth he stole from England, and it still showed. Within the city walls the church spires and towers stood as close as the lances and flags in Edward's army, while on either side of the city were two vast abbeys. The castle lay to the north, its ramparts, like the pale stone of the city's high walls, hung with war banners. The English roar was answered with a defiant cheer from the defenders, who cl.u.s.tered thick on the ramparts. So many crossbows, Thomas thought, remembering the heavy bolts thumping from La Roche-Derrien's embrasures.

The city had spread beyond its walls, but instead of placing the new houses beside the ramparts, as most towns did, here they had been built on a sprawling island that lay to the south of the old city. Formed by a maze-like tangle of tributaries that fed the two main rivers which flowed by Caen, the island had no walls, for it was protected by the waterways. It needed such protection, for even from the hilltop Thomas could see that the island was where the wealth of Caen lay. The old city within its high walls would be a labyrinth of narrow alleys and cramped houses, but the island was filled with large mansions, big churches and wide gardens. But even though it appeared to be the wealthiest part of Caen, it did not seem to be defended. No troops were visible there. Instead they were all on the ramparts of the old city. The town's boats had been moored on the island's bank, opposite the city wall, and Thomas wondered if any of them belonged to Sir Guillaume d'Evecque.

The Earl of Northampton, released from the Prince's entourage, joined John Armstrong at the head of the archers and nodded towards the city walls.

'Brute of a place, John!' the Earl said cheerfully.

'Formidable, my lord,' Armstrong grunted.

'The island's named for you,' the Earl said glibly.

'For me?' Armstrong sounded suspicious.

'It's the Ile St Jean,' the Earl said, then pointed to the nearer of the two abbeys, a great monastery that was surrounded by its own ramparts, which were joined to the city's higher walls. 'The Abbaye aux Hommes,' the Earl said. 'You know what happened when they buried the Conqueror there? They left him in the abbey for too long and when the time came to put him in the vault he was rotted and swollen. His body burst and they reckon the stench of it drove the congregation out of the abbey.'

'G.o.d's vengeance, my lord,' Armstrong said stoically.

The Earl gave him a quizzical look. 'Maybe,' he said uncertainly.

'There's no love of William in the north country,' Armstrong said.

'Long time ago, John.'

'Not so long that I won't spit on his grave,' Armstrong declared, then explained himself. 'He might have been our king, my lord, but he were no Englishman.'

'I suppose he wasn't,' the Earl allowed.

'Time for revenge,' Armstrong said loudly enough for the nearest archers to hear. 'We'll take him, we'll take his city and we'll take his G.o.dd.a.m.n women!'

The archers cheered, though Thomas did not see how the army could possibly take Caen. The walls were huge and well-b.u.t.tressed with towers, and the ramparts were thick with defenders who looked as confident as the attackers. Thomas was searching the banners for the one showing three yellow hawks on a blue field, but there were so many flags and the wind was stirring them so briskly that he could not pick Sir Guillaume d'Evecque's three hawks from the other gaudy ripples that swirled beneath the embrasures.

'So what are you, Thomas?' The Earl had dropped back to ride beside him. His horse was a big destrier so that the Earl, despite being much shorter than Thomas, towered above him. He spoke in French. 'English or Norman?'

Thomas grimaced. 'English, my lord. Right to my sore a.r.s.e.' It had been so long since he had ridden that his thighs were chafed raw.

'We're all English now, aren't we?' The Earl sounded mildly surprised.

'Would you want to be anything else?' Thomas asked, and looked around at the archers. 'G.o.d knows, my lord, I wouldn't want to fight them.'

'Nor me,' the Earl grunted, 'and I've saved you a fight with Sir Simon. Or rather I've saved your miserable life. I talked to him last night. I can't say he was very willing to spare you a throttling and I can't blame him for that.' The Earl slapped at a horsefly. 'But in the end his greed overcame his hatred of you. You've cost me my share of the prize money for the Countess's two s.h.i.+ps, young Thomas. One s.h.i.+p for his dead squire and the other for the hole you put in his leg.'

'Thank you, my lord,' Thomas said effusively. He felt the relief surge through him. 'Thank you,' he said again.

'So you're a free man,' the Earl said. 'Sir Simon shook on it, a clerk made a note of it and a priest witnessed it. Now for G.o.d's sake don't go and kill another of his fellows.'

'I won't, sir,' Thomas promised.

'And you're in my debt now,' the Earl said.

'I acknowledge it, my lord.'

