Painted in Blood

by Pip Vaughan-Hughes

  ‘He shall have a red shield,’ said Earl Richard, mounting again, ‘in honour of the one he took.’

  ‘And on it?’ Edmund insisted.

  ‘I don’t …’

  ‘A griffon,’ said de Montfort, laconically. ‘Sir Petrus is a little of this, a little of that, as a griffon is.’ He gave me an absent-minded grin, but I could tell that I was no longer important to these great men. He turned and began to speak loudly with Earl Richard.

  ‘A griffon, Sir Petrus?’ demanded the lads. ‘A griffon is a mighty charge, to be sure …’

  ‘No,’ I said, my head clearing for a moment. ‘Not a griffon. A dog. A black dog.’

  ‘Like the great dog of Dartmoor!’ said Gervais. ‘Did we not take you for …’ But whatever Gervais was about to say was cut short, for there was a clamour of noise from the direction of Saintes, and we all turned to look.

  ‘Lusignan is fighting as if he wishes to be killed,’ Earl Richard was saying.

  ‘He has a guilty conscience,’ answered de Montfort.

  ‘He does, the brute. My damn father-in-law, God smite him. Well … Oh, look there! More of the French!’

  We had been fighting only the vanguard of the French army, I saw, now, and our numbers had been almost equal. But now another wave of knights was pouring down the road.

  ‘Fetch Lusignan!’ de Montfort ordered Edmund de Wykham. ‘Let him draw his men up here, and we will charge their flank.’ The lad galloped away. I climbed back on to my horse. I was stiff, and looking down I saw that I was bleeding from under my mail coat. The bolt that had skipped off my belly must have driven some chain links into my flesh. There was a tangle of smashed links on one thigh and blood was clotting there into a glistening jelly. There was blood, too, all over my surcoat. But everyone was splattered and daubed with red, like men in a shambles. I waited, rocking in the saddle, impatient now to get back into the fight, for I was infected with the fever of battle, and we were passing the contagion back and forth between us with every dry, painful breath we drew.

  At last Lusignan rode up, his shield with its bands of blue and silver slashed almost to splinters. Behind him came a grim-faced band of knights. De Montfort yelled instructions and pointed, Lusignan nodded matter-of-factly, and that was it. With a great shout of ‘King’s men!’ Earl Richard dug his spurs into the bloodied flanks of his charger and without a moment’s hesitation every man on the hill screamed the same words and flung their horses down the hill.

  I do not remember the charge, save that my chest was filled with a great and luminous energy that forced its way out of my mouth in the cry I yelled over and over again. It was not courage, nor was it fear. Perhaps it was just the joy of being alive stretched to its utmost as I hurtled towards death. For the French host was very large now, so large that they were having difficulty turning themselves to face us in the confines of the Taillebourg road. They were still wheeling and cursing when we struck, lances still up and wavering. There was a sound like a tall winter wave falling onto a pebble beach, or a thousand axes felling a thousand trees, and a knight I had seen an eye-blink ago, manikin-small in the distance, was yelling in my face, his tongue out, his golden beard …

  My elbow smashed into his cheek and instantly another knight crashed into me from the side. My horse reared and almost fell, sliding through a little gap between horse tails. A mace appeared from nowhere and the pommel of my saddle exploded into shards and nails. But I was rushing past and the mace – I never saw its owner – thudded into my stomach and disappeared behind me.

  I was battering to right and left with my sword, desperately beating away the forms that rose up through the dust and the sun-glare, swatting at shadows and disembodied yells and cries that danced in and out of my dust-blurred vision. The din was abominable: horses, metal clashing against metal, a tumult from thousands of throats giving voice to ecstatic terror. As in a fever dream, faces came very close and vanished. I felt buffets and blows, but distantly, as though I were wrapped up like an Egyptian corpse. I could no longer hear my own voice, only the tearing in my throat as it came out of me.

  Then I was flailing at thin air. I had burst through the hedge of French bodies, and found myself in another of the narrow lanes between vineyards. All around me, other Englishmen were appearing, their faces, those not hidden behind the blank steel of helms, shining with sweat and blood, looking around wild-eyed for something to cut, to stab. And here it came. For through the vineyards, smashing the fences and rending the nets of vines, a wall of Frenchmen rode down upon us, their horses fresh, their shields and surcoats bright. ‘Montjoie! Montjoie et Saint Denis!’ Their cries came before them like a thickening of the air itself. The rest of Louis’ army had arrived upon the field.

