The Wolf Cub

by David Pilling

  A word on the enemy. Desperate for allies after the loss of Normandy and Paris, the beleaguered Dauphin had begged for help from Scotland. The Scots, those red-shanked robbers, always keen to thrust a dagger between England’s shoulders, agreed to send ten thousand of their best fighting men to France under the command of the Earl of Buchan and the Earl of Wigtown.

  About half these men, along with a few hundred French, were now encamped at a village near Baugé, east of the River Couasnon. Our army at Beaufort, cheerfully ignorant of the approaching doom, was some eight miles south-west of the river.

  Clarence had just sat down to dinner in his pavilion when Sir Gilbert Umfraville galloped into camp at the head of a foraging party.

  As was his habit, the duke had invited his nobles and some favoured knights to share the meal. Despite my lowly status, I was also invited. A few shreds of popular fame still clung to me, and it turned out that every nobleman present had read The Siege of Rouen. They treated me with genial contempt. Exeter, for instance, called me the Infant Chaucer, which I took as a compliment of sorts.

  We dined in our armour, in case of a sudden call to arms. I was tearing the leg off a roast capon when Sir Gilbert barged into the pavilion, rank with sweat and dust. He wasn’t one to stand on ceremony, and gasped out his news without waiting for permission to speak.

  “The enemy, Your Grace,” he panted, “they are up in force west of the Couasnon, barely an hours’ march away.”

  Clarence, whose narrow features were already flushed with too much wine, shot to his feet. The burst of excited chatter from his nobles died away as he wiped his mouth.

  “How many?” he demanded. His entire body quivered, like a hound about to be unleashed on a fox, and there was a gleam in his eyes that made my heart skip.

  Sir Gilbert paused for breath. He and his uncle were hard-headed Border knights, superb fighters and strangers to any notion of mercy or compassion. Both were thoroughly hated by the Scots, whom they raided and slaughtered with impunity.

  Scottish vengeance on the Umfravilles was fast approaching. “Some five or six thousand, Your Grace,” he replied, “I saw the banners of Buchan and Wigtown, and de Lafayette, the Constable of France. Mostly Scottish knights and men-at-arms, with a few French.”

  “We are outnumbered,” said Exeter, “and they have blocked our path into Normandy. No matter. I say we retreat south, cross the Loire at some convenient point, and circle back to our own territory. If Buchan and Lafayette choose to follow, we can wait for them on ground of our own choosing.”

  There was a murmur of agreement. I was relieved at Exeter’s calm good sense, and the support he had from his peers.

  All save Clarence, whose voice was the only one that counted. “Retreat?” he exclaimed in a tone of high-pitched indignation, “and allow the Dauphin to boast that his men caused the banners of England to fly before them? Never!”

  A baffled silence fell over the pavilion. This was Clarence’s moment, of course, the one he had waited and prayed for ever since Agincourt. God had handed him a chance to win a victory at last and even the score with his brother.

  Salisbury was the first to recover. “Your Grace,” he said, barely containing his impatience, “we only have fifteen hundred men-at-arms. The rest are archers. We could fight a defensive battle, behind lines of stakes and ditches, but...”

  “To attack would be sheer folly,” rasped Sir Gilbert, “we may as well cut our own throats, and save the Scots the trouble.”

  His northern bluntness made no impression on Clarence, who didn’t seem to hear him. “If we ride north, now,” he said excitedly, “with all speed, we could take them unawares and cut them up in their tents. In the confusion, they won’t realise how few we are.”

  “Come, Sir Gilbert,” he cried when this met with further silence, “these are Border tactics, are they not? The swift raid, the sudden dash, and then away again before the enemy knows what hit him!”

  “The last time such a thing was attempted in the north country, Your Grace,” Sir Gilbert replied quietly, “was at Otterburn, where Harry Hotspur tried to ambush the Scots as they lay in camp. We all know how that ended. Hotspur was taken captive, and his men scattered and slain.”

  “Just so,” said Lord Roos, “any talk of a head-on assault against superior numbers is madness. We should withdraw at once. Let the Dauphin claim his empty victory, and to hell with his boasts.”