The Earl made a dismissive noise, suggesting it was unlikely Thomas could ever pay such a debt, then he shot the archer a suspicious look. 'And speaking of the Countess,' he went on, 'you never mentioned that you brought her north.'

'It didn't seem important, my lord.'

'And last night,' the Earl continued, 'after I'd growled at Jekyll for you, I met her ladys.h.i.+p in the Prince's quarters. She says you treated her with complete chivalry. It seems you behaved with discretion and respect. Is that really true?'

Thomas reddened. 'If she says so, my lord, it must be true.'

The Earl laughed, then touched his spurs to his destrier. 'I've bought your soul,' he said cheerfully, 'so fight well for me!' He curved away to rejoin his men-at-arms.

'He's all right, our Billy,' an archer said, nodding at the Earl, 'a good one.'

'If only they were all like him,' Thomas agreed.

'How come you talk French?' the archer asked suspiciously.

'Picked it up in Brittany,' Thomas said vaguely.

The army's vanguard had now reached the cleared s.p.a.ce in front of the walls and a crossbow bolt slammed into the turf as a warning. The camp followers, who had helped give the illusion of overwhelming force, were pitching tents on the hills to the north, while the fighting men spread out in the plain that surrounded the city. Marshals were galloping between the units, shouting that the Prince's men were to go clear about the walls to the Abbaye aux Dames on the city's further side. It was still early, about mid-morning, and the wind brought the smell of Caen's cooking fires as the Earl's men marched past deserted farms. The castle loomed above them.

They went to the western side of the town. The Prince of Wales, mounted on a big black horse and followed by a standard-bearer and a troop of men-at-arms, galloped to the convent, which, because it lay well outside the city walls, had been abandoned. He would make it his home for the duration of the siege and Thomas, dismounting where Armstrong's men would camp, saw Jeanette following the Prince. Following him like a puppy, he thought sourly, then chided himself for jealousy. Why be jealous of a prince? A man might as well resent the sun or curse the ocean. There are other women, he told himself as he hobbled his horse in one of the abbey pastures.

A group of archers was exploring the deserted buildings that lay close to the convent. Most were cottages, but one had been a carpenter's workshop and was piled with wood-shavings and sawdust, while beyond it was a tannery, still stinking of the urine, lime and dung that cured the leather. Beyond the tannery was nothing but a waste ground of thistles and nettles that ran clear to the city's great wall, and Thomas saw that dozens of archers were venturing into the weeds to stare at the ramparts. It was a hot day so that the air in front of the walls seemed to s.h.i.+ver. A small north wind drifted some high clouds and rippled the long gra.s.s that grew in the ditch at the base of the battlements. About a hundred archers were in the waste ground now and some were within long crossbow range, though no Frenchman shot at them. A score of the inquisitive bowmen were carrying axes to cut firewood, but morbid curiosity had driven them towards the ramparts instead of outwards to the woods and Thomas now followed them, wanting to judge for himself what horrors the besiegers faced. The screeching sound of ungreased axles made him turn to see two farm wagons being dragged towards the convent. They both held guns, great bulbous things with swollen metal bellies and gaping mouths. He wondered if the guns' magic could blast a hole through the city's ramparts, but even if it did then men would still have to fight through the breach. He made the sign of the cross. Maybe he would find a woman inside the city. He had almost everything a man needed. He had a horse, he had a hacqueton, he had his bow and arrow bag. He just needed a woman.

Yet he did not see how an army twice the size could cross Caen's great walls. They reared up from their boggy ditch like cliffs, and every fifty paces there was a conical roofed bastion that would give the garrison's crossbowmen the chance to slash their quarrels into the flanks of the attackers. It would be carnage, Thomas thought, far worse than the slaughter that had occurred each time the Earl of Northampton's men had a.s.sailed the southern wall at La Roche-Derrien.

More and more archers came into the waste ground to stare at the city. Most were just inside crossbow range, but the French still ignored them. Instead the defenders began hauling in the gaudy banners that hung from the embrasures. Thomas looked for Sir Guillaume's three hawks, but could not see them. Most of the banners were decorated with crosses or the figures of saints. One showed the keys of heaven, another the lion of St Mark and a third had a winged angel scything down English troops with a flaming sword. That banner disappeared.

'What the h.e.l.l are the G.o.dd.a.m.n b.a.s.t.a.r.ds doing?' an archer asked.

'The b.a.s.t.a.r.ds are running away!' another man said. He was staring at the stone bridge that led from the old city to the Ile St Jean.