  I saw some English knights wheel and throw themselves back into the fight behind us. I stuck my spurs into the flayed belly of my own horse, but the poor beast gave a sickening groan and staggered sideways. I was being crushed between two lines of steel. Despairingly I screamed at the horse and urged it on. If I was going to die, I would not be ridden down. Go forward! Always go forward! I heard one of my old fencing teachers say somewhere far back in my head. One last clap of my heels, and the wretched horse leapt ahead on watery legs. It broke into a tottering run, heaving itself up the shallow slope. I could feel its heart slamming against the great ribcage beneath my knees. On came the French, their lances straight and steady, death shining from the points.

  ‘DEVON!’ I yelled, trying to crouch behind my shield, its roundness hardly covering me. I picked a French face, black-bearded, distended with rage, and levelled my sword at it. I could feel the muscles of my horse tearing and failing. The head of a lance danced towards me like a shining, speeding bird. Time enough to take a last gulp of powdery air, before …

  There was a massive jolt: I was a hanged man at the end of his long drop, a woodsman caught by the tree he has felled. Every bone of my body felt clenched by an iron hand which shook them like a lion shakes its kill. Then nothing. And then another crash. There was no air left in my body, so bile came instead. Hooves throbbed and clapped very close to my head. My left arm … I could not feel it at all, but it was still attached to me, apparently. I managed to shake off the straps of my buckler, seeing as I did so that it was gouged and cracked from side to side. Using my sword I levered myself onto my knees, the horses rushing past me on each side. My own mount was nowhere to be seen, lost in the blur of yelling, heaving creatures all around. I ducked my head and held up my sword, quavering, one stalk of corn before the scythe, trying to stand, my left arm hanging lifeless. Then the storm was past, and I was still standing, swaying. There was a horrible sound all about me, a keening, moaning drone. All about me, horses lay kicking, and men sprawled or writhed: the drone came from them. The barely-living were singing their own dirge. I blinked stinging wetness from my eyes, and found there was some feeling in my arm after all. I took a step and tripped over something: it was a man’s leg, severed at the top of the thigh, still wearing its mail stocking. I gagged, seeing, a little further away, a lower jaw nestling in its beard, one red lip like a fat lobworm, an arc of white teeth.

  French voices came from near by. A party of foot soldiers was trotting down the hill, dressed in kettle helms and leather armour. They carried bucklers and some held short spears such as might be used for hunting boar, or axes, or short, heavy swords. As I watched, one of them paused and stabbed down with his spear, impaling a body that lay tangled in the vines. He bent and rummaged, and straightened with a golden chain in his fist. Then they saw me. I managed to get my left hand around my sword hilt and, wrapping my right hand around it, lifted the blade and held it up. The gold chain twinkled, and the men leered. I was going to be butchered. But, Christ! If I were captured by the French … Louis Capet was here, somewhere nearby. He would find out, and what would that mean for me? Would he think I had betrayed him? I was an Englishman, so I could not be a traitor to France, but after so many thousands of pounds of French gold had made
their way into my company’s chests? And Louis had his treasure. He could make me vanish on this battlefield just to satisfy a spiteful whim, and who, really, would blame him? So the trap had closed: so be it. With all these spears and axes heading for me I could get myself killed quickly enough. But then I thought of the burning carts, and Letice, and realised that the madness of battle was seeping out of me, and suddenly I remembered that I … it sounds strange to relate this, but in a battle there is no room in a man’s head for anything save fear and death, and soon enough only death remains: bringing it to others and waiting for it to come for you, and everything else is like the memories you might have of being a very young child: distant, faint and perhaps not even real. But now I was becoming sane again. Behind me, the sounds of battle had grown dim. The battle must be over. The English had lost: I could not imagine it otherwise. My head suddenly became clear. I turned my blade and stuck it into the ground, and pulled off one of my rings.