  Clarence, the stubborn dolt, would not listen to reason. “I am in command here,” he yelled, his voice shrill again, with more than a touch of petulance, “and my orders will be obeyed! We will ride out and attack the enemy. Does any man here challenge my authority?”

  Not one of them spoke up. Less through fear of Clarence, I suspect, than the King, who had placed his brother in charge of the army as a mark of confidence and trust. Any challenge to Clarence was a challenge to Henry.

  No man present, whatever his rank or degree, cared to defy the victor of Agincourt, and the butcher of Caen and Montereau.

  “Salisbury,” said Clarence after a long pause, “I believe a number of our archers are still out foraging. Gather up the strays, and bring the entire force of archers north in support as soon as possible. Meantime I will lead our men-at-arms to Baugé.”

  “Yes, Your Grace,” mumbled Salisbury, staring at the floor. Clarence was deaf to his sullen tone, and blind to the expressions on the faces around him.

  “Come, gentlemen,” the duke bellowed, his face ruddy with drink and excitement, “to the greater glory of England, and the confusion of our enemies!”

  “To your company, Sir John,” Salisbury ordered me as we dispersed. I bowed and hurried out of the pavilion, wishing I could take horse and ride as far and as fast away as possible.

  I found my men at dinner, seated on the grass near our tents. “Up,” I cried, “fetch your horses. Ralf, get Odo.”

  Odo was my destrier, named after the horse I had lost, slain by Sir Roland’s cut-throats on the road near Louviers. My men scrambled for their mounts, tethered in a little wood nearby.

  Of them all, only Pepin the cook would be left behind. He raised his flask of cheap red wine in an ironic salute, and lay flat on his back to enjoy the warm spring sunshine. I envied the villain, and had to suppress an urge to kick his fat derrière.

  Trumpets screamed through the camp, summoning our knights and men-at-arms to their duty. Like the nobles, they were already in armour, and had only to wait for their squires to fetch weapons and horses.

  The golden pards and blood-red cross of England were to the fore as the long column of horsemen, splendid in burnished steel, thundered out of the camp. Clarence set a furious pace, and hundreds of racing hoofs churned up a great cloud of dust that formed a dirty yellow haze in the air. The long line of horsemen streamed away over the hill, heading for the river crossing near Baugé.

  Salisbury sent outriders to bring in the foragers, which gave our archers time to deploy at a more leisurely pace. Few of them looked keen to follow in the wake of the men-at-arms, and engage a much larger host lurking somewhere over the horizon to the north.

  Solid, dependable Ralf, who I had made my standard bearer, jogged up with Odo. “Are we going to fight, my lord?” he asked, and for once there was a twinge of anxiety in his soft voice.

  “We are,” I replied shortly. He was frightened, but I couldn’t help that. My own fear was enough to cope with, and my hands shook as they tightened the girths of my saddle.

  It took the best part of an hour for our foragers to return. Salisbury was beside himself with impatience, and cursed the stragglers in terms that would have made a whore blush. He was another of King Henry’s hard, capable captains, much like Warwick and Exeter and the Umfravilles. Any one of them would have made a better commander than Clarence, and avoided the disaster that was fast unfolding.

  When our entire force was gathered, Salisbury led us north along the same road as Clarence. Our archers were all mounted, and for a time I dared to hope th
at we may reach the battlefield in time to rescue the duke from his folly.

  We rode hard, half-blinded by dust swirling up from the road, and rapidly covered the eight miles between our camp and Baugé. Salisbury only called a halt when he sighted the roofs and spires of the town, north-east of the Loire.

  I nudged my destrier forward to get a better view of the river. There was only one bridge, built of stone and wide enough for two, maybe three horsemen to ride abreast. South-west of the bridge, on our side of the Loire, was a small village.

  The breath caught in my throat when I saw Clarence’s vanguard, strung out along the road leading to the bridge. In his haste, the duke had failed to keep his men together, and now they were dangerously stretched out in loose formation.

  “Where in hells are the enemy?” I heard Salisbury mutter, straining his eyes in the direction of Baugé.