That bridge was thronged with soldiers, some mounted, most on foot, and all of them streaming out of the walled city onto the island of big houses, churches and gardens. Thomas walked a few paces southwards to get a better view and saw crossbowmen and men-at-arms appear in the alleys between the island's houses.

'They're going to defend the island,' he said to anyone in earshot.

By now carts were being pushed over the bridge and he could see women and children being chivvied on their way by men-at-arms.

More defenders crossed the bridge and still more banners vanished from the walls until there was only a handful left. The big flags of the great lords still flew from the castle's topmost towers, and pious banners hung down the keep's long walls, but the city ramparts were almost bare and there must have been a thousand archers from the Prince of Wales's battle watching those walls now. They should have been cutting firewood, building shelters or digging latrines, but a slow suspicion was dawning on them that the French were not planning to defend both the city and the island, but only the island. Which meant the city had been abandoned. That seemed so unlikely that no one even dared mention it. They just watched the city's inhabitants and defenders crowd across the stone bridge and then, as the last banner was hauled from the ramparts, someone began walking towards the nearest gate.

No one gave any orders. No prince, earl, constable or knight ordered the archers forward. They simply decided to approach the city themselves. Most wore the Prince of Wales's green and white livery, but a good few, like Thomas, had the Earl of Northampton's stars and lions. Thomas half expected crossbowmen to appear and greet the straggling advance with a terrible volley of spitting quarrels, but the embrasures stayed empty and that emboldened the archers who saw birds settling on the crenellations, a sure sign that the defenders had abandoned the wall. The men with axes ran to the gate and started to hack at its timbers, and no crossbow bolts flew from the flanking bastions. The great walled city of William the Conqueror had been left unguarded.

The axemen broke through the iron-studded planks, lifted the bar and pulled the big gates open to reveal an empty street. A handcart with one broken wheel was abandoned on the cobbles, but no Frenchmen were visible. There was a pause as the archers stared in disbelief, then the shouting began. 'Havoc! Havoc!' The first thought was plunder, and men eagerly broke into the houses, but found little except chairs, tables and cupboards. Everything of real value, like every person in the city, was gone to the island.

Still more archers were coming into the city. A few climbed towards the open ground surrounding the castle where two died from crossbow bolts spat from the high ramparts, but the rest spread through the city to find it bare, and so more and more men were drawn towards the bridge that spanned the River Odon and led to the Ile St Jean. At the bridge's southern end, where it reached the island, there was a barbican tower that was thick with crossbows, but the French did not want the English getting close to the barbican and so they had hastily thrown up a barricade on the bridge's northern side out of a great heap of wagons and furniture and they had garrisoned the barrier with a score of men-at-arms reinforced by as many crossbowmen. There was another bridge at the island's further side, but the archers did not know of its existence and, besides, it was a long way off and the barricaded bridge was the quickest route to the enemy's riches.

The first white-fledged arrows began to fly. Then came the harder sounds of the enemy's crossbows discharging and the crack of bolts striking the stones of the church beside the bridge. The first men died.

There were still no orders. No man of rank was inside the city yet, just a ma.s.s of archers as mindless as wolves smelling blood. They poured arrows at the barricade, forcing its defenders to crouch behind the overturned wagons, then the first group of English gave a cheer and charged at the barricade with swords, axes and spears. More men followed as the first tried to climb the ungainly pile. The crossbows banged from the barbican and men were thrown back by the heavy bolts. The French men-at-arms stood to repel the survivors and swords clashed on axes. Blood was slick on the bridge approach and one archer slipped and was trampled underfoot by his colleagues going to the fight. The English were howling, the French were shouting, a trumpet was calling from the barbican and every church bell on the Ile St Jean was tolling the alarm.

Thomas, having no sword of his own, was standing in the porch of a church which stood hard beside the bridge from where he was shooting arrows up at the barbican tower, but his aim was obscured because a thatch in the old city was on fire and the smoke was curling over the river like a low cloud.

The French held all the advantages. Their cross-bowmen could shoot from the barbican and from the shelter of the barricade, and to attack them the English had to funnel onto the narrow bridge approach, which was littered with bodies, blood and bolts. Still more enemy crossbowmen were stationed in the line of boats that was moored along the island's bank, stranded there by the falling tide, and. the defenders of those boats, sheltered by the stout wooden gunwales, could shoot up at any archer foolish enough to show himself on those parts of the city wall that were not smoke-shrouded. More and more crossbowmen were coming to the bridge until it seemed as if the air above the river was as thick with quarrels as a flock of starlings.