  ‘Là! ’ I cried, holding up the heavy little circle of gold. ‘I am an English knight, and I am worth a fat ransom!’ The men circled me, spears and swords levelled. Their eyes ran over me as if I were a naked maid in a brothel. Then one of them – his gut pushed over his belt and his face was furrowed and thickly stubbled with grey – hefted his axe and spat at my feet. He reached out and snatched the ring, and handed it to the man on his left, who bit it, nodded, and handed it back. The man spat again, then opened his toothless mouth wide and laughed at me.

  ‘Alors, mon chevalier,’ he said, wetly. ‘We will take you up on that. Follow us, my lord, if it pleases you.’ He gave a mocking bow, and his fellows did likewise. Then, with the dull, notched blade of his axe, he pointed the way up the hill.

  Chapter Fourteen

  Two of the toothless soldier’s mates escorted me away from the battlefield. They let me keep my sword, though when they began to search me I feared they would find my purse and so I pulled off another ring and gave it to them, which they seemed to appreciate, for they left me alone after that. I wondered if they were going to take me straight to the king, but shrugged this unpleasant thought aside: nobody knew anything about me, after all. I was just an unknown knight – I was a knight, though, wasn’t I? How strange. Was it real? I had earned my spurs, as the saying goes. Did one become a knight in such an off-handed way? And if Earl Richard and Earl Simon had not come through the battle alive, did my knighthood count at all in any case? I was pondering these questions, and discovering that, although I did not seem to be wounded in any proper way, I was not in particularly good shape, when my escorts grabbed me by the shoulder and pointed towards a tall linden tree under which a crowd was gathered. Further on up the hill, a company of men were putting up a richly decorated tent, no doubt for Louis.

  ‘You go over there,’ one of them said. ‘On your own parole.’

  ‘What is your name, knight?’ the other asked, rolling the words mockingly across his tongue.

  ‘Sir Peter Blakkedogge,’ I told him. Ridiculous, it sounded, but not to these men, for they tapped their heads, knocking the name into their brains, for they would be after a share of the ransom later on. I was not even sure if knights had special names or not – I’d never had to think about it before. Perhaps I was Sir Petrus Zennorius. Sir Petrus … Sir Petroc. Useless thoughts. Free of my escort I turned around and looked back at the battlefield.

  The rich country I had seen this morning as I sat with Simon de Montfort under the walls of Saintes was fearfully changed. The soft hills that had looked so neat and orderly with their rows of vines were churned, the straight plantings smashed as if the sea had flowed in and receded, leaving a hideous tide line of ruin. The English army was nowhere to be seen, but the English lions flew above the city, so perhaps what was left of it had taken refuge inside. If the flag flew, King Henry lived, at least. The land fell away from me down to a low valley and then up again to the walls of the city. In the valley and on the far slope bodies were littered, men and horses. Small bands of men on foot were roaming, searching for prisoners and loot. On the other side of the Taillebourg road the French cavalry had formed up, one wing on the road itself, the centre on the hill where only an hour ago – or more, or less, for I had lost track of the time – I had been made a knight. The Oriflamme flew there next to the blue and silver flag of France, so King Louis was down there. Good – I would not be running into him up here. There were thousands upon thousands of mounted men around the king, a forest of spears and flags. More were coming down the road. And all around them and beneath them, men lay in black drifts. The ghastly sound of the battlefield, the moaning, keening lamentation of bad ends coming slowly, hung over everything, unearthly and chilling. The French had won, there seemed no way to doubt it. But both sides had paid a high price. At the place where our last charge had caught them on the road, a line of corpses and half-living horses lay thick and tangled. A little beyond it, the place where their counter-attack had struck, another blurred line of butchery. A confused jumble of dark shapes over where the English carts still smouldered. Here and there a shape would rise up and stagger away or fall again. Wounded men limped aimlessly through the maze of ruined vines and bodies. I watched as the French foot soldiers cut down a wounded man quite close by, although he held up his clasped hands and begged them. No gold rings on those fingers.

  I stumbled onwards towards the crowd, and as I drew nearer saw that the throng was a hundred or more in number, men in armour for the most part, some standing, some sitting, others lying on the ground, hurt or dying. I looked to see if I knew anyone there. A few knights I recognised: the red-haired man I had spoken to before dawn yesterday was lying close by, his face white as the chalk he lay on, his armour hanging from him, a livid gash in his side. I thought I saw young Gervais Bolam, and there was Henry, Lord Hastings, a haughty gentleman I had sat next to at the king’s table once. Married to the Princess of Scotland: he’d bring a pretty ransom. Gervais saw me, and limped over. He was grinning as if he’d suffered no more than a rowdy game of football.