  He must have had poor eyesight. “There, my lord,” I cried, pointing at the bridge. The sun glinted off a mass of lances and spears gathered on the northern side. Among the forest of bright pennons I made out the lilies of France and the saltire of Scotland.

  The main force of our men-at-arms were bunched together at the southern side of the bridge. Clarence’s standard was among them, and Salisbury cursed as they milled about like a flock of sheep. Clouds of white-fletched arrows rained down on them, loosed by a few hundred Scottish archers strung along the opposite bank.

  “Don’t just stand there!” Salisbury raged, “pull your men back, you fool, out of range!”

  No-one objected to the insult. Clarence was piling error upon error. Having charged ahead so eagerly and abandoned his archers, he was now struck with indecision, and exposed his men to a murderous hail of missiles while he dithered, uncertain whether to attack or retreat. The stubby, powerful darts punched through steel and layers of leather and flesh, nailed men to their saddles or sent them tumbling to earth in a tangle of limbs.

  In fairness, the duke had reason to hesitate. North of the bridge the ground rose slightly, and the enemy had placed their men-at-arms at the top of the slope. They were dismounted, and presented a glittering hedge of steel points. Our men would have to tackle them if we wished to force passage to the town.

  “This is Buchan’s work,” growled Salisbury, “he knows his business well. Too well, damn him. Clarence must not cross the bridge!”

  He looked around, and crooked his finger at me. “Sir John, ride down and advise His Grace to withdraw. Immediately. Tell him I will not advance another step. The archers will deploy here, and cover his retreat if the enemy pursue. Go!”

  I was about to prick in my spurs, when a distant squall of bugles sounded across the plain.

  This time Salisbury’s curses were fit to turn the air black. Clarence had made his decision, and taken his men across the bridge.

  Whatever his faults, he lacked not for courage. It might have been the king himself charging at the head of his knights, a slim figure in silvery plate, the sunlight reflecting off his ducal coronet. He held his sword aloft like a marshal’s baton, while above him the pards of England snapped and flickered in the wind as though alive.

  Sounds glorious, does it not? The stuff of ballads. If I have achieved sixty years on this earth, it is because I appreciate the distinction between romance and reality. Clarence, alas, never did.

  Salisbury made the sign of the cross. “Christ save His Grace,” he murmured, “for I cannot.”

  Thus far, O Sultan, I have spoken much of siegecraft but little of pitched battles. The battlefield tactics of my countrymen have not changed a great deal in a hundred years, though our captains in France are now being forced to adopt new methods. In my youth, however, the old ways were still the best.

  Englishmen prefer to ride to battle but fight on foot. Our archers are deployed in V-shaped wedges, protected to the front by rows of stakes and on their flanks by companies of dismounted men-at-arms. The latter wield glaives, halberds, battle-axes, shortened lances and other such butcher’s tools, and their task is to carve in pieces those enemy troops that manage to survive the arrow-storm.

  This has been the English way of war for over a century. It served us well on many battlefields, from Halidon Hill to Crécy and Poitiers, Auberoche, Najéra and Agincourt. At Baugé Clarence chose to throw away our proven strategy, and replace it with a mounted charge on a narrow front, uphill, against a more numerous enemy that had ample time to prepare.

  Even the meanest wit could predict the result. The duke crashed headlong into the fence of pole-arms, relying on the sheer weight of his horse and armour to force a gap.

  The Scottish foot refused to yield ground. His sword flashed as it struck right and left, and then he was swallowed up in the throng.

  Clarence’s knights thundered up the slope in his wake. Some of their impetus was lost, thanks to the incline, and their charge failed to pierce the enemy ranks. War-shouts and the clatter of steel echoed across the field, mingled with the frightful shrieks of wounded horses. Battle was joined in earnest. No chivalric warfare this, the mock combat of the tourney, but war to the death.

  The blur of knightly heraldry was spattered with the bright gush of blood. I saw blades rise and fall, savage strokes given and taken, bones crushed, helmets cleaved like parchment, bright blood spattered over the road. A horse tried to crawl away from the melée, trailing blood and dung. His back legs were broken, and trailed uselessly behind him as the poor beast’s forelegs scrabbled for purchase.