Another rush of archers charged from the alleys to fill the narrow street leading to the barricade. They screamed as they charged. They were not fighting with their bows, but rather with axes, swords, billhooks and spears. The spears were mostly carried by the hobelars, many of them Welshmen who uttered a high-shrieked howl as they ran with the archers. A dozen of the new attackers must have fallen to crossbow bolts, but the survivors leaped the bodies and closed right up to the barricade that was now defended by at least thirty men-at-arms and as many crossbowmen. Thomas ran and picked up the arrow bag of a dead man. The attackers were crammed up against the arrow-stuck barricade with little room to wield their axes, swords and spears. The French men-at-arms stabbed with lances, hacked with swords and flailed with maces, and as the front rank of archers died, the next rank was pushed onto the enemy weapons, and all the time the crossbow quarrels thumped down from the barbican's crenellated tower and flew up from the grounded s.h.i.+ps in the river. Thomas saw a man reeling from the bridge with a crossbow bolt buried in his helmet. Blood poured down his face as he made a strange incoherent mewing before falling to his knees and then, slowly, collapsing on the road where he was trampled by another rush of attackers. A few English archers found their way onto the roof of the church and they killed a half-dozen of the barricade's defenders before the crossbowmen on the barbican swept them away with stinging volleys. The bridge approach was thick with bodies now, so many corpses that they obstructed the charging English, and a half-dozen men began heaving the dead over the parapet. A tall archer, armed with a long-handled axe, managed to reach the barricade's summit, where he chopped the heavy blade again and again, beating down at a Frenchman who had ribbons on his helmet, but then he was struck by two crossbow bolts and he folded over, letting the axe fall and clutching at his belly, and the French hauled him down to their side of the barricade where three men hacked at him with swords, then used the archer's own axe to sever his head. They thrust the b.l.o.o.d.y trophy onto a spear and waved it above the barricade to taunt their attackers.

A mounted man-at-arms, wearing the Earl of Warwick's badge of a bear and ragged staff, shouted at the archers to retreat. The Earl himself was in the city now, sent by the King to pull his bowmen back from their unequal fight, but the archers were not willing to listen. The French were jeering them, killing them, but still the archers wanted to break through the bridge's defences and slake themselves on Caen's wealth. And so still more blood-maddened men charged at the barricade - so many that they filled the road as the bolts whipped down from the smoky sky. The attackers at the back heaved forward and the men at the front died on French lances and blades.

The French were winning. Their crossbow bolts were smacking into the crush of men and those at the front began to push backwards to escape the slaughter while those at the back still shoved forward and the ones in between, threatened with a crus.h.i.+ng death, broke through a stout wooden fence that let them spill off the bridge's approach onto a narrow strip of ground that lay between the river and the city walls. More men followed them.

Thomas was still crouching in the church porch. He sent an occasional arrow up towards the barbican, but the thickening smoke hung like fog and he could scarcely see his targets. He watched the men streaming off the bridge onto the narrow riverbank, but did not follow, for that seemed just another way of committing suicide. They were trapped there with the high city wall at their backs and the swirling river in front, and the far bank of the river was lined with boats from which crossbowmen poured quarrels into these new and inviting targets.

The spillage of men off the bridge opened the roadway to the barricade again and newly arrived men, who had not experienced the carnage of the first attacks, took up the fight. A hobelar managed to climb onto an overturned wagon and stabbed down with his short spear. There were crossbow bolts sticking from his chest, but still he screeched and stabbed and tried to go on fighting even when a French man-at-arms disembowelled him. His guts spilled out, but somehow he found the strength to raise the spear and give one last lunge before he fell into the defenders. A half-dozen archers were trying to dismantle the barricade, while others were throwing the dead off the bridge to clear the roadway. At least one living man, wounded, was thrown into the river. He screamed as he fell.

'Get back, you dogs, get back!' The Earl of Warwick had come to the chaos and he flailed at men with his marshal's staff. He had a trumpeter sounding the four falling notes of the retreat while the French trumpeter was blasting out the attack signal, brisk couplets of rising notes that stirred the blood, and the English and Welsh were obeying the French rather than the English trumpet. More men - hundreds of them - were streaming into the old city, dodging the Earl of Warwick's constables and closing on the bridge where, unable to get past the barricade, they followed the men down to the riverbank from where they shot their arrows at the crossbowmen in the barges. The Earl of Warwick's men started pulling archers away from the street that led to the bridge, but for every one they hauled away another two slipped past.