  ‘Sir Petrus!’ He cried, giving me a great, painful hug. ‘Knight of the Black Dog! How goes the day, sir?’

  ‘Tolerably well, Sir Gervais,’ I replied. ‘Except that I am horribly thirsty. Is there anything to drink?’ It was true. I was dry as an embalmed carcass, and now that I had said the words out loud I could think of nothing else.

  ‘I saw you in the charge, man,’ the boy went on. ‘A mace almost took your bollocks off, by God! And the way you charged the second line …’

  ‘I am sorry, Gervais, but I do not remember seeing you at all. Did you … are you all right?’

  ‘Fine, fine. A knock on the leg. I cut that French devil clean in twain, though!’

  ‘Jolly good,’ I said weakly. ‘What happens now?’

  ‘Well, we will be ransomed – I trust!’ he added, with a wild laugh. ‘Or we will be exchanged. We took a lot of French knights prisoner, you know. So I would guess …’

  ‘Are there any ladies here?’ I cut in. ‘My … my cousin Agnes was in one of the carts that the French captured. I looked for her there, but she must have escaped. I hope.’ I looked again at the carnage all around us, and at the black smoke rising from the carts.

  ‘Your cousin? Lord! No, I have not seen her. There are some women – perhaps some ladies too – somewhere about. I think they are over near the tents.’ He waved a hand towards the hilltop. ‘I do hope your cousin is all right. She is a fine …’ He blushed, poor boy.

  ‘And your friends? What about Edmund and William?’ I asked to change the subject, although I was already staring in the direction he had pointed. I could see no women, though.

  ‘They will be all right,’ he was saying. ‘They were with my lord Leicester and Earl Richard, and their party fought their way back to the gates. No, those two rogues will be drunk already, telling lies about all their great deeds.’

  ‘Good for them. So a few of us escaped?’

  ‘Oh, most of us!’ he cried. ‘While y
ou and I were fighting down there—’ and he pointed to where the bodies lay thick in the valley ‘—the rest of the army managed to get into Saintes, and Earl Richard led his men, and Lusignan’s, back as well.’

  ‘And Lusignan?’

  ‘I believe he was with the earl.’

  ‘So it has not been a complete disaster.’

  ‘No, not at all! A very fine fight – did you not think so?’

  I tried to show him a ferocious grin, but God knows what he saw. ‘Very fine indeed,’ I told him. And for no reason I threw my arms around the lad and embraced him. ‘Now I will look for my cousin,’ I said, and started off towards the tents.

  ‘You’d better stay here, Black Dog!’ called Gervais behind me, anxiously. ‘You’re a prisoner, you know!’ I waved my arm tiredly and staggered on. My limbs were really hurting now, and the rest of my body was smarting and burning. It felt as if I had been rolled in nettles, thrown through a blackthorn thicket and then been threshed with flails. ‘And you’re bleeding!’ came Gervais’ faint voice as if to confirm what my senses were telling me.

  I paused to lean on a vine-hung stake. The gnarled wood of the vine was thick with leaves and festooned with bunches of green, unripe grapes. Without thinking I grabbed a bunch and stuffed it into my mouth, letting the grapes pop against my teeth. The juice was thin and terribly sour, but I gulped it down anyway. A shadow fell over me. Looking up, I found a knight looking down at me from his horse.

  ‘Que faites-vous, Anglais? ’ he snapped.

  ‘Thirsty,’ I croaked.

  ‘Back to your fellows,’ he ordered.

  ‘My friend, I am looking for my cousin, a lady named Agnes de Wharram. She was in the carts that were straggling at the end of our line. Have you seen her?’

  ‘A lady?’ The man brightened immediately. ‘What does she look like?’ I described Agnes. He frowned. ‘There are some women up there,’ he conceded. ‘Ladies-in-waiting, most of them. Noble ladies …’ He scratched his nose. ‘You had better go and look,’ he said, and leaned down towards me. ‘Do not say I let you, though. What is your name?’ I told him, and stuffed a few more grapes into my mouth. He shook his head and trotted off towards the other prisoners.