  “They make no headway, my lord,” said one of Salisbury’s knights, “we must go to their aid.”

  The earl rounded on him. “What would you have me do, fool?” he snarled, “take our hobelars across the bridge, and throw them onto the French pikes?”

  He ripped off his gauntlet and gnawed a knuckle, caught in an agony of indecision. There was still time for him to quit the field and save the archers.

  Honour forbade him. Almost every other English nobleman of any consequence had charged over the bridge with Clarence - Sir Gilbert Umfraville, Lord Roos, the earls of Huntingdon and Somerset, and many others.

  These were Salisbury’s peers, as well as friends and kinsmen. The ties of honour and family demanded he make some attempt to rescue them.

  “Page,” he shouted, “take your company down to the village, and drive off those arbalesters on the opposite bank. Bold, Hersy, Heyward, you as well.”

  The latter were men-at-arms, each in command of a troop of hobelars. All told, we numbered some sixty men, barely a third of the crossbowmen on the other side of the river. Our war bows had a longer range, and we could pick them off from distance.

  I goaded Odo into a trot, down the gentle rise towards the village, surrounded by an orchard and rows of hedges. There was ample cover for our men to dismount and advance to the river without being spotted by the enemy.

  “Ralf,” I said, “wait here, while I take the men forward. You must not lose the standard, do you hear me? If the day goes against us, get off the field. I would not have it fall into enemy hands.”

  Ralf nodded, his face sickly pale, and I slid off Odo and looked for somewhere to tether him while the rest of my company dismounted.

  We were on a square patch of green, perhaps used by the villagers for summer fairs and markets. It was a deceptively peaceful spot, the din of battle muffled by the woodland between us and the river.

  “There has been fighting here, my lord,” remarked one of my archers, “look to the church.”

  A little stone church lay on the edge of the green. The door had been stoved in, and the glass in the arched windows shattered. There was some further evidence of a brief skirmish - no bodies, but a couple of discarded shields, a dented bascinet, and some rust-coloured smears of blood on the steps.

  I hesitated, chewing my lip. Had the French stationed a company of troops to hold the village? If so, where were they now? Perhaps Clarence’s vanguard had driven them off before moving on to the bridge.

  “Follow,” I ordered, and
cautiously approached the church, sword in hand. The rest of the archers under their captains loped through the trees towards the riverside.

  I used my sword to thrust open the broken door, which lay ajar on its hinges. It creaked inward, and I stepped quickly through the arch, aware of what a perfect target I made for anyone hidden inside.

  The interior of the church was cool, and well-lit by the narrow windows set high in the walls flanking the nave.

  My feet almost slipped on a greasy pool of blood. The flagstones were awash with the stuff, all the way up to the altar on its dais at the northern end. More than a dozen men lay strewn over the floor. Their jupons bore the silver fleur-de-lis of France.

  I wrinkled my nose against the stench of death and looked down at the nearest body. His neck was laid open by the downward stroke of some vicious chopping weapon, a halberd or pole-axe.

  The French had held the church, that much seemed clear. Our men had cleared them out, and slain a few in the melée. I pictured the desperate struggle for possession of the church, the outnumbered defenders striving to hold the door against the English. The crash of breaking glass, the screams, the oaths, the flow of blood across consecrated ground. The final slaughter.

  “My lord!” An archer’s voice, half-strangled by panic, broke into my thoughts.

  “My lord, the French are here!”

  The true test of any officer is his conduct in the presence of immediate danger. I have always been one to act in a crisis, thank God, rather than goggle and ask foolish questions while the world collapses around me.

  Even as I ran outside, the earth quaked underfoot, and the rumble of distant thunder filled the air.

  Hoofbeats. I looked to the river, fearing the enemy had found another crossing and sent horsemen to drive away our archers.

  “No, my lord,” cried the archer who had alerted me, “to your left, on the ridge!”

  Behind the village was a steep rise. I bit down on a curse as I glimpsed the flash of steel on the ridge, lance-points and helms.