A crowd of Caen's menfolk, some armed with nothing more than staves, waited beyond the barbican, promising yet another fight if the barricade was ever overcome. A madness had gripped the English army, a madness to attack a bridge that was too well defended. Men went screaming to their deaths and still more followed. The Earl of Warwick was bellowing at them to pull back, but they were deaf to him. Then a great roar of defiance sounded from the riverbank and Thomas stepped out from the porch to see that groups of men were now trying to wade the River Odon. And they were succeeding. It had been a dry summer, the river was low and the falling tide made it lower still, so that at its deepest the water only came up to a man's chest. Scores of men were now plunging into the river. Thomas, dodging two of the Earl's constables, leaped the remnants of the fence and slithered down the bank, which was studded with embedded crossbow quarrels. The place stank of s.h.i.+t, for this was where the city emptied its nightsoil. A dozen Welsh hobelars waded into the river and Thomas joined them, holding his bow high above his head to keep its string dry. The crossbowmen had to stand up from their shelter behind the barge gunwales to shoot down at the attackers in the river, and once they were standing they made easy targets for those archers who had stayed on the city bank.

The current was strong and Thomas could only take short steps. Bolts splashed about him. A man just in front was. .h.i.t in the throat and was s.n.a.t.c.hed down by the weight of his mail coat to leave nothing but a swirl of b.l.o.o.d.y water. The s.h.i.+ps' gunwales were stuck with white-feathered arrows. A Frenchman was draped over the side of one boat and his body twitched whenever an arrow hit his corpse. Blood trickled from a scupper.

'Kill the b.a.s.t.a.r.ds, kill the b.a.s.t.a.r.ds,' a man muttered next to Thomas, who saw it was one of the Earl of Warwick's constables; finding he could not stop the attack, he had decided to join it. The man was carrying a curved falchion, half sword and half butcher's cleaver.

The wind flattened the smoke from the burning houses, dipping it close to the river and filling the air with sc.r.a.ps of burning straw. Some of those sc.r.a.ps had lodged in the furled sails of two of the s.h.i.+ps that were now burning fiercely. Their defenders had scrambled ash.o.r.e. Other enemy bowmen were retreating from the first mud-streaked English and Welsh soldiers who clambered up the bank between the grounded boats. The air was filled with the quick-fluttering hiss of arrows flying overhead. The island's bells still clamoured. A Frenchman was shouting from the barbican's tower, ordering men to spread along the river and attack the groups of Welsh and English who struggled and slithered in the river mud.

Thomas kept wading. The water reached his chest, then began to recede. He fought the clinging mud of the riverbed and ignored the crossbow bolts that drove into the water about him. A crossbowman stood up from behind a boat's gunwale and aimed straight at Thomas's chest, but then two arrows struck the man and he fell backwards. Thomas pushed on, climbing now. Then suddenly he was out of the river, and he stumbled up the slick mud into the shelter of the overhanging stern of the closest barge. He could see that men were still fighting at the barricade, but he could also see that the river was now swarming with archers and hobelars who, mud-spattered and soaking, began to haul themselves onto the boats. The remaining defenders had few weapons other than their crossbows, while most of the archers had swords or axes. The fight on the moored boats was one-sided, the slaughter brief, and then the disorganized and leaderless ma.s.s of attackers surged off the blood-soaked decks and up from the river onto the island.

The Earl of Warwick's man-at-arms went ahead of Thomas. He clambered up the steep gra.s.sy bank and was immediately hit in the face by a crossbow bolt so that he jerked backwards with a fine mist of blood encircling his helmet. The bolt had driven clean through the bridge of his nose, killing him instantly and leaving him with an offended expression. His falchion landed in the mud at Thomas's feet, so he slung his bow and picked the weapon up. It was surprisingly heavy. There was nothing sophisticated about a falchion; it was simply a killing tool with an edge designed to cut deep because of the weight of the broad blade. It was a good weapon for a melee. Will Skeat had once told Thomas how he had seen a Scottish horse decapitated with a single blow of a falchion, and just to see one of the brutal blades was to feel terror in the gut.

The Welsh hobelars were on the barge, finis.h.i.+ng off its defenders, then they gave a shout in their strange language and leaped ash.o.r.e and Thomas followed them, to find himself in a loose rank of crazed attackers who ran towards a row of tall and wealthy houses defended by the men who had escaped from the barges and by the citizens of Caen. The crossbowmen had time to loose one bolt apiece, but they were nervous and most shot wide, and then the attackers were onto them like hounds onto a wounded deer.

Thomas wielded the falchion two-handed. A cross-bowman tried to defend himself with his bow but the heavy blade sliced through the weapon's stock as if it had been made of ivory, then buried itself in the Frenchman's neck. A spurt of blood jetted over Thomas's head as he wrenched the heavy sword free and kicked the crossbowman between the legs. A Welshman was grinding a spear blade into a Frenchman's ribs. Thomas stumbled on the man he had struck down, caught his balance and shouted the English war cry. 'St George!' He swung the blade again, chopping through the forearm of a man wielding a club. He was close enough to smell the man's breath and the stink of his clothes. A Frenchman was swinging a sword while another was beating at the Welsh with an iron-studded mace. This was tavern fighting, outlaw fighting, and Thomas was screaming like a fiend. G.o.d d.a.m.n them all. He was spattered with blood as he kicked and clawed and slashed his way down the alley. The air seemed unnaturally thick, moist and warm; it stank of blood. The iron-studded mace missed his head by a finger's breadth and struck the wall instead, and Thomas swung the falchion upwards so it cut into the man's groin. The man yelled out and Thomas kicked the back of the blade to drive it home. 'b.a.s.t.a.r.d,' he said, kicking the blade again, 'b.a.s.t.a.r.d.' A Welshman speared the man and two more leaped his body and, their long hair and beards smeared with blood, lunged their red-bladed spears at the next rank of defenders.

There must have been twenty or more enemy in the alley, and Thomas and his companions were fewer than a dozen, but the French were nervous and the attackers were confident and so they ripped into them with spear and sword and falchion; just hacking and stabbing, slicing and cursing them, killing in a welter of summer hatred. More and more English and Welsh were swarming up from the river, and the sound they made was a keening noise, a howl for blood and a wail of derision for a wealthy enemy. These were the hounds of war that had escaped from their kennels and they were taking this great city that the lords of the army had supposed would hold the English advance for a month.

The defenders in the alley broke and ran. Thomas hacked a man down from behind and wrenched the blade free with a sc.r.a.ping noise of steel on bone. The hobelars kicked in a door, claiming the house beyond as their property. A rush of archers in the Prince of Wales's green and white livery poured down the alley, following Thomas into a long and pretty garden where pear trees grew about neat plots of herbs. Thomas was struck by the incongruity of such a beautiful place under a sky filled with smoke and terrible with screams. The garden had a border of sweet rocket, wallflowers and peonies, and seats under a vine trellis and for an instant it looked like a sc.r.a.p of heaven, but then the archers trampled the herbs, threw down the grape arbour and ran across the flowers.

A group of Frenchmen tried to drive the invaders out of the garden. They approached from the east, from out of the ma.s.s of men waiting behind the bridge's barbican. They were led by three mounted men-at-arms, who all wore blue surcoats decorated with yellow stars. They jumped their horses over the low fences and shouted as they raised their long swords ready to strike.

The arrows smacked into the horses. Thomas had not unslung his bow, but some of the Prince's archers had arrows on their cords and they aimed at the horses instead of the riders. The arrows bit deep, the horses screamed, reared and fell, and the archers swarmed over the fallen men with axes and swords. Thomas went to the right, heading off the Frenchmen on foot, most of whom seemed to be townsfolk armed with anything from small axes to thatch-hooks to ancient two-handed swords. He cut the falchion through a leather coat, kicked the blade free, swung it so that blood streamed in droplets from the blade, then hacked again. The French wavered, saw more archers coming from the alley and fled back to the barbican.

The archers were hacking at the unsaddled hors.e.m.e.n. One of the fallen men screamed as the blades chopped at his arms and trunk. The blue and yellow surcoats were soaked in blood. Then Thomas saw that it was not yellow stars on a blue field, but hawks. Hawks with their wings raised and their claws outstretched. Sir Guillaume d'Evecque's men! Maybe Sir Guillaume himself! But when he looked at the grimacing, blood-spattered faces Thomas saw that all three had been young men. But Sir Guillaume was here in Caen, and the lance, Thomas thought, must be near. He broke through the fence and headed down another alley. Behind him, in the house that the hobelars had commandeered, a woman cried, the first of many. The church bells were falling silent.

Edward the Third, by the Grace of G.o.d, King of England, led close to twelve thousand fighting men and by now a fifth of them were on the island and still more were coming. No one had led them there. The only orders they had received were to retreat. But they had disobeyed and so they had captured Caen, though the enemy still held the bridge barbican from where they were spitting crossbow bolts.